Former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D) suggested that former President Barack Obama is behind the Biden administration’s creation of the Disinformation Governance Board.
“Biden is just a front man. Obama, April 21: social media censors ‘don’t go far enough,’ so the government needs to step in to do the job. Six days later, Homeland Security rolls out the ‘Ministry of Truth’ (aka Disinformation Governance Board),” Gabbard tweeted.
Gabbard, a Democrat, cited Obama’s remarks at Stanford University last week calling on social media platforms to ramp up censorship of political speech he doesn’t like, characterizing the infringement of free speech as “content moderation.”
“Now the good news is that almost all the big tech platforms now acknowledge some responsibility for content on their platforms, and they’re investing in large team of people to monitor it,” Obama said during the speech. “Given the sheer volume of content, this strategy can feel like a game of Whac-A-Mole.”
“But while content moderation can limit the distribution of clearly dangerous content, it doesn’t go far enough,” Obama added.
The Department of Homeland Security’s announcement of the Disinformation Governance Board last week drew widespread condemnation from Republicans, who claimed the board would attempt to limit free speech now that Elon Musk took Twitter out of the hands of the establishment.
The blowback prompted DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to do damage control on CNN Sunday.
“Those criticisms are precisely the opposite of what this small working group within the Department of Homeland Security will do,” Mayorkas said. “And I think we probably could have done a better job of communicating what it does and does not do.”
“The fact is that disinformation that creates a threat to the security of the homeland is our responsibility to address. And this department has been addressing it for years,” he added.