FCC Chair Carr: First Amendment Protects 'Almost All' Free Speech

The federal government should not be focused on policing social media, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr said Tuesday.

Following reports that commentators, academics, and business owners had lost jobs after posting celebratory or disparaging remarks about the murder of conservative leader and Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk, Carr addressed whether the Trump administration should monitor social media.

Graphic video of the shooting also was shared on social media.

"I think you can draw a pretty clear line, and the Supreme Court has done this for decades, that our First Amendment, our free speech tradition, protects almost all speech," Carr said during an interview at Politico's AI & Tech Summit.

"We should be giving individuals the tools to curate their own feeds and be in control of what they like to see."

Carr added that although posts that incite violence are potentially unprotected by the First Amendment, it's "a relatively small category of speech," and there are "existing laws on the books that deal with that."

The FCC chair also said "a lot of social media companies have embraced, or re-embraced, the idea of free speech online."

"I think Elon Musk and X had a great deal to do with that," he said. "I was pleased to see Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook join him, but clearly there's more we can do."

Shortly after Carr became chair, the New York Post's Charles Gasparino reported that the FCC was preparing to weaken the legal protection, known as Section 230, that shields Big Tech companies from liability.

During his interview on Tuesday, Carr said he has backed off due to social media platform changes in favor of free expression.

"I think the debate around Section 230 is still live, but I think given the changes that we're seeing on social media, I think right now, for my part, I'm in a trust-but-verify posture," Carr said.

He added that he has been pleased to see a "course-correction within the social media community" following censorship of a diversity of viewpoints on religious or medical issues during the Biden administration.