The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has initiated a systematic removal of AI-focused blog posts and policy guidances published during the tenure of former Chair Lina Khan. Under the new leadership of Trump-appointed Chair Andrew Ferguson, the agency has redirected or deleted key documents that previously outlined the government’s stance on algorithmic accountability, market competition, and the risks of generative AI.
The Vanishing Digital Footprint of AI Regulation
Recent investigations into the FTC’s digital archives reveal a pattern of disappearing content. A pivotal July 10, 2024, blog post titled “On Open-Weights Foundation Models” was redirected on September 1 to a generic landing page for the FTC’s Office of Technology. This specific piece was crucial to the debate surrounding California’s SB 1047, a bill that sought to impose safety requirements on AI developers. Khan’s staff had advocated for “open-weight” models—where training weights are public—arguing they allow smaller competitors to innovate without the restrictive barriers faced by closed-system giants.
Other significant deletions include an October 2023 post, “Consumers Are Voicing Concerns About AI,” which now similarly redirects to a landing page. More aggressively, a January 3, 2025, article titled “AI and the Risk of Consumer Harm” has been completely purged from the server, now returning a “Page not found” error. In that final post, Khan’s team warned that AI could “turbocharge” commercial surveillance, fraud, and illegal discrimination.
Internal Friction and Policy Shifts
The removal of the open-weights post has sparked confusion among former agency officials. Douglas Farrar, the FTC’s former public affairs director, expressed surprise at the move, noting that the deletion seems at odds with the Trump administration’s own stated goals. The administration’s “AI Action Plan” explicitly calls for a “supportive environment for open models” to maintain U.S. technological dominance. “I was shocked to see the Ferguson FTC be so out of line with the Trump White House on this signal to the market,” Farrar told WIRED.
High-level Trump advisers, including David Sacks and Sriram Krishnan, have also championed open-source AI as a geopolitical necessity. Despite this apparent alignment on the value of open models, the FTC has not clarified whether these deletions represent a formal policy reversal or a broader effort to distance the agency from Khan’s regulatory philosophy.
Compliance Concerns and the Scale of the Purge
This is not an isolated incident. Since January, the FTC has scrubbed hundreds of blog posts and business guidances. In March alone, approximately 300 posts related to AI and antitrust lawsuits against companies like Amazon and Microsoft were taken down. Among the casualties was “The Luring Test: AI and the engineering of consumer trust,” a post that received an award from the Aspen Institute for its clarity in explaining AI deceptive practices.
Internal sources suggest these actions may violate transparency laws. The Federal Records Act and the Open Government Data Act mandate that federal agencies preserve records with administrative or historical value. While the Biden-era FTC occasionally added “warning” labels to previous administrations’ guidance it disagreed with, the current total removal of documents raises significant legal and accessibility questions.
What Remains of the Khan Legacy?
Despite the widespread deletions, a subset of Khan’s work remains accessible. More than 200 statements and posts authored directly by Khan are still live, including:
- A September 2024 report on enforcement actions against deceptive AI schemes.
- A 2024 joint statement regarding competition in generative AI foundation models.
- Transcripts from a 2023 roundtable where Khan warned that AI could entrench the dominance of firms controlling “raw inputs” like data and computing power.
The FTC has declined to comment on the specific criteria used to determine which posts are archived and which are deleted, leaving the tech industry and legal experts to speculate on the future of AI oversight under the current administration.
