(Credit: Rob Pegoraro)
BARCELONA—The new chair of the Federal Communications Commission hasn’t had many nice things to say about large US social platforms, but he used a speech at MWC to defend them against a different opponent: large EU regulators.
“In many ways, free speech has been in retreat,” Brendan Carr said in an appearance here Monday. “In America, we're returning to our free speech tradition.”
Europe, he suggested, is going the other way with the sweeping Digital Services Act, which imposes new standards for content-moderation practices and subjects companies used by more than 10% of EU residents to stricter rules.
For example, at the end of 2023, the EU opened an inquiry into X's allegedly inadequate efforts against disinformation and hate speech. "That regulatory regime imposes excessive rules," according to Carr, who said his boss would not stand for it. “The Trump administration has been clear that we're going to speak up and defend the interests of US businesses.”
Carr has spoken out before to defend US tech companies against foreign regulatory overreach, such as when he urged Apple to resist Chinese censorship dictates after Beijing compelled Apple to remove the Voice of America’s app from the App Store.
But in the runup to his promotion to run the FCC, Carr frequently criticized the largest US online platforms for allegedly suppressing conservative and right-wing voices. For example, in a thread on X after the election, he declared, "The censorship cartel must be dismantled.”
However, any such conduct by private firms absent government pressure is not a First Amendment issue. As the Supreme Court noted in a July ruling highly critical of Texas and Florida laws effectively banning content moderation on large social platforms, the Constitution's guarantees of free speech protect the right of private companies not to host speech they don’t like.
Carr has since shown himself willing to use the FCC’s broadcast licensing authority to investigate TV networks for alleged unfair treatment of Republican candidates.
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Carr also used his speech and a subsequent appearance on a panel with Indian and EU tech regulators to advocate for what he called regulatory simplicity.
That overall ambition found some support from the speaker that preceded him on the stage. Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s EVP for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, said “regulatory simplification” is on the EU's agenda.
“We must rethink our regulatory framework,” she said, pledging to “reduce the burden.”
Carr, meanwhile, took particular aim at the net-neutrality regulations the FCC had enacted over his wishes under the Biden administration, and which a court ruling has now effectively dragged into the recycle bin. “Thankfully, in America, that heavy-handed regulation is at an end,” he said
Carr pointed to T-Mobile’s new T-Priority service for first responders (without name-checking that carrier) as something that would not have been possible under the rules the FCC adopted a year ago: “In America right now, our networks can be divided up to provide precise services to emergency responders.”
Asked about that later in the afternoon, T-Mobile tech president Ulf Ewaldsson contended that its use of network slicing to deliver specialized service didn’t violate net-neutrality principles and commended the Trump administration’s overall approach.
“We don't see any degradation of services for other users; we just see the users who really need it get it better,” he said. “I am so happy that the administration is supporting the business opportunity for us and for other carriers.”