FCC’s Carr Hopes Musk’s Twitter Takeover Will Result in ‘More Free Speech’

Brendan Carr, commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, speaks at the CPAC convention in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 29, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

A top Federal Communications Commission (FCC) official said he’s optimistic that “more free speech” will result from a successful Elon Musk takeover of Twitter, a global social network with more than 400 million monthly users.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr told NTD’s Paul Greaney on April 25 that he hopes Musk will “follow through on [his] commitment to free speech” because “at the end of the day, we want more speech, not less.”

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there about [how] you can’t have more speech without allowing terrorist content,” Carr said. “No, that’s not the case. We’re going to put rules in place; we [can] get more speech, core speech, without allowing terrorist speech.”

Carr, the FCC’s senior Republican member, said the platform will need to start with some “core reforms” to allow for more “transparency” and “accountability.”

“That includes an actual appeals process, so when they get things wrong, when speech is taken down, you have the right to appeal that decision. I think we need anti-discrimination provisions, again, to protect core speech.”

Musk has pledged to make the platform better by respecting free speech.

In an April 15 TED Talk interview with Chris Anderson, Musk described Twitter as a “de facto town square,” adding that people should have “both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.”

He said that Twitter should “open source the algorithm” so that there’s no “behind the scenes manipulation” to deemphasize or emphasize speech.

“So if somebody did something to a tweet, there’s information attached to it that that action was taken,” Musk said, adding that if a tweet was promoted or demoted according to an algorithm, that algorithm should be made available for critique.

“A good sign as to whether there is free speech is someone you don’t like is allowed to say something you don’t like. And if that is the case, then we have free speech,” Musk said.

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder, confirmed on April 25 on Twitter that he had purchased the California-based company for about $44 billion. The board approved the acquisition on April 25.

Twitter has increasingly cracked down on users, particularly conservative-leaning voices, in recent years, and banned Donald Trump while he was still president in 2021.

At the time, Twitter executives said Trump’s posts were inciting violence. Trump had called for peace at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and for people who were there carrying out violence to leave, but also said his supporters were “very special.”

Twitter also banned some Trump administration officials, including former trade adviser Peter Navarro.

Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey stated on April 26 that “Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness.” He also voiced support for Musk’s “goal of creating a platform that is ’maximally trusted and broadly inclusive'” in the same Twitter thread.

“In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company,” Dorsey said. “Solving for the problem of it being a company, however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.