In 2025, Incogni’s Social Media Privacy Ranking pulled back the curtain on a digital reality most users would rather not face: the very platforms we use daily are the ones violating our trust the most. Meta’s empire—Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger—along with TikTok, are officially crowned the most privacy-invasive. This is not speculation; it’s a damning assessment backed by data, fines, and disclosure patterns that scream exploitation disguised as innovation.

What stands out most in the 2025 report is how fast the tables turned. Just last year, Reddit, Snapchat, and Pinterest were shamed as the worst offenders in mishandling data. Today, they’ve been displaced by Meta’s juggernaut apps and TikTok, showing how fluid, deceptive, and competitive the privacy invasion race has become. This is not a trend anyone should celebrate. It reveals a digital ecosystem where platforms are competing less for your loyalty and more for your deepest secrets.

The methodology was unforgiving. Incogni examined 15 platforms across key areas: use of personal data to train AI, regulatory penalties, consent processes, and handling of sensitive categories like race, sexual orientation, and health data. The results are terrifying. Twelve of the 15 platforms admit—or refuse to deny—that they use personal data to fuel AI models. Telegram, Twitch, and Discord explicitly opt out, but the rest are either vague or outright opportunistic, treating your personal life as training fodder for their algorithms.

If you thought privacy policies were designed to protect you, think again. They are now drafted like hidden contracts for extraction. Meta and TikTok, in particular, exploit every legal loophole to justify their surveillance practices. They don’t stop at “likes” and “shares.” They dig into your health status, sexual orientation, political leanings, and even racial identity. LinkedIn joins them here, with disclosures that it may collect data on race and ethnicity, widening the net of digital profiling into professional life.

The fines tell their own story. Facebook tops the global list for penalties—one in the United States, four under EU GDPR, and five more scattered across the globe. The cost of being caught? Billions. But the cost to Facebook’s business? Practically nothing. Each fine is just another line item under “operating expenses,” a slap on the wrist they factor into budgets while continuing business as usual. When penalties don’t bite, violations multiply.

TikTok’s presence in the top three adds another dimension. It has long faced accusations of being a data vacuum with questionable ties to foreign state interests. This ranking validates those fears. For young users, TikTok is a stage. For TikTok’s backend, it’s a data mine. Every dance trend, late-night rant, or casual scroll feeds into profiling engines that are more powerful than most government surveillance programs. TikTok is not just entertainment—it’s surveillance dressed in Gen Z slang.

Against this dark backdrop, Discord shines unexpectedly bright. The platform ranks as the safest of the 15 studied, largely because it refuses to use personal data to train AI models and shows greater transparency in how it handles sensitive information. For a service often associated with gamers and niche communities, this is a surprising yet powerful signal: privacy protection is not a fantasy, it’s a choice. Discord chose restraint while others sprinted toward exploitation.

Pinterest and Quora also scored better than expected, securing spots just behind Discord. While they’re not perfect, they reflect a shift toward positioning themselves as relatively safer havens in a digital jungle. Ironically, Pinterest—once shamed for being invasive—now emerges as a redemption story, proving that platforms can pivot and realign their values when pressure mounts. The contrast with Meta’s unyielding expansionist appetite couldn’t be sharper.

The data on AI training practices is where the crisis deepens. With artificial intelligence becoming the core of product design, recommendation systems, and content moderation, platforms are treating your personal history as raw material. Out of 15 platforms, 12 are already feeding user data into these models. The implications are staggering: your private messages, browsing patterns, and photos might be sculpting the very algorithms that then manipulate your digital choices.

Transparency, or lack thereof, drives the distrust. The report shows that very few platforms are honest in plain language about what they collect and why. Consent is buried in labyrinthine documents nobody reads. In the most invasive platforms, “user control” is little more than an illusion. You may toggle settings and limit visibility, but the core surveillance apparatus remains untouched, humming beneath the glossy interface. That illusion is the true product.

