Senate Commerce to Hold FTC Oversight Hearing

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) is convening an oversight hearing on the Federal Trade Commission.

The Aug. 5 hearing will feature all five commissioners, which includes chairman Joe Simons.

Among the issues likely to come up are the FTC's role in regulating the edge in terms of social media content, privacy and transparency, and antitrust oversight of Big Tech.

With the FCC's reclassification of ISPs as information services, the FTC has primary regulatory responsibility over internet access. If the FCC does follow the President's lead to come up with a framework for potentially regulating web content, the FTC would also be the primary enforcer under its unfair and deceptive practices authority.

It divides up antitrust reviews of mergers, so will definitely have a role if the antitrust laws are changed to better capture Big Tech mergers.

That issue was on display Wednesday (July 29) in a House Antitrust Subcommittee hearing with the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.