Of government. Created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Us this week on the communicators as federal trade Commission CommissionerNoah Phillips, one of three republicans sitting on that commission. This has been a couple of years you have been on the commission. What kind of work do you do . Commissioner phillips we do a lot of really exciting work. Twomission is divided into pieces. Competition, antitrust law, and consumer protection, which covers a wide swath of territory. Both of those areas put us squarely in the middle of a lot of interesting changes our society is going through and technologies, which all of us are dealing with and many of us are using. And teliknology medications have become a bigger part of your portfolio, havent they . Commissioner phillips to some extent, yes because to some extent telecommunications are much more the purview of the fcc, but with respect to privacy, we do work with respect to advertising claims, and certainly technology is a big part of what we do. When it comes to technology, correct . Commissioner phillips very much so. Host there was a recent article in the wall street journal talking about a potential lawsuit against facebook. Can you tell us about that . Commissioner phillips all i can tell you is we have publicly confirmed we are conducting an antitrust investigation. Beyond that, i dont want to say anything about pending matters. Host can you tell us what the basis for that investigation is . Commissioner phillips no, all i can do is confirm there is an s investigationn ongoing. Host joining us to look at some of the issues the federal trade commission is looking at is ashley gold with axios. Ashley i want to start with something kind of general. We are getting close to the election, getting close to a possible new presidency, although of course we dont know what is going to happen. Looking back at your past couple years, what sticks out in your mind is your biggest accomplishment or favorite moment so far . Commissioner phillips i think the biggest accomplishments have increased bringing focus to privacy issues. Privacy is an area that has been an important focus for a lot of people for a long time, but i think the Public Awareness of what is going on with the data of ordinary americans, what is being collected, how it is being collected, with whom it is being shared, thats been an important focal point for us, and i think it is a real issue that Going Forward the nation is continuing to grapple with. Congress is considering doing privacy legislation. Some states have adopted privacy legislation. Others may continue to do so. Unders a big topic discussion in asia, europe, and around the world, and i think we have a really big impact. I think we have brought a lot of important cases. Theres a lot to debate, and that debate is going to continue , but i think our focus on privacy has been a really big issue, a really big new issue for us. Its not entirely new to this commission, but its a bigger issue. The other thing i would add is a focus on tech and antitrust. Over the course of my tenure, weve established what is the Technology Enforcement division to take a fresh look at conduct and mergers in the tech space. On the free a study merger notification statute. Have been really important focuses for this commission. Ashley on the privacy front, something i have been think about his childrens privacy, especially with all the Online Learning going on. Youve got more kids staying home and doing Online School than weve ever seen in the country, and that has to come with a host of privacy issues. I know weve got the childrens Online Privacy protection act, and that only covers kids up to the age of 13. What is the ftc looking at at this unprecedented time when there is so much Online Schooling, and should we expect any Enforcement Actions against any Technology Companies . What else do you think people should know about Online Learning and childrens privacy . Commissioner phillips let me say a few things about that. Its really good we have a lot of these technological tools to recreate as best we can all the experiences we are without in this pandemic. Whether its meeting with friends or family or praying at synagogue or church or at the mosque or going to school, it is better that we have these online them, and we not have as much as i would rather having my children in school in person all the time, i would rather for them to have some education. I think it is important to keep that in mind. The second thing i would say is, as we scramble, and society as a whole, but also schools and companies that provide these products, to provide the version of education that we are providing i do think we Want Companies and schools to be focused on the products they are providing and have that as their most important concern, that is the education of children, rather than liability concerns. That is why i share agreement with the chairman, the statement he made pretty early on during this crisis that when companies were working in good faith to provide needed goods and services to people, to schools and so forth, we would take that into account as a matter of our prosecutorial discretion. We are going to continue to enforce the law. We are interested in. We do have to keep in mind when we think about education and privacy and covid19 that it is a lot better we have these tools, and stoking the earth and innovation in this space is important for kids in particular. Ashley is there anything that you have seen as weve gone along in this pandemic and this Online Learning that has been of concern to you, or is there anything you would specifically want to warn teachers or administrators about as they go throughout the year with Online Schooling in conjunction with Educational Technology in particular . Commissioner phillips i dont know there are particular practices that i have seen in the context of my job. Schools are thinking about a lot of Different Things, the ease of use, the propriety of a single platform for an age group. I do think administrators should be cognizant of how a provider , and you might want to think about with whom is this data being shared, just as when you enter into a contract with any provider. That makes all the sense in the world. I suspect that concern about privacy liability is not the first problem schools are trying to solve, and i dont think it should be. Obviously, we dont have a nationwide privacy law, so once people are over the age of 13, there is no privacy law protecting them. We are getting towards the end of this year and the end of this congressional session. We still dont have a National Privacy law. At the beginning of this administration, that was something everyone in the tech for expecting to come together. Commissioner phillips if we had a privacy law, or enforcement would be along the lines of that law. Actionone a lot of ftc on privacy, but the difference is we havent had a law. The big thing i said to congress repeatedly is privacy is this capacious sort of term and it means Different Things to different people. For some, it is autonomy over their data. For some, it is data security. What i Want Congress to do as they go through this process is focus first on, what are the problems you are trying to solve . When you say we need privacy, why do we need it . Then we get around to the discussion of remedies, and by remedies i mean, should we preempt state laws . How should the penalties skew . Those are important questions, and we need to get them right, but i do think what we see to some extent his people are fighting about those things and focusing less on, what we want the regime actually to be . What do we want permitted . What do we want not to be permitted . What we want subject to a consent requirement . There are a lot of different thorny questions, and what we have seen when you look around the worlds people can get this wrong. Is peoplethe world can get this wrong. I think taking time and care on a question like this is important. Russian into it less so. Rushing into it, less. Everybody hasing been talking about is tiktok, and a deal to either move u. S. Data to a u. S. Location, oracle. There are still a lot of questions. A deal has not been approved by the president yet. Tiktoks user data is moved to oracle servers, that really only changes where the data is housed, and im wondering if you think a deal, the deal that seemed to be about to go through, goes far enough to protect u. S. User data with tiktok and what you think should happen and generally what you think about how this whole process has been. Its been quite unusual. Commissioner phillips i dont have enough details on the deal to evaluate it, and the reason i dont have enough details is its not a privacy review. Its not an antitrust review. Its not something we are looking at. There are National Security operations run by different parts of the u. S. Government, and how they evaluate something is very different, for instance, itn how we might evaluate when looking at a competition question or privacy question. Evaluate dont evaluate based on privacy. Theres a longer conversation about privacy. Security national reason. Grindr, to some extent also about privacy, but that is the National Security side. Host let me quickly jump in, Noah Phillips. When it comes to the gdp in arepe andr california, what your feelings about those two systems . Commissioner phillips a lot of the data we have seen coming out of europe, the studies about the ad tech industry, Venture Capital investment suggest that gdpr is not helping to stoke innovation, may even be entrenching some of the largest objectspanies that were of the effort in the first aree, and what youve seen lots of new proposals. Theres no indication that they feel whatever problems they are seeing are solved. It is a very big piece of regulatory burden, and there are billions of dollars i dont know the exact dollar being devoted to that. Whether that is a great thing, im not so sure. California, its just coming into effect. We are going to see with those effects are. What we already know is there are stakeholders in california looking to expand the law, and that tells you something about the ability of the law in the first instance to solve whatever problem it is that people thought they were solving. Ashley you were saying the ftc would not be looking at tiktok in the same way the Commerce Department would be. Is the ftc looking at tiktok at all . I neveroner phillips talk about pending investigations. This is not an answer either way. Ashley remind me when your term is up, and if President Trump loses a second term, will stay on and continue serving at the commission during a biden presidency . Commissioner phillips my term is up three years from the end of this month, and the way the statute works, you can stay until your replacement is confirmed by the senate. I am not thinking that far ahead. I havent given that a lick of thought. Ashley you havent decided whether you will stay on or not if there is a change in administration . I haveioner phillips every intention of serving out my term. I havent given a lot of thought to what happens after that. Phillips, youoner are currently in the majority two three republicans and democrats. What is the relationship between the five commissioners . Can you hold meetings with individual commissioners, or is there the sunshine law . Commissioner phillips we have a sunshine act, which means three of us cannot meet at the same time. We do a lot of oneonone meetings. I regret these days that those meetings are not in person. They are zooms or calls