The Atlantic Interview: Barack Obama on Disinformation and The Future of Democracy

Summary

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The Atlantic Interview: Barack Obama on Disinformation and The Future of Democracy

Podcast: The David Frum Show – The Atlantic
Date: April 7, 2022
Host: Jeffrey Goldberg
Guest: President Barack Obama
Location: University of Chicago (Live conversation)

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Overview

In this deeply reflective and wide-ranging discussion, President Barack Obama joins Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to address the threats disinformation poses to democracy, both in the U.S. and around the world. Using the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Obama explores the evolution of informational warfare, its consequences, and how democracies must adapt in an era of rapidly shifting media landscapes. The conversation blends political analysis, personal anecdotes, and policy ideas, focusing on the resilience, reform, and critical engagement needed to sustain democratic ideals in the digital age.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The War in Ukraine and the Role of Disinformation

[00:40 – 08:25]

• Ukraine’s Tragedy and Global Trends:

  • Obama describes the war as a “tragedy of historic proportions” ([02:32]), framing it as emblematic of global trends where autocratic, ethno-nationalist, and toxic narratives collide in the absence of democratic checks.
  • “Putin represented a very particular reaction to the ideals of democracy, but also globalization... the ability to harness anger and resentment around ethno nationalist mythology.” – Obama ([02:53])

• Complacency in Democracies:

  • He notes Western democracies, including the U.S., have gotten “complacent,” taking freedoms for granted, and are reminded by Ukraine’s plight of the need to continually defend democratic values ([04:11]).

• Unpredictability of Authoritarian Actions:

  • Obama reflects on his personal experience with Putin and the unpredictable nature of autocrats, noting that even those familiar with them cannot always predict their escalations ([06:11]).

• Ukrainian Resistance and Information Warfare:

  • The unexpected high level of Ukrainian resistance and leaders like Zelenskyy are shaping a strong national identity, which Putin underestimated, further amplified by real-time war coverage ([07:09]).

• Historical Perspective:

  • Obama links the fragility of the current international order to historical cycles, urging adaptation of democratic institutions to new realities as “the anomaly” of post-WWII peace is not the human historical norm ([09:29]).

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2. Obama’s Reflection on U.S. Policy Toward Russia

[12:24 – 14:41]

• He defends the administration’s measured response to Crimea and Donbass in 2014, citing different circumstances and Ukrainian politics at the time.
• The lesson, he suggests, is the underestimated vulnerability of democracies to weaponized dis-information:
  • “I saw it sort of unfold and that is the degree to which information, disinformation, misinformation was being weaponized... I underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to it as they were, including ours.” – Obama ([14:37])

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3. Authoritarian Control and the Problem of Alternate Realities

[14:41 – 19:30]

• Breaking Through the Disinformation Bubble:

  • Difficulties persist in reaching populations under authoritarian rule, as seen in Russia; courageous acts of dissent are quickly suppressed.

• Parallels in the U.S.:

  • Obama draws a provocative parallel: even in open societies with free access to information, significant portions of the public believe falsehoods (e.g., 2020 U.S. election denial, vaccine resistance) ([15:18]).
  • “We don't know what we don't know. It's very difficult for us to get out of the reality that is constructed for us.” – Obama ([16:49])
    • Memorable "fish in water" parable, highlighting unawareness of one's own informational environment.

• Danger to Democracy:

  • Obama warns, “It is difficult for me to see how we win the contest of ideas if in fact we are not able to agree on a baseline of facts that allow the marketplace of ideas to work.” ([18:34])

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4. Defining Disinformation vs. Misinformation

[19:30 – 25:48]

• Obama's Definitions:

  • Misinformation: "Just wrong information."
  • Disinformation: “A systematic effort to either promote false information, to suppress true information, for the purpose of political gain, financial gain, enhancing power, suppressing others, targeting those you don’t like.” – Obama ([19:34])

• Political Example and Accountability:

  • Uses the “birther” conspiracy as an example of disinformation with malicious intent; contrasts with his own statements about the Affordable Care Act, where inaccuracies must be contested openly, not weaponized as existential threats to democracy ([22:20]).

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5. Media, Technology, and the Breakdown of Consensus

[27:09 – 40:00]

• Marketplace of Ideas and its Erosion:

  • Obama traces the post-WWII consensus—objective journalism standards, regulatory frameworks—and details how newer technologies broke down shared facts.
  • “We built both a set of standards within journalism and we built a set of regulatory guidelines... But we've seen a breakdown of that consensus.” ([29:23])

• Personal Anecdote: Local Journalism’s Decline:

  • Recounts his early political campaigns when local newspapers allowed for fairer hearings, even in ideologically different communities. Today, news deserts are filled with partisan or manufactured “newsletter” content ([32:18]).
  • “[Digital media has] made it harder to get a hearing. … That’s an indication of how things have changed.” ([35:48])

• Hope and Evidence:

  • A study switching Fox News viewers to CNN shifted opinions by 5–10%, showing pliability in thinking if people encounter alternative information ([37:52]).

