General Discussion

chia

(2,547 posts) Tue Mar 25, 2025, 04:32 PM Mar 25

FTC Removes Posts Critical of Amazon, Microsoft, and AI Companies

FTC Removes Posts Critical of Amazon, Microsoft, and AI Companies
Business-guidance content published during the Biden administration has been removed from the Federal Trade Commission website.

The Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission has removed four years’ worth of business guidance blogs as of Tuesday morning, including important consumer protection information related to artificial intelligence and the agency’s landmark privacy lawsuits under former chair Lina Khan against companies like Amazon and Microsoft. More than 300 blogs were removed.

On the FTC’s website, the page hosting all of the agency’s business-related blogs and guidance no longer includes any information published during former president Joe Biden’s administration, current and former FTC employees, who spoke under anonymity for fear of retaliation, tell WIRED. These blogs contained advice from the FTC on how big tech companies could avoid violating consumer protection laws.

“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,” a source familiar tells WIRED.

https://www.wired.com/story/federal-trade-commission-removed-blogs-critical-of-ai-amazon-microsoft/

There's so much to keep up with (that's their strategy, I know), and removing/wiping/disappearing web pages isn't on the same level as human rights abuses, but it's still important to know what they're doing because it makes it harder and harder to remember things the way they used to be vs. what it looks like now. People forget all too quickly, and newer generations won't ever know.