Monthly Archives: April 2022

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If you want to know how worried an industry is about a piece of pending legislation, a decent metric is how apocalyptic its predictions are about what the bill would do. By that standard, Big Tech is deeply troubled by the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.

The infelicitously named bill is designed to prevent dominant online platformslike Apple and Facebook and, especially, Google and Amazonfrom giving themselves an advantage over other businesses that must go through them to reach customers. As one of two antitrust bills voted out of committee by a strong bipartisan vote (the other would regulate app stores), it may be this Congress best, even only, shot to stop the biggest tech companies from abusing their gatekeeper status.

It is the ball game, says Luther Lowe, senior vice president of policy at Yelp and a longtime Google antagonist. Thats how these guys stay big and relevant. If they cant put their hand on the scale, then it makes them vulnerable to small and medium-size companies eating their market share.

But according to the tech giants and their lobbyists and front groups, the bill, which was introduced by Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley, respectively the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, would be a disaster for the American consumer. In an ongoing publicity push against it, they have claimed that it would ruin Google search results, bar Apple from offering useful features on iPhones, force Facebook to stop moderating content, and even outlaw Amazon Prime. Its all pretty alarming. Is any of it true?

The legislations central idea is that a company that controls a marketplace shouldnt be able to set special rules for itself within that marketplace, because competitors who object dont have any realistic place to go. No business can afford to be left out of Googles search index, and few online retailers can make a living if theyre not listed on Amazon. So the Klobuchar-Grassley bill, broadly speaking, prohibits self-preferencing by platforms that hit certain size thresholds, like monthly active users or annual revenue. To take a simple example, it would mean Amazon cant give its in-house branded products a leg up over other brands when someone is shopping on its site, and Google cant choose to give YouTube links when someone does a video search unless those links are objectively the most relevant.

Beyond that, its difficult to say precisely what the law would do, because it leaves quite a bit unspecified. Like many federal statutes, it directs an administrative agencyin this case, the Federal Trade Commissionto turn broad provisions into concrete rules. And it gives the FTC, the Department of Justice, and state attorneys general the power to sue companies for violating those rules. (Last week, the DOJ endorsed the bill, an important signal of support from the Biden administration.) Inevitably, both the rules and any enforcement actions would end up being litigated in court, giving federal judges ultimate say over what exactly the law means.

This leaves plenty of uncertainty around how exactly the law would play out. Into that zone of uncertainty, the tech companies have poured dire warnings.

Perhaps the scariest talking point is that the law, if enacted, would kill Amazon Prime. According to eMarketer, more than 150 million Americans, more than half the adult population, are Prime members. Thats a lot of people who might hate to lose their free two-day shipping. (Its not really free, of course, if you have to pay a subscription fee.)

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The Senate bill that has Big Tech scared - Ars Technica

It was inevitable that someone would create a Big Tech wiki, and here we are. The wiki's site predictably presents a list of common complaints against tech giants. But before we dive into this particular phenomenon, let's take a look at the term Big Tech and what it's supposed to represent.

Competition law

It originated with Big Oil over a century ago. Still, the concept is competition law, defined by Wikipedia as the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies [and] is implemented through public and private enforcement.

It's not difficult to grasp, and the history of competition law dates from the Roman Empire. Around 50 B.C., says Wikipedia, heavy fines were imposed on anyone directly, deliberately, and insidiously stopping supply ships to protect the grain trade. Interfering with a supply chain to rig prices is clearly a violation of competition law.

The concept continued during the Middle Ages when 'foresteel' (i.e., forestalling, the practice of buying up goods before they reach the market and then inflating the prices) was one of three forfeitures that King Edward the Confessor could carry out through England. More famously, The [U.S.'s] Sherman Act of 1890 attempted to outlaw the restriction of competition by large companies, who cooperated with rivals to fix outputs, prices and market shares, initially through pools and later through trusts.

Busting trusts, not businesses

The most famous trustbuster was U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who famously said: Speak softly, and carry a big stick. Roosevelt's target was Big Oil prominently exemplified by the Standard Oil Company Trust, which in the 1880s controlled several markets, including fuel oil, lead, and whiskey, according to Wikipedia.

