Diogenes
Nemo me impune lacessit
The Biden-Harris Transition Team is formulating the incoming Administration's policy on hate speech and disinformation, which will be implemented by Executive Order in January, 2021.
We are painfully aware that bad actors who hide behind Internet anonymity weaken our society. For example, in the prelude to the stolen 2016 election, Russia’s Internet Research Agency planted false stories on multiple platforms like this one, hoping they would go viral. They did. Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread lies, all supposedly protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The Russians believe that our free press and its undoubted balance and fairness will continue to enable Moscow to slip destructive ideas into our national consciousness.
Well, no more!
Discredited outlets that advocate or disseminate inaccurate information will find themselves sanctioned, and if need be, will be subject to punitive administrative action, including fines and/or loss of access to the Internet and the airwaves.
The Internet will be cleaned up under the Biden-Harris Administration. As leading Constitutional scholars like former President Barack Obama know, the framers of the First Amendment could not have envisioned a world where harmful lies and dangerous ideas could be spread so widely.
Therefore, one of the most important priorities of the new Administration will be to clamp down on all disinformation.
The universally respected members of the International Fact-checking Organization will become the official advisors to the Biden-Harris Administration.
Their bias-free and impartial membership includes such stalwart, non-partisan sources as-
Inflammatory and false speech undermines the values that the First Amendment was designed to protect: fairness, due process, equality before the law.
In addition to federal policy updates, the Biden-Harris Administration is working with state governments to formulate standardized hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
All speech is not equal. When truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.
We are painfully aware that bad actors who hide behind Internet anonymity weaken our society. For example, in the prelude to the stolen 2016 election, Russia’s Internet Research Agency planted false stories on multiple platforms like this one, hoping they would go viral. They did. Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread lies, all supposedly protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The Russians believe that our free press and its undoubted balance and fairness will continue to enable Moscow to slip destructive ideas into our national consciousness.
Well, no more!
Discredited outlets that advocate or disseminate inaccurate information will find themselves sanctioned, and if need be, will be subject to punitive administrative action, including fines and/or loss of access to the Internet and the airwaves.
The Internet will be cleaned up under the Biden-Harris Administration. As leading Constitutional scholars like former President Barack Obama know, the framers of the First Amendment could not have envisioned a world where harmful lies and dangerous ideas could be spread so widely.
Therefore, one of the most important priorities of the new Administration will be to clamp down on all disinformation.
The universally respected members of the International Fact-checking Organization will become the official advisors to the Biden-Harris Administration.
Their bias-free and impartial membership includes such stalwart, non-partisan sources as-
- Snopes
- Factcheck.org
- Politifact
- The American Press Institute
Inflammatory and false speech undermines the values that the First Amendment was designed to protect: fairness, due process, equality before the law.
In addition to federal policy updates, the Biden-Harris Administration is working with state governments to formulate standardized hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
All speech is not equal. When truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.