Andrew Ferguson, a Republican lawyer, was tapped on Tuesday to succeed Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Commerce Fee.
President-elect Donald Trump praised Ferguson in an announcement saying the appointment, saying he “has a confirmed report of standing as much as Massive Tech censorship, and defending Freedom of Speech in our Nice Nation.”
Ferguson has been on the fee since April and doesn’t require further Senate affirmation. His previous statements counsel he sees a extra restricted position for the FTC than did Khan — in September he delivered a speech entitled “Staying in Our Lane,” and in November he blasted Khan’s FTC for its “regulatory assault on American enterprise.”
Khan generated appreciable resentment and pushback within the enterprise group for taking an aggressive strategy to antitrust enforcement. Ferguson has indicated a milder strategy, saying in June that some components of Khan’s new merger pointers are “pushing the envelope a bit of bit.”
At that occasion, he mentioned he could be “open to reforming” Khan’s pointers, however didn’t need to rescind them. “At the least at this stage, I don’t suppose it’s good for us to get right into a type of cycle of recrimination the place the events simply preserve rescinding one another’s pointers,” he mentioned.
Ferguson opposed the FTC’s rule to ban non-compete clauses, which has been struck down within the federal courts.
Extra not too long ago, he has taken intention at tech platforms, saying their content material moderation insurance policies successfully suppress conservative speech. Ferguson argued that the FTC has the ability to analyze whether or not platforms are colluding with one another to set “shared censorship insurance policies.”
“We must conduct such an investigation,” he wrote final week. “And if our investigation reveals anti-competitive cartels that facilitate or promote censorship, we must bust them up.”
Trump’s choose to guide the Federal Communications Fee, Brendan Carr, has additionally argued that the FCC can play a job in regulating content material moderation.
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