About 5 million years ago in OctoberFederal Communications President Ajit Pai has vowed to “move forward with regulation” to “clarify” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a key legal shield that protects online platforms from liability for certain types of posted content. of users. However, he seems to have quietly left the clock to end these plans.
Now, less than three months later, Pai says he doesn’t intend to follow her anymore, because if you don’t know, he has too little time. Drats. (Well’s coming down from the agency on January 20 before the new Biden administration could give him the boot).
“I do not intend to go any further with the notification of the proposed FCC rules,” he said. Protocol on Thursday, explaining that “there is simply not enough time to complete the administrative steps needed to resolve the rules.”
Of course, you may have let these plans fall through the cracks because of the FCC he had no legal authority to follow with them first.
A sense executive order on social media which President Donald Trump issued in September instructed the FCC to control section 230 and investigate websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube to uncover alleged anti-conservative prejudice. Trump’s demands came after an explosive clash – even for him – about the social platforms that verify the facts of his posts.
G / O Media may receive a commission
If performed, this reinterpretation of section 230 he threatened to break into the internet in all sorts of ways. even theoretical. Namely, it would essentially create Republican-controlled FCC to remove Section 230 liability protection from any platforms that Trump thought were discriminatory against conservatives, leaving those platforms vulnerable to litigation to moderate user-posted content. The thing is that the FCC simply does not have the power to A) regulates the internet to this extent or B) rewrites federal law willingly or unwillingly.
It is worth mentioning this with Democrats now Senate control, President-elect Joe Biden he is ready to fast watch his nomination for the next FCC president and reverse Pai’s most controversial political decision: killing net neutrality protections that have prevented Internet service providers from restricting access to online content or charging more for the use of certain sites.
Pai’s remarks came during a C-SPAN interview, “Communicators,” aired this weekend, in which the president also strongly condemned Wednesday’s DC insurrection attempt, which left at least four people dead. He called the violent scene that erupted on Capitol Hill “outrageous and extremely disappointing to those of us who cherish American democracy.”
And while Pai largely refrained from publicly commenting on the president’s whims during his tenure, he rebuked Trump for spreading baseless theories of election conspiracy that should not have been “pampered.” .
“I think it was a terrible mistake to suggest that the election results, and especially the process that culminated yesterday in the Senate and the House, could be changed in any way,” he said. “It was a terrible mistake and I don’t think it should have been satisfied.”
[Protocol]