A former FEC chairwoman who favored censoring conservative outlets is now calling for a sweeping national plan to silence vaccine and mask critics and a “disinformation” czar to oversee it all from the liberal Biden White House.
The goal spelled out in the plan, pushed by former Democratic Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ann Ravel, is to kibosh the many conservative voices questioning anti-COVID policies on social media.
In the write-up of the plan, published by CNN, Ravel and Kristin Urquiza cited only conservatives who have questioned the widespread use of masks, including Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, and Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“Disinformation and misinformation about masks, vaccines and other COVID-19-related topics has been spreading like wildfire across social media,” wrote Ravel, the digital deception project director at MapLight, and Urquiza, co-founder of Marked by COVID.
The duo noted that while Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms have temporarily suspended some conservative accounts over comments on the coronavirus, more needs to be done so that contrarian viewpoints do not see the light of day.
“With more than 600,000 people lost to COVID in the U.S. and case numbers surging yet again, fighting disinformation is critical to ending the pandemic and decreasing health disparities for generations to come,” they wrote.
Their plan is for Biden to name a chief disinformation officer who would presumably police social media. “To begin, the Biden-Harris administration should create a coordinated national response and appoint a disinformation expert to the COVID-19 task force, as a diverse coalition of public interest groups urged in a letter last year,” they demanded.
And they want the Democrat-controlled Congress to force social media platforms to get in line.
Social media companies in their plan would also have to clear COVID-related comments of those with a substantial following. That’s over 50,000 on Twitter, they wrote. That wouldn’t include Ravel, who despite her very public voice only has 8,010 Twitter followers.
Those posts would be “subjected to a pre-clearance policy in which the content can be fact-checked before it’s posted online.”
And they called for a European Union-styled overseer to which the social media giants would present a monthly report on their work shutting down voices of doubt on the virus.
“There isn’t a silver bullet to eliminate the COVID-19 disinformation that has become so prominent online, so we need social media companies and our government to do everything they can to chip away at the problem. Until then, online conspiracy theories and lies will continue to impact all of us while serving as powerful fuel for one of the most deadly viruses in modern history,” they concluded.