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6. News Deserts, Venture Capital, and Media Ecosystem

[40:00 – 47:48]

• Man-made Disaster:

  • Journalism’s collapse is partly driven by profit-driven hedge funds (e.g., Alden Capital) contributing to news deserts ([40:15]).

• Obama’s Core Media Assumptions:

  • Social/tech media amplify division but didn’t create it ([40:47]).
  • Favors classical liberal free speech ideals; opposes over-sensitivity to offense ([41:16]).
  • Perfect objectivity is unattainable, but “there’s things that are more true and things that are less true.” ([42:06])
  • The loss of local and expert-driven journalism, and the rise of product designs that monetize outrage and division, threaten democracy and even safety ([44:53]).

• Call for New Consensus:

  • In order to “fix” the media ecosystem, society needs to recommit to the goal of a self-governing, truth-based democracy—Obama’s suggested “North Star.” ([46:55])

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7. Regulating Social Media: Concrete Proposals and Philosophical Dilemmas

[47:48 – 56:30]

• Supply & Demand of Toxic Content:

  • Tech companies, as private actors, make amplification decisions, often prioritizing engagement over the public good ([48:07]).

• Potential Regulatory Ideas:

  • Tweak Section 230 to increase liability for certain types of targeted advertising ([48:51]).
  • Address anonymity and distinguish bots from real users, while preserving necessary protections for activists in repressive regimes ([49:50]).
  • Demand greater transparency from platforms about product designs influencing behavior (“We have to have at least a consensus about what’s our North Star...”) ([52:59]).

• Demand Side and Civic Engagement:

  • Civic habits have atrophied in the digital age; education and institutions must adapt to teach critical thinking, build participatory habits, and bridge online and real-life engagement ([54:24]).
  • “We haven't done a very good job in training this next generation to participate, other than virtually and in a fairly shallow way.” – Obama ([54:48])

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8. Personal Epiphanies & Advice for Young People

[56:30 – 64:52]

• Presidential Turning Points:

  • Obama notes “truth decay” started before social media, during his campaigns (e.g., birtherism), but digital platforms escalated erosion of accountability ([57:03]).
  • By his second term, he recognized the accelerated spread of bad information—culminating in 2016 ([57:55]).

• Advice for the Next Generation:

  • “Young people are going to have to help us reinvent for a primarily virtual social media space the same kinds of rules, norms, practices, processes that existed before.” ([59:30])
  • Emphasizes there are no “silver bullet” solutions, but urges development of critical habits over time ([59:57]).

• Guiding Principle and American Example:

  • The core question: “Does this make our democracy stronger or weaker?” ([61:00])
  • Strength of American democracy, with its diverse, multiracial society, can inspire the world if the U.S. “gets it right.”
  • “If we get democracy right, democracy is stronger around the globe. And when we don't get it right, or we don't look like we care about it, others fill that gap.” ([62:54])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the State of Democracy:

  • "For all the times we didn't live up to our ideals, for all the times that we've made mistakes on the international stage, if we get democracy right, democracy is stronger around the globe. And when we don't get it right or we don't look like we care about it, others fill that gap." – Obama ([00:00], [62:54])

• On Information Bubbles:

  • "We don't know what we don't know. It's very difficult for us to get out of the reality that is constructed for us." – Obama ([16:49])

• On the Definition of Disinformation:

  • “A systematic effort to either promote false information, to suppress true information, for the purpose of political gain, financial gain, enhancing power, suppressing others, targeting those you don’t like.” – Obama ([19:34])

• On Local Journalism:

  • "That newspaper probably doesn’t exist. It’s been replaced, by the way, not just by Fox in every barbershop and beauty salon or Sinclair local news, but… with digital community newsletters that are being ... pumped into these communities as local journalism has [fallen prey]." – Obama ([36:54])

• On Social Media Regulation:

  • "There are ways in which a democracy can rightly expect [tech companies] to show us ... what their product designs are that are more likely to prompt insurrectionists, white supremacists, misogynist behavior ..." – Obama ([50:07])

• Guiding Democratic Principle:

  • "Does this make our democracy stronger or weaker? ... Does this make a multiracial, vast, diverse country more likely to work together and to affirm basic notions of fairness, process, truth?” – Obama ([61:00])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| MM:SS | Segment | |---------|-----------------------------------------------| | 02:32 | Ukraine, autocracy, and lessons for democracy | | 08:33 | Can Ukraine “win”? | | 12:24 | Reassessing U.S. response to Crimea | | 14:41 | Disinformation and authoritarian control | | 19:30 | Defining disinformation vs. misinformation | | 32:18 | Local journalism, Obama’s campaign anecdotes | | 40:15 | News deserts and venture capital’s role | | 47:48 | Social media regulation specifics | | 54:24 | Rebuilding civic engagement in digital age | | 57:03 | Tech and the “hinge moment” in democracy | | 59:30 | Obama’s guidance for future generations | | 62:54 | American democracy as a global example |

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Conclusion

President Obama’s wide-ranging and candid discussion with Jeffrey Goldberg underscores the urgent need to rebuild democratic consensus, revive journalistic integrity, and adapt democratic habits to new technological realities. Obama offers hope that, despite profound challenges, both systemic reforms and renewed civic engagement—especially among the younger generation—can preserve and strengthen democracy at home and abroad.

