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Trump's FTC takes a ‘family values' approach to internet regulation
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Trump's FTC wants to regulate the internet to protect kids.
A recent all-day Federal Trade Commission workshop on kids' online safety hammered home a focused message: The internet has become a dangerous place for kids, and strict new laws are required to protect them from its harms.
Panelist after panelist at the Wednesday event agreed on the need for laws mandating age checks to identify minors online; more robust privacy protections for teens; and holding online platforms liable when they fail to protect kids from unwanted sexual content, advances or exploitation.
'The 30-year experiment on a frictionless, child-facing internet is a complete and devastating failure,' said Wes Hodges, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's center for technology and the human person, kicking off a panel on how the FTC can better protect kids online. The goal, he went on, should be to give parents more control of their children's and teenagers' online lives so they can be 'the leader in their household for how their kids engage online.'
The workshop heralded a conservative internet policy agenda centered on 'family values.' But that wasn't the initial idea behind it.
Planned in the waning weeks of the Biden administration, the workshop was originally titled 'The Attention Economy: Monopolizing Kids' Time Online,' people involved told the Tech Brief. The title was a nod to the FTC's focus on the links between the market power of Big Tech platforms and the alleged harms that flowed from their outsize role in young people's digital lives.
But the event was postponed and reworked after President Donald Trump took office and chose Andrew Ferguson to replace Lina Khan as FTC chair. Panelists who had planned to bring free-speech or antitrust lenses to the conversation were disinvited in favor of right-leaning think tankers and child safety advocates.
It was rescheduled for June with a new title: 'The Attention Economy: How Big Tech Firms Exploit Children and Hurt Families.'
The FTC said the event was reconfigured to align with the Trump administration's priorities.
'It is true that the Biden administration was in charge of a previous iteration of the attention economy workshop,' agency spokesman Joe Simonson told the Tech Brief. But 'the Biden administration's vision for the internet was rejected at the ballot box.'
Shielding minors online is a cause with bipartisan appeal, though attempts to regulate online speech can run into industry opposition and roadblocks in the courts. In Trump's second term, Republicans have taken on the mantle, passing age-verification laws in several U.S. states as well as the federal Take It Down Act, which requires online platforms to promptly remove sexual deepfakes and revenge porn.
The FTC event highlighted that emerging bipartisan coalition, even as several panelists framed it in conservative terms.
Rejecting the idea of 'progress for progress's sake,' Ferguson spoke of a 'God-given right and duty' to ensure that technological innovations benefit 'ordinary families.'
Another speaker was Louisiana state Rep. Laurie Schlegel (R), a sex addiction therapist who helped pass laws there requiring adult websites to verify users' ages.
Joseph Kohm, director of policy for the conservative Christian group Family Policy Alliance, said he was optimistic that the Supreme Court would uphold such laws in the face of First Amendment challenges. (The justices are expected to rule on a similar law in Texas in the coming weeks.)
'For generations, right-minded people in America have been looking for something to push back against the malign influence of both pornography and technology as both have become ubiquitous in our society,' Kohm said. Age verification tools, he suggested, could be part of the answer.
Among those left out were not only left-leaning advocates and academics but pro-industry groups and free marketeers.
A staffer at a nonpartisan nonprofit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity after being disinvited from the event, had planned to discuss how tech platforms' design choices impact children. That theme, which the FTC had emphasized under President Joe Biden, passed with little mention at last week's event.
'It was disappointing but not totally shocking, in that the leadership of this FTC was being pretty clear they wanted to put their stamp on everything,' the staffer said.
Also rescinded was an invitation for David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology at the libertarian Cato Institute. He said he had planned to put the current wave of concern for kids' online safety in the context of historical 'panics' over new communication technologies.
While some of the harms are real, he said, government intervention isn't the answer.
'Even in the current administration, there are people who talk about unleashing American innovation and technology,' Inserra said. 'The fact those views weren't represented in the panel is a missed opportunity.'
The App Association, a trade group for app developers, wrote a letter to Ferguson criticizing the event for overlooking the interests of smaller tech businesses and start-ups.
But sidelining those interests was probably no accident.
'The lineup could be taken as a targeted message at the very people who have previously stood in the way of kids online safety reform: fellow Republicans,' The Verge's Lauren Feiner wrote Monday. She noted that the U.S. Senate passed the sweeping Kids Online Safety Act 91-3 last year, but the House's Republican leadership never brought it to a vote.
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