US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Melissa Holyoak has expressed concerns that the agency’s own report, meant to provide insight into Big Tech surveillance and privacy invasion, might in fact end up enabling more of it.
That’s certainly one way to express a dissenting stance toward the report that has just been published and was commissioned in December 2020.
The document concludes that some of the biggest tech companies – Amazon, Google, Meta, at that time Twitter, ByteDance (TikTok), and Snap – have created what its authors call a vast surveillance operation.
The report – “A Look Behind the Scenes: Examining the Data Practices of Social Media and Video Streaming Services” – slams these companies for anti-competitive behavior, and the use of algorithms to promote content which could be “harmful.”
We obtained a copy of the report for you here.
Holyoak’s response is not openly opposed to the findings’ overall purpose: in fact, the FTC official states that, as far as protecting the online privacy of Americans, it is “a major step forward.”
We obtained a copy of Holyoak’s letter for you here.
Yet, Holyoak uses language and arguments “pioneered” by those consistently critical of Big Tech and its censorship and surveillance policies, when she states that she has “grave concern” the document is “unclear exactly how its analysis or recommendations will affect free speech.”
In other words, Holyoak is worried that the language and definitions found in the report are too vague – despite it spelling out that it was not compiled to “address or endorse any attempt to censor or moderate content based on political views.”
Still, in the same vein, Holyoak cites the part of the report that talks about “more stringent testing and monitoring standards” as not properly defined – and therefore possibly a risk of undermining First Amendment violations even further, The Federalist first reported.
FTC Chair Lina Khan, Holyoak continued, knows that Big Tech is prone to “coordination” or “co-optation” (she stopped short of calling it, collusion) with government entities – and then turned the argument on its head by suggesting that since FTC is a government agency, it was FTC that was, with this report, now “unambiguously directing the private sector to comply with its recommendations.”
Holyoak expresses her concern that “such suggestions and recommendations may further limit free speech online, even where the intent is not directly to suppress free speech.”
Much depends on what tech companies decide to consider as “harmful,” “biased,” or “erroneous” when it comes to how they treat content.
