Are the FTC’s tools strong enough for digital challenges?

In a period of only nine days—April 25 to May 3, 2023—the the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced initiatives to look at unfair and deceptive acts involving AI and proposed banning Meta Platforms from targeting young users. These come on top of two years of antitrust aggressiveness and consumer protection assertiveness. But both actions beg the question, “Are the tools strong enough for the task?” Both the AI and Meta activities are indications of the limitations that FTC Chair Lina Khan and the agency face as a result of being tied to industrial-era statutes and procedures. Because there is no other agency to pick up the challenge—or other agencies are less creative and aggressive—the FTC has become the primary digital enforcer. We do not live in traditional times. As the only watchdog in sight, the FTC is right to apply its authority to protect the public against non-traditional threats. Fitting new realities into old statutes, however, can be awkward. What’s more, these efforts are an invitation for those who don’t like such protections to go to court to dispute the FTC’s authority. At a time when other Western democracies are stepping up to protect their citizens’ digital rights, the US needs its own set of digital protection tools—whether beefing up the FTC’s authority or creating a new, focused digital agency.

[Tom Wheeler is a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. Wheeler is a businessman, author, and was Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) from 2013 to 2017. For over four decades, Wheeler has been involved with new telecommunications networks and services.]