US FTC slams Meta, TikTok and Twitch for ‘woefully inadequate’ data policies

YouTube, social media platform X, Snap, Discord and Reddit were also included in the FTC report

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Social media and video streaming companies continue to face scrutiny from US regulators over data concerns. Photo: NurPhoto/Zuma Press/TNS

Published: 10:21am, 20 Sep 2024Updated: 11:48am, 20 Sep 2024

Social media companies collect, share and process vast troves of information about their users while offering little transparency or control, including over how it is used by systems incorporating artificial intelligence, the US Federal Trade Commission said in a report released on Thursday.

The report analysed how Meta Platforms, ByteDance’s TikTok, Amazon’s video gaming platform Twitch, and others manage user data, concluding that data management and retention policies at many of the companies were “woefully inadequate”.

YouTube, social media platform X, Snap, Discord and Reddit were also included in the FTC report, though its findings were anonymised and did not reveal specific companies’ practices. YouTube is owned by Alphabet’s Google.

Discord, a communications platform, said the report lumps very different business models into one category, and that it did not offer advertising at the time the study was conducted.

The Federal Trade Commission in Washington. Photo: Dreamstime/TNS

An X representative said the report is based on practices from 2020 when the site was known as Twitter, which X has since improved.

“X takes user data privacy seriously and ensures users are aware of the data they are sharing with the platform and how it is being used, while providing them with the option of limiting the data that is collected from their accounts,” the representative said.