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ftc – Techdirt

from the andrew-ferguson-speedruns-the-learning-curve dept

The FTC’s politically motivated inquiry into “tech censorship” has managed to prove exactly the opposite of what it intended: the government agency is now actively censoring public comments from people complaining about being censored by tech platforms.

It’s almost too perfect. The FTC, under Chair Andrew Ferguson, launched what it called an investigation into “tech censorship” back in March. The investigation was based on the repeatedly debunked idea that social media platforms were unfairly silencing conservative voices. (This was already odd timing, given that Elon Musk had long ago turned ExTwitter into a non-stop Trump rally and Zuckerberg was eagerly aligning Meta with Trump, but consistency has never been the point here — unconstitutional coercion of anyone not sucking up to Trump is the point.)

But Ferguson seems committed to the bit, effectively making it clear that all platforms are expected to promote pro-Trump content… or else.

As the comment period continues through May 21st, Daphne Keller spotted something remarkable: The FTC itself is actively censoring submissions about censorship. And yes, this time “censoring” is the right word – it’s the government doing it.

Take Michael Dukett’s submission. This self-described “Concerned American Patriot” complained about TikTok “constantly removing comments and censoring my free speech,” attaching screenshots of his removed comments as evidence. The irony? Many of those screenshots were themselves removed by the FTC for containing “profanity” or being “inappropriate.”

Of Dukett’s twenty submitted screenshots, the FTC blocked nearly half — five for being “inappropriate” and four for “profanity.” The very same kinds of moderation decisions he was complaining about TikTok making. Even more telling? The screenshots the FTC did allow through included threats about shooting home intruders and various personal attacks — content that clearly violated TikTok’s community guidelines.

It’s almost as if the FTC is learning in real time what every platform eventually discovers: open systems need moderation, including the ability to remove “ otherwise objectionable” content.

And Dukett’s case is far from unique. Scanning through the over 2000 comments in the docket reveals a pattern of the FTC practicing exactly the kind of content moderation it’s supposedly investigating.

One commenter railed against “horrific censorship” after supposedly losing 34 Instagram and 33 TikTok accounts — only to have their FTC submission partially blocked for sharing personally identifiable information.

Even more striking is “ Jo Sullivan,” who requested an FTC investigation into platform moderators while calling for “the right to express ourselves within reason.” The FTC’s response? Blocking or redacting 16 of their 20 attachments for — you guessed it — inappropriate content and personal information.

Gosh.

The crazy thing here is that while private platforms have a First Amendment right to moderate as they see fit, the federal government does not. The FTC hiding these comments on its platform is, quite possibly, a First Amendment violation. The posts blocked for “profanity” are almost certainly protected speech under the First Amendment.

But the FTC’s actions inadvertently prove what platforms have known all along: Any open system needs moderation rules and enforcement, or it quickly fills up with inappropriate content, profanity, and personal information. The FTC’s own comment system demonstrates the Masnick Impossibility Theorem in action — content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, and someone will always complain about the decisions made. It doesn’t mean that there is unfair bias. Sometimes it just means that some users are assholes.

The ultimate irony? Apparently the best way to determine if Andrew Ferguson thinks certain content moderation practices are acceptable is to submit specific decisions to his “tech censorship” investigation and see if the FTC itself censors them.

At this rate, Ferguson might just need to investigate himself for all this anti-conservative bias censorship.

Filed Under: andrew ferguson, anti-conservative bias, big tech censorship, content moderation, ftc

from the watch-what-I-do,-not-what-I-say dept

Fri, Apr 25th 2025 05:32am - Karl Bode

A few days ago I talked about how the Trump administration is desperate to present the illusion it still cares about consumer protection and “antitrust reform.” Via executive order, regulatory capture, DOGE cuts, and a rightward-lurching court system, Trump 2.0 really is taking an absolute hatchet to consumer protection, labor rights, corporate oversight, environmental law, and public safety.

It’s really not subtle. It’s also not very populist, or popular, so the Trumplings need to occasionally put on a good face to maintain the ruse they care about “antitrust reform” and consumer protection in what’s looking to be a new golden age of corruption.

Enter the FTC, where Trump just illegally fired the agency’s two Democrat commissioners. The FTC has been maintaining some of Lina Khan’s inquiries into California “big tech” companies. Not because they actually care about corporate power, but because they care about leverage. That leverage, so far, has quite successfully turned most Silicon Valley giants into obedient, authoritarian-coddling invertebrates.

