President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris walk through the Cross Hall as they arrive to the East Room for an Executive Order signing on Artificial Intelligence, Monday, October 30, 2023 at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
Republican FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak published a statement on Thursday expressing concern with Big Tech facilitating content harmful to children, but also warning that the Biden-Harris FTC could take actions that result in the censorship of Americans’ online speech.
“How social media companies view and treat users increasingly shapes civic discourse and determines the extent of Americans’ freedoms to participate in the modern public square,” Holyoak said.
In 2020, during the Trump administration, the FTC issued orders to nine tech companies — Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, WhatsApp, Snap, Discord, Reddit, Twitter, and Amazon — seeking to examine their data practices and how they operate.
Some of the key findings in the FTC report include revelations that “Companies’ deletion practices varied and may not reflect what consumers expect.” That is, while some companies claim to delete data, they don’t actually follow through with it.
Users might assume that “deletion” means a social media platform has permanently erased their data, but companies have instead been found to “de-identify” data, meaning the data was made anonymous. However, the data could potentially be subject to “re-identification,” the report points out.
