Pai said in a speech Tuesday he needed to “cut through the confusion and hot air” about the engagement he unveiled last week to unwind the Obama-era rules that restrict broadband companies from controlling customers’ internet experience.
The Federal Communications Commission chairman maintained his plan as a return to a light administrative framework authorized by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s at the dawn of the commercial internet. Then he went on the charge against social media platform Twitter, attacking it and other, unnamed internet companies of censorship.
He argued that these corporations, rather than internet services providers, are the very threat to an open internet.
“Let’s not kid personally. When it happens to an open internet, Twitter is part of the problem,” Pai said at an event received by the R Street Institute in Washington. “The business has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.”
Twitter didn’t answer to a request for comment.
He also attacked fame who’ve taken to Twitter and other social media networks to analyze his new policy. He poked fun at actor Alyssa Milano’s tweet last week that said the FCC’s move puts democracy at risk. Milano, who starred with Tony Danza in the 1980s hit TV show “Who’s the Boss?” has supported for net neutrality in the past.
“I’m threatening our government? Really?” Pai quipped. “If this were ‘Who’s the Boss?’ this would be an occasion for Tony Danza to dish out some wisdom about the results of making things up.”
Pai’s attacks come as more than 200 companies, including Airbnb, Reddit and Twitter, have confirmed the agency to reconsider its repeal of net neutrality organizations. These companies say that dismantling the regulations would “put small and medium-sized industries at a disadvantage and prevent innovative new ones from even taking off the ground.”
Democratic lawmakers, like Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, as well as millions of citizens, have also come out firmly against a repeal.
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