Former US President Obama calls for technological regulation to combat false information on social media

Author | Yao Yongzhe

Former U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday that the spread of false information online is harming the United States and the technology industry needs to address the problem through regulation and legislation.

"The problem is the design of these platforms themselves," Obama said at an event at the Stanford Cyber ​​Policy Center. "They're taking us in the wrong direction."

At the same time as Obama made this initiative, the US Congress is also considering a series of reforms to control the power of the technology industry, including changes to competition laws, privacy protection laws, and "Provision 230" which protects platforms from liability to users despite content review.

The debate over Internet regulation has been raging in the US over the past few years, and Obama's stance has come as a surprise to some, given that his administration was not always friendly to the tech industry during his presidency.

Google reportedly had a close relationship with the White House during Obama's tenure. For example, according to meeting records released to the Technology Transparency Project, Obama met with Google employees hundreds of times at the White House.

"If I wasn't popular online, I probably wouldn't even be elected president. I surf the Internet, on MySpace, Meetup, Facebook, and I enable an army of volunteers to make money and spread the word online," Obama said. "That's why people elected me."

But the relationship between the U.S. government and big tech companies was far less tense then than it is now. Things have changed dramatically since former President Trump revealed Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal during his tenure.

Obama said he "does not believe that repealing Section 230 across the country is the answer." Biden, who served as Obama's running mate during his tenure, advocated for such a policy during his campaign, although most Democrats have not taken such an extreme stance.

Obama suggested a more measured approach should be taken. He said Congress should consider changes to the law and should "require platforms to have stricter standards for when they place ads on their sites."

"If structured properly, regulation can promote competition and prevent incumbent firms from becoming monopolies that block new innovative businesses from emerging," Obama said.

Many conservative lawmakers have accused social media of censoring based on ideology, though the platforms deny this and say they are simply enforcing their communities' guidelines.

"I'm very close to being a First Amendment absolutist," Obama said. "The First Amendment is a check on state power, and it doesn't apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter, or to news outlets like The New York Times or Fox News. Social media companies already make choices about what content is allowed on their platforms through their policies. Both through explicit algorithms for content moderation and through hidden algorithms. The problem is that we often don't know what principles ultimately govern those decisions."

Obama advocated for greater transparency in the design of technology platforms, likening the concept to proprietary meatpacking methods.

“They don’t have to show it to the world, but they do have to tell ‘meat inspectors,’ ” he said. “Similarly, tech companies should be able to protect their intellectual property while complying with national laws, not just the standards they dictate. This is more important for the big picture.”

Obama said Internet companies are not the only cause of social polarization.

"However, due to the growing dominance of social media platforms in the market and the emphasis on speed, they are accelerating the decline of newspapers and other traditional news sources," Obama said.

Obama acknowledged the difficulty of advancing legislation and spoke directly to technology companies and their employees.

“This is an opportunity for companies to do the right thing, and you’ll still make money, but you’ll feel better about it,” he said. “For the employees of these companies, this is an opportunity to push them to do the right thing. Because they’ve seen what’s going on out there and want to do better.”