Obama Criticizes Social Media Companies for Not Cracking Down on Disinformation Enough

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter have sought to limit the spread of misinformation and other content that violates their policies.

But, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are raising questions about how the platforms moderate content.

Republicans have accused social media companies of censoring conservative voices, while Democrats have suggested that the platforms have tried to appease conservatives and have been too lax in moderating content.

Former President Barack Obama told The Atlantic in an interview published on Monday that he believes the platforms’ attempts to cast themselves as “more like a phone company than they are like The Atlantic” have fueled the spread of disinformation and division.

Obama said he believes technology companies, which have allowed echo chambers to thrive and spread false or misleading information, risk harming American democracy.

“I think it is the single biggest threat to our democracy,” Obama said, adding, “Part of the common narrative was a function of the three major networks and a handful of papers that were disproportionately influential. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You’re not going to eliminate the internet.”

“Without this, it becomes very difficult for us to tackle big things. It becomes hard for us to say, ‘Hey, we have a pandemic here; it’s deadly; it’s serious; let’s put partisanship aside; let’s listen to Anthony Fauci because he’s been studying stuff like this for a long time. We may not get everything exactly right, because science works iteratively, but let’s hew as closely as we can to the science.'”