The FTC Is Disappearing Blog Posts About AI Published During Lina Khan's Tenure The Federal Trade Commission removed several blog posts in recent months about open source and potential risks to consumers from the rapid spread of commercial AI tools. Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, arrives to testify before Congress in 2024. In late July 2024, Lina Khan, then the chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, gave a speech at an event hosted by the San Francisco startup accelerator Y Combinator in which she positioned herself as an advocate for open source artificial intelligence. The event took place as California lawmakers were considering a landmark bill called SB 1047 that would have imposed new testing and safety requirements on AI companies. Critics of the legislation, which was later vetoed by California governor Gavin Newsom, argued it would hamper the development and release of open source AI models.

What has long been asserted by big tech skeptics is now the official position of the US district court for DC. Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google broke antitrust law by spending tens of billions annually to secure default search engine status across major web browsers, including Safari and Firefox. This coordinated campaign resulted in Google securing 90% of the global search market, despite its engine increasingly answering queries with spam pages, AI gibberish and product placements. The court has yet to determine Google's penalties. But this opinion marks a turning point in the ongoing fight to regulate Silicon Valley.

Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, faced a grueling four hours of questioning during a House judiciary committee oversight hearing on Thursday. Republicans criticized Khan – an outspoken critic of big tech – for "mismanagement" and for "politicizing" legal action against large companies such as Twitter and Google as head of the powerful antitrust agency. In his opening statement, committee chair Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said Khan has given herself and the FTC "unchecked power" by taking aggressive steps to regulate practices at big tech companies such as Twitter, Meta and Google. He said Khan carried out "targeted harassment against Twitter" by asking for all communications related to Elon Musk, including conversations with journalists, following Musk's acquisition because she does not share his political views. Khan, a former journalist, said the company has "a history of lax security and privacy policies" that did not begin with Musk.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering a wide range of options, including new rules and guidelines, to tackle data privacy concerns and algorithmic discrimination. FTC s Chair Lina Khan, in a letter to Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), outlined her goals to "protect Americans from unfair or deceptive practices online" and in particular, Khan said that the FTC is considering rulemaking to address "lax security practices, data privacy abuses and algorithmic decision-making that may result in unlawful discrimination." The FTC s letter comes in response to a letter from several lawmakers, including Senator Blumenthal, who urged the FTC to start a rulemaking process that would "protect consumer privacy, promote civil rights and set clear safeguards on the collection and use of data in the digital economy." "Rulemaking may prove a useful tool to address the breadth of challenges that can result from commercial surveillance and other data practices […] and could establish clear market-wide requirements," Khan wrote. The FTC can resort to its rulemaking authority to address unfair or deceptive practices that occur commonly, instead of relying on actions against individual companies.