A clip of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) promoting an app that allows “accountability partners” to monitor one another’s phone and computer usage to make sure they’re not watching porn has resurfaced on social media.
During a conversation on the “War on Technology” hosted at a Louisiana church in 2022, Johnson said that Covenant Eyes is the software that “we’ve been using a long time in our household.”
According to Covenant Eyes’ website, the technology “helps you and the ones you love live porn-free through transformative accountability relationships” and has had over 1.5 million users.
“I’m endorsing it because I’m a user,” Johnson said in the old clip. “It’s about $15 a month, $16 a month, something like that and you get up to 10 devices.”
He added that men’s bible study groups will use it for accountability, but that it’s also marketed for parents of teenagers and that he was using it with his then-17-year-old son, Jack.
“He and I get a report of all the things that are on our phones or all of our devices once a week,” Johnson said of his son being his accountability partner. “If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell you my son, he’s got a clean slate alright.”
The clip prompted a variety of jokes and memes, as well as concerns about the security of the House Speaker’s data.
“A US Congressman is allowing a 3rd Party tech company to scan ALL of his electronic devices daily and then uploading reports to his son about what he’s watching or not watching…. I mean, who else is accessing that data?” wrote the user who resurfaced the clip.
“Kelly Johnson’s phone right now:” wrote another user with a meme of a fake image of a Covenant Eyes report stating Johnson had logged into Grindr.
“This is how roadside adult dvd and mag stores stay in business,” wrote another X user.
Johnson’s past promotion of Covenant Eyes is being scrubbed from his pages, according to progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen.
The scrubbing follows Johnson’s wife similarly taking down a website advertising her counseling services following a HuffPost report detailing documents on the site that compared homosexuality to bestiality and incest.
