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

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has retracted three blog posts from the tenure of Chair Lina Khan, which discussed open-source AI and concerns related to consumer safety, as reported by Wired.

The blog posts in question included “On Open-Weights Foundation Models,” published on July 10, 2024, “Consumers Are Voicing Concerns About AI,” which was released in October 2023, and “AI and the Risk of Consumer Harm,” authored by Khan’s team and posted on January 3, 2025. The latter highlighted the FTC’s recognition of AI’s potential risks, including the promotion of commercial surveillance, fraud, impersonation, and illegal discrimination against consumers.

TechCrunch has sought clarification from the FTC regarding the rationale behind the removals, but Khan has chosen not to comment on the matter.

These actions are part of a wider trend that began during the Trump administration, where executive orders directed federal agencies to amend or eliminate significant amounts of governmental content.

Following his inauguration, Trump appointed a new FTC head and replaced several commissioners, steering the agency away from Khan’s assertive antitrust initiatives toward a more deregulated environment favorable to Big Tech. In September, the newly appointed FTC Chair, Andrew Ferguson, recommended substantial revisions or deletions of anticompetitive regulations at the federal level.

The recently retracted blog posts, which emphasized consumer risks, seem to contradict the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan. This plan has shifted away from prioritizing safety toward encouraging rapid growth and competition with China, despite the administration publicly supporting open-source initiatives.

Douglas Farrar, former FTC public affairs director, expressed surprise at the disconnect, stating, “I was shocked to see that Andrew Ferguson’s FTC is so out of alignment with the Trump White House on this significant signal to the market.”

This isn’t the first instance of content removal under the current administration. Earlier in March, Wired reported that the FTC eliminated nearly 300 posts regarding AI, consumer protection, and the agency’s litigation against tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft.

While hundreds of blog entries from Khan’s administration and earlier periods remain accessible on the FTC’s Office of Technology Blog, Ferguson’s FTC has yet to release any new content, despite the fast-paced developments in the AI sector, which have led to numerous business mergers and acquisitions potentially perceived as anticompetitive.

The recent blog purges coincide with the Trump administration’s previous removals or alterations of thousands of government webpages and datasets, focusing on areas such as diversity, equity, inclusion, public health, and environmental policy. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has retracted data on various chronic health conditions, while the Justice Department has removed studies regarding hate crimes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also discontinued the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment reports.

The removal of this content—including the FTC’s blog posts—raises concerns about potential violations of the Federal Records Act. This act mandates the preservation of records that accurately document government activities, while the Open Government Data Act requires agencies to publish their data as open data by default.

Under the Biden administration, FTC leadership has opted to label content from prior administrations that they disagree with, as noted by Wired.