Barack Obama, who was instrumental in fueling the media’s “misinformation” narrative before he left office, has a new buzzword — “digital fingerprints.”
The former Democrat president wants the origin of digital information such as photos and videos to be clearly traced, to fight the spread of deepfakes.
“That technology’s here now,” said Obama in a discussion with his former advisor David Axelrod on the latter’s CNN podcast. “So, most immediately we’re going to have all the problems we had with misinformation before, [but] this next election cycle will be worse.”
President Barack Obama signs the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act alongside Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd (center), Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Barney Frank (second right), Vice President Joe Biden (far left), and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (second left) on July 21, 2010. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
“”And the need for us, for the general public, I think to be more discriminating consumers of news and information, the need for us to over time develop technologies to create watermarks or digital fingerprints so we know what is true and what is not true.”
The idea of fighting “misinformation” by tracing the origin of digital info is not new. A coalition of tech and media companies led by Microsoft is already trying to make this technology the industry standard, as is a coalition with similar goals led by Adobe.
Before he left office, President Obama helped spark the media panic over “fake news” — later rebranded as “misinformation” — that was adopted by the media, NGOs, and tech companies as a pretext to suppress conservative content.
Hours before election day 2016, the Democrat president was giving interviews to the media about the dangers of “fake news,” and in the weeks following the election of Donald Trump, used public appearances to talk about the problem of “misinformation.”
Prior to this, the topic was not discussed widely in the media. Afterwards, it was everywhere. And by 2020, it was a key part of the media and tech industry’s efforts to interfere in the election.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.