Firms like Reddit, are involved in online surveillance. According to The Gaurdian: "Whatever product was in use, it was not easy to opt out of data collection, according to the FTC. Nearly all the companies said they fed personal information to automated systems, most often to serve content and advertisements. On the flipside, almost none of them offered “a comprehensive ability to directly control or opt-out of use of their data by all Algorithms, Data Analytics, or AI”, per the report."
And when according to state privacy laws, when data was asked to be deleted, many of these firms did not comply. You have to assume that online platforms are collecting data that allows them to identify you, your race, and gender, and other personal characteristics. The data is used to give you targeted content and ads. There is great marketing buzz on recommendation systems, in e commerce web sites. But I personally don't find them very useful. You should be easily able to opt out of it, if you want to.
Furthermore: "Several firms say it’s impossible to even compile a full list of who they share your data with. When the companies were asked to enumerate which advertisers, data brokers or other entities they shared consumer data with, none of these nine firms provided the FTC with a full inventory."
There is a need for stronger enforcement of state or national privacy laws. And laws to ensure users have control of how their data is used. Businesses also should not be sharing private data with the authorities. While according to the FTC there is a risk, according to the NSA or others, there might be an opportunity. We have to stop the government business surveillance complex.
Online companies may need to alter their business model, when they can no longer freely collect data and sell it. E commerce firms will not have a big negative impact. But social media firms and other free services, are more reliant on user data, to make money.
Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/19/social-media-companies-surveillance-ftc
Social media and online video firms, need to be better regulated, to reduce surveillance and improve privacy
byu/fool49 ineconomy
by fool49
1 comment
You’re right. But the problem is that the regulators themselves prefer to keep things wild open to have access to surveillance tools and backdoors. The UK for example kept trying a couple of years ago to pass its “ghost protocol” law which coerces messaging apps to leave a backdoor for them. https://ponderwall.com/index.php/2019/07/10/uk-law-messaging-privacy/
We can’t eradicate surveillance but we can educate people to be less vulnerable to it.