Social Media

Meta’s announcement Tuesday that it will scrap fact-checking on Facebook is a “good step in the right direction,” said FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in a post on X. “I look forward to monitoring these developments and their implementation. The work continues until the censorship cartel is completely dismantled and destroyed.” Carr, President-elect Donald Trump's choice to head the FCC, wrote to Facebook questioning its use of fact-checkers (see 2412160052), and has previously named fact-checkers and social media companies as components of the "censorship cartel," a term that he has frequently used in interviews and social media posts. Other components of the cartel include President Joe Biden’s administration, advertising agencies and European governments, Carr has said. In a Facebook video Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would shift to using crowdsourced fact-checking, similar to X. Carr credited Trump with causing the change at Meta. “President Trump’s resolute and strong support for the free speech rights of everyday Americans is already paying dividends,” he said. During a news conference Tuesday, Trump responded “probably” when asked if Meta’s shift was a response to his threats, which included calling for Zuckerberg to be imprisoned for life. “Meta is a private company that can decide how it manages its platform,” responded FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez in an X post Tuesday. “However, under the First Amendment, government threats to private companies over speech can have a chilling effect and are dangerous.” "As our database of false narratives continues to demonstrate, Meta has perennially been a home for Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation," said Gordon Crovitz, co-CEO of fact-checking service NewsGuard, in an emailed statement. "Now, Meta apparently has decided to open the floodgates completely."Public interest groups condemned Meta’s changes. “Everyone should be concerned when major technology firms and their billionaire owners kowtow to a leader like Trump who is intent on undermining the checks and balances that are fundamental to a healthy democracy,” Free Press Senior Counsel Nora Benavidez said in a news release. Said Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer, “With this announcement, Mark Zuckerberg's playbook is as clear as day: Protect Meta's bottom line and cozy up to political leaders while leaving users to fend for themselves.” Ishan Mehta, Common Cause Media and Democracy program director, said, “Americans deserve to know the truth, and Meta’s move to end its third-party fact checking opens the door to endless political lies and disinformation.” Meta’s recent decision to move away from third-party fact-checking is a stark reminder of the growing challenges posed by misinformation online," NAB said in a blog post Tuesday touting the reliability of broadcast news. "While Big Tech platforms operate without any constraints, local stations are bound by regulations that haven’t kept pace with the marketplace," it added. "Policymakers must act to modernize these rules, leveling the playing field so local stations can continue providing the high-quality journalism communities depend on."

Attorneys for Maurine and Matthew Molak asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to restart their challenge of a July order that lets schools and libraries use E-rate support for off-premises Wi-Fi hot spots and wireless internet services (see 2409230024). In September, the court dismissed the case, saying it lacked jurisdiction (see 2409260046). Petitioners “wish to inform the panel that, after nearly six months, they are still waiting on the FCC to rule on their July 2024 request that the agency reconsider its … ‘Hotspots Order,’ which subsidizes Wi-Fi hotspots anywhere students go,” said a Monday filing at the court: “It seems the FCC is content to ignore the petition for reconsideration, safe in the belief that as long as the petition remains pending the agency can both implement its unlawful policy and avoid judicial review.” The filing in docket 23-60641 also notified the court of the 6th Circuit’s recent decision vacating the FCC’s net neutrality order (see 2501020047) as it ponders a second case on school bus Wi-Fi. Judges heard oral argument in that case in November (see 2411040061). That decision “slams the door on the FCC’s contention in this case that the Declaratory Ruling expanding E-Rate subsidies for Wi-Fi on school buses is authorized” by the Communication Act section on the USF, the filing said. The Molaks brought both cases because they oppose unsupervised social media access on school buses. The Molaks' son David died by suicide after he was bullied online as a 16-year-old.

A New York bill would require schools to restrict students' use of wireless devices and access to social media platforms while on school property. State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D) prefiled the bill this week for the next legislative session. The bill, SB-140, would require that schools employ "progressive consequences" if a student violates the rules. A similar bill was prefiled in Missouri (see 2412090043).

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s Nov. 13 letters to tech companies (see 2411150032) about their relationship with news website rating service NewsGuard are inaccurate and repeat false information, NewsGuard co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz said in a letter Friday to Carr, the agency's incoming chair. “We wish you had reached out to us before sending your letter because it relies on false reporting about us,” the co-CEOs wrote. Carr also relied on reporting from Newsmax, which has “misled” the commissioner in order to undermine the service’s credibility because it rates Newsmax poorly, NewsGuard's letter said. “An analogy would be a maker of unsafe cars objecting to its rating by Consumer Reports by making false claims about the magazine’s testing process,” NewsGuard said.

Bills governing social media and wireless providers' use of renewable energy were delivered to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) Thursday. SB-895, which passed the Assembly in June, adopts stronger disclosure requirements for social media companies' terms of service. AB-4098, which New York's Senate approved in June, directs wireless carriers to report on their current and future plans to use renewable energy technology to power macrocells.

