Regulate Social Media Advertising

Social media networks, through vague privacy policies, are able to collect a users personal data including their location, online activity, online behaviour and so on. The websites then sell your personal information, that you gave them for free, to third party advertising agencies that use this information to gear advertisements to you. We believe this constitutes as an invasion of privacy. Social media websites are able to change their existing privacy policies at any time, without giving users notice, thus making them unaware of potential exploitation of their information. Is this the price we have to pay to communicate online? It doesn't have to be. If we enforce a new policy, ensuring all social media websites to adhere to a set of rules, we can end this invasion of privacy. Here is our solution. The following regulations would apply to all social media websites and their third party organizations and their relationship to Canadian users. 1. Upon signing up for a social media website, the website will make it clear to the user if they plan on collecting their data for third party applications. There shall be a choice on all social media websites to 'opt out' of data collection without affecting the quality of service. 2. Social media websites will make it clear to all users when using their data for marketing or advertising purposes. 3. Social Media users shall be given advance notice, at least 72 hours, before privacy settings are changed and users are entitled to knowledge of what is being changed. 4. Social media websites retain the right to establish set fees for those users that 'opt out' of data collection, allowing their websites to run efficiently without personalized ads on the users page. Fees shall be kept minimal and regulated by the government. 5. If a user leaves a social media website, all data collected shall be the users property, the website holds no ownership over that data. Otherwise the data will be deleted by the website if the user does not acquire it. 6. Social media websites will disclose to users that their activities are being used as 'sponsored stories' on their friends' pages to advertise via word of mouth. A user will be able to choose whether a website is allowed to use this information for marketing purposes. If all social media websites followed these regulations, our information would not be abused by big marketing corporations.