U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), member of the Senate Commerce Committee, authored a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan urging the prompt release of its privacy report on social media and video streaming services by November 14th.
The FTC is preparing to announce new privacy-related rules for online businesses, and its comment deadline for its privacy rulemaking ends on November 21. In his letter, Sen. Cruz called for the release of the FTC privacy report by November 14 to allow interested parties full transparency before commenting.
In the letter, the Senator states:
“The social media and video streaming investigation was initiated in December 2020, when the FTC issued orders to Amazon.com, Inc., ByteDance Ltd. (operator of TikTok), Discord Inc., Facebook, Inc., Reddit, Inc., Snap Inc., Twitter, Inc., WhatsApp Inc., and YouTube LLC requesting the relevant information. Specifically, the FTC orders sought information related to:
(i) how these companies collect, use, track, estimate, or derive personal and demographic information;
(ii) how they determine which ads and other content are shown to consumers;
(iii) whether they apply algorithms or data analytics to personal information;
(iv) how they measure, promote, and research user engagement; and
(v) how their practices affect children and teens.”
…
“Moreover, Congress and state legislatures have considered numerous bipartisan bills related to each of the five 6(b) orders. Certainly, the elected representatives of the people—and more importantly, the American people—would benefit from the findings of this investigation to craft sound public policy. Thus, it is imperative the report is released immediately to provide the public and interested parties alike an opportunity to comment on the ANPRM, and to supply members of Congress and state legislators with vital information in advance of the 118th Congress and upcoming state legislative sessions.”
A copy of the letter can be found here.
