United States President-elect Donald Trump has recently taken office, and while much attention has been paid to his views on immigration, abortion rights and democracy, he has received little attention for his threats to internet freedom.
His appointments to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other government agencies appear to favor restricting Internet speech and generally make the Internet freer than ever, technology experts have warned.
One of the most prominent people who can pose a threat to free speech on the Internet is Brendan Carr. Currently a commissioner at the FCC, which oversees broadcasting, Carr was appointed by Trump to lead the agency. Carr is self-made as an opponent of Big Tech, and when the president-elect called him a “warrior of free speech”, Carr has fought against Internet speech in the past.
“They're trying to turn the FCC into the internet's speech police,” Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, told Al Jazeera.
In the Movement of Wingless Races Explaining the Controls Known Project 2025A column written by Carr on the FCC advocates removing “Section 230's current approach”. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects platforms from being responsible for user posts and allows companies to monitor those posts. In Project 2025, Carr said Section 230 should contain “significant” changes, including limits on the ability of companies to regulate or remove positions that reflect “political views”.
In a letter to social media companies, he also criticized censorship services as being part of a “censorship cartel” and warned that the new Republican Congress and administration would “review” media practices that “restricted freedom (of expression)”.
“He's made it clear that he wants to use the FCC's powers to pursue 'Big Tech censorship,' which means punishing any tech company that doesn't promote lies to serve its own interests,” Mary Anne said. Franks, a professor of technology, engineering and human rights law at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
In the past, Carr has threatened to issue licenses to broadcast television stations he considers “not in the public interest”, including after CBS aired an interview with Trump's presidential opponent Kamala Harris that was criticized by Trump. Although he portrayed himself as a champion of free speech, he also appears to have supported restrictions that the incoming administration disliked.
As for the FTC, which is supposed to protect consumers, Trump has appointed Commissioner Andrew Ferguson to lead the agency. Ferguson is also seen as a threat to internet freedom. He is of the opinion that Big Tech companies have been strictly suppressing speech and wants to use his power to oppose this.
Ferguson wants to use antitrust laws to go after these companies, and he said that, as the head of the FTC, he will help the Trump administration to “remove unscrupulous officials”. That could mean getting rid of difficult civil servants and turning them into Trump loyalists.
“Ferguson is really singing the same song with a slightly different administration,” said Matt Wood, senior counsel and vice president of legal affairs at the nonprofit Free Press.
Ferguson has made it clear that he will use the FTC to crack down on online speech about gender-affordable care, LGBTQ issues and abortion, Greer told Al Jazeera.
Experts and free speech advocates have warned that both candidates appear intent on using their power to amplify conservative voices and suppress voices they disagree with.
There is also Harmeet Dhillon, who was appointed by Trump to head the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, another supporter of the myth of 'conservative censorship' and has a history of criticizing social media companies and other organizations that try to follow a few anti policies. — racism,” Franks said.
Dhillon, a lawyer and activist, defended a Google employee accused of sexism who was fired during the first Trump administration after he wrote a memo saying that, due to biological differences, women are better programmers.
As head of the Civil Rights Division, Dhillon can go after tech companies, possibly through lawsuits, for violating the rights of conservatives and could force these companies to allow abusive or threatening speech on their platforms that targets minorities and the left and limited speech that opposes the administration. which is coming. Indeed, during the announcement of his appointment, Mr Trump praised Dhillon for taking on Big Tech and “law enforcement agencies that use wake-up calls”.
'Come back' to the media
Beyond these candidates, there are people who will advise Trump, such as the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and his partner in the technology industry David Sacks, who supported Musk throughout his takeover of Twitter. He is also known for advocating for the idea that dissenting voices are censored on the Internet, and is a staunch critic of liberalism.
Many First Amendment experts are concerned that Trump's nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel, a former federal security guard and Trump confidante, will go after reporters the administration doesn't like if confirmed. In fact, he repeatedly said he would do the same while on Steve Bannon's podcast, a former Trump aide. This can also be an issue of internet freedom as they can use the entire country to do this.
“At some point, it's hard to separate our digital rights from our brick-and-mortar rights,” Greer said.
It can be argued that a person's freedom on the Internet is curtailed when it is censored because then they cannot act freely without fear of reprisal. This leads to self-evaluation.
For example, during the first Trump administration, the government looked into the history of Black Lives Matter activists and complained about their ability to freely express their political views online.
The attacks could be seen as part of what Wood called a “larger attack on free speech” by the administration, including Trump's threat, like Carr, to revoke the licenses of news organizations that report in ways they don't like.
It is not clear whether all of Trump's nominees will be approved by the Senate when they vote in the coming weeks, but what is clear is that many of them share the same views and can change or reduce the freedom of the Internet.