Back from the Dead: Senate Democrats Urge FCC to Reinstate 'Net Neutrality'

Twenty-seven Senate Democrats have written a letter urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reinstate Title II common carrier regulations on internet service providers, a regulatory move marketed to the public as “net neutrality,” little more than two weeks after the Biden White House appointed a new commissioner to the agency.

The FCC has had an extended 2-2 deadlock between Republican and Democrat commissioners until this month, due to the White House’s repeated failed attempts to confirm a partisan progressive, Gigi Sohn, to the agency. The administration eventually relented, withdrawing Sohn’s nomination and submitting a new candidate, Anna Gomez, who was confirmed by a Senate vote earlier this month.

The law of common carriage, mandated by the Title II regulations demanded by Democrats, is one of the solutions recommended by Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas to address tech censorship. Yet Democrats want the rule applied to service providers, which are not in the habit of kicking off internet users for their political viewpoints, while not recommending similar regulations on the companies and platforms that are actually responsible for suppressing online discourse over the past five years — companies like Google, YouTube, Twitter/X, and Facebook.

It’s unsurprising the Democrats, who have been at the forefront of calls for online platforms to censor so-called “misinformation,” would exempt those platforms from their demands for “Net Neutrality.” But it will be harder to persuade the public that the measures are necessary to preserve a “free and open internet.”