like other people. As a general meeting, if we are going to have a meeting of more than two, we need to put a Public Notice out. Ashley i want to ask you about , if you could clarify your position on whether you think section 230 plays at all into competition or content moderation decisions. Weve seen a lot of conflation of all of those topics in various congressional hearings and the media, and i want to know what you about section 230 and whether it relates to those other topics. Commissioner phillips i am not an expert on section 230. What i must say is the following. It doesnt really bear on competition in any way that is obvious to me. Any law that affects markets has some bearing on competition, but its not a law protecting competition. It is a law that on some level protects content moderation. Goodfaith content moderation is protected from liability. The impact it has on us as an agency, and i dont know that it makes a huge difference, is that it governs civil liability. It doesnt do anything on criminal liability. We are a civil Law Enforcement agency. To some extent, it limits our jurisdiction, but on a daytoday basis, it doesnt make a lot of difference. 230 raises a lot of interesting policy questions. It is a statute that congress passed. People had a lot of different views of what we ought to have. I think that is Something Congress is very much talking about, and congress is the right entity to make that decision. Ashley i want to ask you generally how you feel about the future of independent agencies. Seen ay, weve nomination pulled from the white house, and a lot of people are same that is tied to comments he made about section 230 and the president s executive order. We have no way of knowing if that is why it happened, but does that create any sort of Chilling Effect for independent agencies and what commissioners can go out and say . Commissioner phillips let me say two things. Michael orielly is a friend and former kylie, and he is a terrific person. The second thing i would say is fundamentally no. We operate as a bipartisan agency. We dont always agree, but all the work we are doing is coming from both sides of the aisle. We have a protection against being fired that congress put in statute that is still good law, and at the end of the day, it is the five commissioners who make the decisions. Host in our last 10 minutes, i want to talk about antitrust. This is a field you have worked in. What is your definition of antitrust, and is it something that you can see . Is it obvious . Commissioner phillips sometimes, yes. Sometimes, less so. Antitrust protects the competitive process, and the way that has been interpreted by courts for decades is serving consumer welfare. We are looking at the effect of market conduct whether it is mergers or other kinds of conduct in terms of how it affects consumers, not in terms of how it affects other things, meaning that just because one conduct one firm takes hurts its competitors in the market doesnt mean it is illegal in any way. There are aspects of antitrust law that lend themselves very easy answers. You cant fix prices. You cant divide markets. Conduct that may have ambiguous welfare effects are governed by the wu of reason, and that is something weve had in case law. If you think about the breakup of standard oil, that decision from the Supreme Court in 1911, that is how long we have had the rule, and theres a lot of conduct sometimes that to one person might look bad, but its impact might not be so bad. Commissioner phillips, in the past, not current cases, but in the past, can you give examples of the Larger Tech Companies behaving in antitrust ways . Look,sioner phillips theres a lot of cases that have been brought over time against large tech companies. Weve had antitrust laws on the books for a hundred years. Intel was the object of action. Ibm was the object of an action that went on for i think 13 years. It didnt result in anything. The most famous example would be the Microsoft Case where microsoft was alleged i am going to simplify to be protesting its operating system monopoly through a variety of tactics, including tying Internet Explorer to the operating system. This summer, the House Judiciary Committee had a big hearing with all the major tech executives, and now they are talking about potential new legislation that would defund antitrust for the new digital economy. Do you feel new laws are needed to do antitrust in the 21st century, and do you have general observations about work the House Judiciary Committee has done while your agency continues its work . Commissioner phillips i will be interested to see what work product they come out with. One of the interesting things about the antitrust debate we are having nationally as all of a sudden there are a lot of people who seem to put a lot in the bucket of antitrust. They are looking at the world and saying, if we had better competition, however they did im at, more fumes in the however they define market,re firms in the labor would have more sway in the market. Those are important policy questions. It is not clear that antitrust was designed to or would be effective at solving those problems. Traditionally, when we see a problem in the market, sometimes antitrust can undo it. We can stop a merger, or maybe there is some contractual engagement that is problematic. Failures,see market sometimes regulation is the way to go. Privacy is a great example. Not believe that if we had a few more firms would see a meaningfully different role of privacy. I think that is why you have to talk about privacy legislation. Host i did want to ask about something weve talked about for years on this program and in washington, which became part of the ftcs portfolio, and that is Net Neutrality. Where are we with that issue . Commissioner phillips