President Joe Biden used his farewell address to warn Americans about a scourge of misinformation and social media giants’ failure to stop it, unleashing a blistering criticism as tech companies such as Facebook and X embrace the incoming Trump administration.
“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling an abuse of power,” Biden said Wednesday from the Oval Office. “The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media has given up on fact-checking.”
“The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.”
His remarks come amid a shocking retreat from fact-checking on major social media platforms. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this month that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, would end its fact-checking program and replace it with a “community notes” model similar to that used by Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter).
In his announcement, Zuckerberg claimed Meta’s fact-checking teams had become “too politically biased.”
The shift is part of a large effort by tech executives to woo Republicans and the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple and Microsoft have all given $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and many of their leaders have made overtures in an effort to thaw an at-times frosty relationship with the president-elect.
Biden compared the rise in the billionaire class to the era of robber barons during America’s Gilded Age. Unchecked, the president warned, an oligarchy could arise that “threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
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“We must hold the social platforms accountable, to protect our children, our families and our very democracies from the abuse of power,” he said.