Abstract:
According to people familiar with the matter, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating whether Alphabet's YouTube's suspension of user accounts violated consumer protection laws. The antitrust and consumer protection agency has been investigating YouTube since last year and is in the final stages of preparing a potential lawsuit. The people familiar with the matter requested anonymity because the investigation is confidential.
Focus of the investigation include: whether YouTube violated its own published user policies when blocking or downgrading content; and whether users may have been misled by the company's content policies - that is, users believed they could post certain content when they signed up for the service, but then the relevant content was deleted or their accounts were suspended.
It is unclear which accounts are involved in the agency's investigation. YouTube has not been accused of wrongdoing, and the investigation may end without enforcement action.
After the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, YouTube and other social media platforms banned the accounts of then-U.S. President Donald Trump and other politicians. Trump's account was reinstated in 2023. YouTube has also removed health content that it determined involved misinformation about vaccines and the new coronavirus epidemic for violating its misinformation policy.
If the FTC files a lawsuit, YouTube can choose to settle with the FTC or defend it in court. Any settlement would have to be approved by the FTC's two Republican commissioners, Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Mark Meador.
YouTube declined to comment. FTC spokesman Joe Simonson also declined to comment on the investigation or possible lawsuits.
Simonson said that "leaks will never prevent or slow down any law enforcement investigation or litigation by the FTC" and that relevant leaks will be handed over to relevant departments for investigation.
Earlier this month, Ferguson focused his public remarks on holding companies accountable for the way they censor speech. He said the FTC's consumer protection laws "treat companies that sell physical goods no differently than companies that sell access to online speech."
Ferguson said at a public event in Aspen, Colorado: "Whatever your policy is, you must abide by it. You can't present one set of policies to consumers when they are deciding whether to use the platform and then implement a completely different set of policies in practice." He also said: "We will review companies that state their online speech policies to ensure that they actually live up to their promises." He did not name any specific companies.
Informed sources said that this investigation is being handled by lawyers from the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection, and Director Chris Mufarich is leading the relevant work. Some career staff privately disagree about bringing the case.
As early as when he served as the minority Republican commissioner of the FTC at the end of the Biden administration, Ferguson had already expressed his willingness to advance such cases. After Trump removed two Democratic commissioners last year, the FTC currently has no Democratic commissioners.
At the time, Ferguson advocated for investigating whether social media platforms violated content policies and whether they might be colluding to censor certain political speech. He wrote at the time that the major platforms "ban people from disputing the origins of the new coronavirus, mask mandates, the effectiveness and safety of the new coronavirus vaccine, transgender issues, and the integrity of the 2020 election." He also said that "every major speech platform, including Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, banned President Trump at roughly the same time in early 2021."
In the months after Ferguson took over as chairman in January 2025, the FTC publicly solicited opinions on this matter. Amid concerns that social media platforms will ban posts or disqualify them from monetization based on the groups to which users belong or content, the agency received more than 3,000 feedback comments.
The FTC's consultation document released in February 2025 also hinted that the agency may determine that the terms of service of social media platforms are unfair or deceptive: the platform failed to fully inform users of account suspension rules and appeal rights, thereby violating consumer protection laws.
There are not many existing precedents for the application of consumer protection laws and antitrust laws to the deletion of specific accounts or posts by online platforms. Courts have generally given social media companies wide latitude in deciding whether to remove user content, often likening the role of platforms to newspapers exercising editorial judgment. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in a 2023 ruling.
However, the Supreme Court's decision did not clarify how broad this protection is. Several cases since then have refused to fully indemnify social media platforms from claims of product liability and negligence. Earlier this year, a Los Angeles jury found Meta Platforms and Google negligent in the design and operation of their platforms, saying the companies built websites designed to make children addicted. This week, a coalition of state governments reached a settlement with Meta in the middle of a trial that could be worth up to $18 billion to resolve allegations that the company knowingly engineered features that encouraged young people to use its platform compulsively and for extended periods of time.
This consumer protection case is one of several the FTC is handling involving Alphabet. Bloomberg previously reported that the FTC has been investigating Google’s search advertising business practices. Last year, the FTC also said it was investigating a number of artificial intelligence companies, including YouTube parent company Alphabet, focusing on artificial intelligence chatbots for teenagers and children. YouTube previously settled an FTC case in 2019 that accused the company of violating online child safety laws by collecting children's information without parental consent.
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