December 14, 2020
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission is seeking information from Facebook, Twitter and other social media and video streaming companies about how they use the personal information that they collect on their users, the agency said on Monday.
In addition to Facebook and Twitter, the orders requesting data were sent to Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp, Amazon.com Inc, China’s ByteDance unit TikTok, Discord Inc, Reddit Inc, Snap Inc, and Google subsidiary YouTube LLC.
The FTC is seeking to learn how the companies collect data on users, how they decide which advertisements to show and how algorithms are used, among other information, the agency said in a statement. It is also seeking information about how the companies’ practices affect children and teenagers.
The companies have 45 days to respond to the orders, which are usually used to generate policy or recommend legislation.
None of the companies immediately responded to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
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