BATS in the Belfry

For those who might actually care about the details (not OP), this stems from Direct Edge's "Hide Not Slide" order type prior to their acquisition by BATS. It's not, contrary to the title, about anything BATS did.

Regulators have been investigating whether exchanges, including Direct Edge, properly disclosed to regulators and investors how their order types operated and whether the order types worked in ways that weren't known to all investors. At issue is whether some clients, such as high-speed traders, had more access to information about order types than others, giving them an advantage, said people familiar with the investigation.
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Gee, it's almost like people should be responsible for learning what they're doing? If you don't like that retail investors can't send special order types, take it up with their broker not the exchange. No one at the exchange was asking if you were a HFT firm and only letting you use it if you said yes. The retail brokers are more at fault here than the exchange, since they're the ones putting their own interests ahead of their customers' by not offering order types that might be more expensive for the broker than selling the order flow to the market makers.

Also, the problem being addressed by the order type was entirely caused the ill-conceived regulation (specifically the SEC forbidding locked markets across exchanges under Reg NMS), so the regulators have a lot of balls blaming the exchanges for trying to fix their mess. Personally, I don't know what the big deal is - what could be more efficient for customers/traders than a locked market where you can buy and sell at the same price? No spread to pay (up to exchange fees).
 
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