The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the US published the article FTC Staff Report Finds Large Social Media and Video Streaming Companies Have Engaged in Vast Surveillance of Users with Lax Privacy Controls and Inadequate Safeguards for Kids and Teens on a new report. According to the subtitle the report recommends limiting data retention and sharing, restricting targeted advertising, and strengthening protections for teens. The article mentions the following recommendations:

• Congress should pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation to limit surveillance, address baseline protections, and grant consumers data rights;
• Companies should limit data collection, implement concrete and enforceable data minimization and retention policies, limit data sharing with third parties and affiliates, delete consumer data when it is no longer needed, and adopt consumer-friendly privacy policies that are clear, simple, and easily understood;
• Companies should not collect sensitive information through privacy-invasive ad tracking technologies;
• Companies should carefully examine their policies and practices regarding ad targeting based on sensitive categories;
• Companies should address the lack of user control over how their data is used by systems as well as the lack of transparency regarding how such systems are used, and also should implement more stringent testing and monitoring standards for such systems; Companies should not ignore the reality that there are child users on their platforms and should treat COPPA as representing the minimum requirements and provide additional safety measures for children;
• The Companies should recognize teens are not adults and provide them greater privacy protections; and
• Congress should pass federal privacy legislation to fill the gap in privacy protections provided by COPPA for teens over the age of 13.

This is revolutionary for the country known for its ‘laissez faire’ approach to digital.

“We need to kill this sector”
Background information can be found in Cory Doctorow’s article, Tech monopolists use their market power to invade your privacy. He explains the significance of the FTC report and its findings:

In the study, the Commission shows – pretty convincingly! – that the commercial surveillance sector routinely tricks people who have no idea how their data is being used. Most people don’t understand, for example, that the platforms use all kinds of inducements to get web publishers to embed tracking pixels, fonts, analytics beacons, etc that send user-data back to the Big Tech databases, where it’s merged with data from your direct interactions with the company. Likewise, most people don’t understand the shadowy data-broker industry, which sells Big Tech gigantic amounts of data harvested by your credit card company, by Bluetooth and wifi monitoring devices on streets and in stores, and by your car. Data-brokers buy this data from anyone who claims to have it

The public is deceived about the collection of this data and about the way it is used. Opt-out is impossible and the data will be there for ever. Het ends with:

But we need to do more than curb the worst excesses of the largest data-brokers. We need to kill this sector, and to do that, Congress has to act:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

We’ll see what comes of it.