Social media has been a big part of our lives for the best part of two decades, with the platforms we use shifting how we behave – and the way we behave, in turn, reshaping how the platforms are built. There have long been efforts to understand this phenomenon and the way that policymakers can respond.
“Like all advances in technology, this progress has had unintended consequences that sometimes come at a price. And in this case, we see that our new information ecosystem is turbocharging some of humanity’s worst impulses.”
The genie’s out the bottle
The former US president had been studying social media for months before giving an address at Stanford University on the topic of how the digital sphere is challenging our democratic norms.
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This speech came in the context of several worrying developments domestically and abroad, including the war in Ukraine, the Capitol Hill riots, as well as widespread anti-vax conspiracy and disinformation during COVID-19.
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His comments refer to the largely unregulated digital realm that we all plug into, where it’s easy for false information to spread like wildfire, driven primarily by our basest instincts and emotions. This, the former president said, was the consequence of billions of people plugging into an instant, 24/7 global information stream.
For Obama to be making these remarks is significant given he’s widely known as the first social media president due to his rampantly successful 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
The politician skilfully wielded social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to spread his message of hope and change at the time.
Arguably, however, the social media landscape was very different at the time. Having just emerged, both users and the tech companies running these platforms indulged in the inherent optimism of the new capabilities that humankind had access to for the first time. But Obama’s speech highlighted how different things are today, with that initial wave of optimism giving way to, in some cases, very dark forces.
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