Brendan Carr’s nomination for Federal Communications Commission chair by President-elect Donald Trump resurfaces old fights over speech, regulation of communications providers, and net neutrality, but with a catch. Carr says he will take the fight to its proper battlefield: Silicon Valley. The intangible nature of the FCC’s regulation of broadcast airwaves and other means by which Americans communicate — the internet chief among them — obscures from debates over such issues as net neutrality the more serious threats Americans have faced in exercising their rights to free speech. That threat has come in the form of censorship from major tech platforms such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and before Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, that platform as well.
Those platforms enjoy, functionally, monopolistic dominance, and both massive license and protection from the government that shield platforms from liability for content users publish. That dynamic has crystallized over the past four years as it became apparent major tech platforms also served as its de facto censorship arm. Carr has already notified tech companies the fight is coming to their door.
The litany of banned content and users being booted from major tech platforms have had grave downstream implications: Facebook’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story likely changed the outcome of the 2020 election. The Covid pandemic spawned a new era of censorship as platforms quelled dissent over lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Spotify very nearly stands alone among major streaming and publishing platforms in the COVID era for allowing dissenting views on both the origins of the virus and safety of mRNA vaccines in continuing to stream Joe Rogan’s popular podcast, which now dwarfs cable news audiences. Rogan interviewed leading doctors and scientists who questioned dominant Covid narratives.
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