FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that the Democrat-led majority at the agency is moving to enact net neutrality instead of holding big tech companies such as Google accountable, which he said is the “greatest threat on the internet.”
Carr explained to Breitbart News that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will likely announce this week that that the agency will vote at the FCC’s end-of-month meeting to reenact net neutrality.
Once the Democrats achieved a majority at the commission, the agency announced in September that they would seek to revive the Obama-era net neutrality regulations. During President Donald Trump’s administration, then-Chairman Ajit Pai repealed the net neutrality rules.
Leftists have long sought to capture more regulatory authority over the internet using Title II regulations.
Essentially, net neutrality regulations seek to prohibit internet service providers (ISPs), such as Comcast and Verizon, from blocking, slowing down, or allowing for “paid prioritization,” by which users can pay for faster, more consistent service.
Carr described the net neutrality proposal as a “power grab by the administrative state” and “unlawful overreach” that could run afoul of the “major questions” doctrine, which prohibits agencies from enacting policies when an issue has “vast economic and political significance.”
Allum Bokhari, a former Breitbart News reporter, explained:
The law of common carriage, mandated by the Title II regulations demanded by Democrats, is one of the solutions recommended by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to address tech censorship. Yet Democrats want the rule applied to service providers, which are not in the habit of kicking off internet users for their political viewpoints, while not recommending similar regulations on the companies and platforms that are actually responsible for suppressing online discourse over the past five years — companies like Google, YouTube, Twitter/X, and Facebook.
Progressives and Democrats lost their minds when the FCC repealed Net Neutrality under Trump, predicting the end of the internet as we know it, and a variety of other disasters. As Breitbart News predicted at the time, none of these doom-laden predictions came true, and in fact broadband speeds across the country improved.
Carr told Breitbart News that in effect there is no need to reenact net neutrality, as broadband prices have lowered and internet speeds have risen since the agency repealed net neutrality. He cautioned that net neutrality would serve as a “significant headwind” that could hamper President Joe Biden’s Internet for All agenda to connect Americans to high-speed internet.
However, Carr emphasized most of all that net neutrality regulations ignore the threats of edge providers, or big tech platforms such as Google or Facebook.
“Google — back in 2005, Google was looking for ways to create a regulatory moat around their business model. And they came up with this catchy phrase called net neutrality, which is all about, you know, imposing heavy-handed regulations at the ISP level. And, you know, largely ignoring the threats that come from Google, the edge, and you’ll flash forward to today. And anyone looking back over the last couple of years … asked, you know, what’s been the greatest threat on the internet, not your mom and pop, rural ISP. It’s the edge,” Carr explained.
“The FCC is sort of just out of sync, you know, we’re sort of engaging in this 2005-era regulatory protection,” Carr added, saying that Republicans have realized that the “true threat of a free and open internet” is coming from big tech platforms. He then said that is why the government needs to take action to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and other laws to rein in big tech platforms.
Carr credited some agencies such as the Department of Justice (DOJ) for going after Apple for its apparent abuse as a monopoly.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
