Current and former FTC staff say the FTC removed 300+ Biden-era business guidance blog posts, including info on AI consumer protection and its Big Tech lawsuits
The agency had previously expanded its technology capacity through an Office of Technology staffing push as it prepared for legal fights involving major platforms. Its published business materials therefore served as a practical record of how that expertise was applied to AI, consumer protection, and competition questions.
The removals follow a leadership-era shift visible in the FTC chair's inquiry into alleged Big Tech censorship. They matter because website guidance can shape how companies, lawyers, and consumers interpret an agency's enforcement posture even when the underlying law and cases remain separate.
First-order effects
Businesses and consumer advocates lose easy access to more than 300 archived FTC explanations, including material on AI consumer protection and the agency's Big Tech litigation.
The FTC's public-facing record becomes less continuous: readers seeking the rationale or practical framing behind earlier guidance must rely on other agency materials, filings, or archives rather than the removed posts.
Second-order effects
Compliance teams may place greater weight on formal rules, complaints, settlements, and court filings when assessing FTC risk, because informal guidance is less readily available.
The change can amplify uncertainty for AI and platform companies already tracking FTC enforcement, while also making it harder for outside observers to compare current priorities with the agency's earlier positions.
Third-order effects
If agencies increasingly remove prior online guidance during leadership transitions, public websites may become a less durable source of regulatory continuity and a more contested part of policymaking.
The pattern would shift more interpretive weight toward binding enforcement and litigation records, potentially increasing the value of independent archives and formal guidance processes.
The trend: This is part of a broader shift in which changes in agency leadership can reshape not only enforcement priorities but also the public record used to interpret them.
A couple weeks ago an advocacy group sent me a press release about how excited they were that Trump's picks were supposedly showing skepticism of Big Tech. It took a lot of self restraint not to just send back an image of Lucy with the football. [embedded post]
NEW: Hundreds of FTC business-guidance blog posts, including ones critical of Big Tech firms and AI companies, have vanished from the FTC website—possibly in violation of federal records law. This is by @makenakelly.bsky.social
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