The Biden Administration's latest social innovation, the "Disinformation Governance Board," has concerned plenty of free speech advocates. On Capitol Hill this week, US Rep. Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL) compared the new policy to communist countries and attempted to block the board.
"Communist China has the state council of information office to fight what they consider disinformation. Cuba has the institute of information and social communications. Venezuela has the strategic center for security and protection of the homeland, sounds pretty familiar," said Representative Balart at a committee hearing.
Diaz Balart called these institutions in foreign nations, "equivalent," to each other and paralleled them with the proposed Disinformation Governance Board. The representative stated, "Now we see that this administration wants the Disinformation Governance Board."
During an Appropriations committee markup last week, I offered an amendment that would block any establishment of DHS’s “Disinformation Governance Board.” Sadly, House Democrats rejected this amendment. https://t.co/ZzzyOAvwqJ
— Mario Diaz-Balart (@MarioDB) June 28, 2022
The Rep. Diaz-Balart moved to pass an amendment that would block the Department of Homeland Security from instituting the Disinformation Governance Board, but was rejected by House Democrats.
The dispute is evidence of an all out culture war ensuing in the US. The idea of the disinformation board came after billionaire Elon Musk acquired Twitter with the intention of cleaning up fake accounts and promoting unrestricted speech on the platform that has essentially become the modern public square.
A new audit of Twitter has uncovered that almost half (49.3%) of Biden's followers are artificial, making plenty conservative voters believe that true public discourse is being masked by the hypocrisy of the Biden Administration. This has also led to the institution of former President Donald Trump's new social media endeavor, Truth Social.
After seeing the former President Trump face permanent censorship on various social media platforms, a debate on what free speech means is bound to have some sort of effect on GOP voters in the up and coming 2022 elections. Florida has even passed legislation to combat corporations from banning candidates on their platforms.
