FCC Commissioner Announces New Big Tech Probe

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr is done playing games with big tech concerning censorship.

The heads of the major big tech platforms were informed that Carr is launching a new investigation.

It will concentrate on the blatant censorship of Americans over the last few years.

First Amendment

For most of the last decade, conservatives have been getting censored relentlessly from social media platforms and search engines.

I can tell you from personal experience that reach has been cut down by about 95%, if not more.

At one point, on multiple Facebook pages, I had about 20 million fans and would get a reach of about 10% on every post.

Suddenly, after the 2016 election, that reach was shrunk down to less than 0.5%, and that was on a successful post.

Keep in mind, I had paid for advertising on Facebook to obtain these fans, yet they were not sending out the content to them.

That, of course, does not even account for my reach on X (then Twitter), which was just completely shut down.

Now, I am just a relatively obscure political blogger, so imagine what was happening to people who had a more significant following.

Carr is finally going to address this, writing to Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

In part, his letter stated, "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.”

Donald Trump clearly likes what he sees from Carr, as Trump has just appointed him to be the FCC Chair once he takes office.

Carr also called out NewsGuard, which, again, I have firsthand experience with.

Carr wrote, "Indeed, NewsGuard bills itself as the Internet’s arbiter of truth or, as its co-founder put it, a ‘Vaccine Against Misinformation.’ NewsGuard purports to rate the credibility of news and information outlets and tells readers and advertisers which outlets they can trust.

"As the U.S. House Committee on Small Business 2024 Staff Report stated, ‘[t]hese ratings, combined with NewsGuard’s vast partnerships in the advertising industry, select winners and losers in the news media space.’"

In our case, NewsGaurd claimed we did not cite proper authority sites for our information, claimed ownership of the site was not disclosed, and that our authors were hidden, all of which were lies.

I, for one, am looking forward to the outcome of this investigation because I have always believed these platforms should have been sued for the crackdown on reach, especially in the cases where you advertised for fans, and they still refused to distribute your content.