Digital Privacy & Technology Guide: Privacy Resources for Social Media Users

Explore facts and statistics about social media use and the attitudes/trends that impact the various online platforms.

A training on privacy basics from Carolyn Bennet Glauda of Southeastern NY Library Resources Council and Library Freedom Project. All worksheets mentioned in Carolyn's YouTube presentation are included in this guide.

Guides in these resources give user-friendly information on how use reporting and privacy tools for Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and YouTube!

Goodwill Foundation teaching resources on internet safety tips.

Goodwill Foundation's general resources on getting started using social media platforms.

Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) official Children's Online Privacy Protection ("COPPA") Rule

Electronic Privacy Information Center's (EPIC) summary of Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA") and social media environments.

Learn more about COPPA, and how how to know if it applies to your organization, and how to ensure compliance.

White paper from Future of Privacy Forum that examines the effectiveness of COPPA, and highlights barriers to protecting children online, and identifies opportunities for improvement.

In 2019, Google LLC and its subsidiary YouTube, LLC paid a record $170 million to settle allegations by the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General that the YouTube video sharing service illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent.

Facebook's official page on navigating its privacy settings

Consumer Reports guide on how to navigate Facebook's complex privacy settings.

Tools for getting off of Facebook and making your Facebook date more secure.

Scandals. Backstabbing. Resignations. Record profits. Time Bombs. In early 2018, Mark Zuckerberg set out to fix Facebook. Here's how that turned out. (From Wired)

Article by Patrick Howell O'Neill, an internal investigation shows private-sector mass surveillance is happening on a scale never before revealed.

Instagram's official page on navigating its privacy settings.

Consumer Reports guide on how to navigate Instagram's complex privacy settings.

Guidance from The Verge on how to use Instagram's "Restrict" feature in order to prevent bullying.

Facebook's own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental-health issue that Facebook plays down in public.

Twitter's official page on navigating its privacy settings

Tech for the People article explaining the in's and out's of Twitter's privacy settings.

Info on how to reduce the amount of data Twitter gathers and uses on its platform.

Info on how people can reduce their personal risks while empowering their ability to act safely.

TikTok's official page on navigating its privacy settings.

Commonsense Media's guide for parents on the in's and out's of TikTok's privacy settings.

TikTok got huge by ignoring who its followers know. That's increasingly no longer the case.

The Federal Trade Commission is being urged to investigate the popular video app's failure to comply with a 2019 agreement.

In response to lawsuit and pushback, TikTok has modified its platform to improve privacy protections for users under 18.

YouTube's official page on navigating its privacy settings.

From YouTube, a blog post announcing changes being made to better protect kids' privacy on its platform.

The video service made several changes after a 2020 settlement with federal and state regulators.

From LifeWire, tips on how to protect user privacy on YouTube platform.

Investigative journalist, April Glaser demonstrates bias in YouTube's algorithm and search results.

This 2020 documentary provides a solid foundation into the psychological underpinnings and the manipulation techniques by which, it claims, social media companies addict users.

Ted Talk by Eli Pariser (2011) that warns of online filter bubbles and the costs of a commercialized, personalized web experience.

Professor Safiya Umoja Noble, co-director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, sheds light on search engine discrimination and examines insights from her book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines.

Aimed at young people as well as adults, this virtual online exhibition explores how digital surveillance, social media and the web have changed the way we read information and react to it.

Malvertising, or malicious advertising, is the use of online advertising to distribute malware with little to no user interaction required. Learn more about it from Malwarebytes.

Enter the address of any website, and Blacklight will scan it and reveal the specific user-tracking technologies on the site—and who is getting the data.

This index marks the first-ever baseline evaluation of the LGBTQ user safety experience across the social media landscape. It provides recommendations for the industry at large and reports on LGBTQ user safety across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok.

How to assess your risk online, provides tools to keep your data safe, how to turn on privacy tools for different platforms, what gets saved in metadata of documents/media you produce.

Librarians talk about their experiences with doxing

Resources for LGBTQ community on steps to take to protect against harassment and harm online.

Fast Company article by A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez discusses the pain and sadness of their experience online.

While this paper focuses on data security and privacy practices and awareness in a specific population – novice protesters – the findings and recommendations are of interest for library workers who work with patrons through library programming or other outreach and educational services around digital privacy and security.

Equality Labs anti-doxxing guide.