The FTC this week also announced it had sued San Francisco based, Tesla-competitor Uber for deceptive billing practices, stating that the company charged consumers for its Uber One subscription service without their consent, failed to deliver promised savings, and made it difficult for users to cancel the service despite its “cancel anytime” promises. Said FTC boss Andrew Ferguson:

“The Trump-Vance FTC is fighting back on behalf of the American people.”

Indeed. That’s a bummer for Uber and Uber Technologies CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who collectively donated $2 million for the Trump inauguration fund.

Trump has made it clear their regulatory targets will usually be highly selective, and usually chosen for cronyism purposes (like, say a company directly competing with the billionaire running your DOGE department). There’s no limit of dangerous misrepresentation and potential fraud you could target Elon Musk’s companies for, but that’s clearly not happening under Trump 2.0.

Meanwhile most Trump agencies, like the FCC, are openly making it clear they plan to utterly eviscerate consumer protection. All while Supreme Court rulings like Loper Bright make it so regulators can’t do much of anything without it being overturned down the road. These are actions that are going to make corporate malfeasance worse, not better.

At the same time, agencies like the FCC are hypocritically claiming to have authority they don’t have to do bizarre and legally incoherent things, like the harassment of companies for not being racist and sexist enough, accurately reporting on the Trump administration, or not going far enough to coddle right wing ideology or protect and nurture right wing online propaganda.

FTC boss Andrew Ferguson’s first act before joining the FTC was to announce he’d leverage the agency’s dwindling authority to do things like “ fight back against the trans agenda,” and take aim at the tech industry’s “censorship” (read: refusing to coddle right wing ideology and propaganda).

A lot of gullible press outlets are going to see the cases against Meta, Uber, and Google and proclaim that Trump 2.0 is “perpetuating the antitrust legacy of Lina Khan.” But they’ll downplay the much larger reality that is the complete evisceration of most regulatory agencies and corporate oversight in a way that’s going to make all corporate misbehavior much, much worse.

There’s still a lot of normalization bias among people who don’t want to believe the reality of what’s happening. And a lot of major media outlets that are too afraid of losing money and access to accurately call a duck a duck.

When Trump 2.0 does take consumer-protection action, it’s going to be incredibly important to wait and see what the actual remedies for harm look like (if there are any). And whether any of these efforts survive the Trumplican court system being custom-repurposed to derail reform and corporate accountability of every kind, performative or otherwise.

For example the Trump-stocked Fifth and Sixth circuits have taken an absolute hatchet to efforts like net neutrality or location-data privacy enforcement. Any consumer protection efforts you do see are being taken knowning that they’re likely not going to survive the Trump-stocked court’s assault on regulatory oversight.

Which is to say I think most Trump 2.0 consumer protection efforts are still a sort of performance art, generally designed to trick the press and public into believing that the administration is populist, when on every level beneath that façade, it’s being built to coddle corporate power and a relatively tiny subset of white rich men.

Filed Under: andrew ferguson, antitrust reform, consumer protection, deceptive billing, fraud, ftc, subscription, uber one

Companies: uber

from the fascism-in-a-lazy-coat-of-paint dept

Tue, Apr 15th 2025 05:26am - Karl Bode

Back in March Trump illegally fired the Federal Trade Commission’s two Democratic Commissioners. With a captured Supreme Court and a 3-2 agency majority, Trumpism could have already done whatever it wanted at the FTC, so firing the two Democratic Commissioners was just scorched Earth; like applying napalm on the site of a nuclear strike. Real sociopath shit.

With everything going on, the firings were about a four hour news cycle. But the two fired Commissioners (Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya) sued Trump, noting (quite correctly) that the firings were illegal under the precedent of Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 Supreme Court case stating FTC commissioners can only be fired for clear cause. Not for simply… existing.

Slaughter and Bedoya are attempting to fast track their case, but, in the interim, Republicans in the Senate just confirmed their third commissioner: Mark Meador of the Heritage Foundation. At his hearing confirmation, Meador unsurprisingly lacked any sort of backbone to acknowledge that the firing of his would-have-been colleagues was wildly illegal and completely undermines agency integrity.

