Nina Jankowicz, the chair of the new Disinformation Governance Board in the Department of Homeland Security, wanted Facebook to censor Breitbart News, joining the left’s calls for Silicon Valley to censor conservative news outlets in 2019.
Jankowicz, 33, whose past statements (and songs) came under scrutiny after her new job became widely known this week, once promoted the “Russia collusion” conspiracy theory, and denied in 2020 that Hunter Biden’s laptop was authentic.
She has also called for increased regulation of free speech on social media, calling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s speech at Georgetown University on free expression “unfortunate,” and protested against the inclusion of Breitbart on the platform:
THREAD. For the past month I've been mostly focused on Ukraine-related news. There's been no shortage of tech news, however, and at times I have felt like I might not recognize the Internet when I got back to it.
— Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) October 28, 2019
Now that I've caught up, it's clear not much has changed. 1/
Last week Facebook announced positive changes it is making to the platform ahead of the 2020 elections. Increased page transparency and more aggressive labeling of misleading content are two moves I think are really important and overdue. https://t.co/QZkiM7M6QA
— Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) October 28, 2019
But… 2/
…these changes were announced in the same news-breath as Zuckerberg's unfortunate free expression speech at Georgetown and revelations that Breitbart will be part of Facebook News, the platform's subsidized news scheme that will deliver "trusted" content to users. 3/
— Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) October 28, 2019
Left-wing groups have pushed for boycotts of Breitbart News since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, and efforts to silence independent conservative outlets continue in Congress, notably in the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA).
Jancowicz also suggested that Breitbart News repeated “Russian state-sponsored media” in her 2020 book, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict. She provided no evidence in the book for her claim.