A recent analysis by Ohio State University paints a more balanced picture of Roosevelt. Roosevelt believed that when a business grew big, it was not necessarily bad, said OSU, Bigness might mean simply that a firm had bested its rivals through superior efficiencies, prices, and service. Having superior efficiencies, prices, and service might well require bigness, as in the case of a railroad providing service through an extensive system across a wide territory.

Is railroad infrastructure a good metaphor for big tech?

The term trustbuster suits a politician seeking re-election more than upholder of competition law, but according to OSU, Roosevelt had a firm grasp of the government's effective controls on private business. If a firm grew through reasonable means, then the government should not attack it, says the university in its analysis. However, if a firm grew through unfair practices, then government should enforce its power.

Tech-centric by default

Business-centric communication is perennial, and pervasive technology has brought us new vectors. Larger businesses are tech-centric by default now consumers expect to connect via a website and social media, preferably 24/7.

The railroad serves as a monopolistic metaphor. Constructing a transcontinental railroad in the 19th century helped unify the U.S. post-Civil War and boosted business in the western part of the nation. The infrastructure costs were tremendous, and the term railroad barons was coined to describe the moguls who earned riches from the rail link stretching across the Wild West. Good for businesses but clearly a monopoly.

Jack Dorsey's regret

It's trendy nowadays to attribute social ills to social media platforms and, by extension, their chief executives. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta (the artist formerly known as Facebook) comes to mind.

Jack Dorsey recently expressed regrets about Twitter, the social media giant he co-founded. Dorsey, who announced plans to leave Twitter in November, recently tweeted that he feels guilty about the role the company has played in creating a centralized internet, where a small handful of companies and platforms claim an outsized proportion of users and their data, said CNBC.

The history of competition law dates from the Roman Empire

With 217 million daily users, Twitter certainly qualifies as one of those platforms, along with other tech giants like Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon, said CNBC. Alphabet-owned Google captures more than 90% of the online search market, according to StatCounter. Research from eMarketer shows that roughly 64% of all digital ad spending [goes] to Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

The days of usenet, irc, the web...even email (w PGP)...were amazing, wrote Dorsey in his April 2 tweet. Centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet.

I realize I'm partially to blame and regret it, wrote Dorsey, who stepped down as the companys chief executive officer last year.

Do we need new trustbusters?

Dorsey's comments on centralized identity touch on society at large and not just tech-boosted communication. On the tech side, there are issues of data privacy and overarching legislation such as the E.U.'s GDPR that attempt to address that.

We enjoy avenues of communication that people back in Teddy Roosevelt's day could never have dreamed of. But, inevitably, there are downsides, and it's convenient to blame corporations.

It's no secret that many of the free services on offer are subsidized by the value of the data they gather. The value-equation of this harvested data isn't an exact science, but users can opt out. No one is forcing Netizens to use Twitter, for example.

Big Tech isn't violating the letter of competition law. But the creation of a Big Tech wiki indicates that some feel the spirit of competition law is under pressure.

Stefan Hammond is a contributing editor to CDOTrends. Best practices, the IOT, payment gateways, robotics and the ongoing battle against cyberpirates pique his interest. You can reach him at[emailprotected].

Image credit: iStockphoto/wildpixel

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What the Wiki Big Tech Site Tells Us About Competition - CDOTrends

Cathy ONeil is a writer, a mathematician and author of the bestselling Weapons of Math Destruction, which won the Euler book prize. Her latest book is The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation, which looks at the ways shame is manufactured and exploited in a range of industries, including prisons, welfare systems and social media, for coercive and commercial purposes. She argues that a common intention is to shift responsibility for social problems from institutions to individuals.

This is a very different book to your previous one. What made you decide to write about the subject of shame?I first became really interested in shame while researching Weapons of Math Destruction. I talked to teachers who had been evaluated by a secret scoring system. And they were sometimes getting fired or denied tenure. When I asked if somebody had explained the formula to them, they said they were told it was math and they wouldnt understand. That silenced them. It was shame as a systematic mechanism.

What, by your own understanding, constitutes shame? Is it universal?Its universal. But shaming always happens with respect to a norm. And those norms arent necessarily universal. Shame is a social thing that happens in the context of feeling like youre unworthy and youll be unlovable by your community. There are a few universal norms around shaming; like sex theres always some way to get shamed if you do it wrong. So you can try to shame somebody to behave well with respect to a norm. And then the question is, when does that work and when is it appropriate?

