FTC

While antitrust lawsuits and Capitol Hill hearings get headlines, Big Tech’s biggest threat in Washington may come from the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is gearing up to flex its muscle, by both enforcing current rules and trying to draft new ones. And it may be able do so relatively quickly.

The Federal Trade Commission which has historically worked its will through lawsuits and settlements, is flexing its rulemaking muscle. That is because acting FTC Chair Rebecca Kelly Slaughter has created a rulemaking group within the Office of General Counsel. Historically, the FTC has used its rulemaking authority primarily to review existing rules, rather than come up with new ones, but that could be about to change.

As expected, President Joe Biden said he will nominate antitrust expert Lina Khan to serve on the Federal Trade Commission. Khan, a professor at Columbia Law School, is among the most prominent critics of Big Tech. In 2017, while still a law student, Khan argued in the Yale Law Journal article “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” that antitrust policies should aim to preserve a “competitive process and market structure,” as opposed to just focusing on whether a company’s practices harm consumers in the short term.

Facebook is asking a D.C. federal judge to dismiss two government suits that allege its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp gave it a monopoly on the personal social networking market in violation of antitrust laws — arguing that such a claim “utterly ignores the reality of the dynamic, intensely competitive high-tech industry in which Facebook operates.”

President Biden has decided to nominate Lina Khan, a Columbia University legal scholar championed by anti-Big Tech activists, to the Federal Trade Commission. Along with the recent hiring of Tim Wu as an economic adviser inside the White House, the addition of Khan signals that Biden is poised to pursue an aggressive regulatory agenda when it comes to Amazon, Google, Facebook and other tech giants.

President Biden on Thursday appointed Rebecca Kelly Slaughter acting chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission and Jessica Rosenworcel as acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission. The two appointments reflect the tectonic political shift underway in Washington as Democrats, newly in charge of the White House and Congress, prepare to roll back a slew of deregulatory actions implemented under President Donald Trump.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons will exit the agency on Jan. 29. Simons, an antitrust lawyer, has led the agency since May 2018. News of Simons’ departure comes as the FTC is in the process of conducting a broad review of what it calls “dangerously opaque” privacy practices in the online ad industry.

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday voted to issue orders to nine major internet platforms requiring information about how they handle data for a new study. The orders, which do not implicate any legal wrongdoing, were sent to Amazon, ByteDance (the parent company of TikTok), Discord, Facebook, Reddit, Snap, Twitter, WhatsApp and Youtube. The agency is requesting information about how the platforms collect, use, track or estimate personal and demographic information.

The Federal Trade Commission has frozen pay and hiring, explored ways of shrinking its staff, and may need to bring fewer expensive cases, its executive director says in internal emails.

The antitrust lawsuits were announced by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The satellite provider will pay a historic civil penalty that tops the total penalties paid to the government by all prior violators of the Federal Trade Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule.

A looming vacancy on the Federal Trade Commission has created a dilemma for the agency as it decides how to pursue its expected antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, contributing to a delay in the launch of the case, three people familiar with the discussions said. While the five commissioners had been expected to file the suit by the end of this month, the agency’s commissioners are now grappling with the prospect that Republican Chairman Joseph Simons’ likely departure before the next administration could lead to 2-2 splits in future votes.

The Federal Trade Commission’s staff have made a recommendation to the agency’s commissioners on whether to file an antitrust complaint against Facebook, three people familiar with the agency’s probe said Thursday — a potential new milestone in Washington’s fight to rein in Silicon Valley. The FTC’s five commissioners met to discuss a potential case Thursday afternoon, though a final decision isn’t expected for several weeks.

Joe Simons has come under White House pressure for resisting the president’s fight against alleged political bias in social media.

The Federal Trade Commission’s proposed changes to security regulations for financial institutions could also affect a broad swath of non-financial companies — including ad agencies, social networks, lead generators and ad-tech companies — according to the Association of National Advertisers.

The social media company says the agency was examining whether it had misused people’s personal information to serve ads.

The president today signed an executive order targeting Twitter and other social media. It comprises several directives, including one calling on the FCC to establish rules that would limit how far social media can go in tagging and censoring user content before risking the immunity they now have from libel and other civil actions arising from user content. Above, the president holds up a copy of the New York Post before signing the order.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons indicated on Monday that the agency was looking at privacy complaints regarding Zoom Video Communications Inc. In a teleconference with lawmakers, Simons made reference to concerns that Rep. Jerry McNerney of California had about Zoom. While not addressing the question of Zoom directly, Simons said the agency takes its complaints seriously.

The Federal Trade Commission is launching a review of its endorsement guides, which set out recommendations for online testimonials and influencer marketing.

The Federal Trade Commission has launched a lookback at some of the smaller past acquisitions by some of the largest tech companies. The FTC said Tuesday it has issued “special orders” to Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, which require them to provide info on all acquisitions over the past decade (Jan. 1, 2010 through Dec. 31, 2019).

Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri released a proposal this morning to absorb the Federal Trade Commission into the U.S. Justice Department as a way to push back on Big Tech companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc.

The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are teaming up for two public workshops on drafts of new vertical merger guidelines. Vertical mergers are ones that combine different parts of the same supply chain, an AT&T with its video services and Time Warner with its content production, for example. DOJ and the FTC divvy up reviews of mergers for potential anticompetitive effects.

Federal officials are considering seeking a preliminary injunction against Facebook over antitrust concerns related to how its products interact, according to people familiar with the matter. A majority of the five-member FTC would be needed to seek an injunction, which the commission would need to file suit in federal court to obtain.

Pediatricians and consumer advocates are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate practices for collecting online data about children, amid concerns advertisers might be manipulating children with targeted ads.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons says he intends to name Ian Conner as the new head of the commission’s Competition Bureau. Conner is currently the deputy director of the bureau, a post he has held since September 2017, appointed by then chairman Maureen Ohlhausen as acting director. Conner is formerly a partner in the antitrust and competition group at Kirkland & Ellis.

Even though advertising for e-cigarettes is not currently illegal at the federal level, there are moves to change that position (including the announcement last month of an anticipated ban on flavored vaping products).

Google has agreed to pay between $150 million and $200 million to resolve an FTC investigation into YouTube over alleged violations of a children’s privacy law, according to a person familiar with the matter. The FTC voted 3-2 along party lines to approve the settlement, sending it over to the Justice Department as part of the review process, the person confirmed. Details about other terms of the settlement were not immediately available.

FTC Chairman Joe Simons, who is overseeing a tech task force, for the first time said he is prepared to break up major tech companies. He said this could be done by “unwinding” past mergers if the agency finds the companies are harming competition. Antitrust experts have argued for years that major tech companies buy startups to shut down their competition.

The fine is the largest the Federal Trade Commission has levied on a tech company. As part of the settlement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will have to personally certify his company’s compliance with its privacy programs. The FTC said that false certifications could expose him to civil or criminal penalties.

“We are concerned that the FTC has failed to impose strict structural reforms and managerial accountability that would put an end to Facebook’s privacy invasions,” Sens. Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal and Josh Hawley write.

While a $5 billion fine from the FTC, which Facebook has been expecting, is by far the largest the agency has levied on a technology company, the real worries for Facebook — and its investors and the companies that use it to advertise on its service — are the other restrictions and government oversight that might come with it.

The Federal Trade Commission is in the late stages of an investigation into YouTube for allegedly violating children’s privacy, according to four people familiar with the matter, in a probe that threatens the company with a potential fine and already has prompted the tech giant to reevaluate some of its business practices.