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federal trade commission building

phoenix.com technology news, september 20, beijing time (federal trade commission) said on thursday that it has found that several social media and streaming services are involved in "large-scale surveillance" of consumers, including minors, and these platforms collect and share more personal information than most users realize.

the finding comes from the ftc's study of the collection and use of consumer data by nine companies, including meta and youtube. the report said that most of these websites provide free services and make profits by using this data for targeted advertising to specific users. these companies also failed to protect users, especially children and teenagers.

the ftc said it began the study nearly four years ago as the first comprehensive look at the opaque business practices of some of the largest online platforms that have used consumer data to create a multibillion-dollar advertising business. the ftc said the report showed the need for federal privacy legislation and restrictions on how companies collect and use data.

“surveillance practices jeopardize people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a range of harms, from identity theft to stalking,” said ftc chairwoman lina khan.

the ftc also found that many websites claim they restrict access to users under 13, but many children still remain on these platforms. in many applications, teenagers are also treated as adults, subjecting them to the same data collection practices as adults. the study showed that many companies were unable to tell the ftc how much data they collected.

the study also covers amazon's streaming platform twitch, messaging service discord, snapchat, and social forum reddit. x also provided data. as of press time, none of these platforms commented on this. (author/xiao yu)

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