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Biden selects Slaughter as acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) headquarters stands in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019.Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden on Thursday appointed Rebecca Kelly Slaughter as the acting chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, a move that positions the Washington watchdog agency to take on a more aggressive role in policing Facebook, Google and other tech giants in Silicon Valley.

Slaughter takes the reins at the FTC after serving as a Democratic commissioner since 2018. She stands to inherit an agency that in recent years has issued record-breaking penalties against tech companies for jeopardizing their users' privacy - and only last month sued Facebook for violating federal antitrust laws.

In these and other cases, Slaughter has supported enforcement even as she has joined the FTC's fiercest critics in saying the commission should have acted more swiftly, and decisively, to penalize the tech industry for its missteps. She has called on the watchdog agency to calibrate its punishments better so that harmed web users are made whole - and others in Silicon Valley are deterred from committing similar acts in the future.

"The threats to consumer privacy are growing; they impact our most vulnerable citizens more than most, and they demand new solutions," Slaughter said in a speech in September 2019, that illustrated her views about the agency's broad remit to penalize wrongdoers. "My hope is that the 'near future' brings renewed action on this front across the board: from the FTC, Congress, advocates and industry and I feel both humbled and privileged to get to take part in this effort."

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The appointment reflects the tectonic political shift now underway in Washington, as Democrats, newly in charge of the White House and Congress, prepare to roll back a slew of deregulatory actions implemented under now-former President Donald Trump. Biden and his congressional counterparts over the past year have teased an ambitious digital agenda, particularly in promising to rein in Silicon Valley and rethink the legal protections afforded to tech giants' handling of harmful content online.

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But Slaughter may face early obstacles at the commission, where new vacancies may eventually leave the FTC deadlocked at two Democrats and two Republicans. The stalemate will not totally trap the agency in policy paralysis, but it still may set back some of her most audacious plans at the FTC until Biden nominates additional Democrats, and the party's razor-thin majority in the Senate can confirm them.

Privacy watchdogs said they expected Slaughter, a former top aide to now-Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to try to use all the powers at the commission's disposal to probe the tech industry for potential wrongdoing.

“She is firmly of the belief there are things the FTC should do today that it is not doing today, and some of their weakness is self-imposed weakness,” said Justin Brookman, the director for consumer privacy and technology policy for Consumer Reports.