We appreciate the opportunity to provide information related to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s “Request for Public Comment Regarding Technology Platform Censorship.” This comment does not represent the views of any particular party or special interest group but is intended to assist regulators in understanding the way technology platforms host and moderate speech based on our prior research and relevant expertise. We seek to provide our insights into the important questions raised by the RFI around content moderation, the rationale for such moderation, and the relevance and impact of competition in this market. We seek to emphasize three key points in this response.

  • The FTC’s request frames technology platforms’ moderation as “censorship” but fails to grasp the platforms’ constitutional right to host and moderate speech as they see fit.
  • To support its claim of private “censorship” the FTC asks for information about platforms’ inconsistency, unfairness, and lack of transparency in their moderation, even though such moderation does not remove the fundamental speech rights of platforms.
  • The FTC’s request also asks if biased, unfair, and unclear content moderation is a result of anti-competitive practices by technology companies, an argument that if pursued could abuse antitrust authority and shift away from objective standards while potentially resulting in fewer content moderation options as well.