House group critical of the Twitter probe to grill FTC chair on July 13. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Republicans who have harshly attacked Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, will hear her testimony on July 13.
Since Republicans took over, this is her first committee appearance. Since Musk bought Twitter, Republicans have criticized the FTC’s privacy inquiry.
The FTC announced a Twitter privacy probe in March. Twitter’s May 2022 settlement with the FTC to enhance its privacy procedures raised concerns about its staffing.
After Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter in October, the committee subpoenaed Khan for Twitter privacy papers in April.
In a June 8 letter, House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan said, “There is an unjustified approximate one-year gap in the FTC’s actions concerning Twitter” and that neither the prior chair nor Khan “seriously planned to take action against Twitter “until political pressure arose given Mr. Musk’s impending acquisition.”
In February, Jordan questioned the FTC’s proposals to outlaw worker non-compete provisions and its handling of the Illumina-Grail transaction.
San Diego-based DNA sequencing giant Illumina is appealing an FTC judgment that stated its $7.1 billion acquisition of Grail would reduce cancer-testing competition. Illumina denies it.
After Christine Wilson resigned at the end of March, the FTC has only three Democratic commissioners instead of five.
After becoming FTC chair in June 2021, Khan, an antitrust scholar focused on Big Tech’s market power, pledged to revive antitrust enforcement.
The FTC sued Amazon.com (AMZN.O) this week for enrolling millions of users in its paid Amazon Prime service without their knowledge and making quitting difficult.
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