As President Trump’s second administration is taking shape, his picks for various key positions are expectedly coming under scrutiny, with the choice of the surgeon general nominee causing particular interest.
The nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, has in the past defended issues like digital ID, and online age verification, but also even Big Tech’s – specifically Facebook’s – censorship around Covid topics.
None of this is sitting well with some Trump supporters, who are now outright calling Nesheiwat “a bad choice.”
As recently as in March and July of this year, Nesheiwat appeared on Fox News to call for teens and young children to be banned from social platforms (the contentious question here is rarely the intent, but rather the method, namely using digital ID for age verification).
In March, she defended Florida House Bill (HB 3), mentioning the usual accusations that the internet represents a serious threat to young people’s mental health, but also life, in a plethora of ways.
Other than endorsing HB 3, which bans minors younger than 14 and seeks parental consent for those under 16 to be able to use social networks, Nesheiwat also called for more “awareness” and involvement by parents – as a way to help manage the “challenges” of enforcing this, and other laws, such as the federal COPPA rule.
In July, the doctor linked the issues of mass shootings, what she referred to as “just lunatics,” mental disorders, caused or fueled by substance abuse, and “obsession with violence” among the youth – and managed to wrap the argument up by bringing in social media.
“I think social media should be banned to all teenagers, to all young children, because it’s done nothing but harm,” she told Fox News at the time.
Insisting on such “solutions” is often a way for governments to pander to the constituents that they at the same time fail to inform about the consequences of online age verification, and those are invasive methods that seriously undermine everyone’s privacy – and security.
As for the Covid lockdowns-era, the likely new US surgeon general was once again on Fox, where she is a contributor, to not only laud Facebook’s approach to censorship of “anti-vaccine disinformation” (that targeted RFK Jr., among many others) but to encourage other platforms to act the same way.