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Transcript

[Barack Obama]

An official message from Medicare. I'm saving money on my Medicare prescriptions. Maybe you can save, too. See if you qualify for Medicare's extra help. It pays. To find out, go to ssa.gov extrahelp paid for by the US Department of Health and Human Services. For all the times we didn't live up to our ideals, for all the times that we've made mistakes on the international stage, if we get democracy right, democracy is stronger around the globe. And when we don't get it right or we don't look like we care about it, others fill that gap.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic. I recently interviewed President Barack Obama to talk about disinformation, what it is, how it threatens our democracy here in America and in countries around the world, and how it can be countered. The very tools that helped pro democracy movements around the world and opened the public square to new and interesting voices are now used to disseminate disinformation, undermining our democratic institutions. Nowhere is the assault on democracy more evident at this moment than in Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin is attempting to demolish Ukraine's democracy and Ukraine itself. Throughout this aggression, we've witnessed the wholesale suppression of information as well as the use of disinformation as an effective tactic of war. In this live conversation taped at the University of Chicago, I talked with President Obama about how he defined disinformation and what to make of its weaponization around the globe. We started our conversation by talking about the war in Ukraine and the role disinformation plays in deceiving the Russian people. Before we go directly into the subject of disinformation, there's a lot to cover. I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about Ukraine, where we are right now. And something that I think everybody here would appreciate is the. Is the chance to hear you talk about this through the prism of your knowledge of Vladimir Putin. You spent a lot of time with him, a lot of time grappling with him. Spend a couple of minutes, if you can, explaining where we are and where you think this is headed.

[Barack Obama]

Well, it is a tragedy of historic proportions. That's not news to people here. You can see it. I think that it is calling the question about a set of trends around the world that we've seen building for some time. Putin represented a very particular reaction to the ideals of democracy, but also globalization, the collision of cultures, the ability to harness anger and resentment around ethno nationalist mythology. And what we're seeing is the consequences of that kind of toxic mix in the hands of an autocratic government that doesn't have a lot of checks and balances. I think it is also fair to say that it is a bracing reminder for democracies that have gotten. That had gotten flabby and confused and feckless around the stakes of things that we tended to take for granted.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

You include our democracy.

[Barack Obama]

Yes. Rule of law, freedom of press and conscience of the sort that one of your previous speakers represents. That you have to fight for that information or you have to fight to. To provide people the information they need to be free and self governing. That it doesn't just happen inevitably. Independent judiciaries making elections work in ways that are fair and free. We have gotten complacent. And I think that I cannot guarantee that as a consequence of what's happened, we are shaking off that complacency. I will say that as somebody who grappled with the incursion into Crimea and the eastern portions of Ukraine, I have been encouraged by the European reaction because in 2014, I often had to drag them kicking and screaming to respond in ways that we would have wanted to see from those of us who describe ourselves as Western democracies. In terms of Putin and where he takes this, there's been a lot of literature about this, a lot of reporting about this. I don't know that the person I knew is the same as the person who is now leading this charge. He was always ruthless. You witness what he did in Chechnya. He had no qualms about crushing those who he considered a threat. That's not new for him to bet the farm in this way. I'm not. I would not have necessarily predicted from him five years ago how much of that is. There have been speculation of the psychology of how much of that is him aging, him being isolated during COVID et cetera. But as much as I think we cannot count on sudden rationality from him, and as disquieting as the absolute control of information within Russia makes me doubtful about any kind of grassroots or oligarch resistance to the current course of events, I think that what has happened in Ukraine in many ways is more remarkable than or less predictable than, than Putin wanting to seize territory.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

You mean the high level of resistance?

[Barack Obama]

The high level of resistance. The degree to which you have somebody like a Zelenskyy responding to the moment. Part of what changed between 2014 and today is that I think a sense of national identity continued to fortify itself. And ironically, him lopping off, at least informally Annexing Crimean portions on the east, I think clarified within Ukraine who they were and what they stood for. And I also think the thing that he did not fully anticipate is the degree to which the nature of war has changed, where everybody is seeing exactly what is happening on a real time basis. And all those things I think may lead to, I won't say a happy resolution, but I think has the potential of preventing a maximalist victory for Putin and that over the long term may allow for a independent Ukraine.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Two more quick things on this. Do you think that Ukraine can win by your definition of what win might be?

[Barack Obama]