Meador’s appointment now gives Republicans a 3-0 majority at the FTC, and Republicans are busy trying to pretend this isn’t all illegal, authoritarian dogshit. With the help of mainstream DC gossip rags like Axios, whose coverage is just as feckless and normalizing of the firings as you might expect.

Now begins the next stage in the pseudo-populist performance.

You might recall that during election season, the promise was that the Trump FTC would “continue the antitrust enforcement legacy of Lina Khan.” Pseudo-populist fascists like JD Vance and Josh Hawley, propped up by contrarian Twitter trolls like Matt Stoller, pretended the Trump FTC would be tough on corporate power. Fascism, bigotry, and corruption, you see, was going to be really good for the plebs.

There were constant refrains about how the GOP, a party that has never seen a monopoly it hasn’t been keen to coddle and mindlessly and dangerously deregulate (see: telecom, energy, airlines, banking, insurance, marketing) was “ serious about antitrust reform now.”

Of course that was all a lie, propped up by lazy news outlets and a rotating cast of useful idiots. The GOP harassed tech companies because it wanted them to coddle Republicans and back off the moderation of race-baiting right wing propaganda, a cornerstone of power for a party whose policies (kissing billionaire ass, polluting rivers) aren’t popular enough with the public to truly stand on their merits.

After some early pretense at a fight, amoral tech giants were quick to oblige.

These fake claims that Trumpism cares about “antitrust reform” and corporate power persist, but they operate simultaneously within a Trump administration and Supreme Court that’s busy taking an absolute hatchet to all remaining regulatory independence and corporate oversight. In this way, they get to have their cake and eat it too; pretend to be populist reformers, while fast-tracking corruption.

They get to claim to support Lina Khan’s antitrust ideas in the pages of our broken press, while simultaneously shitting all over them and dismantling all cogent federal regulatory autonomy. With authoritarians all logic is reversed. Corruption and oligarch coddling is “popular populist reform.” Semi-functional oversight is “radical mismanagement.” Corrupt authoritarianism is the reasonable cure:

“House Commerce Committee leaders said the all-Republican FTC will end the “partisan mismanagement” allegedly seen under the Biden-era FTC and then-Chair Lina Khan. “In the last administration, the FTC abandoned its rich bipartisan tradition and historical mission, in favor of a radical agenda and partisan mismanagement,” said a statement issued by Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). “ The Commission needs to return to protecting Americans from bad actors and preserving competition in the marketplace.”

But again, Trumpism is decimating the federal government’s ability to meaningfully hold corporate power to account. While simultaneously dismantling federal labor protections, consumer protection standards, and public safety. This isn’t really even a debate. The entire claim that Trumpism has any interest in “reining in corporate power” or beefing up antitrust reform is a lie.

Meador, like Stoller and others before him, is just the latest useful idiot brought in to sell it.

The FTC is, of course, pursuing five different antirust cases against major leading technology companies, most of which were started by Lina Khan, with trials expected to start in the coming months. The Meta case began this week. Those cases will persist, but primarily as a way to perpetuate the lies outlined above and extract even more concessions from the increasingly invertebrate brunchlords of Silicon Valley, something that will likely become more apparent in the “remedy” phase.

The goal won’t be meaningfully challenging corporate power, it will be using antitrust inquiries to further bully tech executives into feckless compliance with the authoritarian mission. Contrary to claims by some useful idiots, that mission has nothing to do with protecting markets or consumers, and everything to do with ushering in a new golden age of unaccountable corruption.

If you think authoritarians give two fleeting shits about “antitrust reform” or “reining in corporate power” you’re either an absolute rube or part of the con. The hour is getting late for any pretense that any of this is motivated by a good faith interest in healthy markets or the public welfare. And authoritarians are going to just keep pushing until they meet something other than soft pudding in opposition.

Filed Under: alvaro bedoya, antitrust reform, consumers, corruption, fascism, ftc, kelly slaughter, mark meador, rebecca kelly slaughter, regulatory capture, silicon valley

from the not-with-a-bang,-but-a-whimper dept

Mon, Apr 7th 2025 12:16pm - Karl Bode

A fusion of authoritarianism and corporatism is destroying what’s left of U.S. federal consumer protection.

Whether by dodgy Supreme Court ruling, executive order, or captured regulators, the U.S. right, often in lockstep with consolidated corporate power, are making massive, historic, and potentially irreversible inroads in destroying federal corporate oversight, labor protections, public safety provisions, environmental standards, and regulatory autonomy.

