The network neutrality tennis match has been called in favor of the Republican Information Service team over Network Neutrality Democrats. Ventures providing broadband Internet access have no obligation to operate neutrally. And they have robust, unimpeachable First Amendment rights.
Information Service Providers, have every legal right to act as unneutral and biased as they want to be. That means no one—in a personal capacity, or on behalf of the federal government—can sanction participants in the Internet ecosystem on grounds they aren’t being fair and balanced, to repeat a past slogan. They hold themselves out as family friendly, truth agents, and block (censor!) any content they deem harmful to children, snowflakes, wokeheads, anti-wokeheads, et al.
This may come as a newsflash to some, but it should not for anyone with a baseline sense of what the First Amendment protects. Someone surely in the know, is upcoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Yet he appears to have promised President Trump and Elon Musk that the FCC, under his leadership, will push the envelope on official disregard for the First Amendment.
Surely Chairman Carr knows the FCC has no statutory authority to punish broadcasters, social networks, or broadband operators from being woke, too liberal, anti-Trump, anti-Musk and whatnot.
Back in the day, First Amendment advocates did not cleave on a Democrat/Republican fulcrum. Now it appears that people who should know and embrace the First Amendment seem clueless.
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