Noises like this have emerged out of Obama's censorhole before, but he's being clearer about it now in that secret MIT speech that no one was supposed to ever talk about. Much of it is the usual gladhandling nonsense, but there are some deeply troubling lines.
Obama described social media platforms as a "hugely powerful potential force for good," but then immediately hedged. "What's also true is that our social media platforms are just a tool," he said. "ISIS can use that tool. Neo-Nazis can use that tool.
That is of course true of speech in general.
"I do think the large platforms—Google and Facebook being the most obvious, Twitter and others as well, are part of that ecosystem—have to have a conversation about their business model that recognizes they are a public good as well as a commercial enterprise."
Describing Facebook and Google as a public good is an interesting legal perspective. One that makes Google and Facebook a little gladder that Obama is no longer in the White House.
This is Fox News vs. The New York Times editorial page. If you look at these different sources of information, they do not describe the same thing. In some cases, they don't even talk about the same thing. And so it is very difficult to figure out how democracy works over the long term in those circumstances."
Is Obama under the impression that we didn't have a deeply divided press in the past? We did. And it worked quite well.
"They do not describe the same thing. In some cases, they don't even talk about the same thing," is how an actual free press is meant to work. Obama is moaning because he wants a return to the glory days of the media monopoly.
"Media giants like Facebook and Google should keep in mind that the U.S. government has a role to play in ensuring there are "basic rules of the road in place that create level playing fields."
We're from the government and we're here to create a level playing field.
Beyond the "public good" line, being described as "media giants" has to be making Facebook and Google exec nervous. But what exactly are these "rules of the road" or the "level playing field." And just what would this government intervention involve?