Tag Archives: Trade

Posted by Ruth Manuel-Logan on September 6th, 2011 2:56 PM

Lobbyist group and watchdog the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness wants the Federal Trade Commission to impose trade regulations upon Facebook, Twitter and Google.

According to the CRE, the FTC has the authority to ban acts or practices that cause “substantial injury to consumers which is not reasonably avoidable by consumers themselves and not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition.”  

The CRE is under the assumption that with an absence of rules for internet services, the FTC would lack “sound intellectual and legal framework for its work,” possibly resulting in the commission utilizing ambiguous rules to settle on a ruling.

The CRE implied in a petition that the Commission would be jumping the gun at this point into any investigation of a web-based service — including Facebook, Twitter and Google — until the following is drafted and put out for public comment:

A proposed trade regulation, consistent with the statutory requirement that a practice may not be determined unfair unless it causes or is likely to cause substantial injury to consumers which is not reasonably avoidable by consumers themselves and not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition.

In the mean time, Google is getting revved up to defend itself against the FTC which has opened an investigation to “address fundamental questions of business operations” against the popular search engine company.  Twitter is under the FTC’s microscope for allegedly abusing its microblogging monopoly, while Facebook has been hand slapped for concerns over its privacy settings practices.

Readers, what do you think the FTC ought to do in response to this petition?