Carr Urges Facebook to Stop Policing Speech; Some Question His Opining

Facebook should take a hands-off approach to content moderation, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr told us in arguing the company's new oversight board injects political bias and lets the platform avoid responsibility. Carr criticized the board in a series of tweets, calling it Facebook "speech police" and arguing most members have left-leaning bias. Facebook and several board members didn’t comment Tuesday.

Some industry experts and observers agreed in other interviews with some of Carr's points. The commissioner has taken heat in the recent weeks over his focus on China and other issues that some argue are outside his agency's purview (see 2004240045). Others argued Facebook should be more active in moderating to stop the spread of hate content, which has been rampant on filterless platforms like 4chan. Some noted the FCC has no jurisdiction over speech on social media platforms, a point that Carr addressed in Monday's interview.

Carr warned against biased and fallible participants making content moderation decisions, particularly about political speech. He urged Facebook to get “out of the speech police business altogether.” He suggested the company turn off its “bias filters,” giving users the option to have unfiltered feeds.

“Unless you want Facebook to turn into 4chan, setting and enforcing reasonable limits is appropriate,” said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Vice President Daniel Castro. "So the oversight board is a good move because it establishes an independent and transparent process to start adjudicating decisions and upholding values like free speech.” The board appears to be “a diverse and thoughtful group of people” structured to operate with independence, he said.

It’s unclear why Carr is spending time on this issue because there’s no FCC jurisdiction, said Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez. It’s critical for Facebook to moderate its platform to prevent the spread of hate groups and white supremacists, she said: The company has a responsibility to protect users from abuse, and it hasn’t done a good enough job so far. It’s unclear whether the panel will help, but she said she doesn’t want to “trash it” yet.

Carr acknowledged the jurisdiction-related pushback. “I don’t envision a regulatory role for the FCC,” he said, noting it’s not an issue he has raised with Chairman Ajit Pai or other commissioners. He intended to highlight the selections Facebook made, he said.

The content moderation approach, whether done under the umbrella of Facebook or the company operating through a so-called supreme court, is a “fraught no-win path,” Carr said. “It’s pretty plain that they’ve stood this board up as a way to sort of pass the buck and say, ‘Hey, it’s not us. It’s this oversight board.’ You really can’t have it both ways.”

Gun safety advocate Andy Parker, a frequent critic of big tech and its use of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (see 2002200049), agreed Facebook created this body to improve its reputation. It’s “purely cosmetic,” and nothing is going to happen until Congress amends or revokes Section 230, he said.

The board could be a useful adjunct to Facebook’s own obligations, but Section 230 is really the issue, said Excolo Law's Keith Altman: Child pornography doesn’t proliferate on Facebook because the platform is held accountable for such content. The company should face the same accountability for terror-related content, he argued.

The platform should focus less on human intervention and more on technology for locating harmful content, said Coalition for a Safer Web Vice President-Content Moderation Eric Feinberg. Now, he said, the tech player is relying on a reactionary, whack-a-mole approach. He said that means a lot of material slips through in foreign languages.

Twenty members are on the oversight board, originating from the U.S., Australia, Cameroon, France, Israel, the U.K., Kenya, Brazil, Denmark, Hungary, Colombia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Pakistan, Senegal, India and Yemen. The U.S. members (see personals section, May 7) are co-Chair Michael McConnell, Stanford Law School; Evelyn Aswad, University of Oklahoma College of Law; Jamal Greene, Columbia Law School; Pamela Karlan, Stanford Law School; and John Samples, Cato Institute.