Obama points finger at tech companies for disinformation in major speech
by Rebecca Klar - 04/21/22 5:33 PM ET
Former President Obama placed blame on tech companies for failing to address the disinformation problem he said the industry has amplified during a speech Thursday at Stanford University.
The new information ecosystem, fueled by the rise of dominant social media platforms, is “turbocharging some of humanity’s worst impulses,” he said in the roughly hourlong speech.
“But not all problems we’re seeing now are an inevitable byproduct of this new technology. They’re also the result of very specific choices, made by the companies that have come to dominate the internet generally, and social media platforms in particular. Decisions that intentionally or not have made democracies more vulnerable,” he said.
Certain features, such as the “veil of anonymity” online, have compounded the problem, he said.
Obama highlighted the real-world impacts of the spread of disinformation, discussing the spread of false information about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, 2020 election conspiracies that fueled the violent riot at the Capitol last year and Russian disinformation campaigns leading up to the invasion of Ukraine.
“People like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and Steve Bannon for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing, that citizens no longer know what to believe,” Obama said. Bannon is a former strategist for former President Trump.
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https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3382803-obama-points-finger-at-tech-companies-for-disinformation-in-major-speech/