During a speech to Stanford students, former US President Barack Obama explained that social networks were responsible for “the weakening of democracies” and called for platform regulation.
This Thursday, April 21, 2022, in front of students at Stanford University in California, Barack Obama was not kind to companies in Silicon Valley. The conference, focusing on the influence of social networks, was an opportunity for the former President of the United States to plead for the regulation of large platforms, arguing that “people are dying because of misinformation”.
This sentence made particular reference to the vaccine campaign carried out all over the world to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. “Despite the fact that we have now tested the vaccine on billions of people around the world, approximately one in five Americans puts themselves at risk rather than get vaccinated”he said.
Barack Obama believes that social networks have amplified “humanity’s worst instincts” and “one of the major causes of the weakening of democracies is the profound change [survenu] in our ways of communicating and informing ourselves”. It’s hard not to draw a parallel with the political campaigns of Donald Trump, the last of which ended with the dramatic events that took place on Capitol Hill. Be that as it may, Barack Obama recognizes that part of his own elections was played out on platforms like Facebook.
“It’s content that’s inflammatory, polarizing, grabs attention and drives engagement”
“We just saw a sitting president deny clear election results and help incite a violent insurgency against the nation’s capitalsaid Barack Obama. This must be our alarm bell to react”. The former head of state also castigated the algorithms of the major platforms, which, according to him, promote violent content: “Unfortunately, it is content that is inflammatory, polarizing, grabs attention and encourages participation”.
All evidence, he said, that it is time for the United States to reform the laws that govern social networks so that they are more responsible and more transparent.