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

The FTC sent orders to nine companies in December 2020, including Meta, YouTube, X, Snap, TikTok, Discord, Reddit and Amazon’s Twitch. It took almost four years to conclude what everyone already knew. Their data retention was “woefully inadequate,” some ignored deletion requests, and teens got treated like adults. The fix on offer is asking Congress for a privacy law, which is the same thing nobody has gotten for a decade.