Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr sent a letter to the heads of the Big Tech platforms last week alerting them that their companies will be investigated for their alleged roles in mass censorship of Americans in recent years.
Carr addressed Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Apple CEO Tim Cook in an open letter calling on these companies to hand over information that will allow the FCC to understand how censorship has been conducted against the American people and prevent it going forward.
“Over the past few years, Americans have lived through an unprecedented surge in censorship. Your companies played significant roles in this improper conduct. Big Tech companies silenced Americans for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights,” the commissioner wrote.
Carr has since been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as FCC chairman beginning in January.
Based on evidence put on by press reports, congressional investigations and other sources, he went on to accuse the CEOs’ companies of being part of a “censorship cartel that included not only technology and social media companies but advertising, marketing, and so-called ‘factchecking’ organizations as well as the Biden-Harris Administration itself.”
Carr’s statement characterized the nature of the censorship, saying, “The relevant conduct extended from removing or blocking social media posts to labeling whole websites or apps as ‘untrustworthy’ or ‘high-risk’ in an apparent effort to suppress their information and viewpoints, including through efforts to delist them, lower their rankings, or harm their profitability.”
The commissioner called out NewsGuard – an internet fact-checking platform which rates the trustworthiness of news outlets and other information shared online – as being one of the major tools of the alleged censorship cartel.
“NewsGuard combines human expertise and technology to provide data, analysis and journalism that helps enterprises and consumers identify reliable information online,” its site states.
