The FTC is under the president's authority. This is election pandering, same as Zuckerberg's backpedaling on government censorship.
This is for getting votes from the undecided.
Everything will be back to normal (surveillance, data collection and censorship) after the election.
Begs the question of agency authority which is manifestly not resolved. You will find that the elections’ results will effect the eventual resolution of the question of the unitary executive quite dramatically.
I don't know if you've been watching but the FTC has actually been extremely proactive during this cycle. Lina Khan is an excellent steward and has pushed for a lot of policy improvements that have been sorely needed - including the ban (currently suspended by a few judges) on non-competes.
It is disingenuous to accuse the FTC of election pandering when they've been doing stuff like this for the past four years consistently.
The FTC is bipartisan, no more than three of the five commissioners can belong to the same party. The present report was unanimously voted by all five.