{"id":684,"date":"2025-06-25T02:41:47","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T02:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/?p=684"},"modified":"2025-06-25T02:41:48","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T02:41:48","slug":"obama-calls-for-government-constraints-for-online-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/?p=684","title":{"rendered":"Obama Calls For Government Constraints For Online Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Former President Obama has a twisted plan for what he believes should happen regarding speech online, and it is terrifying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The former president believes that the government should have the power to develop \u201crestraints\u201d over what can, and cannot, be posted online in order to avoid having \u201cdisinformation\u201d and \u201cmisinformation\u201d spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Obama made the comments when he spoke to historian and author Heather Cox Richardson at The Connecticut Forum on June 17, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve said this before, but I always repeat it. You and I can have an opinion about this little side table. You know, you might not like the design, you might not like the color or how it\u2019s finished, but we can have that discussion,\u201d former President Obama said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf I say to you this is a lawnmower, you\u2019ll think I\u2019m crazy. And if I really believe it, I\u2019ll think you\u2019re crazy. And we\u2019re now in a situation in which we are having these just basic factual arguments,\u201d he said to the historian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd that further undermines trust. And those in power, those with money, exploit that space in which nobody knows what\u2019s true. Vladimir Putin and the KGB had a saying that was then adopted proudly by Steve Bannon, which was if you want propaganda to be effective, you don\u2019t have to convince people that what you are saying is true,\u201d he said as he attempted to make his draconian case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Obama just came out advocating for mass online censorship.<br><br>&quot;We want diversity of opinion. We don\u2019t want diversity of facts.&quot; <br><br>Right after his party lied about COVID, lockdowns, vaccines, the border, the autopen, and Joe Biden&#39;s mental acuity. <br><br>Not to mention Epstein. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/r1nsDksSF4\">pic.twitter.com\/r1nsDksSF4<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Emergent Perspective (@_emergent_) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/_emergent_\/status\/1936189425081262249?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 20, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou just have to flood the zone with so much poop. They use a different word. But you have to flood the zone with so much untruth, constantly, that at some point people don\u2019t believe anything,\u201d noted Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSo it doesn\u2019t matter if a candidate running for office just is constantly, just hypothetically, saying untrue things, or if an elected president claims that he won when he lost and that the system was rigged, but then when he wins, then it isn\u2019t rigged, because he won,\u201d he continued in what appeared to be an obvious reference to President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if everybody believes it. It just matters if everybody starts kind of throwing up their hands and saying, well, I guess it doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd that\u2019s what\u2019s happened. That\u2019s what\u2019s happened in one of our major political parties. You have a whole bunch of people who know that\u2019s not true, but we will pretend like it is. And that is dangerous. But part of what we\u2019re going to have to do is to start experimenting with new forms of journalism and how do we use social media in ways that reaffirm facts, separate facts from opinion,\u201d said Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe want diversity of opinion. We don\u2019t want diversity of facts. And how do we train and teach our kids to distinguish between those things?\u201d Obama asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThat, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media. By the way, it will require some government, I believe, some government regulatory constraints around some of these business models in a way that\u2019s consistent with the First Amendment, but that also says, look, there is a difference between these platforms letting all voices be heard versus a business model that elevates the most hateful voices or the most polarizing voices or the most dangerous, in the sense of inciting violence, voices. And that, I think, is going to be a big challenge for all of us that we\u2019re going to have to undertake,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former President Obama has a twisted plan for what he believes should happen regarding speech online, and it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":686,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions\/686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}