Sept 19 (Reuters) - Social media companies collect,

share and process vast troves of information about their users

while offering little transparency or control, including over

how it is used by systems incorporating artificial intelligence,

the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said in a report released on

Thursday.

The report analyzed how Meta Platforms ( META ), ByteDance's

TikTok, Amazon's ( AMZN ) gaming platform Twitch, and others

manage user data, concluding that data management and retention

policies at many of the companies were "woefully inadequate."

YouTube, social media platform X, Snap, Discord and

Reddit ( RDDT ) were also included in the FTC report, though its

findings were anonymized and did not reveal specific companies'

practices. YouTube is owned by Alphabet's Google.

Social media companies gather data through tracking

technologies used in online advertising and buying information

from data brokers, and other means, the FTC said.

"While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance

practices can endanger people's privacy, threaten their

freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identity

theft to stalking," said FTC Chair Lina Khan.

Data privacy, particularly for kids and teens, has been a

hot-button issue. The U.S. House of Representatives is

considering bills passed by the Senate in July aimed at

addressing social media's effects on younger users. And Meta

recently rolled out teen accounts that incorporate enhanced

parental controls.

Meanwhile, Big Tech companies have been scrambling to

acquire sources of data to train their emerging

artificial-intelligence technologies. The data deals are

infrequently disclosed and often involve private content locked

behind paywalls and login screens, with scant or no notice to

the users who posted it.

In addition to collecting data about how users engage with

their services, most of the companies the FTC reviewed collected

users' age and gender or guessed it based on other information.

Some also gathered information on users' income, education and

family status, the FTC said.

Companies gathered data on individuals who did not use their

services, and some were not able to identify all of the ways

they collected and used data, the FTC said.