4 days Ago By Varun Godinho
Big Tech’s seemingly arbitrary and unfettered attempts to silence some voices on their platforms is now being rigorously challenged. US President-elect Donald Trump has announced the appointment of Brendan Carr as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the independent agency that regulates telecommunications. Carr earlier this month demanded answers from Big Tech firms about their involvement in what he described as a “censorship cartel” to suppress speech with which they disagreed.
He sent letters to Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook. Dated November 13, the letters specifically sought information about the firms’ dealings with NewsGuard – a for-profit “fact-checking” firm that allegedly targeted conservative outlets by labelling them as more “risky” than liberal outlets. Brendan Carr “Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have played central roles in the censorship cartel,” Carr wrote in an X post last Friday alongside the letter.
“The Orwellian named NewsGuard along with ‘fact-checking’ groups and ad agencies helped enforce one-sided narratives.” Big Tech executives have been given until December 10 to submit responses to the FCC regarding which of their products or services partner with NewsGuard. Carr’s investigation could have ripple effects on Section 230, the controversial statute that shields companies from being held liable for third-party content posted on their platforms.
In his letter, Carr notes that Section 230 protections only apply if companies are operating “in good faith.” “My letter goes to Big Tech’s continued reliance on NewsGuard given its track record. For one, reports indicate that NewsGuard has consistently rated official propaganda from the CCP as more credible than American publications.
For another, NewsGuard aggressively fact-checked and penalised websites that reported on the Covid-19 lab leak theory. For still another, the Small Business Committee and multiple Media Research Center studies identified numerous instances where NewsGuard apparently does not apply its own ratings in an even-handed manner. The list goes on,” wrote Carr on X.
There is reportedly an “ongoing investigation” by the House Oversight Committee into NewsGuard. NewsGuard’s advisory board also includes at least one member who “signed the now infamous October 2020 letter from former intelligence community officials that flamed the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation — a letter that itself fuelled a wave of censorship,” Carr noted. NewsGuard denied wrongdoing and pushed back on Carr’s letter, asserting that its work “does not involve any censorship or blocking of speech at all.
” “The key claims in the letter about NewsGuard are false, citing unreliable sources,” NewsGuard said in a statement. Carr is also seeking information on whether companies such as Meta and Google use NewsGuard or any other “media monitor or fact checking service” as part of their dealings with clients. He alleged that the Big Tech firms were complicit in an effort, alongside the so-called media monitors, to “defund, demonetise, and otherwise put out of business news outlets and organisations that dared to deviate from an approved narrative.
” “This censorship cartel is an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled,” he added in the letter. Meta has pointed out that NewsGuard is not one of its fact-checking partners. However, Zuckerberg has admitted in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that “senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, repeatedly pressured” Meta to “censor” content related to the coronavirus pandemic in 2021.
Zuckerberg added that he now felt it was mistake that Facebook suppressed The Post’s exclusive reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020. Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said: “We do not use NewsGuard services in our products and our business model depends on connecting people to a wide range of perspectives and voices,” reported the New York Post. Here in Australia, as ChannelNews reported recently , the government is taking the fight to tech giants, promising to hold them accountable if Australians suffer harm as a result of their platforms.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has said that the government would legislate a “Digital Duty of Care” that will place the onus on digital platforms to proactively keep Australians safe and prevent online harms..
