Tech pioneer Marc Andreessen has slammed Barack Obama’s recent calls to fight “disinformation,” blasted the former president’s agenda as an attempt to suppress free speech.
Andreessen is a major technology investor who co-invented the first widely used web browser, making it possible for non-technical people to navigate the Internet.
It is easily one of the most consequential inventions of all time.
He is not happy that Obama called on tech companies and the government to suppress free speech yesterday, remarking that the ex-POTUS is “not fooling anyone.”
Before Obama spoke, Andreessen: “Will Mr. Obama, speaking at our second most important university and to his acolytes in our modern aristocratic laptop class, stand for truth to power, or power to truth?
“Will Mr. Obama have the stiffness of spine and clarity of virtue to stand for the American values of free speech and free thought, or for their opposites, censorship, and repression?
“Will Mr. Obama stand today for Socrates, or for the men who condemned Socrates?
“No, Marc, you don’t understand, it’s not about freedom of speech, it’s about freedom of reach, distribution, foreign disinformation…
“Oh, no, I understand. It’s about freedom of speech.
“Always remember that the prime urge of every society is to expunge the truth-teller. Socrates had it coming.
“In the early ’90s, such speech suppression demands came from one political side, now they come from the other. But honestly, they’re the same people.
“No, Marc, you don’t understand, you need to have run Internet services to understand the issues here!
“Well, I’ve been running and participating in running Internet services at scale since [squints, checks draft of memoirs] 1992.
“Holy Lord, thirty years!
“No, Marc, you don’t understand, the guy whose speech we need to ban is no Socrates.
“Well, first, who are you to decide that? Second, how do such assessments by authority figures like you tend to hold up through history?
“No, Marc, you don’t understand, it’s not suppression of free speech when private companies do it!
“Well, the guy onstage today is a former President and at least the second most important person in our dominant political party, if not the first… huh.
“No, Marc, you don’t understand, we can’t have freedom of speech right now, we must prevent fascism!
“Ah, so tell me, when fascism arrives, does it…eliminate free speech?
“If fascism eliminates free speech, but we must eliminate free speech to prevent fascism, then… huh.
After Obama’s speech, a disappointed Andreesen said:
“Everyone knows it’s all about free speech.
“You know it, I know it, they know it.
“They’re not fooling anyone, they’re not even fooling themselves.
“It’s about– Free speech.
“It’s about free speech. It’s always about free speech.
“Shut up,” Obama explained.
“Oh well!”
Oh well! pic.twitter.com/xoc1Fpp6fH
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) April 21, 2022
Fun fact, I was first asked to implement Internet censorship in 1993. “The browser must block bad images.” I refused then, and my views have never changed.
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) April 21, 2022
So, Barack Obama has taken up fighting disinformation. NYT notes how his administration didn’t regulate tech.
When I started writing about it, a decade ago, the pushback I got from the Obama universe was intense, and is hinted at the below profile of me.🧵https://t.co/sOrP43qQC0 pic.twitter.com/LwxLfKVrXt
— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) April 22, 2022
