The Federal Trade Commission has been chilling free speech just as bad as the FBI has. After Elon Musk took over Twitter, the heavy handed regulator significantly exceeded its authority by “demanding a broad array of internal communications — including the names of all reporters who got access to the so-called ‘Twitter Files.’”
Trade Commission demands
On Tuesday, conservative lawmakers on the Weaponization Subcommittee revealed the Federal Trade Commission waged “an aggressive campaign to harass” Twitter CEO Elon Musk. They sent a flurry of more than a dozen letters demanding all sorts of controversial information.
As part of the “broad array of internal communications” they tried to get their hands on, they wanted to know “the names of all reporters who got access” to the Twitter Files.
The committee exposed the demands in a report which came out March 7. The trade commission has no right to come down like a ton of bricks on protected free speech.
Jim Jordan on the FTC targeting Twitter and Elon Musk? They're going after journalists. The person who heads up the FTC, guess who she worked for before going to the FTC? House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. pic.twitter.com/6Q28RfBAxk
— ??Will?? (@notBilly) March 9, 2023
The aggressive campaign of harassment included numerous requests for records which “have no basis in the FTC’s statutory mission.” Not only that, the report adds, they “appear to be the result of partisan pressure to target Twitter and silence Musk.”
This was no short little memo. The subcommittee devoted a full 112 pages to shredding the Federal Trade Commission. They’re supposed to be “protecting consumers from anticompetitive, deceptive or unfair business practices,” not intimidating social media platform executives.
The FTC wanted Musk to cough up responses to “more than 350 specific demands” in fewer than three months. It seems the commission wanted to micromanage Twitter behind Musk’s back. They were dying to get their hands on “details of the creation of Twitter Blue, Musk’s controversial subscription plan for verified accounts.”
Total fishing trip
It’s clear to congressional watchdogs that the trade commission was on a total fishing trip. Without any basis for the request, the FTC ordered Twitter to disclose “[e]very single internal communication ‘relating to Elon Musk,’ by any Twitter personnel—including communications sent or received by Musk—not limited by subject matter, since the day Musk bought the company.”
In the legal field they like to call that “overly broad and burdensome.” The FTC should know better.
The document request that has the congressional oversight panel doing back flips is dated December 13. That’s the one where the trade commission demanded that the company identify “all journalists and other members of the media to whom [Musk has] granted any type of access to the Company’s internal communications, Resources, internal documents and/or files.” That seems to most people like chilling suppression of free speech and freedom of the press.
HUGE: Biden's FTC harassment of @ElonMusk exposed by House committee! Joining @FoxNews' @TraceGallagher in a few to talk about this breaking news….@JudicialWatch pic.twitter.com/BhKmT6jg1t
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) March 8, 2023
“There is no reason the FTC needs to know every journalist with whom Twitter was engaging,” the committee’s report said. “Even more troubling than the burden on the company, the FTC’s demand represents a government inquiry into First Amendment-protected activity. It is an agency of the federal government demanding that a private company reveal the names of the journalists who are engaged in reporting about matters of public interest, including potential government misconduct.”
The Federal Trade Commission was apparently furious that Twitter would dare disclose the truth. Independent journalists were given unfettered access to the platform’s internal communications. They quickly learned and revealed to the public that “dozens of FBI and government employees actively sought to censor users for their viewpoints, including for obvious jokes and criticism of Democrats.”
It also exposed how “the company suppressed the tweets of right-wing commentators and anti-COVID lockdown advocates by ‘blacklisting‘ their accounts, limiting the visibility of their tweets.” While “the FTC’s inquiry would be inappropriate in any setting, it is especially inappropriate in the context of journalists disclosing how social media companies helped the government to censor online speech.“
