Most users know social media companies like Facebook and Twitter track and profile their users. In one recent study, researchers discovered encoded information about an individual and his or her interests, likes and behaviors by using tweets from only 8 or 9 of their friends social networking accounts – the first study that analyzed how much information about an individual is encoded in interactions with friends. They found that machine learning algorithms could start to predict factors such as political affiliation or leisure interests simply by studying the tweets of someone’s friends - with up to 95% accuracy. They concluded that all a company or government entity needs to do is figure out who a person’s friends are and it’s possible to predict how that person will act or behave. Even deleting your social media accounts will not prevent this from happening since your friends continue to share personal information about you. Advocates claim Facebook and other companies appear to be collecting shadow profiles of non-users by capturing all the ambient data that flows through the social network on a daily basis. They warn that information is collected on social media sites in ways that might not be obvious to social media users.

Pending Legislation: S.1667 - Social Media Privacy Protection and Consumer Rights Act of 2021
Sponsor: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN)
Status: Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Chair: Sen. Maria Cantwell (WA)

Tweet