Law professor Adam Candeub, who was an attorney in the FCC's Media and Common Carrier bureaus as well as acting NTIA head, is returning to the commission as general counsel. Candeub brings with him strong criticisms of Big Tech. In response to a post on X about Candeub not being the GC that Big Tech executives would have preferred, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr replied that the agency "will work to dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights to everyday Americans." He added: "I look forward to Adam Candeub serving as the FCC's General Counsel. He is going to do great things!"
A White House executive order on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programs could lead to telecom companies abandoning such efforts, causing a rollback of progress on diversity, said industry executives and public interest attorneys during a FCBA panel discussion Tuesday. There is “fear and chaos” in “lots of corridors and hallways of corporate America” over the DEI executive order and anticipation of future White House action in that vein, said Clint Odom, T-Mobile vice president-strategic alliances and external affairs and a former FCC aide. “The world seems to be lining up between the companies that are doing DEI and the companies that are retreating from it.”
Congress' oversight of broadband subsidy programs should include moving universal service funding from a surcharge to direct congressional appropriations, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said Tuesday as it issued "a pro-growth agenda" for the 119th Congress. CEI urged a focus on reform and oversight of BEAD and reauthorization of the FCC's spectrum auction authority. The libertarian public policy organization also said Congress should oppose efforts at repealing or curtailing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
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.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision doing away with Chevron deference won’t grind the next FCC to a halt but could prompt congressional action on the USF, former FCC officials said during panel discussions Thursday at Broadband Breakfast’s "Broadband in the Trump Administration" event.
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.
Tapped to lead the FCC during the second Trump administration (see 2411170001), FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is expected to be as aggressive as possible on spectrum and wireless siting issues, industry experts said. During President-elect Donald Trump's first administration, then-Chairman Ajit Pai made Carr lead commissioner on wireless siting.
Snap accused the New Mexico attorney general of making false allegations against the social media platform and misrepresenting its undercover investigation into the Snapchat app in a case about children’s safety and privacy. The platform said Thursday that it filed a motion to dismiss the AG’s lawsuit on Nov. 18. “Instead of working with Snap and New Mexico’s law enforcement officials on these efforts to combat bad actors,” AG Raul Torrez (D) "has chosen to work against them,” the motion said. “The result is a highly charged, headline-grabbing lawsuit founded upon gross misrepresentations of the State’s ‘investigation,’ dubious ‘evidence’ mined from the dark web, screenshots from platforms other than Snapchat, and cherry-picked references to old features that no longer exist.” Torrez filed a suit against Snap on Sept. 4 alleging that the social media app’s design features foster sextortion, sharing of child sexual abuse materials and child sexual exploitation. The New Mexico Department of Justice conducted an undercover investigation into the social media platform, including creating a decoy account of a 14-year-old. The decoy exchanged messages with dangerous accounts, several of which attempted to coerce it into sharing child sexual abuse materials. The investigation found the app’s recommendation algorithm connected Snapchat accounts that capture, circulate and sell child sexual abuse materials, as well as a network of dark websites dedicated to sharing these materials, among other allegations. In the motion to dismiss, Snap asserts that the decoy account searched for and instigated connections with the dangerous accounts, contrary to claims that they came up as algorithmic recommendations. On these and other grounds, including violations of the First Amendment and the legal liability shield Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Snap seeks to dismiss the lawsuit.
Outgoing FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel received praise from the regular commissioners at Thursday's open meeting (see 2411210006) as she announced plans for stepping down Jan. 20, the date the next presidential administration takes power. Addressing reporters, incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr repeatedly named "tech censorship" and the "censorship cartel" as major priorities. "Smashing this [censorship cartel] is going to be a top issue," he said.
Dismiss tech groups’ complaint against a Florida social media law “for lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) argued Friday at U.S. District Court for Northern Florida (docket 4:21-cv-0220). The U.S. Supreme Court in July ruled the First Amendment protects social media platforms’ ability to moderate content, sending the tech industry’s suits against Florida and Texas laws back to the lower courts (see 2407010053). The Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice earlier this month submitted an amended complaint asking the district court to permanently enjoin Florida’s social media law (see 2411040033). The plaintiffs lack associational standing to advance First Amendment claims, which “require a host of factual determinations about the members and their platforms,” said Moody. In addition, the amended complaint “is a shotgun pleading,” said the Florida AG. “Plaintiffs have not stated a claim under the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, or Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,” nor a claim for injunctive relief for their members.