Facebook and Google must overhaul their business models, which rely on harvesting and monetizing users' private data to the detriment of their core human rights, a prominent rights watchdog said in a report out Thursday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st November, 2019) Facebook and Google must overhaul their business models, which rely on harvesting and monetizing users' private data to the detriment of their core human rights, a prominent rights watchdog said in a report out Thursday.
Amnesty International's "Surveillance Giants" report investigated how the world's dominant social media company and web browser weaponized users' data to micro-target and manipulate billions of people.
"These capabilities mean there is a high risk that the companies could directly harm the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and freedom of opinion and expression ... Furthermore, they risk contributing to abuses of these rights by other actors who are able to access or utilise their models," the report pointed out.
The study made an emphasis on the platforms' algorithms that can sift through huge amounts of data and infer detailed characteristics about users. Advertisers pay the tech giants handsomely to tap that potential of shaping people's online experience.
"Google and Facebook dominate our modern lives - amassing unparalleled power over the digital world... Their insidious control of our digital lives undermines the very essence of privacy and is one of the defining human rights challenges of our era," Amnesty's secretary general, Kumi Naidoo, said.
The rights watchdog proposed forbidding the tech companies from conditioning access to their services on the availability of users' private details. It also said that governments should also enact stricter data protection laws and make Big Tech firms clarify to users their purpose for gathering their data.