I mean, you look at these cities and you look at the populations and you look at the exodus, it's hard to describe that as a win. And I think it's too early to tell what an end game looks like. I would not try to predict not only what's in the minds of Putin, but also how the Ukrainians conceive of this struggle. Because we are sitting here comfortably and they are going through heck. And the one thing I try not to do is to project onto them what they should do, how we should define what's tolerable, what the nature of the resistance should look like, how if negotiations proceed, those should proceed. I think what we can do is support them and their efforts and their courage. And I think the other thing that we can do is take this as a lesson that sadly, they're paying the price for, but that speaks to a much more bumpy, difficult, violent, challenging future for the coming generation if we don't get some things right here at home in Europe and in Asia, in Latin America, because these are not what's happening there, is not isolated. What we're seeing is a reversion back to old ways of thinking about power and place and identity. And I think part of our complacency grew out of the notion that once the Berlin Wall fell and Mandela was released and the world was flat and you had McDonald's everywhere, and now suddenly that was it and we were done and we forgot that, that post World War II, 50 year stretch to 60 year stretch, that's the anomaly. And there is millennia of brutality and pillage and violence and displacement and cruelty, and we created a set of institutions out of 60 million people dying in World War II and tried to reconfigure how we might organize our societies. But it is not self executing, right? It's something that we have to continually, that we have to continually nurture and respond to new circumstances. Whether that's changes in Technology, changes in globalization, climate change, all those things require us to say, all right, what does that mean for our capacity to maintain human dignity and freedom and self governance? And that's the prism through which we should be examining these questions and being willing to modify, adjust, reform our institutions to keep up with that. And that's something that I think we have not done as well as we need to.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

One last question on this. Back in 2013, 2014, if you can go back and do things over again, would you have done more to work against Putin's aims in Donbass in Crimea? You, I remember, you know, you and McCain going at it in various points.

[Barack Obama]

Well, I actually don't, because the circumstances were different, the populations in Crimea certainly, and their attitudes towards Russia were different, which is why you did not have to have a full scale invasion. The east was more complicated and we had a very robust response that, as I said, required a lot of work with the Europeans in order to mount. And Ukraine itself was different. I mean, keep in mind that you had just had essentially a strong man who was aligned with Putin and we had had to intervene to prevent a massacre in the Maidan. The RADA still had elements that were linked to the old order. And so for us to check at least his efforts for eight years, I think was what we needed to do at the time. The notion that we were also concerned about making sure that we did not give an excuse for a further incursion. And a lot of the arguments back then had to do with arming Ukraine, which in turn could have provided those kinds of excuses. And you had issues of training. Anyway, if you ask me what I'm most concerned about when I think back towards the end of my presidency, it probably has more to do with the topic here today. It's something I grappled with a lot during my presidency. I saw it sort of unfold and that is the degree to which information, disinformation, misinformation was being weaponized. And we saw it. But I think I underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to it as they were, including ours.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, let me ask you about something notable that's happening in Russia, which is that despite a somewhat porous Internet globalization, everything else, most Russians, from what we understand from reporting, seem to have very little idea that Ukraine is not the aggressor nation, that it's not run by neo Nazis and so on. And so my question for you has to do with how do you break through to authoritarian regimes or populations controlled by authoritarians to give them your understanding of reality, democracy's understanding of reality.

[Barack Obama]

Well, I don't think we have an easy solution. I mean, we have courageous journalists. You saw a woman with a handheld sign go across the TV screen saying, this is all a lie. And that obviously got suppressed quickly. Here's one way to think about it, though. For all the flaws that may exist in our own society, you can get any information you want right now. It's in your pocket or some of you are taking pictures. So it's right in front of me, unfiltered, literally. There's nothing you cannot receive right now in this room. And yet in our society, you have currently roughly 40% of the country that appears convinced that the current president was elected fraudulently and that the election was rigged. And you have 30% to 35% of the country that has chosen not to avail itself of a medical miracle, the development of a vaccine faster than anything we've ever seen before, which, by the way, now has been clinically tested by about a billion people and yet are still refusing to take it, despite extraordinary risks to themselves and their families. So if that's true in our society, imagine how any of us would process information if we are not getting, if we're not seeing anything else, right? I have to be careful. The reason I'm pausing is I'm about to tell a dad joke. And so I'm sure my daughters, if they see this, will roll their eyes. But hey, it's like the old story of the old fish is swimming by a couple of young fish and he Moses past him and he says, how's the water? And he keeps on swimming and one of the young fish looks at the other and says, what's water? And I think that that's how we are in terms of information. We don't know what we don't know. It's very difficult for us to get out of the reality that is constructed for us. And that is part of the reason why the stakes of this issue are so important, because it is difficult for me to see how we win the contest of ideas if in fact we are not able to agree on a baseline of facts that allow the marketplace of ideas to work.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I want to stay in this and I want to sort of level set on some definitions. I just want to note for the record that that joke was 40% too epistemologically sophisticated to count as a dad joke. By the way, I have dad jokes we can do in our second hour, but go to definitions. Let's just start There. What is the difference between disinformation? I'm asking you this as a retired politician who uses facts or used facts to your advantage, your electoral advantage. What's the difference between disinformation and information that's narratively inconvenient? Let's say. How do you define disinformation? Misinformation?

