BITTER TWEET AT FTC

1st Amendment ‘attack’

The Federal Trade Commission’s demand that Twitter reveal the names of journalists who were granted access to company records is being assailed as “an outrageous attack on the First Amendment.”

Matt Taibbi, the former Rolling Stone journalist, blasted his “former colleagues in mainstream media” for failing to cover the “insane overreach” by FTC Chair Lina Khan.

He wrote that the lack of media outrage was “particularly infuriating” given that none of the journalists who published the “Twitter Files” had “asked for nor received access to private user data” whereas “the Files themselves are full of instances of government agencies improperly asking for the same.”

“Which journalists a company or its executives talks to is not remotely the government’s business. This is an insane overreach,” according to Taibbi.

In a Twitter thread, Taibbi referred to mainstream reporters as “spineless, corrupt, amoral f--kwits.”

Author Michael Shellenberger, who was among those given access to the files, blasted the Biden administration for its “outrageous attack on the First Amendment.”

Taibbi, Shellenberger and other reporters partnered with Musk and began publishing the Twitter Files — analysis of internal documents and communications that detailed how the socialmedia giant’s previous management team sought to silence controversial voices and suppress news items such as The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

‘Shameful’

Musk supporters argue the FTC’s probe smacks of political retribution. Musk hit out at the FTC, calling it a “shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth!”

Defenders of the FTC include antitrust expert Matt Stoller, who argued that “following the law compels this investigation.”

Twitter reached a consent decree with the FTC in 2011, which was expanded in 2022, that required it to conduct regular security audits and to keep the agency informed about how it handles data.

“The FTC is seeing whether Twitter is violating its consent decree on privacy, which it has because it was lying to customers,” said Stoller, who noted the FTC’s May 2022 deal with Twitter to pay a $150 million fine for violating the consent decree.

But experts told The Post the consent decree doesn’t supersede the First Amendment.