You talk about shame in terms of its commercial exploitation by shaming machines. But is it different to or greater than the exploitation of other emotions, like sexual desire, vanity and insecurity?I think they have a lot to do with shame. Certainly, insecurity is a notion of feeling only contingently acceptable. So its sort of the threat of shame. The first third of the book refers to traditional shame machines, like cosmetics for women, because theyre ashamed of looking old. The middle section refers to how big tech is making use of shame to profit from our interactions. I think that is a new development that relies quite directly on the ability to hijack our pre-rational, triggered reactions and the existential threat that shame represents to our psyche.

Do algorithms target shame, or just anything that is popular?I think algorithms are optimised to service that which will arouse us the most. That usually means outraging us so we perform shame. In our filter bubble, our in-group, the algorithm serves to us the most outrageous thing that some other filter bubble has managed to arrive at, so we have the opportunity to be righteous and lob shame on to that other group, and to create this shame spiral.

Are there such things as good shame and bad shame, shame that is beneficial, and shame that is harmful? If so, who makes that distinction and how?I think the answer is yes. And I put forth suggestions for how to think through that. Im willing to be corrected, but the basic notions I suggest are that if youre shaming somebody who cannot conform to the norm, or who has no voice, thats inappropriate and bullying. Thats punching-down shame. The converse of that statement is that if youre shaming somebody for something that theyve chosen to do against the norm you share with that person, and they have the opportunity to defend themselves, then that is appropriate, or at least its not bullying. But that doesnt mean it will work.

You acknowledge that you could be accused of punching down by highlighting certain individuals in the book. As you write, But Im doing so in the hopes that we can all learn from it. Isnt that what everyone believes when theyre shaming people?Right. I did change quite a few names of people in the book, just to prevent a little bit of that extra shame falling on them. I agree with you. I think a lot of people do think of it as setting an example rather than purely punitive. I just dont think jumping on a shame train of the latest Karen video [film of white women supposedly behaving in an entitled manner] sets an example that we need to see.

You cite JK Rowling as an example of someone you think is punching down because shes powerful, but shes a woman whos been threatened and called the most appalling things. Whos punching down to whom?Yeah, its a great example of where its a grey area. What I hate about social media is how much attention we give to things that dont really matter. Just the fact that I know what JK Rowling thinks about this is a waste of my brain. What I want by writing this book is a better conversation about shame.

In the section on JK Rowling you segue into the example of George Wallace, the racist governor of Alabama, who was shot and paralysed, and then asked for forgiveness for his previous segregationist views. Does that seem an appropriate context to discuss Rowling, who has received many death threats?First of all, I didnt know that JK Rowling had death threats. So I certainly didnt mean to suggest that she would ever get shot, if thats what youre asking.

No, but Im not sure how an aggressive racist politician who was shot, and recanted, bears any comparison with Rowling.I dont see the story that way. I think Wallace saw the error of his ways because Shirley Chisholm [the black Democratic congresswoman] visited him in hospital. And he recognised her humanity. It was a great example of someone who really reckoned with the shame of his past deeds and, not only at a personal level but at a social justice level, apologised in a really honest way.

You discuss cancel culture in your book. Many people argue that it doesnt exist. Whats your opinion?I think its real. When you hear people complain about it, theyre probably the people who have the fakest examples because the very fact youre hearing them complain means they have a voice and a chance to defend themselves. But I do think cancel culture is more common and people fear speaking out and being wrong. I used to do a blog 10 years ago and I really experimented with ideas. It would be harder to do that blog now because back then I felt like my readers were giving me the benefit of the doubt. I think people who are less well known can be squashed more easily.

If there was one change that you could make that would affect the shame machine, what would it be?I would want every institution, including social media companies but also in prisons and welfare systems and schools, to analyse the extent to which they have embedded punching-down shame in their policies and practices, and try to remove them.

The Shame Machine by Cathy ONeil is published by Penguin (20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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Cathy ONeil: Big tech makes use of shame to profit from our interactions - The Guardian

Dr. Mehmet Oz receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 11, 2022. (Photo by JC Olivera/Getty Images)

Ive gone to battle with Big Tech, Mehmet Oz, the physician and TV personality, said when announcing his Senate campaign in December. Ive got scars to prove it.