[Barack Obama]

I don't think the definitions are that tough. Misinformation is just wrong information. And that's always been with us. We get facts wrong, we say stuff wrong, and you know, we're not going to solve for that problem anytime soon. The way I define disinformation is if you have a systematic effort to either promote false information, to suppress true information for the purpose of political gain, financial gain, enhancing power, suppressing others, targeting those you don't like. And that I think is entirely different from information that is inconvenient. If you're asking Jeff, I'll use an example because I think it also shows that sometimes we get too cute about this and we're not operating on common sense. I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. There's a clipping there of me in the newspaper dated 1961. I walked by the hospital every day for the first several years of my life. So that's an example. That wasn't an example of people being misinformed. There was an agenda behind that promotion of what was clearly a false fact. I was identified as having engaged in a political falsehood. When I said we just celebrated the Affordable Care act passage at the White House, I wasn't milking, I wasn't looking to milk any applause. But during the run up to passage, in a speech before the ama, I think I said that and repeated several times that if you want to keep your doctor, you can. And the point we were trying to make is 85% of people had health care. One of the big problems in trying to get healthcare for the uninsured is making sure that folks who already had it didn't feel like, weren't vulnerable to scare tactics, that they were all going to be rationed and socialized medicine and they'd lose their planet. Dr. And we said, look, we're keeping the system for folks who have employer based health care intact. Once we passed it and we were starting to implement, one of the things that we had done is to raise standards for what insurance could or could not provide because there was a bunch of phony insurance on the marketplace that people thought they were purchasing insurance, but it turned out that when they actually got sick, there were so many Restrictions to it, it didn't do them any good. And there was constant churn in this market. So when people were up for renewal for these ultra cheap insurance plans that didn't actually provide coverage, the standard we had set, it turned out they couldn't renew because those plans were no longer being offered. Well, many mainstream reporters, not just Fox News, said, look, he lied. You lost your insurance that you had and you were perfectly satisfied with. I thought, well, I guess technically it's true that you no longer had the plan you had because the bogus plans that you used to pay for that offered you no protection when you actually finally got sick. We regulated out of existence. That was deemed as a, you know, I hadn't been accurate. That was one of the few times during my presidency where, you know, everybody gave four Pinocchios on Obama. That's an example of what can happen in politics. And by the way, although I promise you, I cursed a lot in the Oval Office when I read people saying that I'd been mistruthful or I hadn't been truthful because the basic principle I had laid out, I meant and was true. But I couldn't really complain about people criticizing me for it. And that's okay. But that was not a matter of us. Let me put it this way. Me saying that was not a threat to democracy. It was not intended to somehow subvert democratic process. And because people could then criticize me for it, the democratic process worked. That's how the, the marketplace is supposed to work, in theory.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Can I, can I ask you a, A meta question? Not a, not a Zuckerberg meta question. A meta. Meta question. No, no, no.

[Barack Obama]

Did you. How have you been holding that joke for no.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

3 seconds? Seriously? It just happens. It's spontaneous. No, no, no. The meta question is prompted by your statement here. I'm wondering, given what you understand about the information environment, no one has been afflicted by some negative aspects of this current information environment. Like you have the birth certificate being one example. You just kind of sort of admitted that maybe you didn't tell the whole truth or you, or you shared something that was inaccurate and you just shared that publicly. Are you worried tomorrow that Fox News is going to say Obama admits he lied about ACA or about keeping your own?

[Barack Obama]

I am now that you just said it that way, because that is.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I'm just, I'm not trying to be clear.

[Barack Obama]

That is not at all. I thought I was making the exact opposite point. No, this is how the press works, even in a democracy. Yeah. And by the way, even with a award winning magazine editor. No, that's to make it meta, meta, meta.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

To make it meta, meta. Brian Stelter is sitting over there already typing how he's gonna report on this meta moment.

[Barack Obama]

That is not the point I was making.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I'm just asking that. No, no, no, I'm asking a serious.

[Barack Obama]

Question about and I'm gonna respond. The point I was making is that the reason I brought up the point is that in a democracy there are going to be, in the normal course of debate, we will contest what's been said, what's been promised, what's been delivered, and there will be some play in the joints in terms of how we interpret stuff. Right. I actually to this day believe that what I said was accurate, which was when you say you can keep your doctor, if your doctor dropped dead tomorrow, that is not the fault of the Affordable Care Act. Technically speaking, you did not keep your doctor, you had to find a new one. Right. So I was making a broader point, which is that systematically we are not forcing you out of existing employer based healthcare, which is what people at a aggregate level are concerned about. But the reason I told that story is to illustrate that yes, there are still going to be disputes around what's true and false, even in a well functioning democracy and a free press. That is. Okay, I was going to the point you were making. What's the difference between systematic disinformation, whether it's by the state or by product design on Internet platforms that are different in kind and are destructive in different ways? Just to go back to basics, if you think about our constitutional design, and obviously even each democracy has sort of a different coding for how their democracy is supposed to work. But in our design, the theory is if First Amendment, you have freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, and everybody has a say, and in that marketplace, then we're going to sort out what's true and what's false or what's best for us, how we act collectively and so forth. In reality, as we all know, some voices have been louder than others. Some voices were excluded entirely. But we did come to a point, let's call it post World War II, because prior to that, sometimes we have a rosy nostalgia about the past. And you have Father Coughlin and you have the McCarthy era and you've got the treatment of black people and brown people generally. But at least after World War II, you had enough of a consensus that we built both a set of standards within journalism and we built a set of regulatory guidelines that Industries had to follow. And it was possible then to have a debate between the left and the right in which we differed strongly on process or on substance. But we agreed on process. And what we've seen is a breakdown of that consensus. And what we've seen is a shift in technology and who controls these platforms in ways that are not transparent. And that has contributed to, aggravated a sense in which we are no longer operating by the same rules or on the same facts.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I want to come to that because Maria Ressa talked very effectively about these questions about what the platform she did. But there's a story that you have told over the course of your career. You wrote was in the volume one of your autobiography. When is volume two coming, by the way?