I don’t say that as hyperbole. It’s happening now, and you’d think it would be a bigger story.

In many sectors, and for many people, it’s going to be a life or death issue. No more enforced pollution standards. No more functional CDC guidance. No more real oversight of corporate fraud. No more serious policing of “unfair and deceptive” predatory company practices. Not with any consistency, anyway.

In telecom, it means pretty much turning the FCC into a mindless rubber stamp for the interests of monopolies like Comcast and AT&T (assuming they prove themselves racist and sexist enough for Trump’s liking). That’s left a smorgasbord of semi-functional state governments to try and fill the void with shrinking budgets, something that’s going to be a consistent theme in the years to come.

Net neutrality (some modest rules trying to keep telecom monopolies from abusing their market power to harm competitors and consumers) was always treated like fringe (and even irrelevant) tech policy, but, at its heart, it asked a functional question: do we, or don’t we want large corporations to face any sort of oversight and accountability for abusing consolidated market power.

The government’s answer, in telecom and media’s case, was a resounding no.

Congress, for decades, proved too corrupt to protect U.S. consumers from telecom monopolies or pass even the most basic of consumer protection updates for the modern era. That drove the FCC to impose some modest broadband privacy rules that were killed by the GOP using the Congressional Review Act. It also drove the FCC to develop some modest net neutrality rules that were summarily dismantled by an antidemocratic right-wing court system fixated on protecting corporate revenues.

When the public complained, companies, courts, and “free market” libertarian think tanks told them to go talk to a Congress they knew was too broken and corrupt to take action, because it had repeatedly proven itself too broken and corrupt to take action. Fixated on the threat of unchecked government power, many of these folks turned a blind eye to the perils of unchecked corporate power.

The attack on net neutrality didn’t just kill “net neutrality.” It eviscerated the FCC’s authority to protect broadband consumers from giant, shitty telecom monopolies. A smattering of states tried to fill the void with their own state net neutrality laws, but generally haven’t bothered to enforce them.

This is the future of consumer protection across industries. Feds abdicate their responsibility to protect workers and consumers, regulatory agencies are steadily hollowed out like pumpkins, and a rotating suite of states (with varying degrees of competence) try to fill the void. The companies that lobbied to dismantle stable federal oversight then complain about the “discordant nature of fractured state law.”

You’re going to be seeing this exact sequence play out a lot. And the net neutrality fight was a modern pioneer.

In Pennsylvania, state leaders are responding to the Trumpy Sixth Circuit’s dismantling of net neutrality protections by introducing a net neutrality law. Sponsored by PA Rep. Ismail Smith-Wade-El, This one’s of note (and likely extra doomed) because it attempts to classify telecom giants as essential public utility demanding of healthy state oversight:

“The Internet is not a luxury but a daily necessity. All Pennsylvanians deserve a fair Internet that provides equal access,” Smith-Wade-El said. “With only a handful of large companies providing these services, consumers should expect that the company providing their service will transmit the service fairly and not manipulate access to the Internet and the prices that they pay.”

The reason U.S. broadband is spotty, slow, and expensive was always consolidated telecom monopoly power and the corruption that protects it. Most politicians are keen to pretend this isn’t the core problem because they like getting campaign contributions from AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

So generally, over forty years, we’ve steadily been eliminating oversight of these companies under the pretense that this results in near-miraculous levels of “free market innovation.” But when you eliminate both competition and regulatory oversight from telecom, what you get instead is giant, unaccountable regional monopolies dedicated to doubling down on all their worst behaviors.

Under PA’s proposed law, a new chapter on “Internet Neutrality” would be added to Title 66 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, which would expand the definition of “public utilities” to include broadband ISPs. This would subject ISPs to greater regulatory oversight and prohibit practices such as blocking lawful content or unfairly throttling Internet speeds.

ISPs have long been obsessed with having broadband viewed as a fun and frivolous luxury, as to avoid the oversight we reserve for essential utilities. And, pretty much uniformly, they’ve been successful at ensuring federal and state officials don’t wander down this path.

Again here, Pennsylvania’s law is unlikely to pass, given the state’s lawmakers historically been extremely corrupt when it comes to pandering regional telecom giants. In most states, AT&T and Comcast’s influence is so profound, they genuinely directly write most state telecom legislation. Occasionally they’ll get busted for bribery, but generally this kind of thing has been broadly normalized.

