FTC investigates “tech censorship,” says it’s un-American and may be illegal

The Federal Trade Commission today announced a public inquiry into alleged censorship online, saying it wants “to better understand how technology platforms deny or degrade users’ access to services based on the content of their speech or affiliations, and how this conduct may have violated the law.”

“Tech firms should not be bullying their users,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who was chosen by President Trump to lead the commission. “This inquiry will help the FTC better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds.”

The FTC announcement said that “censorship by technology platforms is not just un-American, it is potentially illegal.” Tech platforms’ actions “may harm consumers, affect competition, may have resulted from a lack of competition, or may have been the product of anti-competitive conduct,” the FTC said.

The Chamber of Progress, a lobby group representing tech firms, issued a press release titled, “FTC Chair Rides MAGA ‘Tech Censorship’ Hobby Horse.”

“Republicans have spent nearly a decade campaigning against perceived social media ‘censorship’ by attempting to dismantle platforms’ ability to moderate content, despite well-established Supreme Court precedent,” the group said. “Accusations of ‘tech censorship’ also ignore the fact that conservative publishers and commentators receive broader engagement than liberal voices.”

Last year, the Supreme Court found that a Texas state law prohibiting large social media companies from moderating posts based on a user’s “viewpoint” is unlikely to withstand First Amendment scrutiny. The Supreme Court majority opinion said the court “has many times held, in many contexts, that it is no job for government to decide what counts as the right balance of private expression—to ‘un-bias’ what it thinks biased, rather than to leave such judgments to speakers and their audiences. That principle works for social-media platforms as it does for others.”