Progressives blast FTC’s Bedoya for ‘unforgivable’ stance in Meta privacy case

A number of progressive tech policy advocates are furious with FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya’s hesitant stance on the agency’s move to reopen its case against Meta for privacy violations stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In early May, the Federal Trade Commission accused Meta of violating the terms of a 2020 settlement that included changes to its business practices and a record $5 billion fine. The FTC’s three commissioners, Bedoya, Chair Lina Khan and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, voted to reopen the matter in the agency’s in-house administrative court, seeking among other things, a blanket ban on the company’s ability to profit off the data of users under age 18.

Bedoya sided with his fellow Democratic commissioners — there are currently no Republicans — in a separate statement, but he said he has procedural concerns about the intention to limit Meta’s use of kids’ data.

That prompted vitriol from progressive backers of Khan, according to correspondence Bedoya posted to the FTC’s website on Friday.

“Alvaro — Your statement today is insanely at odds with the representations you made to me about backing Lina on Facebook matters prior to your confirmation. Very very disappointing,” Dan Geldon, a former chief of staff to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and consultant working on progressive antitrust reform wrote in a text message to Bedoya on the day of the FTC’s announcement.

When Bedoya didn't respond, Geldon followed with: “Very telling that you don’t even respond to text messages now that you don’t need help getting confirmed. That pretty much says it all.”

In Friday's filing, which hasn't been previously reported, Bedoya said, "I have never made representations regarding how I would vote or act in any Commission matter."

The angry nature of the messages highlights the hyper-partisan environment in which Khan is leading the FTC. The chair is under multiple congressional investigations by House Republicans including Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). On Friday, Bloomberg reported that Khan ignored the advice of ethics officials in refusing to recuse herself from a different case against Meta, further fueling partisan concerns.

Geldon sent the same messages to Bedoya staffer Max Miller, who responded that as an adjudicator in the case Bedoya is prohibited from discussing it. That ban that extends to FTC staff prosecuting the case.

In response, Geldon wrote: “Ok. Please feel free to convey to whoever you’d like that this was inexcusable and unforgivable.”

After consulting with the FTC’s general counsel, Bedoya posted the “unsolicited ex parte communications directed at me and my staff” on the FTC’s case docket.

Spokespeople from the FTC and Facebook, as well as Bedoya and Geldon all declined to comment. A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond for comment.

Underlying the FTC’s new allegations are issues with Facebook’s Messenger Kids app that led to faulty parental controls on who their kids could communicate with and undisclosed access to kids data. Those were fixed prior to the 2020 settlement, according to Facebook’s owner Meta.

Meta is also challenging the FTC's move, saying any revisions to the 2020 settlement must be approved by a federal court and cannot take place in the agency's internal administrative court.

“There are limits to the commission’s order modification authority,” Bedoya said in his statement about his concerns in reopening the case, referring to its ability to unilaterally modify the terms of a settlement. “Here, the relevant question is not what I would support as a matter of policy. Rather, when the commission determines how to modify an order, it must identify a nexus between the original order, the intervening violations and the modified order. Based on the record before me today, I have concerns about whether such a nexus exists for proposed Provision I,” he said, referring to potential limits on the use of kids data.

The company’s supporters immediately seized on Bedoya’s break with his fellow commissioners, with Adam Kovacevich, head of the tech-funded Chamber of Progress, tweeting about the split that same day.

In other exchanges with David Segal, the head of Demand Progress, and Katharina Kopp, a deputy director with the Center for Digital Democracy, Bedoya and his staff said he's prohibited from discussing the case.

Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute, wrote to Bedoya’s chief of staff to "register our disappointment". Green said his group currently working with the White House and other national groups on a summer strategy of amplifying some of the FTC’s bold moves for consumers on a hyper-local level — and it's important that those bold optics not be undermined.”

Kopp said she had hoped to discuss issues around Meta and privacy that her group later articulated in a letter to the FTC. Segal and Green didn't respond for comment.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated the names of the people in Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya's office who communicated with Dan Geldon and Katharina Kopp.