[WND] Former President Barack Obama said at a forum Tuesday that the U.S. must address what he called misinformation and said government must regulate social media platforms to ensure facts are separated from opinions.During an appearance on The Connecticut Forum's "An Evening with President Barack Obama," the former president said he worries about the current state of discourse and spoke of a growing disregard for facts. He said that this undermines trust in society.
"I've said this before, but I always repeat it. You and I can have an opinion about this little side table. You know, you might not like the design. You might not like the color or how it's finished, but we can have that discussion. If I say to you this is a lawnmower, you'll think I'm crazy," Obama said. "And if I really believe it, I'll think you're crazy. And we're now in a situation in which we are having these basic factual arguments. And that further undermines trust."
Obama then spoke of Vladimir Putin.
"Vladimir Putin and the KGB had a saying that was then adopted proudly by Steve Bannon, which was if you want propaganda to be effective [then] you don't have to convince people that what you are saying is true. You just have to flood the zone with so much poop. They use a different word. But you have to flood the zone with so much untruth, constantly, that at some point people don't believe anything," Obama added.
"So it doesn't matter if a candidate running for office just is constantly, just hypothetically, saying untrue things, or if an elected president claims that he won when he lost and that the system was rigged, but then when he wins, then it isn't rigged, because he won. It doesn't matter if everybody believes it. It just matters if everybody starts kind of throwing up their hands and saying 'Well, I guess it doesn't matter.'"