Brendan Carr has been named as President-elect Trump’s choice for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Because Carr has already been confirmed by the Senate as an FCC commissioner, President Trump will be able to appoint Carr as chairman without any additional approval from the Senate.

Carr gave a strong indication of his priorities as head of the FCC in an open letter to the heads of four Big Tech platforms, alerting them that their companies will be investigated for their alleged roles in mass censorship of Americans. Carr called on these companies to turn over information that would help the commission evaluate how their censorship efforts have been conducted against the American people.

Carr said in his letter:

The relevant conduct extended from removing or blocking social media posts to labeling whole websites or apps as ‘untrustworthy’ or ‘high-risk’ in an apparent effort to suppress their information and viewpoints, including through efforts to delist them, lower their rankings, or harm their profitability. This censorship cartel is an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled. Americans must be able to reclaim their right to free speech. Indeed, our democracy depends on freedom of expression.

Carr’s letter specifically focused on one organization: NewsGuard. According to Carr, “NewsGuard is a for-profit company that operates as part of the broader censorship cartel. Indeed, NewsGuard bills itself as the Internet’s arbiter of truth or, as its co-founder put it, a ‘Vaccine Against Misinformation.’”

Carr adds that the company “purports to rate the credibility of news and information outlets and tells readers and advertisers which outlets they can trust.” NewsGuard’s “ratings … select winners and losers in the news media space. NewsGuard does so by leveraging its partnerships with advertising agencies to effectively censors targeted outlets.”

The conduct by big tech companies that Carr plans to investigate and stop is similar to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s “election misinformation” initiative. Benson set up a hotline and email for Michigan residents to report “misleading or inaccurate information regarding voting or elections” to her office. According to the secretary, “Just as election officials have a duty to detect election misinformation and quickly provide correct information based on the law, voters have a responsibility to proactively seek out reliable sources of information and encourage productive and honest dialogue.”

An earlier version of Benson’s election misinformation document specifically identified three websites, Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, and PolitiFact, as arbiters for deciding the accuracy of information. Benson called them sources of “trusted, verified, nonpartisan information.”

But these left-leaning, self-appointed factcheckers operate in much the same way as NewsGuard, making them part of the broader “censorship cartel” Carr describes as “an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms.” Perhaps these concerns are what led Benson to edit her official state document to remove references to these organizations.

Thus, Commissioner Carr and Secretary Benson are describing fundamentally opposing views of efforts to censor information and viewpoints on the internet. Benson believes it is her duty to monitor and rebut, at taxpayer expense, so-called misinformation. It’s the government’s job to help voters “know the truth,” as she put it.

Carr, in contrast, sees such censorship efforts as an affront to basic rights that all Americans are guaranteed by the Constitution. We need to dismantle the censorship cartel because our democracy depends on free speech, he argues.

Benson and other proponents of censorship may claim they are protecting people from harmful misinformation, but the reality is that they are trying to silence or punish people for expressing messages that government officials and factcheckers find inconvenient, are embarrassed by, or just don’t like.

What Benson does not seem to understand is that when a variety of views are allowed to be expressed, the better ideas naturally overcome the bad ones and misinformation. Government efforts to censor information can also be self-defeating. When the public senses the government is censoring too much, it will increasingly seek alternative sources of information, including the ones factcheckers and Benson would label misinformation.

We should be alarmed when government officials and powerful companies want to censor what others can say or hear, rather than encourage the free exchange of ideas and differing viewpoints. The temptation is great for those in power to hijack this process to advance their own agendas. Carr’s approach is preferable to Benson’s, because it encourages all people to express what they believe without fear of government punishment or loss of access online.

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