https://www.wired.com/story/federal-trade-commission-removed-blogs-critical-of-ai-amazon-microsoft/
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.
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 leveraged sensitive consumer data to train the ecommerce 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 the 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 to just erase those from history," a source familiar tells WIRED.
Another removed FTC blog titled "The Luring Test: AI and the engineering of consumer trust" outlines how businesses could avoid creating chatbots that violate the FTC Act's rules against unfair or deceptive products. This blog won an award in 2023 for "excellent descriptions of artificial intelligence."
The Trump administration has received broad support from the tech industry. Big tech companies like Amazon and Meta, as well as tech entrepreneurs like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, all donated to Trump's inauguration fund. Other Silicon Valley leaders, like Elon Musk and David Sacks, are officially advising the administration. Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employs technologists sourced from Musk's tech companies. And already, federal agencies like the General Services Administration have started to roll out AI products like GSAi, a general-purpose government chatbot.
The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED.
Removing blogs raises serious compliance concerns under the Federal Records Act and the Open Government Data Act, one former FTC official tells WIRED. During the Biden administration, FTC leadership would place "warning" labels above previous administrations' public decisions it no longer agreed with, the source said, fearing that removal would violate the law.
Since President Donald Trump designated Andrew Ferguson to replace Khan as FTC chair in January, the Republican regulator has vowed to leverage his authority to go after big tech companies. Unlike Khan, however, Ferguson's criticisms center around the Republican party's long-standing allegations that social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, censor conservative speech online. Before being selected as chair, Ferguson told Trump that his vision for the agency also included rolling back Biden-era regulations on artificial intelligence and tougher merger standards, The New York Times reported in December.
In an interview with CNBC last week, Ferguson argued that content moderation could equate to an antitrust violation. "If companies are degrading their product quality by kicking people off because they hold particular views, that could be an indication that there's a competition problem," he said.
Sources speaking with WIRED on Tuesday claimed that tech companies are the only groups who benefit from the removal of these blogs.
"They are talking a big game on censorship. But at the end of the day, the thing that really hits these companies' bottom line is what data they can collect, how they can use that data, whether they can train their AI models on that data, and if this administration is planning to take the foot off the gas there while stepping up its work on censorship," the source familiar alleges. "I think that's a change big tech would be very happy with."
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The Verge, Space News, and The South China Morning Post are reporting that Red China has begun assembling a 744 TOPS super computer in Earth's orbit. The advantages of an orbital super computer include better access to solar energy, easier radiation of waste heat, and, above all, shorter communications times with other satellites.
The satellites communicate with each other at up-to-100Gbps using lasers, and share 30 terabytes of storage between them, according to Space News. The 12 launched last week carry scientific payloads, including an X-ray polarization detector for picking up brief cosmic phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts. The satellites also have the capability to create 3D digital twin data that can be used for purposes like emergency response, gaming, and tourism, ADA Space says in its announcement.
- — China begins assembling its supercomputer in space. The Verge.
They are part of the Three-Body Computing Constellation, space-based infrastructure being developed by Zhejiang Lab. Once complete, the constellation would support real-time, in-orbit data processing with a total computing capacity of 1,000 peta operations per second (POPS) – or one quintillion operations per second – the report said.
- — China launches satellites to start building the world's first supercomputer in orbit. The South China Morning Post.
The satellites feature advanced AI capabilities, up to 100 Gbps laser inter-satellite links and remote sensing payloads—data from which will be processed onboard, reducing data transmission requirements. One satellite also carries a cosmic X-ray polarimeter developed by Guangxi University and the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), which will detect, identify and classify transient events such as gamma-ray bursts, while also triggering messages to enable followup observations by other missions.
Maintenance will be difficult.
Previously:
(2025) PA's Largest Coal Plant to Become 4.5GW Gas-Fired AI Hub
(2025) FTC Removes Posts Critical of Amazon, Microsoft, and AI Companies
(2025) Real Datacenter Emissions Are A Dirty Secret
(2022) Amazon and Microsoft Want to Go Big on Data Centres, but the Power Grid Can't Support Them
(Score: 4, Informative) by Tork on Thursday March 20 2025, @05:28PM (20 children)
We might find out what happens when a party boldly defies their voting base.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 5, Touché) by ikanreed on Thursday March 20 2025, @05:50PM (13 children)
We already have. The dems have spent a good 30 years becoming increasingly antagonistic to their own voters and losing more and more elections for it.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday March 20 2025, @05:53PM (12 children)
Do you really think we're operating under 'business as usual' right now?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday March 20 2025, @06:04PM (2 children)
No, but we never have been.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2025, @06:11AM (1 child)
That kind of means yes, it is business as usual.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday March 21 2025, @01:47PM
Kinda does, but if you say that exactly, smug pricks will point out all the bad things that have gotten worse recently, as if they're not comparable to all the bad things that got worse 10 years ago.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2025, @07:29PM (8 children)
Absolutely.. Business is good.. Republicans,democrats are making more money than ever for themselves and their associates. The monopoly we have given them remains undiminished, on the contrary, it is flourishing. We are witnessing a perfectly natural sequence of events, given the choices we the people made over the decades. I don't understand the surprised look on everybody's faces.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 20 2025, @08:02PM (7 children)
Watching the broader market, we're right about on par with where the market was 6 months ago:
https://www.google.com/search?q=qqq+stock+price [google.com]
Normally at this point in a presidency the market should be up about 2-3% from where it was 6 months ago, but 2-3% is in the noise.
