BENTON, La. – There’s a bit of a kerfuffle going on right now in relation to a video circulating on social media of our esteemed, recently elected Speaker of the House, in which Mike Johnson discusses his use of “Covenant Eyes.”
While Covenant Eyes might sound like a type of contact lens crafted from the foreskin trimmed off baby penises, it’s not. Covenant Eyes is “accountability software” that’s apparently popular among people who believe it’s against the Will of God to look at porn – but who also know that there will be times when, if they’re being honest with themselves, their desire to watch someone suck dick might seem momentarily more important to them than the Will of God.
“Covenant Eyes is the software we’ve been using a long time in our household,” Johnson tells the audience in the video, which according to media reports was shot in 2022 at an event titled “War on Technology,” held at Cypress Baptist Church in Benton, Louisiana, where Johnson lives. “I first learned about it I think at a Promise Keepers event in the early 2000s, or about the year 2000. It’s the largest accountability software that there is.”
After noting that the software is “subscription-based,” Johnson assured the crowd he wasn’t being compensated for his endorsement. “We don’t make any money on this; we use it. I’m endorsing this because I’m a user.”
Johnson then gives his explanation for how the software works.
“You obviously opt-in to it, but it scans all the activity on your phone — or your devices, your laptop, or what have you, we do all of it — and it sends a report to your accountability partner,” Johnson says. “My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son, right? And so, he’s 17, so he and I get a report of all the things that are on our phones, or all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell you my son has a clean slate.”
In the video, Johnson does not say whether he, too, has “a clean slate.” But he does provide a bit more detail about the user experience, which is where things get interesting (to me, at least).
“But we get a report and it says ‘hey no activity of concern’ and it’s really sensitive, it picks up almost anything, it looks for key words, search terms and also images, and it will send your accountability partner a blurred picture of the image. So, on occasion I get one — I was just looking at the one from this week that I got on Jack and it said ‘this is the only one that might be questionable’ and it’s this blurred image of two women talking in a livestream thing, and I zoom in and I have to unblur it, it’s two middle-aged teachers…” (emphasis added).
At that point, the video cuts off. Several things stand out to me here, not the least of which is the part bolded above. If I correctly understand what MAGA Mike is saying, the reports sent out by the Covenant Eyes software default to a blurred version of ‘suspect’ images, but also enables the recipient of the report to “zoom in and unblur it,” as Johnson describes doing with the then-recent report about his son’s devices.
If this is true, and you’re also the sort of person who thinks viewing porn does terrible damage to young minds (I think it’s safe to say MAGA Mike is such a person), maybe having an accountability buddy who is under 18 is not the greatest idea?
Let’s suppose for a second that MAGA Mike’s own reports have not been a “clean slate,” as he describes his son’s reports to be. It wouldn’t necessarily need to be the case that the Speaker intended to look at porn – after all, anti-porn folks are always telling us how easy and dadgum common it is to stumble across smutty stuff accidentally – because presumably the unknowable intent of the original viewer isn’t taken into consideration by the Covenant Eyes algorithm.
Call me crazy, but if I believed porn was ruinous to young minds, and I knew that my chosen accountability software sends reports that can be unblurred by the recipient to enable viewing the underlying content, my first choice as an accountability partner probably wouldn’t be a minor.
Just sayin’, Mike.
The other part of this that bothers me is the part I put in italics; we never get to hear what went down between these two middle-aged teachers to trigger the software in the first place! Presumably, whatever happened was SFW, since we already know Jack’s reports show a clean slate. But WHY did Covenant Eyes flag this livestream featuring two middle-aged teachers? Were they talking about sex? Did one of them refer to herself as a MILF? Did the content of their conversation contain some of this “grooming” Republican politicians are always warning us about?
Sadly, we’ll probably never find out, since MAGA Mike seems to have tried to memory hole this clip to begin with and likely won’t be eager to discuss it in the future. I’m not sure that’s how “accountability” works in the context of being Speaker of the House, but hey – Mike never agreed to make the media or the public his accountability partner, right?
