FTC probe of Big Tech censorship must seek a LASTING end to the bullying

“Tech firms should not be bullying their users,” declared Federal Trade Commission head Andrew Ferguson in announcing an investigation of Big Tech censorship and shadow banning.Ferguson’s probe promises to turn the heat up on tech giants like Google, Facebook parent Meta and perhaps even Elon Musk’s X over “not just unAmerican” but “potentially illegal” censorship, including of The Post.The FTC is asking for public input on how the companies’ policies squelched speech, including “potential violations of the law.”But the investigation can’t be purely backward-looking.Yes, Americans need answers on how the censorship-industrial complex penetrated the federal government during the first Trump term, then thrived in the Biden years as a web of agencies, including the FBI and CIA, worked with social-media sites to censor dissenting opinions — including suppression of The Post’s laptop reporting, COVID “wrongthink” and so on.But the fact that the likes of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have flipped (he’s firing his whole “fact-check” apparatus) doesn’t mean the danger’s over, nor that only the right is at risk.The left will be back in power some day, and there’s certainly no guarantee that, say, Musk might not put X’s hidden algorithmic fingers on the other side of the scale.Any probe can start by exposing the past censorship menace, but the nation needs clear rules and governance procedures that ensure it never happens again.Free-speech protections can’t depend on the “right” side winning any given election....