Financial markets seem to be of the opinion that their prospects haven't materially changed much, so far - despite a "cooling off" from their initial "GO TEAM R!" exuberance during the lame duck period.
>I don't understand the surprised look on everybody's faces.
I do. The ones who voted against can't believe all of this is actually happening with so little friction. The ones who voted for didn't believe they were actually going to do "all the things" - surely he was just joking about most of that and would be stopped from the really illegal stuff, right?
>We are witnessing a perfectly natural sequence of events, given the choices we the people made over the decades.
I'm going to say that only about 30% of we the people made those choices, another 30% can be blamed for making the choice of choosing not to decide, 40% actively voted against the changes, but inexplicably allowed gerrymandering and other electorate shaping actions against their interests to continue and expand unabated.
What we have going on right now is clearly not in the interests of the majorty of the population, the citizens of the country, or the registered or active voters. It has been squeaked in by the slimmest of margins on an unleveled playing field that skews outcomes far more than the margins of victory have been for the past 30 years.
I don't have "surprised look" - I have deeply disappointed look, combined with hope that, finally, this might be the wakeup call needed to get some course correction going in favor of the majority of the people, instead of the majority of "the people that matter."
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by DadaDoofy on Thursday March 20 2025, @08:41PM (2 children)
"this might be the wakeup call needed to get some course correction going in favor of the majority of the people"
You are severely confused. That's what Biden was. Even CNN reports that Democrat favorability is now at a record low 29%.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/16/politics/cnn-poll-democrats/index.html [cnn.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 20 2025, @09:23PM
Biden rode in on a pendulum swing back from T1, yes.
T2 is pushing much harder than T1, and I agree that Dem as usual isn't going to make people happy - but I'm not sure how incentivized they are to change with the shitshow that they're competing against?
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Thursday March 20 2025, @09:25PM
I thought that sort of thing didn't matter now? Didn't Trump say that his beloved uneducated Christians [sic] would be spared the hassle of having to vote again?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2025, @08:53PM
I only count the people that vote, at least until we can get the non-voter counted as a "no" vote, as in "no confidence", or "none of the above". And the way I see it, over 98% voted to keep things going merrily along as they have been for all of recorded history. As distressing as it appears, nothing out of the ordinary is happening. All we have done is to weaponize our greatest gift, the opposable thumb
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Thursday March 20 2025, @09:39PM (2 children)
It's going to be hard for the country to course correct when the current administration will be spending the next 3.5 years removing the ability to do that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 20 2025, @09:49PM (1 child)
I like to believe that as easily as this is happening, it can be even more easily reversed (without all most of the court battles.)
What disturbs me is a control theory observation that US policy has been oscillating faster and harder ever since Reagan/Bush, like a system out of control and at present it's hitting and damaging many of the safeguards that have been put in place over the centuries. I'd like to see changes that damp the oscillations down - not necessarily to a steady state, but to something more predictable.
I'm not sure we ever had much of that predictability, but that doesn't mean that 20-50 years of predictable gradual change wouldn't be good for us.
I think key to that kind of transition is to stop making empty promises about things like "trickle down is good for everyone" while simultaneously not overheating the economy with too much easy borrowing from the future.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2025, @06:15PM
I think it's helpful to distill the motives rather than a single concept like "trickle down". One side clearly does not believe or care whether "trickle down" or any theory is actually true - whatever it take to waste your time chasing your tail diving down rabbit holes to prove them wrong - they don't care. Power is lynig to somebody's face when both of you know you're lying and having the other person paving to pretend you're not lying. That's the only "real" thing that matters.
On the other side, we are in knots trying to shoe-horn concepts like equality, fairness and human rights onto the world. It's a grand idea that all humans are essentially equal, sharing the same consciousness, empathetic to eachothers' plights.
So those are the two poles: Kings/Leaders/solipsists versus shared experience/equality/teamwork.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by krishnoid on Thursday March 20 2025, @06:11PM
And "baldly" as well. In a country with 5:4 gun:population ratio, "shot down" indeed.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by DadaDoofy on Thursday March 20 2025, @08:32PM (4 children)
That's the narrative. They are anything but "GOP constituents".
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/democratic-activists-fueled-anti-trump-protests-at-gop-town-halls-but-also-rage-at-their-own-party/ar-AA1A2YD5 [msn.com]
Not that there is anything to worry about.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-hits-highest-approval-he-s-ever-had-as-more-americans-say-us-is-on-right-track-than-any-time-in-20-years-poll/ar-AA1B2hMT [msn.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Thursday March 20 2025, @08:43PM
I hear the chocolate rations are up again too. Doubleplus good!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2025, @09:07PM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday March 20 2025, @09:59PM (1 child)
My daughter knows me well, one year giving me a coffee cup with the statement I would make to MSN: "Nice story, now show me the data."
