FTC Recommends Tighter Data Practices at Amazon, Meta, Google

Amazon, Meta, Google, TikTok and other companies should change their data “surveillance” practices to improve user privacy, the FTC said Thursday, concluding a probe the Trump administration started. The FTC issued a staff report with recommendations for nine companies that received orders in December 2020 (see 2012140054). Republican commissioners said in statements that some of the recommendations exceed the FTC’s authority. The report details how companies “harvest an enormous amount” of data and monetize it for billions of dollars annually, Chair Lina Khan said. “These surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms.” The agency issued Section 6(b) orders to Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, X, Snap, ByteDance, Discord, Reddit and WhatsApp. Staff recommended data minimization practices, targeted advertising limits and more-stringent restrictions for children. The commission voted 5-0 to issue the report, but Commissioners Andrew Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak dissented in part. Ferguson argued that some of the FTC’s recommended actions for companies exceed agency authority: “We are not moral philosophers, business ethicists, or social commentators. ... [A]s Beltway bureaucrats, our opinion on these matters is probably worth less than the average American’s.” Some of the recommendations are “thinly-veiled threats,” he said. Ferguson cited the recommendation that companies not willfully ignore user age because it won’t “help companies avoid liability under” the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Holyoak said some of the agency’s recommendations could chill online speech. For example, should a company follow recommendations to redesign algorithms for classes the agency deems “protected,” it could undermine the speech rights of certain populations. The report “fails to robustly explore the full consequences of its conclusions and recommendations,” she added. Khan in her statement denied the report “somehow endorses or encourages the platforms to disfavor certain viewpoints.” The report directly states that it doesn’t “address or endorse any attempt to censor or moderate content based on political views,” said Khan.