Social Media Regulation through the Bureaucracy

Since the 2016 election, the CEOs of major tech companies Google, Twitter, and Facebook have been reporting consistently to the Senate Judiciary Committee over issues regarding censorship and misinformation on their platforms. The main legislative reform that has been proposed at these hearings is reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which protects social media platforms from legal liability for things posted on their platform. However, just last month, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission Ajit Pai issued a statement stating he was considering issuing an interpretation of Section 230 to address the concerns of government officials. This statement and the actions of Congress in regards to regulating big tech companies shows the conflict between the congressional dominance and autonomous agent theories

The FCC is reliant on Congress for its budget. Although Pai has not been specific on what his interpretation would be, the prevailing sentiment on both sides of Congress is for some sort of Section 230 reform. The fact that Pai as a lone bureaucrat has the power to change the interpretation of Section 230 and hasn't shows that he is under congressional control in waiting for a more specific recommendation to come down from Congress. However, the fact that he is indeed coming out in support of the specific policy solution proposed by Congress, general Section 230 reform, shows that he is indeed acting as an autonomous agent seeking to maximize his bureaucracy's budget by agreeing with the people who approve his budget. I would argue in this situation Congress is exerting more control than the bureaucratic agent, but it will be interesting to see who determines how these social media companies are regulated.