According to former President Barack Obama, the 24-hour social media juggernaut is 'turbocharging some of humanity's darkest instincts.'
For all of its benefits, former President Barack Obama cautioned today that the internet and social media are "turbocharging some of humanity's darkest impulses" and filling the zone with disinformation that undermines our democracy.
During an address at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center, Obama said there has been a "profound change in how we interact and consume information." "The internet astounds me," he continued, "but our brains aren't used to processing this much data so quickly."
Conflict sells, according to Obama, and tech and social media corporations have a financial interest to keep people online and involved. "In reality, some of the most ridiculous information on the web comes from conventional media," he asserted, noting that Silicon Valley is not completely to blame. However, social media has hastened the demise of local news institutions, allowing less respectable charlatans like Steve Bannon and Vladimir Putin to fill the hole.
We lose our ability to discriminate between reality and fiction over time, according to Obama. "Or perhaps we simply stop caring."
Members of Congress who "know better" aren't helping matters, Obama added, citing GOP claims about the 2020 election and the Capitol insurgency on Jan. 6.
Obama is speaking out on this issue in part because of his personal "failure to fully appreciate [in 2016] just how susceptible we had become to lies and conspiracy theories, despite having spent years being a target of misinformation myself," he said, referring to former President Donald Trump's Birther conspiracy. "That was not done by Putin." He wasn't required to. We brought it upon ourselves."
And it can be dangerous, according to Obama, who cited the deaths of people who trusted fraudulent vaccination information, as well as unrest in Myanmar and Ethiopia caused by incorrect information distributed over Facebook. He stated, "People are dying as a result of disinformation."
Obama made several general proposals for combating the problem, including revisions to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act; "a reasonable regulatory structure has to be in place," he added, noting that partisanship in Congress may block efforts rapidly.