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“People are dying because of misinformation,” said former President Barack Obama (2009-2017) during a speech at Stanford University.
In the heart of Silicon Valley, the heart of the technology industry, the former president called for updating and strengthening the regulation and censorship of social platforms that, according to him, are weakening democracies by leaps and bounds, in what he considers conspiracy theories, hate speech and extremist messages.
“Misinformation” has become the former president’s pet cause, in an attempt to suppress Republican discourse, Obama has embarked on a campaign in which he is trying to use his influence to get Washington to update its laws and companies to increase censorship.
Earlier, in another appearance at the University of Chicago, the politician expressed “concern” about the erosion of democratic and civil values on the Internet.
In his long speech before the Stanford Center for Cybersecurity, Obama implored for the reform of the well-known Section 230, a legal remedy that protects technology companies from being held legally responsible for the content published on them.
Obama’s statements are quite controversial, taking into account that in the last presidential elections, precisely the censorship of networks such as Twitter, favored the Democratic candidacy, when the social network deleted the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop, cataloging it as “misinformation,” something that the New York Times and the Washington Post have acknowledged ended up being true. The same goes for the alleged conspiracy between Russia and Trump, which has recently been shown to have been part of the Clinton campaign to try to draw challenges away from her Republican opponent.
