FCC Chair Brendan Carr taking first steps in eroding key legal protection enjoyed by Big Tech
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is taking the first steps in eroding a key legal protection enjoyed by Big Tech, which if successful has the potential of costing some of the most profitable companies in the world billions of dollars in market value, the Post has learned.Since being picked by President Trump to run the agency, Carr’s actions to throttle Paramount’s sale to Skydance over concerns of relentless partisanship at CBS, violating the FCC’s “public interest” rules, have garnered the most attention.But his still inchoate plan to weaken the so-called “Section 230” protections of major tech and social media companies could — depending on how they are written and interpreted by the courts — have the most far-reaching implications.It’s not just the Big Tech companies’ social media businesses like Facebook or Twitter (now known as X) that rely on this “liability shield” to save countless billions of dollars in legal costs over alleged libelous posting and other possible liabilities.
Investors who have piled into stocks like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and even Apple could be impacted as well depending on how far he goes in weakening liabilities of all kinds that 230 protects them from.Congress passed the Section 230 provision as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 — essentially giving tech a pass for third-party postings on their platforms.The thinking was that lawsuits over defamation, etc., created by third parties could cripple innovation in the new economy.Plus, unlike traditional media, they’re simply unbiased conduits of information.
They don’t operate as a traditional publisher by hosting a message board, chat room and should not accept the liability that goes along with it.But Carr, my sources say, believes the world has changed dramatically since the early days of the Internet.Social media has replaced chat rooms.
The operators of these sites make all sorts of editorial decisions.Meta�...