Oz and his wife also have got at least $10.2 million worth of stock in Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, according to a campaign disclosure he filed Wednesday with the Senate. Overall, Oz values his and his wifes assets at more than $100 million.

Update, April 7, 2022, 2:22 p.m.: You can own stocks and still be critical of a company, look at Elon Musk, said campaign spokesperson, Brittany Yanick. She went on to claim that Ozs private investment pales in comparison with his primary opponent, former hedge fund executive David McCormicks, record of ripping off Pennsylvania taxpayers.

Oz trails McCormick in Pennsylvanias Republican Senate primary, according to polls taken by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Washington Free Beacon. Voting ends on May 17.

While Oz took flack for running to represent Pennsylvania despite living in New Jersey, his disclosures do reveal a Keystone State connection. He owns at least $5 million worth of shares in Wawa, the Pennsylvania-based gas station and convenience store thats a bit of an institution in the Mid-Atlantic. The dividends from Wawa alone paid Oz more than $1 million last year.

As for earned income, Oz reported receiving $10 million, $2 million of which came from hosting the Dr. Oz Show while another $7 million was from his stake in Oz Media.

Additionally, Oz reported $594,000 in honoraria payments. His appearances on Jeopardy and the app Cameo as well as three speeches raised $347,000, which he donated to charity. (The $268,000 he was paid for 11 days of hosting the game show is $94,000 more than what his annual salary would be in the Senate.) Oz did pocket the $125,000 he was paid for giving a speech to the American Pistachio Growers Association.

Ozs disclosure was first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Senate Candidate Memhet Oz owns at least $10 million worth of tech stocks.

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Dr. Oz Wants To Fight Big Tech In The Senate. He Owns At Least $10 Million In Shares Of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple And Microsoft. - Forbes

Actor Richard Dreyfuss, best known for his iconic roles in Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, recently weighed in on Big Techs seemingly-selective censorship, asserting that the industrys current practices go against the the very essence of the First Amendment in the Constitution.

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In an interview with political commentator and talk show host Megyn Kelly, Dreyfuss explained that Facebooks new hate speech policies introduced amidst the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine are not only despicable, but also a threat to free speech.

As Kelly notes, Meta president Mark Zuckerberg recently changed the social media platforms hate speech policy in an effort to allow users to openly call for violence against Russian soldiers entering Ukraine.

Asked for his opinion on these changes, Dreyfuss told Kelly, I think its despicable, and I think its breaking the most fundamental part of the First Amendment.

Source: The Megyn Kelly Show, YouTube

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I think that weve fattened us up so that we can be cut up into thin strips and put on the stupid grill, he explained. The real problem is [Zuckerberg] is not calling for this, he says asthis geopolitical fight.

The Academy Award-winning actor elaborated, Hes saying that he has freedom of speech, and as an owner of the First Amendment, he tells you whats fair and balanced. Calling for the incitement to violence and the reform of theis okay to assassinate Vladimir Putin is not what was meant, and is not meant today.

Source: Jaws (1975), Universal Pictures

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Kelly then turned to the subject of how Big Tech initially censored The New York Posts story about emails exchanged between son of President Joe Biden, Hunter and Ukrainian businessman Vadym Pozharskyi reports that the Washington Post and The New York Times just recently admitted to be real to which Dreyfuss declared,There is a complete, apparently, lack of trust in the brains of our young people.

Source: The Megyn Kelly Show, YouTube

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We think that they will be putty in the hands of an influencer or a social network owner, the Academy Award-winning actor elaborated, This happens, and has been happening since social media has been our constant companion for many years.

We may not be able to affect what the leaders of the Russians do on the groundin the pay of a foreign government, but we have our own rules and they are the most important rules we have, he continued. We have ethics and values expressed not on a list at the end of the Constitution, but right smack-dab in the middle of the Constitution are the things that they say are irrefutable and basic.

Source: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Sony Pictures Entertainment

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Previously a life-long Democrat, Richard Dreyfuss announced in 2011 that he was abandoning his political affiliation because he thought it could negatively affect his non-profit, non-partisan civics endeavour.

