NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE
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y all accounts, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has its hands full. Despite the agency’s laundry list of regulatory priorities and strained resources, Congress is poised to bestow it with a new responsibility: policing self-preferencing on the Internet. Whatever that means.
Congress created the FTC in 1914 to crack down on “unfair methods of competition” and, in 1938, expanded the commission’s mission to prohibit “unfair and deceptive acts or practices.” The FTC also screens mergers and acquisitions to block anticompetitive deals and has traditionally focused on conduct that directly harms consumers, such as scams, identity theft, and data breaches.
The FTC certainly …