(TNND) — President-elect Donald Trump has tapped a free-speech advocate who has talked about “reining in Big Tech” as the next chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
Brendan Carr is already the senior Republican on the FCC, having been confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.
“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy,” Trump said in a statement announcing Carr’s appointment. “He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”
Carr won’t need Senate confirmation to ascend to the role of FCC chairman.
“We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans,” Carr said this weekend in a social media post.
Carr wrote a chapter for the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint about the FCC, advocating for freedom of speech, unleashed economic opportunity and greater transparency from Big Tech.
Andrew Selepak, who teaches in the Department of Media Production, Management, and Technology at the University of Florida, said the FCC’s power applies more to “public airwaves” than the internet.
“So, you would have to expand the powers of the FCC to really be able to do much in terms of regulation of social media, the internet, Big Tech and so forth,” Selepak said.
But the FCC under Carr can influence the interpretation of Section 230, the law that has been used to defend social media companies against liability for third-party content.
And the FCC plays an important role in connecting Americans with high-speed internet.
“He still is going to have a very powerful voice in terms of just human communication here in the United States,” Selepak said.
Carr decried the current administration’s “rural broadband flop” in a Wall Street Journal opinion article last month, blaming President Joe Biden’s administration for what he said was a slow and dysfunctional rollout of a high-speed internet program that left rural Americans without the broadband they need.
In that, he criticized the FCC for revoking an $885 million award for Elon Musk’s satellite service Starlink, which he said would’ve offered high-speed internet to more than 640,000 rural homes and businesses.
Carr blamed “regulatory lawfare” against Musk for the award revocation.
Selepak said Carr can indirectly influence how Americans consume news and media content.
Those choices are consumer-driven, and Carr won’t change that.
However, his impact can be in facilitating the connections to digital content that is increasingly the go-to news and entertainment source for Americans.
About one-in-five Americans, including 37% of adults under 30, regularly get news from “influencers” on social media, a new report from the Pew Research Center showed.
Slightly more news influencers identify as Republican or conservative (27%) vs. Democratic or liberal (21%).
Carr, in addition to his role in spreading broadband connectivity, is a proponent of less censorship on social media.
Selepak said Carr wants social media companies to use a lighter hand in moderating content on their platforms.
“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. 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 wrote in the Project 2025 document.
This post was originally published on here
