Former US President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks at the 2021 climate summit in Glasgow on November 8, 2021. NBC News reports Obama will return to the White House on Tuesday for the first time since. since he left office to promote the Affordable Care Act during an event alongside President Joe Biden.
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Former President Barack Obama said on Thursday that the spread of misinformation online is harming American democracy and that the tech industry needs regulation and legislation to tackle it.
“It’s the design of these platforms that seems to be leading us in the wrong direction,” Obama said at a Stanford Cyber Policy Center event.
The comments come as Congress considers a series of reforms aimed at curbing the power of the tech industry, including competition laws, privacy protections and changes to the so-called regulatory shield Section 230, allows content moderation but also protects the platform from liability to users’ articles.
It’s a debate that has raged in Washington over the past few years. Obama’s position is notable because his administration is now seen by many reform advocates as tech-friendly. Google believed to have close ties to Obama’s White House, for example, met hundreds of times with staffers, according to a review of meeting records published by Technology transparency project.
“I could never have been elected president without sites like – and I’m dating myself – MySpace, Meetup and Facebookthat allows an army of young volunteers to organize a fundraiser, spreading our message,” Obama said. That’s what elected me. “
But relations between Washington and Silicon Valley were less tense at the time. Things changed dramatically in 2016, after the vote of Donald Trump as chairman and revealed Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Obama said he “doesn’t believe that wholesale repeal of Section 230 is the answer.” President Joe Bidenwho was Obama’s vice president, support such a policy in his campaign towards the White House, although most Democrats have taken less extreme positions.
Obama is taking a calculated approach. He said that Congress should consider reforms to the law and that platforms should “be required to have a higher standard of care when it comes to advertising on their websites.”
“If properly structured, regulation can boost competition and keep incumbents from freezing new innovators,” Obama said.
Many conservative lawmakers have accused social media companies of ideological censorship, although the platforms have denied this and say they are simply enforcing their community guidelines. surname. Obama pointed out that arguments for free speech have serious limitations.
“I’m pretty close to being a First Amendment tyrant,” Obama said. “The First Amendment is a test of the power of the state. It does not apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter, more than it applies to editorial decisions made by the New York Times or Fox News. Never have. Social media companies have made choices about what is or isn’t allowed on their platforms and how that content appears. Both explicitly through content moderation and implicitly through algorithms. The problem is that we often don’t know what principles govern those decisions. “
‘Tell the meat inspector’
Obama advocated increased transparency around the design of technology platforms, likening the concept to a proprietary method of encapsulation.
“They don’t have to tell the world what the technique is. They have to tell the meat inspector,” he said. “In the same way, technology companies must be able to protect their intellectual property while also following certain safety standards that we as a country, not just them, have established. consent is necessary for the greater good.”
Obama says internet companies are not solely responsible for the polarization that is ripping through society.
“What social media platforms have done, thanks to their growing market dominance and focus on speed, is accelerating the decline of newspapers and other sources,” he said. other traditional news”.
Obama directly appealed to technology companies and their employees, acknowledging the difficulty of making legislation.
“It’s an opportunity for companies to do the right thing. You’ll still make money, but you’ll feel better,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for the employees of those companies to push them to do the right thing. Because you’ve seen what’s out there and you want to feel better.”
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