Charly Triballeau / EPA
Donald Trump
Measure detailed in a State Department memo orders the denial of visas to any candidate involved in “censorship”. The alleged “censors” that Donald Trump objectively intends to censor are fact checkers and content moderators.
The Trump administration will formalize a tightening of rules on granting visas to people it considers to have participated in the “censorship of freedom of expression” of US citizens.
The measure, described in a State Department memo sent this week to diplomatic missions abroad, first reported by and then by , orders consular officials to refuse visas to any candidate “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected speech in the United States”.
The order, which State Department officials have not denied, requires a enhanced candidate verifications “to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as disinformationintentional disinformation, content moderation, fact checking, compliance and online security, among others”, according to Reuters.
The measure will initially focus on applicants for H-1B visas, generally assigned to highly qualified foreign workers in the technology industry, among other sectors, but it is applicable to all orders visa, the news agency added.
The directive is the latest in a series of decisions by Donald Trump to restrict legal immigration to the US through the consular route, and gives substance to a promise made in May by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to prevent entry into the country of anyone seen as responsible for suppressing freedom of expression “essential to the American way of life.”
In a post on Network X at the time, Rubio wrote: “Foreigners who work to undermine the rights of Americans should not enjoy the privilege of traveling to our country. Whether in Latin America or Europe or elsewhere, the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.”
According to NPR, which indicates that the memo was sent to US offices abroad last Tuesday, diplomats are instructed to refuse visas to anyone who has worked on fact-checkingcontent moderation “or other activities that the Trump administration considers ‘censorship’ of Americans’ freedom of expression.”
Officials should scrutinize the employment history of applicants to enter the U.S. for clues, including analyze your LinkedIn profiles and other social networks, and look for references in press articles to “activities that include ccombat disinformation, intentional disinformation or false narratives, content moderation, compliance and trust and safety”.
If evidence emerges that leads the screener to conclude that the candidate has been involved in “censorship activities”, they should seek to reach the conclusion that the applicant is ineligible for a visa,” the memo reads.
Despite having the support of several tycoons of technology companies, Trump has been pointing out the sector as a target for criticism and reprisals for having been banned from platforms such as Twitter and Facebook at the time, following , on January 6, 2021.
Many H-1B visa applicantsmainly from India, work in the area of technology, part of which involves moderating content on social networks.
“I worry that or work of trust and safety is being confused with censorship,” he told NPR Alice Goguen Hunsbergervice-president of trust and safety at the outsourcing company.
“The work of trust and safety is a broad practice that includes critical and life-saving tasks such as protect children and stop sexual abuse content of minors, as well as prevent fraud, scams and sexual extortion. Having global teams at technology companies dedicated to trust and safety undoubtedly makes Americans safer,” adds Hunsberger.
After contact from , a State Department spokesperson stated that “although we do not comment on allegedly released documents, there is no doubt: the Administration defends freedom of expression of Americans against foreigners who want to censor them. We do not support foreigners coming to the US to work as censors who muzzle Americans.
“In the past, the President himself was a victim of this type of abuse when social media companies blocked their accounts. He doesn’t want other Americans to suffer the same. Allowing foreigners to conduct this type of censorship would be both an insult and a harm to the American people.”
Trump probably has good reasons to want to censor fact-checkers, who, in dystopian world of its alternative truthscalls “censors”.
In July 2017, Mashable almost 1000 tweets published by Donald Trump in the first six months of his first term, and concluded that the American president had .
At the same time, The Washington Post published the complete list of lies said by Trump since he came to power. In total, the TWP counted 181 lies, an average of 4.6 lies per day.
In May of this year, TWP created Fact Checker, a digital database in which it gathers the US president’s misleading statements – since the “pace and volume of false or erroneous statements makes it impossible to follow them in any other way”, explained the North American newspaper.
O site still exists and is accessiblehaving accounted, in four years of Trump’s first term, 30,573 false or misleading statements. Its last update is from January 20, 2021, the date of the inauguration of Trump’s then successor, Joe Biden.
This term, The Washington Post decided not to create a fact checker to account for Trump’s false or misleading claims. Maybe it’s because your servers lack the processing capacity to handle the work; perhaps because its owner, Jeff Bezos is now on the president’s side.