[Barack Obama]

Let's move on.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Okay, it's the story. It's a story. It's kind of an Iowa story, but it's also a downstate Illinois story. You talk about entering politics as a black politician, black Democratic politician from Chicago with a name like yours getting a fair shake downstate. It's a great story, and I think you should tell about newspapers.

[Barack Obama]

I think it speaks to the evolution of press and information and how it reflects on politics. And Axelrod will remember this because he was, let's face it, he was highly skeptical about the idea of me running for the US Senate two years after nine, 11 with a name that rhymed with Osama. And I can't fault him for that. So I'm going down to downstate Illinois. And those of you who know downstate Illinois, it's conservative, it's rural, it is conservative, 98% white, some of these counties. And I'd drive around and I for you young people, there were these things called maps that you had to unfold, and it was really hard to fold them back. And so you'd swing into a town and I'd typically stop. We'd arrange for me to stop by the local newspaper. And usually you'd have sort of a stereotype, but more than once, bow tie, crew cut, glasses look at you kind of skeptically. Come on in. You want some coffee? Would organize a little roundtable with the reporters, and you'd sit there and you'd answer questions and bat some ideas around and explain why you were running for the Senate. And typically, the next day there would be a little article, because these are small towns, so there wasn't much going on. So even though nobody knew who I was, they'd still report on it. And they'd say, well, you know, this young man came down a little Liberal for our taste, funny name, but he had some okay ideas. And he's running for Senate. And that was the extent of the filter that I was dealing with. And so then I'm going to the fish fryer or the VFW hall or the county fair. And people might still be a little suspicious of a black civil rights lawyer from Chicago and whether they can connect with him. But I could get a fair hearing. There weren't a set of impenetrable assumptions about who I was. And as a consequence, I could win those counties, which I did. And if I went there today, I could not. Now, let me take myself out of the equation because obviously I'm such an object of. People may have some fixed opinions at this point, I think it's fair to say. But someone like me going downstate or traveling through Iowa, they would have to work through a different set of barriers because that newspaper probably doesn't exist. It's been replaced, by the way, not just by Fox in every barbershop and beauty salon or Sinclair local news, but it's also been replaced now with digital community newsletters that are being manufactured, printed out and just pumped into these communities as local journalism has prayed. And by the way, I don't think there is an equivalence necessarily on the left and the right in terms of the media space, but I suspect it is also harder to get a hearing if you are a rural guy coming up to Chicago that doesn't check every box with respect to certain issues, certainly if you're a conservative Democrat, let's say, who is coming up here running in a primary. So that, I think is an indication of how things have changed. And by the way, there was just recently a report that that confirms what I feel and what I've seen. And anecdotally, it's just one study that was done. Interesting study, though they paid a pretty large cohort of Fox News watchers to watch CNN for a certain period of time. Do you see this? And it was, and these are very hardcore conservatives, not Biden voters, not central sort of swing voters. These were folks who watch Hannity and Tucker Carlson and so forth. And after a relatively short period of time, what it showed was is that their views on issues, controversial issues like immigration or police or vaccinations, had changed by 5, 8, 10% just simply by changing their diet. It hadn't turned them into liberals. It didn't make them want to vote for Joe Biden. They had just had access to a different set of information. And so I say that to suggest that I think we underestimate the degree of pliability in our opinions and our views and what that means. I take that as hopeful, not in the sense that the divisions that we see in our democracy, of race, of region, of faith, of identity, those are there. They are not creations of social media. They are not creations of any particular network. They're deeply rooted and they're hard to work through. But it does give me faith that if people are given different information, they can process differently. And that the stories they tell themselves about who they are and their relationship to their neighbors, their friends, people who don't look like them, people who don't think like them, that those are subject to, well, to quote Lincoln, you can either encourage the better angels of folks, nature or their worst. And democracy is premised on the idea that we can come up with processes, including how we share information and argue about information, that encourages our better angels. And I think that's possible.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

But stay on this newspaper question, journalism question, because this is not a natural disaster. I mean, yes, there have been unique pressures that tech companies have put on newspaper companies, but Alden Capital for instance.

[Barack Obama]

Yeah, you guys did a great story about a venture capital firm that single handedly scooped up and destroyed a whole bunch of newspapers in this country for profit.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It's a man made disaster in some cases. What is your specific recommendation about these news deserts that have been created across the country and you could fold in the tech companies and responsibilities.

