Can the FCC Regulate Social Media?

There has been a lot of talk lately from the White House and Congress about having the FCC regulate online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google. From a regulatory perspective, it’s an interesting question if current law allows for the regulation of these companies. It would be ironic if the FCC somehow tried to regulate Facebook after they went through series of legal gyrations to remove themselves from regulating ISPs for the delivery and sale of broadband – something that is more clearly in their regulatory wheelhouse.

All of the arguments for regulating the web companies centers around Section 230 of the FCC rules. Congress had the nascent Internet companies in mind when the wrote Section 230. The view of Congress was that the newly formed Internet needed to be protected from regulation and interference in order to grow. Congress was right about this at the time and the Internet is possibly the single biggest driver of our current economy. Congress specifically spelled out how web companies should be viewed from a regulatory perspective.

There are two sections of the statute that are most relevant to the question of regulating web companies. The first is Section 230(c)(1), which states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

This section of the law is unambiguous and states that an online platform can’t be held liable for content posted by users. This would hold true regardless of whether a platform allows users free access to say anything or if the platform heavily moderates what can be said. When Congress wrote Section 230 this was the most important part of the statute, because they realized that new web companies would never get off the ground or thrive if they have to constantly respond to lawsuits filed by parties that didn’t like the content posted on their platform.

Web platforms are protected by first amendment rights as publishers if they provide their own content, in exactly the same manner as a newspaper or magazine – but publishers can be sued for violating laws like defamation. But most of the big web platforms don’t create content – they just provide a place for users to publish content. As such, the language cited above completely shields Facebook and Twitter from liability, and also seemingly from regulation.

Another thing that must be considered is the current state of FCC regulation. The courts have given the FCC wide latitude in interpreting its regulatory role. In the latest court ruling that upheld the FCC’s deregulation of broadband and the repeal of net neutrality, the court said that the FCC had the authority to deregulate broadband since the agency could point to Congressional laws that supported that position. However, the court noted that the FCC could just as easily have adopted almost the opposite position, as had been done by the Tom Wheeler FCC, since there was also Congressional language that supports regulating broadband. The court said that an agency like the FCC is only required to find language in Congressional rules that support whatever position they take. Over the years there have been enough conflicting rules from Congress to give the FCC a lot of flexibility in interpreting Congressional intent.

It’s clear that the FCC still has to regulate carriers, which is why landline telephone service is still regulated. In killing Title II regulation, the FCC went through legal gymnastics to declare that broadband is an ‘information service’ and not a carrier service.

Companies like Facebook and Google are clearly also information services. This current FCC would be faced with a huge dilemma if they tried to somehow regulate companies like Facebook or Twitter. To do so would mean declaring that the agency has the authority to regulate information service providers – a claim that would be impossible to make without also reasserting jurisdiction over ISPs and broadband.

The bottom line is that the FCC could assert some limited form of jurisdiction over the web companies. However, the degree to which they could regulate them would be seriously restricted by the language in Section 230(c)(1). And any attempt to regulate the web companies would give major heartburn to FCC lawyers. It would force them to make a 180-degree turn from everything they’ve said and done about regulating broadband since Ajit Pai became Chairman.

The odds are pretty good that this concept will blow over because the FCC is likely to quietly resist any push to regulate web companies if that means they would have to reassert jurisdiction over information service providers. Of course, Congress could resolve this at any time by writing new bills that would explicitly regulate Google without regulating AT&T. But as long as we have a split Congress, that’s never going to happen.