FTC removes Lina Khan-era posts about AI risks and open source

The Federal Trade Commission has removed three Lina Khan-era blog posts that discussed open-source AI and the risks of AI for consumers. a wired report.

One post, titled “On Open-Weights Foundation Models,” was published on July 10, 2024. Another, titled “Consumers Are Outing Concerns about AI,” was published in October 2023. A third, written by Khan’s staff, was published on January 3, 2025, titled “AI and the Risk of Consumer Harm.” That release noted that the FTC “noted AI’s potential for real-world harm cases – from boosting commercial surveillance to enabling fraud and impersonation to perpetuating illegal discrimination.”

TechCrunch has contacted the FTC to find out why the messages were 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 substantial amounts of government content.

After his inauguration, Trump also installed a new head of the FTC and fired several FTC commissioners, installing leadership that focused less on Khan’s aggressive antitrust agenda and more on deregulation for Big Tech. New FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson in September submitted recommendations for eliminating or revising anticompetitive regulations throughout the federal government.

The most recently removed blog posts by the FTC, which focused on consumer harm, appear to be inconsistent with the Trump administration’s AI action plan. That plan has reduced the focus on safety and guardrails and instead promoted rapid growth and competition with China. However, the Trump administration has been vocal about supporting open source initiatives.

Former FTC public affairs director Douglas Farrar told TechCrunch: “I was shocked to see Andrew Ferguson put the FTC so out of step with the Trump White House on this signal to the market.”

This isn’t the first time this administration’s FTC has removed content. In March, Wired reported that the FTC has removed about 300 posts related to AI, consumer protection and the agency’s lawsuits against tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft.

While hundreds of blog posts from Khan’s tenure and earlier remain on the desk Office of Technology BlogFerguson’s FTC has yet to publish any notices on the site, despite the feverish pace of the AI ​​race, which has resulted in several corporate mergers and acquisitions – including takeovers – that could be considered anticompetitive.

The cull of the FTC blogs follows the Trump administration’s removal or modification of thousands of government web pages and data sets, 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 has removed hate crime investigations, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has done soAdminister the National Climate Assessment mandated by Congress reports.

Removing content — including the FTC’s blog posts — could violate the Federal Records Act, which requires federal agencies to maintain records that properly document government activities, and the Open Government Data Act, which requires agencies to publish their data as “open data” by default.

The Biden administration’s FTC leadership placed warning labels on content published during previous administrations that it disagreed with, according to Wired.