FTC Orders Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube To Explain How They Collect, Use, and Present Info

[engine]

The Federal Trade Commission has ordered social media and video streaming companies to provide data on how they collect, use, and present personal information, their advertising and user engagement practices, and how their practices affect children and teens.

The orders are being sent to Amazon.com, Inc., ByteDance Ltd., which operates the short video service TikTok, Discord Inc., Facebook, Inc., Reddit, Inc., Snap Inc., Twitter, Inc., WhatsApp Inc., and YouTube LLC. The companies will have 45 days from the date they received the order to respond.

The FTC is seeking information specifically related to:

how social media and video streaming services collect, use, track, estimate, or derive personal and demographic information;

how they determine which ads and other content are shown to consumers;

whether they apply algorithms or data analytics to personal information;

how they measure, promote, and research user engagement; and

how their practices affect children and teens.

[ftc.gov...]

[tangor]

I suspect lawyers are busy scanning all the potential responses to keep g safe while responding to the requested information!

These questions seek the inner workings of the "black box" and g will do all they can to respond to the inquiry without giving up their secrets. Standard business practice, not suggesting anything nefarious!

[JorgeV]

Hello,

The upcoming EU Digital Services Act also includes this kind of requests. Internet giants (yet to be defined) , will have to be transparent on how they collect, and use the data, and , from my understanding , expose their ranking/selection algorithms.