[Barack Obama]

Why don't I, why don't I step back just for a second and maybe just share a couple of assumptions that I have in the interest of this transparency? Number one, as I said, I don't think that our media companies, our tech companies, social media created the divisions in our society. But I do think that what has happened in our media ecosystem is exacerbating and making democracy more difficult. Number two, I am close to a First Amendment absolutist. I believe in the idea of not just free speech, but also that you deal with bad speech, with good speech, that you engage, that the exceptions to that are very narrow and particularly among this cohort of folks in college, and I've talked to my daughters about this. I don't want us to be such a society of manners that we feel like our feelings are hurt and we, we can't hear something that somebody says and we wilt. I think I want us all as citizens to be in the habit of being able to hear stuff that we disagree with and be able to answer with our words. Number three, I think that duplicating the consensus that we had Post World War II and you had three TV stations and newspapers in every major cities, in some cases like Chicago, multiple newspapers and an FCC and all that. I think that's hard to duplicate. Not just because of technology and the proliferation of content, but also because of the internationalization of content that makes it more difficult. And number four, let's stipulate that there is no such thing as perfect objectivity. New York Times obviously chooses which stories to write and which reporters to hire. And they have certain perspectives that reflect itself in their newspapers. Even AP and Reuters and upi, same thing. But along with that, I would also argue that there's things that are more true and things that are less true. That the basic ideas of checking sources and having multiple sources and fact checking and not reporting things that somebody just popped off and heard and the value of expertise and science, that those things are important, right. And that I, you know, there are some areas that are not subject to fact checking and those are things we call opinions or faith or belief and those are important too. Those speak to our emotions. But that is different from what in the public square we're supposed to be at least being able to find agreement on. So if I stipulate all that stuff, then what I would say is that the, the loss of journalism or local journalism, the nationalization of sort of a grievance, anger based journalism, the growth of social media and technology whose product design monetizes anger, resentment, conflict, division, and in some cases makes people very vulnerable. This isn't just words, but can lead to violence. And it's not just the Rohingya in Myanmar, it's not just, you know, in some far off place, right. But can, 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 and what you now have is these product designs that are, and I think this was already said by Maria and others previously 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 ethno nationalism or misogyny or racism can be fatal. And that is the media ecosystem that we now are occupying. And the good news is, I actually think that it is at every juncture, every time you've had a new media, we've had this kind of churn and then we've come up with rules to try to figure out how do we fix it. But in order to fix it, we are going to have to have at least a consensus about what's our North Star, what is the thing, the guiding principle around which we fix it. And my concern is right now that at least a portion of the country either isn't interested in fixing it or disagrees with what I would think our North Star should be, which is do we have a free, self governing society based on democratic principles?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Let me ask a self described near First Amendment absolutist, how would you very specifically want to regulate social media companies to make sure that they're not privileging anger, privileging division and polarization through their algorithms?

[Barack Obama]

So, so we've got a supply issue and we've got a demand issue for toxic information. Right. And on the supply side, I do think that the tech companies are going to be increasingly the dominant players. They are private companies, which means that they are already making a range of decisions about not just what is on or not on their platforms, but also what gets amplified and what does not. And I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then to put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms to make money. But say to them that there's certain practices you engage in that we are not, we don't think are good for our society and we're going to discourage. A specific example would be. There's been a lot of debate around section 230. I don't know that entirely eliminating section 230 protections from liability is necessary. I certainly think that providing section 230 liability for paid advertising that is micro targeting certain groups and we have no transparency into, that's not serving any particular benefit in terms of startups or innovation or so forth. And that can be really damaging. So I think that we have to have a set of debates around that. And there are smarter people than me who are working on this. The issue of anonymity and the distinction between bots and humans or bot farms and people who actually have opinions. Are there ways of sorting that out? In some circumstances it's important to preserve anonymity in terms of, so that there's space in repressive societies to discuss issues. But as we've all learned, it's a lot harder to be rude, obnoxious, cruel or lie when somebody knows you're lying and knows who you are. And I think that there may be modifications there that can be made. So look, the one thing that's interesting if you look at, for example, Facebook's response or Twitter's response, or YouTube's response post January 6th, they made a point of saying, well, we responded in by doing a whole series of things, some of which then were reversed after the heat was off them. Which tells me that they at least appear to have some insight into what's more likely to prompt insurrectionists, white supremacists, you know, misogynist behavior on the Internet, bullying behavior on there. They seem to know what it is, and I'm less interested in them. And in fairness to them, many of them will acknowledge we don't want to be policing everything that's said on the Internet. But they haven't been forthcoming about is what their product designs are. And there are ways in which a democracy can rightly expect them to show us, if not us, then a group of researchers, if they have proprietary concerns, that can be managed, but to show us in the same way that on any other product, I don't know exactly how, you know, the inspections on meat are done, you know, and if somebody says, well, you know, we have a proprietary technique to keep our meat clean, that's fine, take it up with the meat inspector. That's not my job. We can figure out how to. The same thing with carves, the same thing with toasters, this notion that somehow we have to preserve this information to ourselves because somehow we have prioritary interests. I think that's wrong now. That's on the supply side. I do think that there is a demand for crazy on the Internet that we have to grapple with. And part of the reason I'm spending more time thinking about this through the foundation is because I work with young people from across the country and around the world who are working on climate change, racial justice. Our goal in the foundation is to train the next generation of leaders and give them platforms and connections and make sure they're not isolated and that they're learning from each other across borders and regions. And uniformly, they're all confronting these issues about how do I deal with misinformation in my country, in my town, how do I get access to the public so that they know the facts that are affecting their lives, about pollution or about how budgets are being distributed and so forth. And one of the things that we're learning is that they are hungry for a voice and for participation. But we haven't done a very good job in training this next generation to participate, other than virtually and in a fairly shallow way. And part of there have been interesting studies showing that the Single biggest predictor of whether you're a regular voter, et cetera, is did you participate in student council, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts. And that's true for young people. It's true for all of us. The mediating institutions that used to lead us to be able to practice being involved and learning how do we debate and how do we vote and how do we then see results from collective decisions that we make? We're going to have to figure out ways to adapt that to virtual platforms, because that's where people are going to meet and that's where people are going to be. And that may mean different ways of civic education, teaching critical thinking, finding better tools for participation on the Internet. And that's all on the demand side. The good news is that we're seeing a lot of experiments being done. They just haven't been done to scale. Which is why, as wonderful as it is to see exercises in virtual democracy developing in various countries, in towns, ways to get people to listen to each other and work together, we can't ignore the mega platforms that are out there because they're still dominating the space.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Let me, you know, over the past couple of days, we've collected some questions for President Obama and I want to throw two quick ones at you. And then a final question. Maria Ressa, inspired question for you from me. This is from, from Anne Moss here at the University of Chicago. Was there a moment in your presidency you can identify when you or your advisors came to realize that social media itself posed a threat to American democracy? What was it? Was there a hinge moment when you just went, oh, what is happening here?

