Barack Obama told a group of Democratic donors in Silicon Valley they should not be pushing for “Chinese-style monitoring” of people’s opinions by tech companies.
“I believe in free speech — and we can’t resort to Chinese-style monitoring of the correctness of every position on every blast that is sent out via social media,” the former president said Thursday. “So the way for us to deal with that, is that we need to inoculate the body politics by getting our own accurate information out.”
“We have to combat falsehood with truth. And that’s hard to do,” he added. The comments come as some have pressed tech companies to crack down on false information and “fake news.”
Democratic presidential candidates have been particularly furious at Facebook for allowing false political advertisements. Twitter announced it would be ending political ads on its platforms.
