Responsibility for “weakening democracies” | Obama calls for control of social media

Speaking to students at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, he said: “One of the main reasons for the weakening of democracies is the drastic change in the way we communicate and communicate.

The Democratic leader acknowledged that he could not be “elected” without sites such as MySpace or Facebook, and talked about the beneficial work of raising awareness and mobilizing activists around the world through networks.

But he particularly described the reverse of the success of Facebook or YouTube, whose business model – large-scale targeted advertising – focused on the economy. “Unfortunately, this provocative, affirmative content attracts attention and promotes engagement from customers,” he noted.

The former head of state (2009-2017) also lived up to the phenomenon of misinformation and blamed himself for not adequately understanding “how much we accepted lies and conspiracy theories” before the election of his successor Donald Trump.

“Putin did not do that. He does not need to. We did it ourselves, ”he said, referring to voter manipulation campaigns orchestrated from Russia.

“We have just seen a sitting president reject clear election results and help incite a violent uprising against the nation’s capital,” he said, encouraging Donald Trump and his supporters not to recognize Joe Biden’s victory at the end of 2020. Before the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, many people had died.