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Bıdɛn Admin Signs Controversial Christchurch Pact to Push Censorship

Autumn Johnson
May 7th, 2021 7:53 PM
Text to Speech



The Bıdɛn administration signaled its intent to join an international agreement to stop “violent” extremism online.



The controversial agreement is named after the New Zealand city where a far-right gunman murdered 51 people in a mosque in 2019 while live-streaming the massacre on Facebook.
Whιte House press secretary Jen Psaki said the United States "will join the Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online, a global pledge by member governments and technology partners to work together to address terrorist and violent extremist content online."
The State Department released its own statement, saying that the opportunity to sign the agreement was “welcome.”
“We welcome the important momentum that the Christchurch Call has generated and look forward to continuing our work with government, technology sector partners, civil society, and other stakeholders to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting the Internet while protecting its openness, interoperability, reliability, and security.”
This news comes after the Bıdɛn administration announced that it would seek “outside firms” to monitor online extremism. A recent government bulletin also revealed that the United States Postal Service was quietly monitoring Americans’ social media posts.
President Tɾυmρ refused to support it, citing concerns that the agreement would inhibit free speech.
”We continue to be proactive in our efforts to counter terrorist content online while also continuing to respect freedom of expression and freedom of the press,” the Tɾυmρ administration said at the time. “Further, we maintain that the best tool to defeat terrorist speech is productive speech, and thus we emphasize the importance of promoting credible, alternative narratives as the primary means by which we can defeat terrorist messaging.”