[HN Gopher] The FTC Is Disappearing Blog Posts About AI Publishe...
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       The FTC Is Disappearing Blog Posts About AI Published During Lina
       Khan's Tenure
        
       Author : JKCalhoun
       Score  : 84 points
       Date   : 2025-10-20 13:38 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
        
       | afn wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/2025.10.20-102309/https://www.wired.com/s...
        
       | JohnFen wrote:
       | This kind of thing is happening across the government. I think
       | it's become prudent to regard government information outlets as
       | untrustworthy and to ignore them. They're stuffed with outright
       | misinformation and/or have been memory-holing actual information.
        
         | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
         | If you generalize this to "government" then you've let them
         | win.
        
           | JohnFen wrote:
           | OK, federal government. Either way, I don't see how paying
           | attention to the credibility of the various data and
           | information sources is letting anybody "win". I'm just trying
           | to ensure that I have the most accurate information possible.
        
             | bitwize wrote:
             | You're not thinking along the right axis. Government
             | sources are fine if the government hasn't been compromised
             | by a fascist coup.
        
               | nomel wrote:
               | History (including recent history) says the leanings of
               | political party of the administration in charge are
               | unrelated to how truthful the government communication
               | is. _All_ politicians, and the groups they control
               | /communicate with, can't be easily trusted, since all
               | have very strong _personal and group_ motivations to
               | deceive.
               | 
               | Deception of the public is a bipartisan issue because
               | it's an issue of _holding /maintaining power_.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _All politicians, and the groups they control
               | /communicate with, can't be easily trusted_
               | 
               | This is bullshit. The American bureaucracy has been
               | ridiculously reliable as an information source until
               | tight around now. (Same as the British imperial services'
               | were.)
               | 
               | This baseless cynicism is a driver around why we're
               | losing that. (More specifically, the blog posts being
               | disappeared aren't impartial data. They're the historic
               | opinions of the previous FTC chair.)
        
               | joshstrange wrote:
               | > Deception of the public is a bipartisan issue because
               | it's an issue of holding/maintaining power.
               | 
               | And maybe it's because by and large Democrats are
               | completely incompetent when it comes to
               | holding/maintaining power but I cannot remember a time
               | when Democrats were purging information from government
               | websites like we are currently seeing. Saying it's a
               | "bipartisan issue" does not hold water. I'm sure there
               | are instances where Democrats have done something like
               | this (I should make it clear I am not a fan of them, I
               | just find them the lesser of two evils) but nothing on
               | the scale we are currently seeing.
        
               | Gud wrote:
               | This can't be generalized beyond the US government,
               | though. I live in Switzerland and have a lot of faith in
               | the Swiss government.
        
               | ImPostingOnHN wrote:
               | _> History (including recent history) says the leanings
               | of political party of the administration in charge are
               | unrelated to how truthful the government communication
               | is._
               | 
               | If anything, recent history says the exact opposite:
               | truthfulness has absolutely varied historically based on
               | the person in charge. The current person in charge has a
               | record of untruthfulness unrivaled in magnitude by any of
               | his historical predecessors. It isn't even close.
        
               | wredcoll wrote:
               | Everyone else has already jumped on this post but I
               | cannot stress enough how toxic the mentality "everyone
               | does it" is.
               | 
               | Not everyone does it, and people certainly don't do it to
               | the same degree, and when we vote we can actually choose
               | better people. Not perfect. Just better.
        
               | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
               | There's never been a stupider time to believe this. You
               | people will go whoever the Overton window drags you. It's
               | like extremist centrism.
        
             | wredcoll wrote:
             | Because we have elections that affect the government. Very
             | broadly speaking, we do that by electing republicans or
             | democrats. Republicans consistently do things like censor
             | government agencies and attempt to alter history. Democrats
             | do not.
             | 
             | Blaming "the government" becomes a way to shield criticism
             | of the actual people doing it which means people are ever
             | so slightly less likely to take appropriate corrective
             | actions.
             | 
             | (Saying republicans instead of specific republicans is a
             | bit the same, but there's a certain freedom of association
             | there, if you're currently a republican it means that all
             | of these republican actions are, at minimum, acceptable to
             | you)
        
         | nine_zeros wrote:
         | This is not a government issue. It is a _Republican_ government
         | issue.
         | 
         | Democrat governments don't seem to purge information.
         | Republicans are so infantile that they literally display a
         | picture of an Autopen instead of Biden as President in the
         | historical presidents wall.
         | 
         | Republicans are so infantile as to want to erase the reality of
         | slavery.
         | 
         | Republicans are so infantile that they want to erase evolution
         | from textbooks.
         | 
         | Republicans are so infantile that they want to erase the Jan 6
         | coup from memory.
         | 
         | Republicans are so infantile that they want to erase real jobs
         | data from BLS site.
         | 
         | I could go on. But this is a Republican problem. No both-sides
         | here.
        
       | xrd wrote:
       | I've neglected paying for Wired, even though they are doing
       | incredible reporting work. I finally clicked on the link today,
       | and it is only $24 for a year with a 30 day free trial. That's a
       | great value and I'm proud to support them. Please consider doing
       | that as well.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Dunno if I need the whole 404media-esque ragebait article. Blog
       | posts removed? Just give us the list of wayback links to them all
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20250701192515/https://www.ftc.g...
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20250713060942/https://www.ftc.g...
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20250713014422/https://www.ftc.g...
        
         | infinitezest wrote:
         | Dunno if the concern is that "you can't find a copy of the blog
         | post" so much as "why is this admin removing this stuff and/or
         | making it harder to find". This seems bad to me and I don't
         | think their headline is wrong.
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-20 23:01 UTC)