FTC erases Biden-era business blog posts, sparking censorship concerns

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has removed all business blog posts dating from President Joe Biden’s term from its online publication, erasing more than 300 entries that once offered companies guidance on complying with consumer-protection regulations.

The blog, which covered topics ranging from artificial intelligence to big tech data practices, now shows no content published between December 21, 2020, and March 7, 2025.

Several current and former FTC officials, speaking anonymously to Wired out of fear of retaliation, described the move as an effort to “erase” past compliance expectations from history. “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,” one source said.

The decision comes under the leadership of Andrew Ferguson, President Donald Trump’s nominee who now heads the FTC. At the time of his appointment, Ferguson vowed to “end Big Tech's vendetta against competition and free speech.” Critics have pointed out the irony of the current action, as Ferguson and other Republicans have previously claimed that many platforms are censoring right-wing content.

Another source told Wired, “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 erasure of the Biden-era guidance has raised questions about the FTC’s current priorities, with industry watchers and former officials suggesting that the move may signal a shift toward a more politically driven enforcement agenda. As the debate over censorship and data usage continues to intensify, the FTC’s actions are likely to fuel further scrutiny of its evolving role in regulating consumer protection and competition in the tech sector.

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