Senator Warner Joins the Fight

The Federal Trade Commission is on notice

Last month I posted an essay on Substack entitled FTC Doesn’t stand for Federal Trade Commission, It really stands for F*** The Consumer. It highlighted the utter failure of the agency to protect consumers from the abuse of social media platforms and their complete disregard for their own published terms of service.

I also pointed out that since my complaints against Google and Facebook were filed, the response from the FTC has been crickets, and that deafening silence has been going on for close to four years. It made me wonder if Lina Khan and the FTC were tacitly providing these sociopaths cover for their clearly illegal activities.

Last June, I shared this predicament with Senator Mark Warner’s chief of staff who was stunned that there had been no response on an issue that has such enormous implications. She promised action and delivered.

“I am deeply troubled by this response, as the burden of finding and removing harmful content should not fall to victims’ families who are grieving their loved ones,” Sen. Warner wrote. “This approach only serves to retraumatize them and inflict additional pain. Instead, I firmly believe that the responsibility lies solely with the platform to ensure that any content violating its own Terms of Service is removed expeditiously.”

“It has been over three years since Mr. Parker and the Georgetown University Law Clinic filed their first complaint regarding this case, and Mr. Parker continues to endure harassment as a result of the videos remaining on these platforms. Given the practices outlined above, I ask that your agency consider all possible avenues to ensure that companies like Google and Meta uphold their Terms of Service, not only in Mr. Parker’s case but also in other instances where their platforms may host violent and harmful content.”

At long last, I’ve got a powerful ally in Congress joining the fight for me and a host of others who’ve been harmed. If the FTC actually takes action it will still be a bandaid on a gaping wound until we get to the root of the problem and fix Section 230 once and for all. That’s a subject for the next essay.

Now it remains to be seen—Will Senator Warner get a meaningful response or will the FTC continue ghosting all of us involved in this effort? Suffice it to say, the FTC has been put on notice by one of the most tech-savvy and powerful people in the US Senate.

Stay tuned.