FCC

Jacob Sullum | 11.18.2024 4:35 PM

Announcing his choice of Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump described him as "a warrior for Free Speech," which sounds good until you ask what Trump means by that. Carr, who has served as a Republican FCC commissioner since Trump appointed him during his first term in August 2017, believes that promoting freedom of speech requires curtailing liability protections for social media platforms and restricting their editorial discretion.

Carr's agenda for "reining in Big Tech," as described in the chapter that he contributed to the Heritage Foundation's 2025 Mandate for Leadership, includes new FCC rules aimed at restricting the liability protection offered by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Carr also supports regulations that would "impose transparency rules on Big Tech" and legislation that "scraps Section 230's current approach." He favors "reforms that prohibit discrimination against core political viewpoints," which he says "would track the approach taken in a social media law passed in Texas."

That law, which says social media platforms may not "censor" content based on "viewpoint," was the focus of NetChoice v. Paxton, a case that the U.S. Supreme Court decided in February along with Moody v. NetChoice, which involved a similar Florida law. In both cases, the Court unanimously vacated appeals court decisions (upholding the Texas law and blocking provisions of Florida's law, respectively), saying they did not properly apply the First Amendment. But as Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted, the opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, which was joined in full by four of her colleagues, supported the argument that moderation decisions are a form of constitutionally protected editorial discretion.

"While much about social media is new, the essence of that project is something this Court has seen before," Kagan wrote. "Traditional publishers and editors also select and shape other parties' expression into their own curated speech products. And we have repeatedly held that laws curtailing their editorial choices must meet the First Amendment's requirements. The principle does not change because the curated compilation has gone from the physical to the virtual world. In the latter, as in the former, government efforts to alter an edited compilation of third-party expression are subject to judicial review for compliance with the First Amendment."

Carr takes a different view. "The FCC has an important role to play in addressing the threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market," he writes. "Nowhere is that clearer than when it comes to Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square."

Carr re-upped that complaint in an X post on Friday. "Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have played central roles in the censorship cartel," he wrote. "The Orwellian named NewsGuard along with 'fact checking' groups & ad agencies helped enforce one-sided narratives. The censorship cartel must be dismantled."

As Carr sees it, the threat to freedom of expression comes from Big Tech, not from laws and regulations that aim to limit its discretion in deciding which "curated speech products" to offer. "Today, a handful of corporations can shape everything from the information we consume to the places we shop," he says. "These corporate behemoths........

© Reason.com