Even more disturbing is the trend of platforms harvesting sensitive categories of data. Meta’s products and LinkedIn openly admit they may collect sexual orientation and health-related details. LinkedIn even goes further by noting the possibility of collecting race and ethnicity data. This blurs the line between professional networking and intrusive surveillance. Employers, marketers, and governments all become potential secondary beneficiaries of your supposedly private digital footprint.

When asked why these rankings matter, Incogni’s Head of Privacy, Darius Belejevas, cut straight to the point: “Social media users have the right to know where and how their personal information is being used, especially given the rise of data breaches and cybercrime.” The call for transparency is not an academic plea—it’s a survival guide for the digital citizen. Cybercrime thrives on weak data governance, and these invasive practices are feeding criminals just as much as they’re feeding corporations.

For businesses, these findings should ring alarm bells. Partnering, advertising, or depending on platforms with the worst privacy reputations carries reputational risk. Associating your brand with serial violators like Facebook or TikTok could send a message to customers that you value reach over responsibility. On the other hand, working with safer platforms could reinforce credibility in an era where consumers are increasingly privacy-conscious and willing to punish brands that look complicit.

For governments, the stakes are existential. Weak enforcement ensures fines are shrugged off like parking tickets. Regulators need to do more than penalize—they need to restructure the economics of privacy violations so that exploitation becomes unprofitable. Until then, platforms will continue to budget for violations the way oil companies budget for spills. Without systemic change, “privacy” will remain a hollow promise rather than a protected right.

The irony is that while Meta and TikTok are punished publicly, their user bases remain robust. Billions log in daily, fully aware of privacy scandals but unwilling or unable to abandon the digital ecosystems that now anchor social, professional, and entertainment life. This inertia is the platforms’ greatest shield. Users can rage online, but when it comes to logging off, the addiction to convenience, reach, and connection wins almost every time.

So what is the way forward? Part of the answer lies in consumer education and digital activism. Reports like Incogni’s must be amplified, dissected, and debated, not buried in specialized corners of the internet. When users demand better, platforms eventually respond. Pinterest is proof. Public pressure forced it into reforms that are now paying reputational dividends. If platforms see that privacy sells, they’ll treat it as an asset instead of a liability.

Another part of the solution is legislative boldness. Governments must recognize that privacy erosion is not just a digital issue—it’s a social justice issue. When platforms exploit data on race, health, or orientation, they amplify inequalities and vulnerabilities. Lawmakers must act not only to penalize misuse but also to enshrine data dignity as a fundamental human right. Until then, companies will always argue that “innovation” justifies intrusion.

And what about AI? This is the battlefield where the war for privacy will be fought next. As long as personal data continues to fuel AI, we will be spectators to the evolution of systems that know us better than we know ourselves. The ability to predict, manipulate, and monetize our choices will only deepen. Unless strong walls are built between personal data and algorithmic training, users will remain guinea pigs in a relentless experiment with no informed consent.

The 2025 privacy rankings, therefore, are not just a snapshot—they are a warning. They show us that trust is being eroded in broad daylight, not in secret. They show us that fines are meaningless unless paired with accountability. And most importantly, they show us that platforms can choose to change—because some already have. Discord, Pinterest, and Quora prove that safety is possible. The rest are proving that exploitation is profitable.

For now, the battlefield remains uneven. Meta’s apps and TikTok are giants with billions of users and billions in profits. But reputations can crumble faster than financial statements suggest. If consumers, regulators, and brands decide to walk away, no platform is immune. The question is whether we, as a global society, are willing to act, or whether we will remain complicit in our own surveillance.

Until that choice is made, every login, every scroll, every post is part of the trade. Convenience for privacy. Engagement for dignity. Entertainment for autonomy. The 2025 Social Media Privacy Ranking is not just about platforms—it’s about us, our choices, and whether we still care enough to fight for control over our digital lives.