The former president of the United States believes that social networks are responsible for “weakening democracies” and advocates regulation of platforms.
He knows that without social networks he would not have been elected, but today calls for them to be regulated. Former US President Barack Obama made a speech on Thursday accusing the major platforms of vastly amplifying “humanity’s worst instincts”.
“One of the main causes of the weakening of democracies is the profound change in the way we communicate and inform,” he told students at Stanford, the university in the heart of Silicon Valley, in California.
‘This should be our alarm bell to respond’
The former White House tenant has elaborated on the phenomenon of disinformation, especially around Covid-19.
“Despite the fact that we have now tested the vaccine on billions of people around the world. About one in five Americans puts themselves at risk instead of getting vaccinated,” he says before launching: “People die from misinformation.”
Barack Obama blamed himself for not sufficiently realizing “how receptive we had become to lies and conspiracy theories” before the election of Donald Trump, who succeeded him.
“Putin didn’t do this. We didn’t have to. We did this to ourselves,” he added, referring to the voter manipulation campaigns organized from Russia.
“We just saw a sitting president deny clear election results and help fuel a violent uprising against the nation’s capital,” he said, referring to Donald Trump. who failed to recognize Joe Biden’s victory in late 2020, and who encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021. “This should be our alarm bell to respond.”
“We can control them”
Barack Obama, therefore, called for a reform of the laws that apply to social networks so that they are more accountable and transparent, explaining that at the core of disinformation the problem was less “what people publish” than “the content these promote platforms”.
Proof, he says, that they are not “neutral” and that the algorithms should be subject to safety checks by a regulatory authority, in the same way as cars, food and other consumer products.
He then elaborated a set of values that he believes should guide the moderation of the content, such as strengthening democracy and respecting differences. “The tools don’t control us. We can control them,” he concluded.