Started by the actor in 2007, the eponymously named Dreyfuss Civics Initiative seeks to revive the teaching of civics in American public education to empower future generations with the critical-thinking skills they need to fulfill the vast potential of American citizenship.

RELATED: Seth MacFarlane Upset That Fox Censors Family Guy But Not Tucker Carlson, Fails To Realise Fox News and 20th Century Fox Are Separately Owned

During an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson in April of 2017, Dreyfuss expanded on his withdrawl from partisan politics, declaring himself to be a constitutionalist who believes that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be central and the [political] parties must be peripheral.

Whats most important for me is we are over 30 [and] civics has not been taught in the American public school system since 1970, Dreyfuss said. That means that everyone in Congress never studied the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, and that is a critical flaw because its why we were admired and respected for so long.

Source: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Sony Pictures Entertainment

RELATED: Novelist Patrick S. Tomlinson Who Previously Accused Tucker Carlson And Jordan B. Peterson Of Being Nazis Forced To Pay Over $23K In Attorneys Fees After Losing Free Speech Case

Dreyfuss also found himself in agreement with Carlsons past reporting on free speech being eliminated from several universities around the country including theUniversity of Oregon and even Harvard University sharing the opinion that any intrusion into freedom of speech is an intrusion into freedom of speech.

You were talking about the speakers on university campuses, and I am totally, incontrovertibly on your side about this, he admitted the Academy Award-winning actor. I think any intrusion into freedom of speech is an intrusion into freedom of speech.

Source: Fox News, YouTube

RELATED: Ron Perlman Accuses Former President Donald Trump And Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Of Treason, Claims They Extol Putins Worldview

Dreyfuss then recalled that when one of the presidents of one of the colleges said, this is a school, not a battlefield, I said, no, it is a battlefield of ideas and we must have dissonant, dissenting opinions on campuses, and I think its political correctness taken to a nightmarish point of view.

Source: Yahoo! Entertainment, YouTube

What do you make of Dreyfuss comments on Big Techs censorship and its threatening of free speech and the First Amendment? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below or on social media.

NEXT: Rob Schneider Condemns U.S. Governments Treatment Of Individuals Who Exercise Their First Amendment Freedoms

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Jaws Actor Richard Dreyfuss Says Big Tech's Censorship Is A "Despicable" Practice That Threatens Free Speech - Bounding Into Comics

(Bloomberg) -- GoTo Group, Indonesias biggest tech company, surged on its first day of trading after raising $1.1 billion in one of the worlds largest initial public offerings this year.

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The shares jumped as much as 23% and closed the day 13% higher at 382 rupiah in Jakarta, valuing the company at about $31.5 billion.

GoTos listing bucks a global trend of companies scrapping or delaying IPOs because of worries about Russias invasion of Ukraine, soaring inflation and rising interest rates. As Southeast Asias technology industry gains steam, GoTos strong debut bodes well for the regions other technology companies seeking to list in Indonesia or overseas.

The more these IPOs do well, the more Indonesia becomes a home for it, and you get a self-perpetuating type of situation, said Angus Mackintosh, founder of CrossASEAN Research. GoTo will likely have strong support in the near term given its broader exposure to the overall digital economy.

GoTo is the largest of a crop of startups seeking to ride the rapid pace of mobile penetration and internet use in Southeast Asia, a region of more than 650 million people. Other regional technology companies that have been preparing for IPOs include PT Traveloka Indonesia and Blibli.com. GoTo will use the IPO to bankroll an expansion of its services to more markets, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Andre Soelistyo told Bloomberg Television.

Its a matter of timing as to when GoTo will expand more aggressively, he said.

Tiket Said to Mull Blibli Merger Before $1 Billion Jakarta IPO

Underscoring GoTos importance to the local economy and technology industry, Indonesias President Joko Widodo gave a short video address at the ceremony marking the debut on Monday. I hope this GoTo IPO motivates young Indonesians to lend new energy to the technological leap in this countrys economy, he said.

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GoTos offering is the third-largest in Indonesia after PT Bukalapak.com and PT Dayamitra Telekomunikasi, known as Mitratel. The company immediately ranks among the most valuable companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange along with PT Bank Central Asia, PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia and PT Telkom Indonesia.

