Some of the world’s biggest social media companies — Facebook and Google — are assaulting people’s right to privacy “on an unprecedented scale” and its effects pose risks to other rights, such as freedom of expression and opinion, freedom of thought and the right to non-discrimination. This was revealed in a report by Amnesty International called ‘Surveillance Giants - How the Business Model of Google and Facebook Threatens Human Rights’.
“Google and Facebook dominate our modern lives – amassing unparalleled power over the digital world by harvesting and monetizing the personal data of billions of people. 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,” said Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
The report stated that the two companies, which offer services without asking people to pay for it, instead make people pay for services with their intimate personal data, which is constantly tracked.
Amnesty said that such extraction and analysis of people’s personal data is incompatible with the right to freedom from intrusion into our private lives, the right to control information about ourselves and the right to a space in which we can freely express our identities.
"Despite the companies' assurances over their commitment to privacy, it is difficult not to see these numerous privacy infringements as part of the normal functioning of their business, rather than aberrations," said the report that came out on Thursday.
The report calls Google and Facebook as the “global public square”, and said that while Google controls the search engine itself, YouTube, the Chrome browser and Android, Facebook is the world’s dominant social media company, which a third of the world uses each day.
The report stated that Google and Facebook's total revenues come almost entirely from advertising — at 84% and 98% respectively, and are often described to have a duopoly over online advertising.
It went on to add that both companies collect extensive data — what we search, where we go, who we talk to; what we say; what we read, and can infer what our moods, ethnicities, sexual orientation, political opinions, and vulnerabilities may be.
“Facebook and Google must not be allowed to dictate how we live online. It is time to reclaim this vital public space for everyone rather than a few powerful unaccountable companies in Silicon Valley,” Kumi Naidoo said.
The report adds that apart from just advertisements, the data collected by the companies and the insights they get interests many — from insurance companies that set policy rates to law enforcement agencies.
"Advertisers were the original beneficiaries of these insights, but once created, the companies' data vaults served as an irresistible temptation for governments as well,” the report states.
According to the Amnesty report, the surveillance-based business model of Google and Facebook has thrived from a largely hands-off approach to the regulation of the technology industry in key countries such as the US, the companies' home state.
Both companies don’t have a very good record of maintaining privacy. Facebook agreed to pay a $5 billion fine to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over privacy violations in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the European Union's anti-trust regulators have fined Google 1.49 billion euros ($1.7 billion) for abusing its dominance in the online search market by blocking rivals. In fresh trouble for Google, 50 US Attorneys General probing its anti-trust market practices have decided to expand the investigation into the tech giant's Android and Search businesses.
“This isn’t the internet people signed up for,” Amnesty said, stating that when Google and Facebook were first starting out two decades ago, they had very different business models.
In its reply to the report, Facebook disagreed with its business model being "surveillance-based."
In a statement given to The Verge, a Google spokesperson said the company is working to give people more control over their data.