Nina Jankowicz, the executive director of the Department of Homeland Security’s newly established Disinformation Governance Board, recently suggested that verified Twitter users be granted the ability edit others’ tweets if they deem them misleading.
“There are a lot of people who shouldn’t be verified, who aren’t legit, in my opinion. I mean, they’re real people but they aren’t trustworthy,” began Jankowicz, who went on to propose that verified users be able to “essentially edit Twitter… by add[ing] context to certain tweets,” Jankowicz said in a video obtained by The Post Millenial.
“If President [Donald] Trump were still on Twitter and tweeted a claim about voter fraud, someone could add context from one of the 60 lawsuits that went through the court or something that an election official,” explained Jankowicz.
It’s unclear how Jankowicz would differentiate between trustworthy and untrustworthy verified accounts.
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla presently in the process of purchasing Twitter, responded to the clip by calling it “disconcerting.”
“Don’t Diss Information,” he added later.
Both the establishment of the Board and Jankowicz’s appointment at its head have drawn considerable criticism, with detractors concerned by the potential weaponization of the body, especially in the hands of a partisan like Jankowicz.
In a book published earlier this year, How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back, Jankowicz purports to have performed “rigorous research into the treatment of Kamala Harris,” using it “to provide a step-by-step plan for dealing with harassment, abuse, doxing and disinformation in online spaces.”
Notably, Jankowicz, who is verified on Twitter, has been a source of disinformation, including on the platform. In 2020, Jankowicz promoted Christopher Steele, the author of the discredited Trump-Russia dossier, as an authoritative source on disinformation, and cast doubt on the validity of the since-confirmed Hunter Biden laptop story, arguing that it should be treated as “a Trump campaign product.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last month that she did not have “any information about this individual.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted in a recent Congressional hearing that he was unaware of Jankowicz’s online commentary.
* Article from: The National Review
