FCC Chair Brendan Carr on Tuesday declined to endorse the idea of stricter regulations on social media companies as several of the world’s largest platforms face increased scrutiny over content moderation on political issues.
“Clearly we need a change in direction on some of these issues,” Carr said when asked at the Politico AI and Tech Summit about last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “When it comes to social media … we saw a lot of censorship around the time of COVID
Carr praised the efforts of tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who he said have “re-embraced the idea of free speech.”
“My view today is we need to empower individual users to make their own content moderation decisions,” he said. “And give them the tools to curate their online persona.”
Kirk’s assassination has led to a flood of outrage on social media, and calls from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to turn down the temperature of the national political discourse.
President Trump and several of his allies have promised to crack down on left-wing groups they say are mainly responsible for an increase in political violence in recent years.
Carr has similarly criticized mainstream media companies he says are hostile toward Trump and his administration, and threatened to use the power of the FCC to scrutinize the broadcast licenses of major networks like ABC and NBC.
Updated at 2:05 p.m. EDT
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