2 days ago
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The Federal Trade Commission connected Thursday sent a warning letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook astir Apple News, pointing to reports claiming the quality aggregator "systematically boosts left-wing sources and suppresses right-wing sources."
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson alerted the tech giant's main enforcement that, if the allegations are true, the institution could beryllium violating the FTC Act, a instrumentality that prohibits unfair oregon deceptive acts oregon practices. The Apple News app aggregates quality stories from a scope of integer publications to curate contented tailored to consumers' preferences.
Ferguson, who cited probe from the Media Research Center, a right-leaning watchdog group, said that tech companies that diagnostic quality articles based connected a publication's "perceived ideological oregon governmental viewpoint" whitethorn interruption the law. The FTC main asked Apple to reappraisal its nonfiction curation and "take corrective enactment swiftly" if it is excluding blimpish quality sources.
Policies that exclude immoderate quality sources "stifle the escaped speech of ideas, manipulate the nationalist sermon and are inconsistent with American values," Ferguson wrote.
Apple did not instantly respond to CBS News' petition for comment.
The FTC cited a study from the Media Research Center that analyzed much than 600 stories featured by Apple News successful users' feeds from Jan. 1 to Jan. 31. The investigation recovered that much than 400 of the stories Apple News featured came from outlets perceived to beryllium left-leaning, and that quality sources perceived to beryllium right-leaning did not look successful users' integer quality feeds.
The Media Research Center says it relies connected AllSides, a institution that rates the perceived governmental bias of online publications, for determining a quality source's perspective.
Ferguson besides argued that Apple whitethorn beryllium violating its ain presumption and conditions of work if it doesn't disclose to consumers practices that could "cause important wounded that is neither reasonably avoidable nor outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers oregon competition."
Nevertheless, the FTC main noted that the bureau "is not the code police."
"[W]e bash not person authorization to necessitate Apple oregon immoderate different steadfast to instrumentality affirmative positions connected immoderate governmental issue, nor to curate quality offerings accordant with 1 ideology oregon another," Ferguson added.
But, helium noted, the bureau has a mandate from Congress to guarantee that consumers are protected from "material misrepresentations and omissions, including erstwhile the merchandise oregon work offered to consumers is simply a speech-related product."
Edited by Aimee Picchi
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