The company is the result of last years merger between Indonesias two most valuable internet startups -- ride-hailing provider Gojek and e-commerce firm Tokopedia -- to get more firepower against rivals in an increasingly cutthroat market. Over the years, the two amassed a long list of investors, including Google, Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Sequoia Capital India. The latter was an early backer of both Gojek and Tokopedia.

GoTo is among Southeast Asian consumer-internet companies that are adding users at a rapid clip but have yet to generate sustainable profit. Still, GoTo is enjoying a leadership position in Indonesia, a country of more than 270 million people whose mobile-savvy consumers are shopping on Tokopedias platform and ordering rides and food via Gojeks app.

The IPO is testament of investors confidence on Indonesias promising digital economy outlook in the long term, said Henry Wibowo, head of research at JPMorgan Sekuritas Indonesia. The countrys digital economy will expand to about $200 billion by 2025, backed by rising smartphone penetration and growing middle class, he said.

GoTos story started in 2009, when William Tanuwijaya, the son of a factory worker, made a bet on Indonesias economic and internet boom and founded Tokopedia -- the name is a variant of the Indonesian word for store. A year later, Nadiem Makarim, a Harvard Business School grad and former McKinsey & Co. consultant, set up Gojek to arrange courier deliveries in Jakarta.

Soelistyo joined Gojek in 2015 after working as an investor at private-equity firm Northstar Group, one of the first institutional backers of the upstart. He and co-founder Kevin Aluwi were named co-CEOs of the ride-hailing company in October 2019, when Makarim left to join the government as the nations minister for education and culture.

(Updates with comment from analyst in 11th paragraph)

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GoTo Shares Jump After Raising $1.1 Billion in One of 2022s Biggest IPOs - Yahoo Finance

Originally Published: 10 APR 22 08:03 ET

Updated: 10 APR 22 13:50 ET

By Dan Merica and Donie O'Sullivan, CNN

(CNN) -- Former President Barack Obama is urgently throwing himself into the fight against disinformation, taking a yearslong private fascination into the open as he makes addressing the issue a key pillar of his post-presidency.

More than a decade after the false and infamous "birther" conspiracy theory was promulgated by his political opponents, including by the then-private citizen Donald Trump, Obama is hoping his personal experience with disinformation and his knowledge of its ramifications can help determine the best way to regulate social media platforms that promulgate disinformation and find ways to address what he calls the "demand for crazy on the internet" that has filled a void as local news outlets have diminished.

Obama's effort has been sweeping, say the former President's confidants and outside advisers with experience in the tech industry, with Obama convening meetings and conversations with academics, activists, researchers, tech sector leaders, media executives, former government officials and former regulators. People who have met with the former President describe him as gripped by the issue, showing up to meetings with handwritten notes and questions and often referring to reading he has done on the topic, including reports by the RAND Corporation and the Aspen Institute, and a research study on partisan media by David Broockman and Joshua Kalla.

Eric Schultz, an Obama adviser, said the former President views disinformation as a "through line for all of the challenges we face right now," including the pandemic, climate change and racial injustice. And for Obama, Schultz added, the "arc of this issue also tracks the arc of his public life" -- while social media helped get Obama elected in 2008, the misinformation that spread on different platforms also accelerated during his time in office.

Obama made this focus public on Wednesday when he headlined a conversation on disinformation at a conference sponsored by the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics and The Atlantic magazine. He will put a finer point on the topic later in the month when he delivers a keynote speech during a conference at Stanford University.

"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 acts that allow the marketplace of ideas to work," Obama said Wednesday, lamenting that while attendees had access to all the information they wanted on their phones, there were still large swaths of Americans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and that the coronavirus vaccine was not something they needed.

Obama admitted that he "grappled with a lot" during his presidency, including "the degree with which information, disinformation was being weaponized." But recalling his time in office, he said he and his staff "underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to (disinformation) as they were, including ours." On baseless questions about where he was born, he said, "That wasn't an example of people being misinformed. There was an agenda behind that promotion of what was clearly a false fact."

Obama told the audience Wednesday that he could "draw a direct line" from his time on the campaign trail to the proliferation of lies about his place of birth and the falsehood that his signature health care law was establishing "death panels" for older Americans, as 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had put it.

"There was what has been called truth decay. There was an erosion of what was considered acceptable to assert in the press, period. That is all pre-social media," he said. "And then when social media hits, then I think you saw it spread and accelerate. ... I think it was actually in my second term that you start to see now just bad information, but you also start to see an acceleration of misinformation."