With authoritarians taking the dismantling of federal consumer protection to an entirely new level, you’re going to see more and more states trying to fill the void with their own consumer protection laws. But as the fusion of corporatism and authoritarianism finishes irreversibly defanging federal governance, it’s going to increasingly set its sights on state autotomy.

States, facing unprecedented legal assault on everything from immigration law to healthcare, aren’t going to have the time, resources, or staff to meaningfully pick up the feds’ dropped ball on consumer protection corporate accountability (see: popular right to repair reforms). That’s going to result in untold millions of Americans getting ripped off, neglected, or in many instances, killed.

Again, net neutrality signaled this coming consumer protection apocalypse. I feel like I spent the better part of an adult life being dismissed as hyperbolic for warning that it was coming. And while there’s certainly a lot going on, you’d think the total evisceration of all remaining corporate oversight and federal consumer protection enforcement would warrant a skosh more more attention than it’s getting.

Filed Under: broadband, consumers, fcc, ftc, net neutrality, regulators, states, telecom

from the the-purges-will-continue-until-loyalty-improves dept

In an unprecedented move that flatly violates federal law, Donald Trump on Tuesday fired both Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission — Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. The illegal purge represents a direct assault on the independence of the consumer protection agency.

While presidents have always wielded influence over independent agencies through their power to appoint chairs and maintain three to two partisan majorities, the law explicitly protects commissioners from being fired without cause. Trump’s attempt to remove Slaughter and Bedoya — apparently for nothing more than being Democrats who might question his agenda — shows a complete disregard for these vital safeguards.

It is customary for the chair to step down when a new administration of a different party comes in, and former FTC chair Lina Khan obliged and left as Donald Trump was inaugurated. Apparently having that typical 3 to 2 majority was not enough for Trump. In the Trump/Musk world of unlimited, unrestrained executive power, apparently any Democratic voice must be purged.

Both put out statements calling out the illegality of such a move. Here’s Slaughter’s statement:

I woke up this morning, as I have every day for nearly the last seven years, eager to get to work on behalf of the American people to make the economy more honest and fair. But today the President illegally fired me from my position as a Federal Trade Commissioner, violating the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent. Why? Because I have a voice. And he is afraid of what I’ll tell the American people.

The law protects the independence of the Commission because the law serves the American people, not corporate power. The reason that the FTC can be so effective for the American people is because of its independence and because its commissioners serve across political parties and ideologies. Removing opposition voices may not change what the Trump majority can do, but it does change whether they will have accountability when they do it. The administration clearly fears the accountability that opposition voices would provide if the President orders Chairman Ferguson to treat the most powerful corporations and their executives—like those that flanked the President at his inauguration—with kid gloves.

I have served across administrations, including during the last Trump administration, and throughout my entire time as a commissioner I applied the same criteria in my work: that the law must be enforced without fear or favor. I have dedicated myself to executing the Commission’s statutory mandate to protect consumers and promote competition, fighting against illegal business practices that make groceries more expensive, healthcare inaccessible, and compromise people’s privacy and security; it has been my greatest honor to serve.

And here’s Bedoya’s statement:

I’m a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. The president just illegally fired me.

The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists. Our staff is unafraid of the Martin Shkrelis and Jeff Bezos of the world. They take them to court and they win.

Now, the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies.

Together with Chair Lina Khan and Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, I spent my time at the FTC fighting for small town grocers and pharmacists and for people in Indian country going hungry because food was too expensive. I fought for workers getting screwed on pay and benefits and overtime. I fought for their right to organize. I fought tech companies who think they can track you and your kids every hour of every day so they can pocket their next billion.

Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or someone who’s so disgusted with Washington you can barely watch the news, the FTC has worked for you.

Who will Trump’s FTC work for? Will it work for the billionaires? Or will it work for you?

It was an honor to serve my country at the FTC. It was an honor to work alongside its staff.

And to everyone who is watching all of this unfold, don’t be scared. Fight back.

Tomorrow I will testify before the Colorado Joint House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and will have more to say then.

The conventional wisdom is that Trump’s move is plainly illegal under Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 Supreme Court case establishing that FTC commissioners can only be fired for cause. But there are growing signals that today’s Supreme Court would love nothing more than to demolish that precedent. And really, why wouldn’t they? The whole concept of “independent” agencies has always existed in a kind of constitutional twilight zone. This Court has shown increasing hostility toward the independence of administrative agencies, and Trump’s illegal purge provides the perfect vehicle for further consolidating executive power — though, of course, that only applies when Republicans are in charge.

