FTC Launches Sweeping Privacy Study of Top Tech Platforms

The Federal Trade Commission will announce Monday that it's launching a new inquiry into the privacy and data collection practices of major tech firms including Amazon, TikTok owner ByteDance, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook as well as its subsidiary WhatsApp, Axios reported Monday. From the report: The move comes amid broader scrutiny for the industry and appears to be a wide-reaching inquiry into everything major tech companies know about their users and what they do with that data, as well as their broader business plans. The FTC is asking for a large trove of information and documents from the above platforms, plus Discord, Reddit and Snap. The agency wants much of the usage and engagement data the platforms collect on their users, the metrics they use for measuring such things and short- and long-term business strategies, among many other areas of inquiry. In launching the study, the FTC is using its authority to do wide-ranging studies for no specific law enforcement purpose.

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