FTC report on predatory data collection in social media hints at future regulation
It’s more helpful to consider this part of a paper trail the agency is laying down in order to justify new regulations in the space. This is part of the paper trail that the FTC has laid down to justify new regulations. The companies are Amazon, Facebook YouTube, Twitter Snap, ByteDance Discord Reddit and WhatsApp. What data do you collect? Who is it for and how long are they kept? Do you delete data if asked? The questions are quite comprehensive, the better to avoid prevarication or obscurity through withholding important data. As Director Samuel Levine of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection notes in his preface:
Echoing how firms conceal and hide their collection practices, many Companies provided the Commission with limited, incomplete, or unhelpful responses that appeared to have been carefully crafted to be self-serving and avoid revealing key pieces information. The questions are quite comprehensive, the better to avoid the possibility of prevarication or obscuration through withholding of important data.
The responses of the companies were, predictably, evasive, as the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine notes in the preface:
Echoing the way that firms conceal and hide their collection practices, many of the Companies provided the Commission with limited, incomplete, or unhelpful responses that appeared to have been carefully crafted to be self-serving and avoid revealing key pieces of information.
The resulting report details all manner of shenanigans, representing both malice and incompetence. The practices revealed are not surprising, but the executive summaries on pages 9 and 10 will remind you of all the skulduggery that we’ve come to expect. Despite the fact that Lina Khan was elevated to the Chair of the FTC following this investigation, no major revisions or changes to the rules have been made. For example, “thou shalt never sell data about a user’s medical challenges to advertisers.” The FTC states: “
…In a seemingly attempt to avoid liability for the COPPA Rule most
claimed that there were no child users on the platforms because children could not create accounts.” The SMVSSs should not ignore this reality…Almost all of the Companies allowed teens on their SMVSSs and placed no restrictions on their accounts, and collected personal information from teens just like they do with adults. What’s the purpose of this report, when all of this is already known?
Well the FTC also has to be careful in deciding on rules that may restrict multi-billion dollar global tech companies. The FTC could have said in 2020, “These companies are out-of-control, we propose new rules!” and the industries affected would be justified to challenge the FTC’s decision, claiming that there was no evidence for the practices prohibited by the proposed rule. The Chair Khan’s statement that accompanies the report may be true, but it’s almost certain that it will serve as a basis for a new rulemaking. The very fact that the companies both admit to doing these things, and that they have been caught red-handed doing others in the meantime, would strengthen any argument for new regulations.
Khan also fends off dissent from within, from Commissioners who (despite voting unanimously to issue the report) accuse it of attempting to regulate speech or dictate business models. She dispatches these arguments with the confidence of someone already drafting a proposal.
That proposal (should it exist) would likely be aimed at trimming the wings of those companies that have come to embody entire industries within themselves. Khan says: “[social media and video streaming services]… it is the relative dominance and data practices of several of these platforms which gives them an outsized effect on Americans.” When one firm has complete control of a market, and the competition is not present to check it, their policies can function as private regulations. A market that is consolidated is more prone to government cooptation or coordination. These platforms are at greater risk of being used by the government to conduct improper surveillance if they continue to allow private surveillance. The way these markets are set up can have a greater impact on the protection or risk of core liberties.
