from the everything’s-corruption dept
When Andrew Ferguson made his pitch to Donald Trump to take over the organization, his one-page “pick me” plea talked about “ending” former FTC Chair Lina Khan’s “politically motivated investigations.” We pointed out at the time how hilarious it was that he then made it clear he fully intended to abuse the power of the FTC to, instead, launch “politically motivated investigations” on behalf of MAGA culture war interests.
Now we have two separate reports of the FTC going way further than just launching bogus “politically motivated investigations,” but also looking to use consent decrees for clearly partisan support. This isn’t just garden-variety regulatory capture. It’s the transformation of a consumer protection agency into a protection racket for Trump loyalists and billionaire friends.
We’ve joked in the past that it’s become something of a rite of passage for large internet companies that they end up with a 20-year FTC consent decree at some point. Almost always, this is because of some gross violation of privacy by the company, leading to promises not to be so negligent and to be a lot more careful going forward. For a lot of companies it’s kind of the cost of becoming big enough to matter. Some, like Elon Musk, constantly whine about how unfair these consent decrees are.
But now Ferguson is clearly looking to weaponize consent decrees to help friends and punish enemies.
The Meta Shakedown: Pay Up For Exercising Editorial Rights
First up, a story from the NY Post ostensibly about how the big tech billionaires all kissed Donald Trump’s ass… for basically nothing in return. Trump and his allies are still abusing regulatory power to punish these companies. But, buried in that piece is this bit of ridiculous news:
Trump’s team, sources told me, are now pushing for aggressive measures, including a potential consent decree as part of an FTC deal that could force Meta to pay restitution to conservative users and businesses harmed by content moderation that was ratcheted up dramatically during covid.
It’s kind of shocking how ridiculous and inappropriate that would be. First of all, courts up to and including the Supreme Court have already made it abundantly clear that content moderation is protected by the First Amendment, noting that it is the same as the type of editorial discretion that enables Fox News to only spew bullshit and rarely post stories critical of Donald Trump.
Second, the FTC has zero authority to regulate speech or force companies to pay damages for exercising their editorial rights. Consumer protection agencies don’t get to second-guess private companies’ editorial decisions, even when those decisions upset powerful political constituencies.
Third, the predicate for this entire scheme—that Meta was biased against conservatives—is completely fabricated. Study after study after study has shown that Meta strongly favored conservative users rather than targeting them. Indeed, it had a separate set of rules that allowed MAGA types to violate its rules more frequently before facing any consequences, while deliberately limiting the reach of more liberal voices. This is why the platform is dominated by MAGA voices and has been for years.
In other words, Ferguson wants to force a company to pay damages to people who broke that company’s rules, based on a completely false premise about bias, in direct violation of both the First Amendment and the FTC’s statutory authority.
That seems… bad?
But, of course, with Zuckerberg so desperate to suck up to Trump, watch him actually agree to this bit of nonsense.
The Advertising Racket: Pay Elon Or No Deal
The second example is a NY Times article regarding the FTC’s review of the potential merger between advertising giants Omnicom and Interpublic. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be concerned about this deal leading to even more consolidation in the advertising market, but that doesn’t seem to be the major concern of the Ferguson FTC.
Instead, the agency wants to use the merger review as leverage to force these companies to buy ads on Elon Musk’s flailing ExTwitter platform:
A proposed consent decree would prevent the merged company from boycotting platforms because of their political content by refusing to place their clients’ advertisements on them, according to two people briefed on the matter.
This sanitized language obscures what’s really happening here: a protection racket for Elon Musk. As we’ve covered, Elon Musk is very, very mad that he drove away the majority of ExTwitter’s advertisers. But rather than look inward at what he did to cause that, he’s blaming everyone else—to the point that he is suing advertisers directly for not advertising on ExTwitter (while demanding others advertise or be added to the suit). He’s also been trying to encourage government officials to spin up “investigations” into advertisers who won’t advertise on ExTwitter, claiming (ridiculously) it’s an illegal boycott.
Courts at both the district and appeals court levels have rejected this theory as an obvious attack on protected First Amendment activity (i.e., advertisers saying they don’t want their brands associated with neo-Nazi reactionary nonsense).
But, the Ferguson/Trump FTC launched a similarly bogus investigation anyway, in an effort to abuse the power of the FTC to browbeat firms into giving Elon Musk cash (I assume, so long as Elon stays in Trump’s good graces).
So when the FTC proposes a consent decree preventing ad agencies from “boycotting platforms because of their political content,” it’s essentially telling Omnicom and Interpublic: “If you want this merger approved, you’ll agree in writing to buy ads on ExTwitter, whether your clients want them or not.”
This is textbook corruption: using regulatory approval as leverage to benefit a specific company that happens to be owned by someone (for the moment) in the president’s inner circle.
A Pattern of Regulatory Abuse
What connects these two schemes is how far they stray from the FTC’s actual authority. The agency is supposed to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive business practices and prevent anticompetitive mergers. It’s not supposed to act as an enforcement arm for aggrieved conservatives or as a collection agency for politically connected billionaires.
But, as with Zuckerberg, it’s entirely possible that the ad firms may agree to such a condition just to get the merger done.
Ferguson promised to end “politically motivated investigations” and instead launched obviously political shakedown schemes that would make Al Capone proud. The transformation is complete: an agency created to protect consumers from corporate abuse has become a tool for extracting tribute from corporations on behalf of powerful political interests.
This isn’t just garden-variety corruption or regulatory capture. It’s the systematic transformation of consumer protection regulatory tools into weapons of political retribution and personal enrichment. And it’s happening so brazenly that these officials barely even bother to hide their motives anymore.
The corruption is so brazen because they know no one will stop them.
The real tragedy isn’t just that this undermines the rule of law or corrupts important regulatory institutions. It’s that when everything becomes nakedly political, we lose the ability to distinguish between legitimate regulatory action and partisan hackery. It creates increased cynicism and distrust of government organizations. And, perhaps that’s part of the point.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, advertising, andrew ferguson, anti-conservative bias, bias, boycott, consent decree, content moderation, elon musk, free association, free speech, ftc
Companies: interpublic, meta, omnicom, twitter, x