[Barack Obama]

Well, it's weird to remember that the smartphone came out in 2010. I mean, it's been 12 years since this ubiquitous thing came out. And so for us, what we saw was, I think you can draw a direct line. During our campaign Sarah Palin birtherism death panels, there was what's been called truth decay, right? There was an erosion of what was considered acceptable to assert in the press, period. That's all pre social media. So what I did see was I think an erosion of accountability norms and standards accelerated in political life. And then when social media hits, then I think that you saw it spread and accelerate. But I wouldn't actually, I wouldn't say that even by 2012 that social media was the main carrier. I think it was actually in my second term that you start seeing not just bad information, but you also start seeing an acceleration of misinformation. And by 2016, that's when I think it well, we know what happened.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No, tell us.

[Barack Obama]

Yeah, one more question.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

This is from Connor Lee, who's a student here at the University of Chicago. You've sort of touched on this, but it might be worth dilating on it for a second. What is your advice to young people who seek to play a part in protecting our elections and curbing the effects of disinformation on those elections?

[Barack Obama]

Well, I think young people are going to have to help us reinvent for a primarily virtual social media space the same kinds of rules, norms, practices, processes that existed before. I think that's going to take a while, but you are going to have a better idea of what works and what doesn't to encourage veracity, accountability, the ability to listen to people who you don't agree with to create those spaces. And so through the foundation and other institutions, we're really soliciting from young people ideas and trying out a bunch of things. And I think this is going to be, it's going to take some time. I don't think this is a. There are no silver bullet solutions to this and I don't think that it's going to be solved in a year or two years or four years. I think this is building up the habits, the muscles of democracy that have atrophied is going to take some time. But I'll close with what I said before. If you ask me how I'm going to sort through what are a set of genuinely difficult questions, technological questions, free speech questions, how do we encourage citizens questions. If you ask me what's my guiding principle? My guiding principle is does this make our democracy stronger or weaker? And when I say democracy, I don't just mean elections. Does this make a multiracial, vast, diverse country more likely to work together and to affirm basic notions of fairness, process, truth? Or is it sending us in the reverse direction of tribalism, resentment, anger, division? And so that's the, that's what I'm thinking about, that's what I'm working on. And the reason that it's important for us to get this right. You started with Ukraine, I'll end with Ukraine. This is an international trend. And the one thing I'm here to report on about America is for all the times we didn't live up to our ideals, for all the times that we've made mistakes on the international stage or been hypocritical in terms of how we applied our faith in democracy, if we get democracy right, democracy is stronger around the globe. And when we don't get it right, or we don't look like we care about it. Others fill that gap. People, even our enemies, recognize that what happens here, if we can make a democracy function, where you look at this room and you've got people from every corner of the globe, every racial group, every ethnicity, every religion, every culture, that if we can figure out how to live together and treat each other with dignity and respect, then others start feeling like, well, maybe it's possible in our country too. And when we look like we have abandoned those ideals or we're not willing to fight for them robustly, then around the world people start saying, see, that was always a pipe dream and the Putin's of the world have a much easier time.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

There are a dozen other subjects to talk about, but we're well out of time. And just a reminder that we're meeting here again at 9. We have an amazing program tomorrow and I want you all to come. But in the meantime, please join on behalf of David and the Institute of Politics. On behalf of the Atlantic, please join me in thanking President Obama for his time today.

[Barack Obama]

Thank you everybody. This episode was produced by Kevin Townsend and Rebecca Rashid with help from Emily Gottschalk Marconi. Our executive producer is Claudina Bathe. If you value what we're doing here at the Atlantic, please consider subscribing. You can watch the full coverage of the [e-mail] disinformation conference. A special thank you to the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics SA.