FCC's Carr: Social Media Should Follow X On Free Speech

Brendan Carr, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, praised Elon Musk’s advocacy for free speech with X, arguing more people need to move in his direction and “away from government control,” reports The Washington Examiner.

When asked about a ban of social media platform TikTok in the United States and whether or not Trump would take action to stop this ban, Carr pointed to how this topic is “in the court system,” adding that “we’ll see the actions” that Trump takes regarding it.

“I think we’re all going to follow President Trump’s lead on that one, but what’s clear is we need a lot more competition,” Carr said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, guest-hosted by Jackie DeAngelis. “We need more competition to Facebook. What Twitter has done, what X has done now with Elon Musk in terms of restoring freedom of speech, that’s so important and integral to this country. We need to continue to move in that direction; we need to move away from government control and towards freedom of speech.”

🇺🇸NEW: Trump FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is dead serious about taking on the Censorship Industrial Complex:

“Combatting Big Tech censorship is going to be a top priority. We need to restore Americans' right to free speech…[Tech companies] have been part of a censorship cartel… pic.twitter.com/l8uDexbSxy

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) December 1, 2024

Carr contended that restoring freedom of speech is vital to the nation, adding that Facebook and other social media platforms have been part of a “censorship cartel” in cooperation with advertisers to censor people. He added that when censorship abounds, people’s ideas become silenced, going against the boundary-pushing for which the U.S. is known.

Trump’s FCC chairman nominee was also asked if he had any information on Trump’s recent meeting with Meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to which he said he did not, but that Zuckerberg will “hopefully” continue to embrace freedom of speech.

In November, shortly after Trump nominated Carr to be part of his Cabinet, the nominee said that combating tech censorship would be one of his priorities as part of the incoming Trump administration. Another major factor would be to eliminate the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the FCC, for which Carr argued “there’s no place.”