Social media platforms are enormous sources of information where a lot of our personal data is stored, although most of us are not aware of it and do not care about it. Considering that one of the main income sources of social media sources is advertising revenue, this means that user data is very important and we need to be more careful in terms of protecting this data.
A mobile marketing company conducting research on social media platforms in this regard also examined how ‘sensitive’ these platforms are in terms of user data. In the research, which reveals how much user data social media platforms collect, two extremely popular social media platforms came to the fore.
Social media platforms that collect the most personal user data: YouTube and TikTok
A research was conducted on 10 different social media apps by the mobile marketing company URL Genius, using the “Save app activity” feature on Apple’s iOS. Within the scope of the research, it was examined how many different areas monitor a user’s activity on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Messenger.
According to the research, YouTube and TikTok are among the social media platforms that collect the most user data, with 14 network connections. This number stands out as 6 network connections on average on other platforms.
Accordingly, Google-owned YouTube monitors users’ personal data, such as online search history and location, and uses this data for purposes such as serving ads relevant to the person. On the other hand, TikTok, owned by the Chinese technology giant ByteDance, allows third-party trackers, which are usually invisible code snippets found on many websites, to collect user data.
These third-party trackers collect information about users’ browsing histories and send the information they obtain to other companies for advertising purposes. If the same type of third-party trackers are found on more than one site, it may be possible to create a more consistent and complete profile about users after a certain period of time.
In addition, third-party trackers make it impossible to find out who is monitoring user data and what information has been compromised. In addition, with third-party trackers, it is possible to track a user’s activity even if he or she has left the application.
Unclear how our data is used
According to research, 10 of YouTube’s viewers are first-party network connections. This means that the platform tracks users’ activities for their own purposes. So YouTube allows obscure outsiders to collect information by monitoring user activity. On TikTok, it is stated that 13 of 14 network connections are third parties.
TikTok has also been very popular due to the allegations that it has forwarded some personal user information to servers in China; It was criticized a lot, especially because it was not known how the data of young users was collected and what it was used for.
Noting that it is unclear how user data is used, the authors of the report note that “Consumers cannot currently see what data is shared with third-party networks or how their data will be used.”
22430
