Byron York’s Daily Memo: Obama’s partisan ‘disinformation’ campaign
“Here is what I think our guiding principles should be,” Obama began. “The way I’m going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy, inclusive democracy, whether it encourages robust debate and respect for our differences, whether it reinforces rule of law and self-governance, whether it helps us make collective decisions based on the best available information, and whether it recognizes the rights and freedoms and dignity of all of our citizens. Whatever changes contribute to that vision, I’m for. Whatever erodes that vision, I’m against. Just so you know.”
It was a remarkably boilerplate set of guidelines that could be used to justify almost anything. Obama then laid out a proposal for more government regulation of the web and a greater sense of common-good responsibility among tech leaders. It was all just as fuzzy and nice-sounding as his list of principles. But he argues it can lessen the threat of disinformation in our society.
In what way? Nearing the end of his speech, Obama gave an extraordinarily telling example of how his plan might work. “It is possible to broaden our perspectives,” he said. To illustrate that, he cited a recent study by researchers who paid a group of regular Fox News watchers to watch CNN instead for a month. “These were not swing voters,” Obama said. “These were hardcore Hannity-Carlson fans. And what the researchers found was that at the end of the month, people’s views on certain issues, like whether voting by mail should be allowed or whether electing Joe Biden would lead to more violence against police on some of these issues, their views had changed by 5, 8, 10 points. These people didn’t suddenly turn into liberals I’m sure they still don’t like me but at the margins, they had reshaped their perspectives in meaningful ways.”
There it is. Perhaps social media companies could do something similar. Perhaps they could play the role of the good guys, CNN, in changing the views of people who watch the bad guys, Fox News. Or, to be more open about it, perhaps they could play the role of Democrats in changing the views of Republicans. And for those who believe that is precisely what social media companies are already trying to do well, perhaps they could do even more. That is Obama’s vision. “Now is the time to pick a side,” he said. “We have a choice right now: Do we allow our democracy to wither, or do we make it better? That is the choice we face.”
via click1.trk-washingtonexaminer.com
It’s not rocket science. The Democrats are calling for their allies in tech world to get on the ball and start censoring the great expansion of information space that is proceeding apace in the USA. This is one of the forces Elon Musk is fighting. Obama wants DC to get its arms around the large and growing public square just as Xi and the CCP have its arms around public discourse in the PRC or Putin does in Russia. Of course, Obama has in mind, tbf, something less obtrusive, and less obvious here in the USA. So not crushing freedom, but limiting it, and anesthetizing it. I don’t believe Americans will buy it but I’ve been surprised before.