Vice President Harris to head new Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris will convene the first meeting of a new federal task force called the "White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse."

According to an official White House "fact sheet," the task force will respond "to the need for government leadership to address online harms, which disproportionately affect women, girls, people of color, and LGBTQI+ individuals."

This task force's goal and intention has similarities to the failed Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board which was eponymously called the "Ministry of Truth."

The historically unpopular Vice President Harris is adding leadership of the task force to her growing list of assignments from the White House, which has included finding ways to fix illegal immigration.

The task force's launch this afternoon will center around Vice President Harris hosting a "survivor and expert" roundtable.

According to The Hill, some of those attendees include Attorney General Merrick Garland, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Sloane Stephens, a tennis player who received mean-spirited messages on social media after she exited the US Open.

According to the official White House memorandum on the task force, The Director of the White House Gender Policy Council and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs will be the task force's co-chairs.

The articulation of the task force's goals include "enhancing and expanding data collection and research across the Federal Government to measure the costs, prevalence, exposure to, and impact of technology-facilitated gender-based violence."

Expanding the government's ability to collect reservoirs of data on its citizens was one of the former Disinformation Board's goals as well.

Another intention of the task force is "developing programs and policies to address the disproportionate impact of online harassment, abuse, and disinformation campaigns targeting women and LGBTQI+ individuals who are public and political figures." They did not clarify the measuring principle for "disproportionate impact."

The task force cited "the tragic events in Buffalo and Uvalde" as reasons for the task forces creation because "the internet can fuel hate, misogyny, and abuse with spillover effects that threaten our communities and safety offline."

The task force has been given 180 days to provide recommendations for how America, from the federal government down to individual citizens, can better comply with their standards of behavior. They didn't specify any one platform they were analyzing but rather that they were just looking at all types of online "illegal conduct."