Government officials shouldn't secretly pressure private social media companies to silence speech, and greater transparency would help prevent such activity, Cato Institute Fellow David Inserra wrote Friday. He said Congress or the White House should require all government officials to record any oral or written request or suggestion to private actors to remove speech or deny services due to speech. OMB could collect those reports and make them publicly available, he said. That approach wouldn't punish government actors for communicating with or advising companies about potentially dangerous or false information, but it would limit unconstitutional censorship attempts, Inserra wrote.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that a federal law banning TikTok unless its Chinese government-controlled owners divest from it is constitutional. TikTok, parent company ByteDance and a group of TikTok users had challenged the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The ban “does not suppress content or require a certain mix of content” but “narrowly addresses foreign adversary control of an important medium of communication in the United States,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion. Because the law doesn’t target content of speech on TikTok but instead the ability of China to covertly manipulate that content, it “is wholly consonant with the First Amendment,” Ginsburg wrote. The evidence and judgment of Congress and the White House that TikTok is a national security threat “is entitled to significant weight,” Ginsburg added. “In this case, a foreign government threatens to distort free speech on an important medium of communication,” and the law would end China’s control over that medium, Ginsburg said. “Understood in that way, the Act actually vindicates the values that undergird the First Amendment.” A ban of the social media platform is set to take effect Jan. 19. Unless TikTok executes a qualified divestiture by then or the White House grants it a 90-day extension before then, “its platform will effectively be unavailable in the United States, at least for a time,” said the order. President-elect Donald Trump, who opposes the TikTok ban after kicking off the effort during his first term, takes office Jan. 20. House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, praised the D.C. Circuit ruling as “a major win for the rule of law.” House Commerce unanimously advanced the TikTok divestiture measure in March (see 2403070063). “From the beginning, Congress gave TikTok a very clear choice: Divest from your parent company -- which is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party -- and remain operational in the U.S. or side with the CCP and face the consequence,” Rodgers and Latta said. “The United States will always stand up for our values and freedom, which is why the days of TikTok targeting, surveilling, and manipulating Americans are numbered.” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, an early vocal proponent of the ban effort, didn’t comment.

In her last address at the annual FCBA dinner Tuesday, outgoing FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel zinged the Donald Trump administration, fellow commissioners and herself, among others. She's been asked since the November election whether she would try being funny at this year's dinner, Rosenworcel responded, "Why would I start now?" Speaking of her post-FCC activities, she quipped, "I have concepts of a plan." Rosenworcel told the "telecom prom" crowd of more than 1,300 she might become a social media influencer and that she just made a video showing herself unboxing 6 GHz devices. Having an "alternative facts" administration won’t be a big stretch for the FCC, she said, because “for years we called the 10th floor the 8th floor." She noted incoming Chairman Brendan Carr made countless media appearances to curry favor with the Trump administration, but, Rosenworcel said, “I think he’s going to regret the decision to buy a Cybertruck.” She added, "Say goodbye to fluoridated water, say hello to ivermectin for all." Rosenworcel continued, "Say goodbye to remote work, say hello to the new Chipotle" a block from FCC headquarters. She ended her remarks with thanks and kudos to the FCC staff.

Much of FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr's agenda as the agency's incoming chair doesn't require an FCC majority to move forward, New Street Research's Blair Levin noted Monday. Part of that is because Carr can get Congress to act, and some is due to the delegated authority FCC bureaus have, Levin said. Carr's efforts to investigate tech companies and amplify the voice of conservatives on social media platforms don't require a formal FCC proceeding, he said. For example, Carr can tie up Skydance's proposed Paramount purchase, which would signal other networks that unfavorable news coverage could affect M&A approvals. In addition, Carr could have the FCC general counsel issue a policy statement about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that eliminates the expansive immunities courts have read into the statute, Levin said. And Carr doesn't need a majority to stop work on items with which he disagrees, such as bulk billing rules, Levin said. Outgoing Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel "never effectively used her bully pulpit [and thus] had the least consequential term as Chair in modern FCC history," he argued. She failed on such issues as losing spectrum auction authority and not getting an extension of the affordable connectivity program, Levin said. Mentioning Levin's note during a Practising Law Institute event Tuesday, Carr said Levin would need “a food taster” at that night's FCBA annual dinner. Levin's note is a reminder that “it's all downhill from here" for his upcoming stint as chairman, Carr said. “They like you on the way in, they definitely do not on the way out, and I don't expect that pattern to be broken any time soon,” he said. Rosenworcel Chief of Staff Narda Jones said during a different PLI panel that she hadn't read Levin's essay but that her boss was proud of the FCC’s work “to reach communities and stakeholders who haven't necessarily been the focus of the commission's work before.” She pointed to the ACP, formation of the Space Bureau, maternal health mapping, and the Missing and Endangered Persons alarm code as important achievements of the Rosenworcel FCC.

FCC Commissioner and incoming Chairman Brendan Carr on Tuesday discussed empowering local broadcasters, moving "aggressively” on USF revisions and opening up the space economy and jumpstarting spectrum policy. Speaking at the Practising Law Institute's 42nd Annual Institute on Telecommunications Policy & Regulation, Carr said he's “really looking forward” to taking the commission's top seat.