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

The Federal Trade Commission has removed three blog posts Lina Khan-era that addressed open-source AI and AI’s risks to consumers, according to A wired report.

A post titled “On Open-Weights Foundation Model” was published on July 10, 2024. Another, titled “Consumers Are Voicing Concerns About AI,” was published in October 2023. A third, authored by Khan’s staff, was published on January 3, 2025, titled “AI and the Risk of Consumer Harm”. That post noted that the FTC is “looking at AI’s potential for real-world harm — from encouraging commercial surveillance to perpetuating illegal discrimination from fraud and impersonation.”

TechCrunch reached out to the FTC to find out why the posts were taken down. Khan declined to comment.

The removals are part of a larger pattern under the Trump administration, which has begun issuing executive orders directing federal agencies to remove or redact significant amounts of government content.

After his inauguration, so did Trump A new head has been installed The FTC and several FTC commissioners were removed, installing leadership that focused less on Khan’s aggressive antitrust agenda and more on deregulation for Big Tech. In September, new FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson deposit Recommendations to eliminate or modify antitrust regulations throughout the federal government.

More recently removed blog posts by the FTC, which focused on harm to consumers, don’t seem to align with that. The Trump administration’s AI action plan. The plan has reduced the focus on security and guardrails, instead favoring 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 surprised that the FTC, led by Andrew Ferguson, was so out of line with the Trump White House on this market signal.”

This is not the first time the FTC has removed content from this administration In March, Wired report The FTC has removed nearly 300 posts related to AI, consumer protection and the agency’s lawsuits against tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft.

However, hundreds of blog posts from Khan’s era and earlier remain on the agency Technology Blog OfficeThe FTC in Ferguson has yet to publish any posts on the site despite the intense pace of the AI ​​race, which has resulted in a number of business mergers and acquisitions — including for-hire — that could be viewed as competitive.

FTC blog culling follows the Trump administration’s removal or modification of content on thousands of government web pages and datasets, particularly 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 studies on hate crimes, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationCongress mandated national climate assessments aken below Report

Removal of content from the FTC – including blog posts – may violate the Federal Records Act, which requires federal agencies to preserve records that properly document government activities, and the Open Government Data Act, which requires agencies to release their data as “open data” by default.

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