Where's their proof that those were Democrats? Details, details...
Mad at your neighbors? Join ICE, $50,000 signing bonus and a LICENSE TO MURDER!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2025, @10:34PM
its a little confusing because what happened was a bunch of gop reps found themselves unable to answer important questions about elon, doge, and trump's policies. This made gop voters upset. not wanting to see their voters upset, the gop did the logical thing and ... of course... cancelled the town halls. i mean, it worked for covid tests, right? this further angered their constituents so the democrats started holding town halls for the gop. what happened next wasnt really that surprising, but it happened anwyay. the angry people that needed to say they were angry were quite shouty at whoever would hear them. so, yes, dems got shouted at as well.
this is why dadadoofy is leaning hard on trump's approval rating, they're hoping nobody else is aware that trump's making everybody kiss his ring.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by VLM on Thursday March 20 2025, @08:53PM (3 children)
I wonder if anyone read it, heard of it, or cared about it, until it became a TDS topic.
There's an angle not being discussed, surely intentionally, that being the "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody sees it..." argument.
If no one would have ever heard of it or read it or seen it or even know about it existing until claims of censorship at the time of deleting it, does it matter if it ever existed?
I'm just saying that server probably got a fraction of the hits that SN's servers get, which on the grand scale of things is not much.
Just look at that language... 300 whole blogs, wowzers. I'd be WAY more impressed if it was 30,000,000 unhappy RSS subscribers. Or lost 3,000,000 hits per year from USA ip address space. Or 30000 public school lesson plans that referenced those URLs. But nah a bunch of vapor blown into the ether is condensing back out for recycling and nobody would notice unless they were told to have their two minutes hate about it, today. I'm sure they'll find something equally impactful for the two minutes hate tomorrow and the day after. And so?
Another interesting topic carefully avoided in the TDS orgasm over "censorship"; is/was there any unique content or is it just a typical issue of "Consumer Reports" but NIH'd and hand replicated by the FTC? Is there anything in those deleted posts that isn't already an entire Wikipedia article, NY Times article, Post article, commerce dept article, IRS article, DeptEd article, etc?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Thursday March 20 2025, @09:30PM (1 child)
Not condoning censorship, but why is a government department doing "blogs" anyway? Is the stuff in them official policy/information or not? If it is then it should be on their website as such, if it is not then it should not be on a government website at all.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VLM on Friday March 21 2025, @03:33PM
Propaganda on our own citizens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday March 20 2025, @10:35PM
🙄
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Thursday March 20 2025, @09:02PM (1 child)
Things are twisted up enough politically I'd have to do detailed research to figure out who is the enemy in that post and what axe they're trying to grind.
So they're not subsidizing "big tech" anymore by acting as free legal team for them and big tech will have to pay their own legal team for legal advice.
Oh wait its actually anti-capitalist to claim they might be doing something wrong or even could do something wrong.
Or they're ruining the FTCs own ability to make money off fines by explaining how not to acquire fines.
Or they're capitalist bootlickers for claiming "big tech" needs no oversight.
Or they're claiming their own laws are too complicated and baroque to understand and are being used primarily as a weapon
Uh wat?
(Score: 5, Informative) by mcgrew on Thursday March 20 2025, @10:04PM
Here's a hint: Who owns big tech? Who owns almost all media? The 1% who own everything. They have waged class war against the 99% since Reagan.
Wake up and smell the stench of hereditary wealth.
Mad at your neighbors? Join ICE, $50,000 signing bonus and a LICENSE TO MURDER!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Thursday March 20 2025, @09:53PM (1 child)
You knew what you were voting for. The 1% declared class war on us under Reagan. Most of you have lived it without seeing it. The "culture war" is a ruse to keep the 99% at each other's throats. Did the "woke" cancel Aunt Jemima? No, it was the rich people who own the syrup company! Every bit of the "culture war" is from the media, who are OWNED BY THE 1%.
And the man you voted for had three million dollars in the bank at age three. He is the vanguard of the 1% in the war against US, the normal average American. The very rich laugh at your gullibility. Miss the Department of Education? Tough shit. The 1% has declared victory in the war against the enemy who didn't know who was REALLY ruining their lives.
You were swindled by the fraudiest fraudster that ever committed a fraud. Donnie is the King of Fraudsters. He's the GOAT, the greatest fraudster of all time. He will lie to you when he knows you know he's lying and keeps lying, and you STILL buy his bullshit. Make America great again? It's men like him who enshittified it!
It's not your fault, you were swindled. Sucks to be American now. Or anyone else.
Mad at your neighbors? Join ICE, $50,000 signing bonus and a LICENSE TO MURDER!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2025, @01:04AM
Yeah, the bigger swindle is the "opposition" that isn't.