The writing has been on the wall for months. Despite JD Vance’s cynical embrace of Khan’s anti-monopoly stance, the MAGA movement was never actually interested in reining in corporate power — they just wanted to ensure that power answered to Trump. Khan’s departure was inevitable, but firing the remaining Democratic commissioners shows this goes beyond normal political transitions into dangerous new territory.

But now illegally firing both Slaughter and Bedoya once again shows that in this Trump administration even the most basic safeguards are gone, and anyone who does not kiss Trump and Musk’s asses at every moment is going to be gone.

The next moves are depressingly predictable. Trump likely won’t even bother nominating new Democratic commissioners. While 15 USC 41 requires partisan balance (“Not more than three of the Commissioners shall be members of the same political party”), the FTC can legally function with a quorum of just two commissioners. Why would Trump fill those seats when he can simply let the FTC operate as a rubber stamp for his agenda? After all, this fits perfectly with new FTC chair Andrew Ferguson’s stated plan to weaponize the agency against Trump’s perceived enemies.

The ripple effects are already visible across other agencies. At the FCC, Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks has suddenly announced his decision to leave, though it’s unclear whether he also faced threats of forced removal if he didn’t remove himself. This leaves just one Democrat, Anna Gomez — and that may only be because the FCC’s three-commissioner quorum requirement means Trump needs her vote to enable Brendan Carr’s ongoing crusade against tech companies. At least until the Senate confirms another Republican.

There’s a certain terrifying, but clarifying, honesty to all this. For decades we’ve maintained the polite fiction that “independent” agencies were actually independent, that partisan balance requirements meant something, that institutional guardrails would hold.

Now Trump has simply declared that fiction dead, and it turns out there’s not much anyone can do about it. The Supreme Court could theoretically step in to defend Humphrey’s Executor. But they won’t. Congress could theoretically exercise oversight. But they won’t. The press could explain how this is a huge attack on the checks and balances of government. But they won’t.

So we’re left with a situation where “independent” agencies are independent right up until they’re not, where statutory requirements for partisan balance are meaningful right up until they’re ignored, and where commissioners serve fixed terms right up until they’re fired for insufficient loyalty. It’s not a great system. But at least now, thanks to these firings, we’re being honest about how it actually works. Without even the fig leaf of token opposition to maintain the illusion of normalcy, we can finally admit what we’re actually dealing with: a corrupt and broken system of pretend checks and balances that only worked until someone decided not to be checked or balanced.

Filed Under: alvaro bedoya, donald trump, ftc, humprhey's executor, independent agency, lina khan, rebecca kelly slaughter

from the not-how-this-is-supposed-to-work dept

Late last month, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a request for public comment on so-called “tech censorship.”

America has a vibrant and successful market-driven system for content moderation, enabled by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which allows platforms to set their own rules, while users decide where to engage. That’s why conversation on Bluesky feels different from Reddit, which feels different from Truth Social—each platform competes on moderation, governance, and community standards. This diversity has created a vibrant marketplace of ideas, fueling the success of both large and small companies, while cementing the U.S. as the global leader in internet technology and online speech. Undermine this system, and you don’t get more free speech—you get fewer platforms, less competition, and more centralized control over online discourse.

The FTC has based its investigation of “tech censorship” on a belief that tech companies are intentionally restricting access of individual users to their platforms, based on the content of the users’ posts or their affiliations. In the words of the press release, the FTC pointedly seeks information on “how this conduct may have violated the law.” As the FTC moves forward, it should be careful not to base its decisions on unverifiable reports, to the detriment of the digital economy that has been responsible for tremendous American innovation and growth.

The decision whether to include certain content or users on the platform is also a basic First Amendment right. In the Supreme Court’s 2024 NetChoice opinion, the Court stated that online platforms’ choices about what material to publish “constitute the exercise of editorial control and judgment” that are “protected expressive activity.”  As CTA CEO and Vice Chair Gary Shapiro has noted, “America’s tech success needs the First Amendment… It empowers U.S. tech companies by protecting their ability to innovate without fear of censorship, enabling diverse voices and perspectives to contribute to tech progress.”

