United States President-elect Donald Trump will soon take office, and while much attention has been paid to his stances on immigration, abortion rights and democracy, less has been paid to how he may threaten internet freedoms.
His appointments to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other government agencies appear inclined to censor speech on the internet and generally make the internet less free than it has been in years past, tech experts warned.
One of the more well-known figures who may pose a threat to free speech on the internet is Brendan Carr. Currently a commissioner at the FCC, which regulates the media, Carr has been tapped by Trump to lead the agency. Carr has styled himself as a critic of Big Tech, and while the president-elect called him “a warrior for free speech”, Carr has targeted speech on the internet in the past.
“He’s going to try to turn the FCC into the online speech police,” Evan Greer, director of the digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, told Al Jazeera.
In the proposed right-wing governance guide for the incoming administration known as Project 2025, a section written by Carr on the FCC advocates scrapping “Section 230’s current approach”. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects platforms from liability for user posts and allows companies to moderate those posts. In Project 2025, Carr argued Section 230 should have “fundamental” reforms, including limitations on companies’ ability to moderate or remove posts that reflect “core political viewpoints”.
In letters to social media companies, he also accused fact-checking services of being part of a “censorship cartel” and warned that the new Republican Congress and administration would “review” social media actions that have “curtailed [free speech] rights”.
“He has made it explicitly clear that he intends to use the power of the FCC to target ‘Big Tech censorship’, by which he means punishing any tech company that does not promote right-wing propaganda to his personal satisfaction,” said Mary Anne Franks, a professor of intellectual property, technology and civil rights law at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
In the past, Carr has threatened to pull broadcast licences from news networks that he felt were not “acting in the public interest”, including CBS after it aired an interview with Trump’s presidential opponent Kamala Harris that was criticised by Trump. Although he has presented himself as a champion of free speech, he also appears to have supported censoring speech that the incoming administration does not like.
As for the FTC, which is meant to protect consumers, Trump has chosen Commissioner Andrew Ferguson to lead the agency. Ferguson is also seen as a threat to internet freedoms. He is of the mind that Big Tech companies have been censoring conservative speech and wants to use his power to push back against that.
Ferguson wants to use antitrust law to go after the