⚖️ FTC confronts Apple News

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The "Deceptive Curation" Trap: FTC’s Backdoor to News Content

On February 12, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson escalated the Trump administration’s war on "Big Tech censorship" by sending a formal warning letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook. The strategy shifts from traditional antitrust arguments to consumer protection law, specifically Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits "unfair or deceptive acts or practices." Ferguson argues that if Apple News markets itself as a neutral, high-quality news aggregator but secretly applies an ideological filter, it is effectively defrauding its tens of millions of users. While Ferguson admitted that the FTC is not the "speech police" and cannot legally mandate political balance, he warned that any curation "inconsistent with terms of service or reasonable expectations" could trigger a formal investigation into material misrepresentation.

The Study Behind the Letter

The FTC’s move was explicitly prompted by a report from the Media Research Center (MRC), which analyzed 620 top stories featured on Apple News during January 2026. The study alleged that for 100 consecutive days leading into February, Apple News failed to feature a single article from a right-leaning outlet in its high-traffic morning editions. According to the MRC data, while the Washington Post (72 articles) and NBC News (50 articles) dominated the feed, conservative staples like Fox News, the New York Post, and the Daily Wire received zero placements in the curated "top stories" slots. This perceived "blackout" of conservative media is being used by regulators as evidence that Apple's algorithm or human editors are acting as ideological gatekeepers rather than neutral curators.

First Amendment vs. The FTC Act

The core of this conflict lies in a high-stakes legal disagreement over whether an aggregator like Apple News is a platform or a publisher. Apple maintains that its curation involves editorial judgment protected by the First Amendment, much like a newspaper deciding which stories to put on the front page. However, the Ferguson letter argues that once a company makes "representations to consumers" about being a fair or objective service, those claims become a "material fact" that the FTC has the right to verify. This "terms-of-service audit" strategy is being viewed by critics as a form of regulatory jawboning—using the threat of a costly investigation to coerce a private company into changing its editorial standards without passing a new law.

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