Human Events Daily host Jack Posobiec spoke with the Foundation for Freedom’s Allum Bokhari during Monday’s episode, where they talked about the FCC and the growing presence of Microsoft in DC despite its history with censorship.
“The FCC front is going great, frankly. You just mentioned the appointment of Professor Candeub. That’s a fantastic choice in my view,” said Bokhari, referring to Adam Candeub, who will be general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, its chairman, Brendan Carr, confirmed in an email to Semafor.
Candeub, once a little-known academic at Michigan State University Law School, gained prominence during the social media wars of the past decade, writes Semafor. “In 2016, he represented an anti-trans feminist who sued Twitter after being suspended (the case was later dismissed), and published a widely circulated article suggesting that giant social media platforms be regulated as common carriers, forced to adopt neutrality as to political viewpoints, or lose some of the legal protections they enjoy under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act,” they write.
Bokhari called him one of the “big heroes” of the first Trump administration and a “warrior against online censorship.”
Bokhari praised several Trump picks, including new chairman Brendan Carr who he called “fantastic” and new FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson.
One "concerning trend" raised by Bokhari, however, was the "strange ascendancy" of Microsoft, which Bokhari said was “one of the absolute worst offenders when it came to censorship in the last eight years. Unlike Facebook and X, they haven’t really walked back any of it, as far as I can tell. And yet, you've got OpenAI getting this $500 billion AI investment deal that was announced by the president. You've got Microsoft in the running to acquire TikTok, which would, you know, give them enormous influence over the US media ecosystem. And you now see today, OpenAI launched something called ChatGPT government,” which he explains will be used by government agents and as a way to get contracts.
Microsoft is still working closely with Newsguard, a private third-party “fact checker” that was used to create blacklists of those they deemed to be spreading disinformation.
“Microsoft not only participated but actively funded and partnered with several key initiatives aimed at controlling online content, including the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP), and the DHS-born Election Integrity Partnership to which it belongs,” Bokhari explained, saying that records show that “many of the same government officials who spearheaded the most pernicious censorship initiatives between 2016 and 2020 later transitioned to top roles at Microsoft, where they continue to advance these efforts today under the company’s umbrella.”
While this is true, Bokhari explains that things overall have improved, thanks in no small part to the steps made by Elon Musk and X. Posobiec agreed with Bokhari, saying that “everything’s looking up” at the moment.
Watch the whole episode below:
