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Obama suggests Big Tech algorithms need to be regulated over “misinformation” problem

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 8, 2022

Former US President Barack Obama railed against social media platforms for supposedly prompting “white supremacists, insurrectionists, misogynist behavior, bullying behavior,” accused these platforms of undermining democracy, and called for them to be regulated during Wednesday’s “Disinformation and Erosion of Democracy” conference.

At the conference, Obama described himself as “close to a First Amendment absolutist” who believes that you “deal with bad speech with good speech.”

“We don’t want to be policing… everything that’s said on the internet,” Obama added.

However, when it came to speech that Obama deems to be “misinformation” or “disinformation,” he didn’t propose more speech as a solution.

Instead, he framed the weaponization of “information, disinformation, misinformation” as one of the things that he’s “most concerned about” and something that he “underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to.”

Obama also claimed that social media product design “monetizes anger, resentment, conflict, division, and, in some cases, makes people very vulnerable” and “can lead to violence.”

“If you are… a woman, if you are a person of color, if you are a trans person right now in certain parts of this country, what’s said matters,” Obama said. “What you now have is…these product designs that are… in a non-transparent way, that we don’t have much insight to, a series of editorial choices are essentially being made that undermine our democracy and oftentimes, when combined with any kind of ethnonationalism misogyny or racism, can be fatal.”

Additionally, the former President invoked the January 6 Capitol riot and complained that social media platforms “have some insight into what’s more likely to prompt white supremacists, insurrectionists, misogynist behavior, bullying behavior” but haven’t been forthcoming about their product designs.

Obama’s proposed solution to his complaints about misinformation and social media is to regulate social media algorithms and subject these platforms to federal inspections.

“I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms that make money but say to them that… there’s certain practices you engage in that… we don’t think are good for our society and we’re gonna discourage,” Obama said.

He continued by arguing that “a democracy can rightly expect” social media platforms to share their insights with the public and be subject to a level of scrutiny from federal inspectors that is similar to the safety standards and inspections imposed on producers of meat, cars, and toasters.

Interestingly, when Obama was asked to provide examples of misinformation and disinformation during the conference, his stance varied wildly depending on how these examples affected him.

He branded the first example that he provided, media speculation about his birthplace, as agenda-driven promotion of “a clearly false fact.”

Yet when he provided the second example, the media’s accusations that he’d shared false information and lied about the Affordable (sic) Care Act, Obama admitted that what he’d said was “technically” false but justified it by claiming that “the basic principle I’d laid out, I meant and was true.”

This isn’t the first time Obama has pushed for government oversight of Big Tech. In 2020, the former President called for regulations that curb “crazy lies and conspiracy theories.”

April 8, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 1 Comment

Whoops! Federal Judge Acquits January 6 Defendant

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 8, 2022

In what can only come as an extreme shock to people who still view the January 6 Capitol protests as a gigantic conspiracy to violently take over the reins of the federal government, a federal judge has just acquitted New Mexico engineer Matthew Martin of all charges relating to the protests.

Acquitted! As in Not Guilty! As in walking out of the federal courtroom a free man.

Mind you, I’m not referring to a federal jury trial. For some reason, Martin chose to waive a jury trial. In a non-jury trial, the judge serves the same role as a jury. He not only determines the law of the case, he also determines whether the evidence supports a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

In most instances, it is much more difficult, as a practical matter, to get an acquittal from a judge than it is to get one from a jury. That’s because federal judges ordinarily lean toward the prosecution, especially since many of them are former prosecutors.

Our American ancestors clearly understood this phenomenon, which is why they had the Bill of Rights guarantee the right of trial by jury.

Thus, to get an acquittal from a judge is considered by lawyers to be a super-big achievement.

The facts of the case were not very much in dispute. There was no question but that Martin entered the Capitol, along with lots of other protestors. He took the stand and told the judge that he figured the Capitol police were granting people permission to enter the building, a point that prosecutors challenged. Once inside, Martin did not start shooting people, setting off bombs, or committing any other violent acts that would ordinarily be associated with a violent revolution. Instead, he spent his time taking pictures with his cellphone.

According to Politico, in finding Martin not guilty, Judge Trevor McFadden called Martin’s conduct “about as minimal and not serious as I can imagine.”

Whoops! That doesn’t bode well for those people who have been claiming that the protestors were involved in a gigantic conspiracy to violently take over the federal government. Never mind that the protestors didn’t have AR-15s, bombs, or other high-power weapons that are ordinarily used in violent revolutions. In fact, the only person who was shot and killed was one of the protestors, who wasn’t even armed.

Politico stated that “the verdict could be viewed as a message from McFadden to prosecutors that pursuing criminal charges against nearly every demonstrator who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 was unwise and that resources should have been trained more intensely on those accused of violence or of conspiring to block the electoral vote count.”

Good for Judge McFadden. His verdict of acquittal goes to show why an independent judiciary is an essential part of a free society. There is no doubt that if the Justice Department, the Pentagon, or the CIA were determining Matthew Martin’s guilt, the result would have been a conviction.

April 8, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

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