Trump Transition
Trump Transition
Trump’s transition
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President-elect Donald J. Trump’s picks for the FCC and FTCse are committed to online censorship. This conflicts with European regulators pushing for stricter moderation.
By Cecilia Kang and Adam Satariano
President-elect Donald J. Trump and his allies have vowed to stop a “censorship cartel” formed by social media corporations they say target conservatives.
Regulators recently handpicked by the president-elect, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, have already outlined plans to save social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube from content that corporations deem offensive, and to punish advertisers who abandon less restrictive platforms like X instead. Protest against the lack of moderation.
“The censorship and advertising boycott banner will have to end now!” Elon Musk, the owner of X, whom Mr. Trump appointed to cut the federal budget, posted on his online page last month.
In Europe, social media corporations face the opposite problem. There, regulators accuse the platforms of being too lax with the data they host, adding that they allow posts that fuel political violence in Britain and hatred in Germany and France.
Trump’s return to the White House is expected to widen the long-standing rift between the United States and Europe, by establishing parallel regulatory systems that tech policy experts say can influence elections, public health and public discourse. in the midst of a global tug-of-war over how to distribute content on their sites.
“What you are seeing is conflicting laws emerging from the world’s democracies, and consumers in the end suffer,” said Kate Klonick, an associate professor of property and internet law at St. John’s University School of Law. The result could be a fractured internet experience where people see different content based on the laws where they live, she said.
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