Tue, Dec 15th 2020 9:33am
Mike Masnick
On Monday, the FTC announced that it was issuing what s known as 6(b) orders to nine social media and video streaming companies, demanding a fairly massive amount of information regarding their data collection and usage policies, as well as their advertising practices. To me, this is a huge missed opportunity. If the FTC is
truly trying to gain a better understanding of data collection, privacy, and advertising practices, perhaps to better inform Congress on how to, say, pass a truly comprehensive (and useful?!?) privacy legislation, then there are ways to do that. But this. is not that. This looks like a weird fishing expedition for a ton of unrelated information, from an odd selection of nine companies, many of whom are in a very different business than the others. It leaves me quite perplexed.