Former President Barack Obama has claimed that the way people consume and share information is eroding democracy around the world, and he blamed the current information ecology, which is fueled by social media corporations, for “turbocharging some of humanity’s worst impulses”.
While speaking at Stanford University in Silicon Valley on April 21, Obama said technology corporations must be reined in to combat the “weakening of democratic institutions around the world”.
The former Democratic American President said: “One of the biggest reasons for the weakening of democracy is the profound change that’s taken place in how we communicate and consume information.”
The speech came at a time when Obama has increasingly focused his post-presidential messaging on misinformation and what should be done about big tech’s largely unchecked power. This week, his speech included manipulation of the US presidential elections as well as the rise of anti-vaccination sentiments.
“Some of the current challenges we face are inherent to a fully connected world. 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,” he added.
Obama said social media companies’ decisions regarding content moderation and the use of algorithms to rank posts “have made democracies more vulnerable”.
He also described the current period as “another tumultuous, dangerous moment in history,” linking widespread concerns about social media platforms to Russia’s 2016 election meddling and the country’s bloody invasion of Ukraine.
According to Obama: “People like Putin — and Steve Bannon for that matter — understand it’s not necessary for people to believe [misinformation] 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, plan enough conspiracy theorizing, that citizens no longer know what to believe,” he added.
“As Putin discovered leading up to the 2016 election, our own social media platforms are well designed to support such a mission…in the competition between truth and falsehood, cooperation and conflict, the very design of these platforms seem to be tilting us in the wrong direction. And we’re seeing the results,” he further added in his speech.
The former president acknowledged that social media companies must make money, but he expressed concern that “inflammatory and polarising” content attracts and engages users.
Many Americans, according to the former president, are unable to distinguish between a peer-reviewed article by Dr Anthony Fauci and a magical cure promoted by a “huckster”.
It is a fact that after the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO), on social media platforms, several fake news began to appear that included several false information regarding vaccines, Covid-19 cure, and even the source of the virus.
As per Obama, the pandemic is a perfect example of how “the very design of these platforms seems to be tilting us in the wrong direction”.
“Despite the fact that we have now essentially clinically tested the vaccine on billions of people worldwide, around one in five Americans is still willing to put themselves at risk and put their families at risk rather than get vaccinated. People are dying because of misinformation,” he added.
All Are Against Social Media Giants
This is not the first time social media platforms were criticised by US democrats. In the past, there were several incidents when Democrats pointed fingers at such tech companies. But then Republicans also began to heavily criticise such platforms.
It was just last year when Democratic senators introduced legislation that would hold Facebook, YouTube, and other social media platforms accountable for the spread of false information about vaccines, fake cures, and other harmful health-related claims on their platforms.
Former President Donald Trump made one of the first major accusations of anti-conservative bias against a tech company in August 2018, when he claimed Google was favouring Obama’s speeches over his own in search results.
Then came the 2020 election cycle. Republicans then echoed Trump’s unfounded claims that the election was rigged, energising a base that was already riled up following a year of pandemic-driven safety protocols.
Democrats were forced to use their platforms to reiterate that this was the safest election in history. Both sides were yelling into the void of followers who already believed what they were saying.
Throughout it all, members of Congress began seizing opportunities to grill the executives of these companies which often devolved into political theatre. Even suspending Trump’s Twitter account became a huge talking point among some Republicans after the January 6 Capitol riots.
For example, Republican senator Ted Cruz then tweeted “Big Tech’s PURGE, censorship & abuse of power is absurd & profoundly dangerous.”
Meanwhile, in 2021, internal documents from Facebook’s parent company Meta were leaked, revealing that the platform’s researchers were aware that their algorithms were directing users to posts containing misinformation.
After this, Elizabeth Warren tweeted last month that “no company should be too big to be held accountable for spreading misinformation”.
In the case of India, in early 2021, then Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that social media companies will be needed to acknowledge takedown requests of unlawful, misleading and violent content within 24 hours and deliver a complete redressal within 15 days.
However, later, during the Winter Session, Parliament was informed that the administration has taken many efforts to address the concerns of user harm and hateful content available on social media sites. In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw stated that the ministry has taken note of reports based on a whistleblower’s statements about Facebook and its alleged role in the circulation of hate speech, fake news, and misinformation.
Vaishnaw was responding to an inquiry about whether the government had received reports from the Facebook whistleblower about “adversarial harmful networks – India case study”.
He said: “The ministry has taken note of such news reports based on a whistleblower’s statements regarding Facebook. The whistleblower referred to in such articles has attributed amplification of extreme views to algorithmic promotion.”
The government issued the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, under the IT Act, 2000, in February 2021 to guarantee that social media platforms are accountable to users and to improve user safety. These requirements demand that intermediaries perform particular due diligence as specified, said Vaishnaw.
“MeitY through a program, namely, Information Security Education and Awareness (ISEA), has been creating awareness among users highlighting the importance of following the ethics while using the Internet and advising them not to share rumours or fake news. A dedicated website for information security awareness provides all the relevant awareness material,” he added.
Read all the Latest India News here
Comments
0 comment