The Federal Trade Commission has removed all posts from President Joe Biden’s term in office from its business blog. This online publication has historically provided advice about how companies could best comply with consumer-protection regulations, covering topics such as artificial intelligence and how big tech companies have collected and used customer data. Currently, it has no content published between December 21, 2020 and March 7, 2025.
Wired highlighted some of the notable content from the more than 300 blog posts that have been deleted. Several current and former FTC officials spoke to the publication about the change anonymously out of fear of retaliation.
“In terms of the message to industry on what our compliance expectations were, which is in some ways the most important part of enforcement action, they are trying to just erase those from history,” one source said.
The FTC is being led by President Donald Trump’s nominee, Andrew Ferguson. At the time of his appointment, Ferguson said he would use the department to “end Big Tech’s vendetta against competition and free speech.” He and other Republicans have claimed that many platforms are censoring right-wing content, adding a heavy layer of irony to the FTC’s latest actions.
“They are talking a big game on censorship,” another source told Wired. “But at the end of the day, the thing that really hits these companies’ bottom line is what data they can collect, how they can use that data, whether they can train their AI models on that data, and if this administration is planning to take the foot off the gas there while stepping up its work on censorship.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-ftc-has-removed-all-business-blog-posts-from-the-biden-administration-214734633.html?src=rss
