A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) summit last week on protecting children online previewed an odd pivot. Apparently, the agency wants to be a sort of family values advocacy group.
"This government-sponsored event was not a good-faith conversation about child safety—it was a strategy session for censorship," said the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), a trade group for the adult industry.
What stands out most to me about last Wednesday's event—called "The Attention Economy: How Big Tech Firms Exploit Children and Hurt Families"—is the glimpse it provided into how the FTC's anti-tech strategy is evolving and the way Republicans seem intent on turning a bipartisan project like online child protection into a purely conservative one.
