The Facebook application on a smartphone (illustration).
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Jenny Kane / AP / SIPA
The US Competition Commission (FTC) has decided to tackle the giants of Silicon Valley once again.
The federal agency on Monday called on companies, including Facebook, Amazon, YouTube (Google) and Twitter, to provide it with information about their business practices and how they collect user data.
Understand user targeting
The FTC said in a statement, seeking information "on how social networks and video streaming services collect, use, track, estimate or extract personal information and establish the demographics" of their users.
She also seeks to understand how these technology groups determine which advertisements and content should be directed or recommended to specific consumers.
As a backdrop, the FTC wants to know if they are simply relying on algorithms or performing "data, personal information analysis."
"How they measure, promote a user's investment and fuel it and how these practices affect children and adolescents," said the federal agency.
Little luck for legal action
It is not certain that these requests for information will lead to legal action, however warned the FTC, which last week launched, alongside several American states, lawsuits against Facebook for anti-competitive practices.
In this context, the agency asked the courts to dismantle the social network via a sale of WhatsApp and Instagram.
In addition to Facebook and its WhatsApp messenger, Google (YouTube), Twitter and Amazon, ByteDance, the Chinese group that owns TikTok, Reddit, Snap (Snapchat) are affected by the request for information.
These companies have 45 days to respond, insists the FTC.
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