"And by 2016, that is when, well, we know what happened," Obama said, trailing off, acknowledging what everyone in the room knew -- the same man who pushed the birther conspiracy theory was elected as his successor.

Obama argued that he views disinformation as "entirely different from information that is inconvenient," pointing to his "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" falsehood during the fight over his sweeping health care law -- which earned him the Politifact "Lie of the Year" in 2013 -- as an example of the latter. Although Obama defended the intention behind the line, he said he "couldn't really complain about people criticizing me for it" and said it was different than recent lies about the 2020 election because him saying it was "not a threat to democracy" and "was not intended to somehow subvert the Democratic process."

"In a democracy there are going to be, in the normal course of debate, we will contest what has been said, what has been proposed, what has been delivered and there will be some play in the joints of how we interpret stuff," Obama said, adding that lies about the election and other issues went far beyond that.

Obama, now a 60-year-old, gray haired former politician, has fully embraced the technological intricacies of the disinformation issue, according to an outside adviser who has worked in the tech industry, mostly because the former President is "naturally kind of a geek."

"It's not as though it's like this is some new-fangled, whatchamacallit that you will never see on my lawn or whatever," the adviser told CNN. "He understands this world."

The adviser said Obama has more time to focus on the issue because "now he has the ability to talk to a range of experts without it being an official function of government," and so he has convened a range of people to look at the problem.

And that has given him, this person said, not just a better understanding of the way disinformation has personally affected his life and career but also a deep concern that the spread of disinformation will lead to a form of "political nihilism," where many Americans don't know what to believe and just check out from politics all together.

"That is the real nemesis and the real environment that disinformation creates and allows autocracy to flourish," the outside adviser said. "Birtherism is obviously a part of that story, but the stakes have, in some ways, changed so dramatically since then, that it's become part of the context of democracy itself."

In retrospect, "birtherism", or the belief that Obama was not born in Hawaii, was a warning of what was to come, the dark and dystopian route American political discourse was about to take.

"Birtherism" and the "Big Lie" undermining the 2020 election are not at all dissimilar. Both are viral baseless conspiracy theories, with prejudicial undertones, championed by Trump to engage an enthusiastic base and to sow seeds of doubt in the wider population.

The birther conspiracy theory first emerged sometime during the first decade of the century -- Obama said it had been pushed as early as his Senate race in Illinois. It's precise genesis is unclear and disputed.

Come 2011, however, Trump had become a standard-bearer of the birther movement, launching a campaign for Obama to release his long-form birth certificate.

"He doesn't have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there's something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim," Trump told Fox in 2011.

Obama did have a long-form birth certificate, and the White House released it. Obama later went on to roast Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner that year.

Lee Foster, an expert in tracking disinformation and senior vice president at Alethea Group, told CNN that the birther conspiracy theory was "merely a precursor to the barrage of falsehoods we find ourselves facing in today's political environment."

Foster, who has been involved in exposing foreign disinformation campaigns targeting the United States through social media, said that it is important to remember that this goes beyond the internet.

"Big Tech plays a role in this, but so do our media institutions, our political parties and, frankly, all of us. It requires all of us to tackle," he said.

Despite Obama's keen interest, answers about the best way to counter disinformation have proved more elusive.

During his remarks Wednesday, Obama alluded to the need for transparency about social media algorithms that determine what people see in their online feeds and the issue of anonymity on social media sites.

He said also expressed support for toughening regulations on social media companies. He said that while he is not for "entirely eliminating" Section 230, a rule that protects the companies' ability to moderate content on their site as they see fit, he questioned whether the protections were fair for "paid advertising that is microtargeting certain groups. ... That can be really damaging."

And Obama somewhat mockingly responded to protests from social media companies, who say their algorithms and product design contain proprietary information that can't be shown to regulators or the public.

"I don't know exactly how the inspections on meat are done. And if somebody says we have a proprietary technique to keep our meat clean, that's fine, take it up with the meat inspector," he said sarcastically. "This notion that we have to preserve this because somehow we have proprietary interests, that is wrong."

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'Birtherism' to the 'Big Lie': Inside Obama's fight to counter disinformation - WDJT