The Scoop
A leading critic of Big Tech will take the top legal position at a key agency that could target Google, Meta, and their rivals.
Adam Candeub, an architect of a late effort in Trump’s first term to revoke legal protections for social media, will be general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, its chairman, Brendan Carr, confirmed in an email to Semafor.
“Adam is a rare talent — he has fought fearlessly against Big Tech censorship and has had a successful career both as an effective telecom litigator and academic,” Carr said. “He will be an indispensable asset both to me and the FCC as we deliver great results for the American people.”
Candeub, a previously obscure academic at Michigan State University Law School, rose to prominence amid the social media wars of the last decade: 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.
Candeub served as acting head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, where he pressed the FCC — where he will now be working — to narrow those protections around moderating content, in particular. That effort fizzled with Trump’s defeat, but Candeub told Politico last year that he was “certainly hoping” Trump would revive the project.
“It has nothing to do with being anyone’s censor. It’s about establishing normal rules of liability that every other business in the world has to deal with,” Candeub told Politico.
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Ben’s view
Big tech CEOs have swiveled to win Trump’s favor, with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai appearing prominently at the president’s inauguration. But Trump’s appointments suggest their presence and donations may not actually have turned the tide of a political movement that’s profoundly skeptical of their power (except, perhaps, when it’s being used by X owner Elon Musk for Trump’s benefit).
Trump nominated Gail Slater, a big tech critic who has been an adviser to JD Vance in the Senate and a top lawyer at Fox and Roku, to the crucial role leading the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice. If confirmed, she will inherit a federal lawsuit aimed at breaking Google’s dominance in search.
And Candeub has become central to the broad legal attack on the power of social media companies more generally. He wrote a chapter for the Trump Administration blueprint Project 2025 on the Federal Trade Commission, outlining a “broader” view of anti-trust law that has more in common with the Biden Administration than with traditional Republican approaches.
“Antitrust law can combat dominant firms’ baleful effects on democratic institutions such as free speech, the marketplace of ideas, shareholder control, and managerial accountability as well as collusive behavior with government,” he wrote. Targets he suggested include the corporate ESG movement and children’s use of social media.
Room for Disagreement
Critics of Candeub’s approach see it as imposing new regulations on private tech companies, and opening a new way for the government to regulate speech. “Rather than fighting one type of speech coercion with another, we can enforce the First Amendment, and prevent both,” George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin wrote in Reason.
Correction: An earlier version of this item misidentified the author of this criticism.
Notable
- Candeub’s Project 2025 role raised some eyebrows at Michigan State, The State News reported. “Overall, as a professor, I liked him. But I do know that his politics are kind of insane,” one student said.
- Much of the debate over Candeub’s arguments has taken place on the right, including inside the Federalist Society.