Wired reports that the Federal Trade Commission has removed three blog posts from the Lina Khan era that talked about open source AI and its risks to consumers.
One post titled “About the Open Weight Foundation Model” was published on July 10, 2024. Another post titled “Consumers are raising concerns about AI” was published in October 2023. A third post written by Mr. Khan’s staff was published on January 3, 2025, with the title “AI and the risk of consumer harm.” The post said the FTC “noted that AI can cause real-world harm, from encouraging commercial surveillance to enabling fraud and identity theft to perpetuating unlawful discrimination.”
TechCrunch reached out to the FTC to learn why the post was removed. Khan declined to comment.
These removals are part of a broader pattern under the Trump administration, which began issuing executive orders directing federal agencies to remove or alter significant amounts of government content.
After taking office, President Trump installed a new FTC director, fired several FTC commissioners, and installed a leadership that focused more on deregulation for Big Tech than on Mr. Khan’s aggressive antitrust policies. In September, new FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson submitted a recommendation to remove or amend anticompetition regulations across the federal government.
A blog post recently removed by the FTC focused on harm to consumers, but it doesn’t seem to align with the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan. The plan reduced its focus on safety and guardrails, instead prioritizing rapid growth and competition with China. However, the Trump administration has actively supported open source initiatives.
“I was shocked to see the FTC, led by Andrew Ferguson, diverge so much from President Trump on this signal to the market,” former FTC communications director Douglas Farrar told TechCrunch.
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This is not the first time the current administration’s FTC has removed content. Wired reported in March that the FTC removed about 300 posts related to AI, consumer protection, and the agency’s lawsuits against technology companies such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Hundreds of blog posts from Khan’s tenure and earlier remain on the agency’s Office of Technology blog, but Ferguson’s FTC has yet to publish any posts on the site, despite the frenetic pace of AI competition that has resulted in several corporate mergers and acquisitions that could be considered anticompetitive.
The FTC Blog screening comes after the Trump administration removed or altered thousands of government web pages and datasets, particularly content related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Gender identity; public health. and environmental policy. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed data on topics ranging from chronic medical conditions to HIV/AIDS. The Justice Department removed a study on hate crimes, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration removed a Congressional-mandated National Climate Assessment report.
Removal of content, including blog posts, from the FTC could violate the Federal Records Act, which requires federal agencies to keep records that adequately record government activities, and the Open Government Data Act, which requires government agencies to publish data as “open data” by default.
According to Wired, the Biden administration’s FTC leadership has placed warning labels on content it disagrees with that was published during the previous administration.
