Back in 2008, Barack Obama famously harnessed the internet and social media to help win the White House. He kept up the embrace once he got there. Now he worries that the internet and social media have helped create the single biggest threat to our democracy.
Obama has been saying a version of this for four years since he left the White House but his words are getting steadily more pointed. Hes clearly sounding an alarm, but its not exactly clear what he thinks we should do about it.
His latest critique comes in a new interview between Obama and Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, and before we go any further we should put it in full context: Obama was discussing a media landscape dominated not just by Facebook but by Fox News that allows Americans to choose their own distorted reality. Which means, he says, we no longer have a shared set of facts.