Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission
“The FCC should promote freedom of speech, unleash economic opportunity, ensure that every American has a fair shot at next-generation connectivity, and enable the private sector to create good-paying jobs through pro-growth reforms that support a diversity of viewpoints, ensure secure and competitive communications networks, modernize outdated infrastructure rules, and represent good stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
So begins this section, with the above mission statement. A few of those things, such as promoting freedom of speech, “unleashing economic opportunity”, and “enable the private sector to create good-paying jobs” are more than a little beyond the current purview of the FCC.
While the FCC enforces rules on broadcasting content and decency standards, it doesn’t have direct authority over the broader concept of freedom of speech, which is a constitutional right protected by the First Amendment. The FCC can regulate indecency on public airwaves but cannot broadly regulate or “promote free speech” across all communications platforms.
Job creation is also not the primary mandate of the FCC. I’m not sure what Carr means by “unleashing economic opportunity,” unless he’s envisioning that updating outdated infrastructure is going to create jobs. In which case, the statement makes more sense (but still doesn’t make job creation a responsibility of the FCC.)
Full contextual analysis of Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission here.
“The FCC needs to change course and bring new urgency to achieving four main goals: 1) Reining in Big Tech, 2) Promoting national security, 3) Unleashing economic prosperity, and 4) Ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”
The first three of these four are not (or have not traditionally been) the FCC’s responsibility. I touched on this in Section 4.1, during the previous discussion about “reining in Big Tech.”
What’s particularly interesting here is that Republicans supported killing net neutrality, which the FCC enforced, saying it “gave too much power and discretion to the FCC. Perhaps they’re coming around to the idea that killing net neutrality was a terrible idea. (Spoiler: Yes. That is what is happening.) More in the analysis below.
Full contextual analysis of Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission here.
“[the FCC should] Eliminate immunities that courts added to Section 230.”
Section 230 refers to the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provides legal immunity to internet platforms (such as social media companies and websites) from being held liable for content created by its users. In effect, they’re not treated as publishers of user-generated content, meaning they can’t be held legally responsible for what people post.
Section 230 also holds that platforms are allowed to moderate content as they see fit, without losing their immunity from liability.
So, repealing these immunities would be a RIDICULOUS mess for social media companies, to the point that they’d probably shut down. Can you imagine if someone with pockets as deep as Facebook’s could get sued for harmful, false, or defamatory content posted by Facebook users? They’d have ten million lawsuits against them on day one.
Conversely, this might result in extremely strict content moderation, to avoid lawsuits, which would most certainly reduce free speech online, which is something Carr says he wants the FCC to champion, so this idea is somewhat nonsensical. Carr also argues that these bigger tech companies have unfair monopolies over smaller companies, then turns around and argues for a policy which would prevent smaller tech companies from existing – they can’t afford the legal compliance.
This position is SO far opposed to what Carr claims to want, that one wonders if he’s claiming he wants free speech, but really doesn’t (and knows that what he’s calling for will result in killing it.)
Full contextual analysis of Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission here.
“Impose transparency rules on Big Tech. Today, Big Tech offers a black box. After Google manipulates search results, a small business can see its web traffic drop precipitously overnight for no apparent reason, potentially flipping its outlook from black to red. On Facebook, social media posts are left up or taken down, accounts suspended or permanently banned, without any apparent consistency. Out of the blue, YouTube can demonetize individuals who have risked their capital and invested their labor to build online businesses.”
This is another nonsensical position. Again, Google is a private business, whom they have deemed allowed to make their own choices about their business. Google has never claimed to be neutral, and is not obligated to be. Forcing them to make particular decisions amounts to government overreach. One option is that the government is welcome to fire up their own search engine, which they’re free to manipulate as they see fit. No private business is required to platform anyone they don’t want to.
This entire section so far amounts to Republicans being outraged that private companies are behaving exactly as Republicans have dictated.
Republicans: Do whatever you want.
Big Tech: Okay.
Republicans: NO NOT LIKE THAT.
This position is SO far opposed to what Carr claims to want, that one wonders if he’s claiming he wants free speech, but really doesn’t (and knows that what he’s calling for will result in killing it.)
Full contextual analysis of Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission here.
“The FCC should work with Congress on more fundamental Section 230 reforms that go beyond interpreting its current terms. Congress should do so by ensuring that Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining their Section 230 protections. As part of those reforms, the FCC should work with Congress to ensure that antidiscrimination provisions are applied to Big Tech—including “back-end” companies that provide hosting services and DDoS protection. Reforms that prohibit discrimination against core political viewpoints are one way to do this and would track the approach taken in a social media law passed in Texas, which was upheld on appeal in late 2022 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.”
That’s incredibly rich, coming from a Project 2025 author. The entire document calls for bringing back discrimination against racial minorites, women, LGBTQ+ people, and more; but because they’re bigly mad that private social media companies censored their vaccine misinformation (or, they think that’s what happened), now they’re crying discrimination against themselves. What hypocritical asshattery.
Full contextual analysis of Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission here.
“Similarly, Congress could legislate in a way that does not require any platform to host illegal content; child pornography; terrorist speech; and indecent, profane, or similar categories of speech that Congress has previously carved out.”
Note here that he doesn’t mention “harmful” speech, which is often included in these discussions. That indicates to me that this was indeed at least partially about COVID misinformation. They’re trying to argue that Trump telling people to eat aquarium cleaner (hydroxychloroquine) is protected free speech, even though it killed people and sent others to the hospital8.
“Although clinical trials have not verified either antimalarial drug’s effectiveness as a treatment for COVID-19, in his press conference on Monday, President Donald Trump said, “It could be a game changer” for COVID-19.” The couple might have turned to the fish product because they couldn’t get the drugs indicated for human consumption.
“The woman told NBC News she had seen a televised briefing in which Mr Trump discussed the potential benefits of chloroquine as a treatment Covid-19.” [Source]9
Speech that physically harms others is typically couched under incitement of violence, and it is NOT protected by the First Amendment right to free speech. Anti-vax rhetoric actually harmed people. Anti-government rhetoric actually harmed people on January 6. None of these should be protected.
Full contextual analysis of Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission here.
“Address TikTok’s threat to U.S. national security. As law enforcement officials have made clear, TikTok poses a serious and unacceptable risk to America’s national security.”
Some U.S. lawmakers believe that TikTok is an urgent threat to National Security. The Biden Administration even threatened to ban it unless TikTok’s Chinese owners sell their stakes. Is it truly a threat, though? Evidence is unclear.
“It’s not that we know TikTok has done something, it’s that distrust of China and awareness of Chinese espionage has increased,” said James Lewis, an information security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The context for TikTok is much worse as trust in China vanishes.”
“Security experts say these scenarios are a possibility based on what’s publicly known about China’s laws and TikTok’s ownership structure, but stress that they are hypothetical at best. To date, there is no public evidence that Beijing has actually harvested TikTok’s commercial data for intelligence or other purposes.”
“Multiple privacy and security researchers who’ve examined TikTok’s app say there aren’t any glaring flaws suggesting the app itself is currently spying on people or leaking their information.”
“We did not find any overt vulnerabilities regarding their communication protocols, nor did we find any overt security problems within the app,” Lin said. “Regarding privacy, we also did not see the TikTok app exhibiting any behaviors similar to malware.”
Any such policy would not, then, be evidence-based.
Full contextual analysis of Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission here.