These are all substantive legal issues that the FTC should consider in response to its request for public comment.  Unfortunately, the process the FTC has established does not seem likely to result in a balanced and robust record.  To be clear, federal agencies seeking public comment is a good thing. Taking enforcement actions against named companies based on unproven allegations, without giving them the opportunity to defend themselves, is not.

The FTC’s process in this proceeding raises concerns that companies won’t get a fair shake.  Basing enforcement on unvetted—and often anonymous—complaints is not reliable, and when the FTC receives thousands of comments, as it did in response to its proposed noncompete rule, staff cannot verify the factual assertions in each one.  Moving forward on this basis could harm companies’ protected interests in choosing what kind of content appears on their platforms, and result in worse outcomes for American consumers.

Instead, FTC leadership should focus on policies that help unlock innovation from American tech companies. That includes advancing all Americans’ shared interest in free speech.

David Grossman is CTA’s VP of Regulatory Affairs

Filed Under: content moderation, ftc, public comments, section 230

from the finally dept

We talk a lot here about the concept of “ ownership” of what we spend money on, particularly as it relates to purchases that are digital or have some reliance on internet connectivity. Despite being related, those two categories are actually quite distinct.

On the one hand, you have situations where a company may go out of business, or a business may no longer “support” a product it sold, where backend infrastructure also gets shut down and results in sold products no longer having the same functionality or, in some cases, becoming expensive paperweights. Some advocate groups have already pressed the FTC to do something, anything about all of this, such that some consumer rights are conferred to the victims of this behavior.

Then there are the purely digital “purchases,” wherein the public is typically not actually buying a “thing,” but rather a limited license to access said thing. Video games, digital music files, and eBooks all come to mind here. Nobody has done all that much on that front, save for some platforms aiming to force sellers to disclose some ownership rights and some companies being a tad more public about how it isn’t actually selling “things” like the public thought.

Senator Ron Wyden appears to be interested in changing that. He has written to the FTC, urging them to require companies to be far more transparent before and during the sale of digital goods as to what ownership rights the buyer actually has.

Wyden’s letter, shared with The Verge, requests guidance to “ensure that consumers who purchase or license digital goods can make informed decisions and understand what ownership rights they are obtaining.”

Wyden wants the guidance to include how long a license lasts, what circumstances might expire or revoke the license, and if a consumer can transfer or resell the license. The letter also calls for the information “before and at the point of sale” in a way that’s easily understandable. “To put it simply, prior to agreeing to any transaction, consumers should understand what they are paying for and what is guaranteed after the sale,” Wyden says.

This simply isn’t a position that should come with much controversy. Consumers knowing what they’re actually buying based on clear and transparent language isn’t a big ask. Hell, it should have been considered table stakes from the beginning. And any pushback from anyone in the digital industries would be very, very telling.

Why would you want to fight back against a requirement that your customers know what they’re buying from you, after all?

“The shift from physical to digital goods presents some complex legal questions,” Wyden says in the letter. “One thing is clear, however: consumers deserve transparency about their ownership rights in digital goods. Guidance from the FTC on this issue will help ensure that digital goods sellers are aware of best practices and that American consumers can make informed buying decisions.”

This should be an absolute slam dunk of a request. And if some ground rules about disclosure can finally be put in place, perhaps we’ll finally have an end to the shock in some cases when a person’s purchases are suddenly whisked away without recourse.

Filed Under: digital goods, ftc, ownership, ron wyden

from the ctrl-alt-speech dept

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed.

In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

Filed Under: australia, content moderation, donald trump, ftc, ncii

Companies: facebook, meta, microsoft, rumble, snap, telegram

from the I'm-just-saying-it-would-have-been-nice-if-you-asked dept

Fri, Jan 17th 2025 03:27pm - Karl Bode

Last year, Kashmir Hill at the New York Times published a major story confirming that automakers collect all sorts of driver behavior data then sell it to a long list of companies — without making that clear to car owners or getting consent. That includes insurance companies, which are now jacking up insurance rates if they see behavior in the dataset they don’t like.

Not surprisingly, GM was subsequently sued. Several times. Forcing it to spend much of last year going on an apology tour, which included pinky swearing that they will stop spying on their customers and selling data to data brokers and insurance companies.

Fast forward to this week, and the FTC has announced a new settlement with GM and OnStar, banning the companies from collecting and selling sensitive user location data for five years.

