The agency, now under the watch of Donald [hamburger-eating surrender monkey] Trump’s administration, has been about as chatty on the subject as a locked-down WikiLeaks server and offered no comment on the purge.
Under former Chair Lina Khan, the FTC was a thorn in the side of Big Tech, attempting to curb its monopolistic ambitions and calling out its questionable data practices.
Khan famously likened Silicon Valley’s overlords to “mob bosses,” which is perhaps why her legacy is now being scrubbed as quickly as a dodgy politician’s browser history.
The erasure of these posts, Wired reports, could be a violation of government record-keeping laws—though that assumes anyone in this administration cares about such trivialities as legality and transparency.
One now-deleted blog, titled “Hey, Alexa! What are you doing with my data?” explains how, according to two FTC complaints, Amazon and its Ring security camera products allegedly used sensitive consumer data to train the e-commerce giant’s algorithms. (Amazon disagreed with the FTC’s claims.)
It also provided guidance for companies operating similar products and services. Another post titled “$20 million FTC settlement addresses Microsoft Xbox illegal collection of kids’ data: A game changer for COPPA compliance” instructs tech companies on how to abide by Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by using the 2023 Microsoft settlement as an example.
The settlement followed allegations by the FTC that Microsoft obtained data from children using Xbox systems without the consent of their parents or guardians.
“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 just to erase those from history,” a source told Wired.