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  "description": "Chairman signals agency’s expanding role in countering Big Tech censorship",
  "path": "/ftcs-ferguson-says-tech-censorship-may-violate-antitrust-law/",
  "publishedAt": "2025-03-25T17:26:41.000Z",
  "site": "https://broadbandbreakfast.com",
  "tags": [
    "_official inquiry last month_",
    "_relied heavily on_",
    "_his tech anti-censorship agenda_",
    "_two remaining Democratic commissioners_"
  ],
  "textContent": "WASHINGTON, March 25, 2025 – Federal Trade Commission Chairman **Andrew Ferguson** hinted Tuesday that the agency may have the authority to take action against tech companies for censoring user speech — not as a free speech matter, but as a potential abuse of market power.\n\nSpeaking at the Free State Foundation’s annual conference here, Ferguson said the FTC isn’t “the censorship police,” but warned that censorship by dominant platforms could fall under the commission’s antitrust or consumer protection purview.\n\n“I’m not looking for censorship _qua_ censorship,” he said. “I’m looking for exercises of market power that might reveal themselves in censorship.”\n\nHis remarks follow the FTC’s launch of an _official inquiry last month_ into Big Tech’s content moderation practices, which invited public comment from users who believe they’ve been banned, shadow banned, or demonetized, and has been criticized by some as a political maneuver.\n\nWhile President**Donald Trump** has so far _relied heavily on_ Federal Communications Commission Chairman**Brendan Carr** to articulate _his tech anti-censorship agenda_, Ferguson’s remarks suggest the FTC may be taking a more active role in that effort.\n\nFerguson gave a full-throated defense of Trump’s firing of the FTC’s _two remaining Democratic commissioners_ last week. Though the legality of the removals may ultimately be tested in court, Ferguson insisted they were lawful, casting _Humphrey’s Executor_ – the 1935 Supreme Court decision that explicitly barred presidents from removing FTC commissioners over policy disagreements – as outdated.\n\n“Whatever the FTC was in 1935 when _Humphrey’s Executor_ was decided, the 2025 FTC wields substantial executive power,” he said, citing _Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau_ , a 2020 Supreme Court decision, in which the Court ruled that the president must be able to remove the head of the CFPB at will.\n\n _Seila Law_ reinforced the idea that executive branch agencies must be accountable to the president — and cast doubt on older decisions, like _Humphrey’s Executor_ , that had allowed more independence for regulators like the FTC.\n\n“If the president can’t supervise the entire government, that means there are parts of the government that are immune from popular control,” Ferguson said. “That’s the deep state.”\n\nThe FTC currently meets its two-commissioner quorum requirement with just Ferguson and Republican commissioner **Melissa Holyoak** , allowing it to continue enforcement actions, which Ferguson said were full steam ahead.\n\n“The commission has operated with two commissioners before. We have a specific rule that says that if the commission is comprised of fewer than three commissioners, then all of the commissioners — two of them — comprise the quorum,” he confirmed.\n\nFerguson offered strong support for monopolization cases filed against Meta, Google, and Amazon, including those initiated under the Biden administration.\n\nFerguson committed, at least for now, to keeping Biden-era merger guidelines and expanded Hart–Scott–Rodino filing rules, the pre-merger notifications companies must submit to federal antitrust enforcers under the Hart–Scott–Rodino Act, which were developed under former FTC Chair**Lina Khan**.\n\nHe said those rules would eventually be “due for an update” and could be reassessed over time.",
  "title": "FTC’s Ferguson Says Tech Censorship Practices May Violate Antitrust Law",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-11T03:32:10.989Z"
}