“G.M. monitored and sold people’s precise geolocation data and driver behavior information, sometimes as often as every three seconds,” outgoing FTC boss Lina Khan said of the settlement. “With this action, the F.T.C. is safeguarding Americans’ privacy and protecting people from unchecked surveillance.”

A report last year by Mozilla highlighted how the auto industry was the absolute worst industry that the organization tracks on privacy practices, routinely over-collecting and failing to adequately protect or encrypt broad swaths of data. Not just data from the vehicle; but troves of data collected from your phone every time you sync it with your car’s infotainment and navigation systems.

This data is then sold to a massive array of dodgy and barely regulated data brokers, who aren’t particularly discerning when it comes to selling that data to all manner of equally dodgy folks, whether that’s foreign and domestic governments, stalkers, right wing anti-abortion activists, or people pretending to be law enforcement. You can see how this could prove problematic under authoritarian rule.

In the case of most automakers, they bury what passes for “informed consumer consent” deep in the bowels of some overlong privacy policy for their free initial roadside assistance services, which most users never notice. This GM settlement bars GM and OnStar from collecting this data, and requires that they allow users to request copies and the deletion of any existing data.

On one hand, this is a nice example of the positive outcomes that can happen when journalism, consumer groups (Mozilla, Consumer Reports), and regulators work together to protect consumers.

On the other hand, piecemeal temporary settlements aren’t quite as effective as passing a meaningful and consistently enforced federal privacy law, which the U.S. Congress is too corrupt to do. And after billionaires whined endlessly about Lina Khan being too mean, a key component of Trump 2.0 will be defanging regulatory independence and consumer protection, so whether this settlement even sees enforcement by the Trump FTC is an open question I’m pretty sure I know the answer to.

“Secretly collecting and sharing driver location data is a terrible practice that can cause real harm to unsuspecting consumers,” Consumer Reports Tech Policy DirectorJustin Brookman said of the settlement. “We are encouraged that the FTC is taking action under existing consumer protection law to put a stop to it. But because of ambiguity in the law, the best way to avoid these types of abuses in the future is a strong and clear comprehensive privacy law that restricts unwanted data sharing by default.”

Filed Under: automakers, consent, consumers, drivers, ftc, location data, privacy, surveillance

Companies: gm, onstar

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Fri, Jan 17th 2025 05:26am - Karl Bode

A few years ago agricultural equipment giant John Deere found itself on the receiving end of an antitrust lawsuit for its efforts to monopolize tractor repair. The lawsuits noted that the company consistently purchased competing repair centers in order to consolidate the sector and force customers into using the company’s own repair facilities, driving up costs and logistical hurdles dramatically for farmers.

John Deere executives have repeatedly promised to do better, then just ignored those promises.

Now the company is on the receiving end of a belated FTC lawsuit over its effort to monopolize repair, something outgoing FTC boss Lina Khan says made operations much more difficult and expensive for farmers the world over:

“Illegal repair restrictions can be devastating for farmers, who rely on affordable and timely repairs to harvest their crops and earn their income,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s action today seeks to ensure that farmers across America are free to repair their own equipment or use repair shops of their choice—lowering costs, preventing ruinous delays, and promoting fair competition for independent repair shops.”

The FTC lawsuit was filed in conjunction with the states of Illinois and Minnesota.

In addition to intentionally acquiring repair alternatives to monopolize repair and drive up consumer costs, John Deere also routinely makes repair difficult and costly through the act of software locks, obnoxious DRM restrictions, and “ parts pairing” — which involves only allowing the installation of company-certified replacement parts — or mandatory collections of company-blessed components.

More recently, the company has been striking meaningless “memorandums of understanding” with key trade groups, pinky swearing to stop their bad behavior if the groups agree to not support state or federal right to repair legislation. Several such groups backed off their criticism, only to have John Deere continue its monopolistic behavior, the FTC’s complaint notes.

Several class action antitrust suits and ample warning from the FTC wasn’t enough to deter John Deere. The FTC’s suit comes as Lina Khan heads out the door, and it’s more than possible that Trump 2.0 — keen on taking a hatchet to what’s left of U,S, corporate oversight and consumer protection — either kills or undermines FTC legal efforts to finally hold John Deere accountable. You know, for “populism.”

Filed Under: agriculture, drm, ftc, hardware, lina khan, repair, right to repair, tractors

Companies: john deere