Barack Obama: Hungary is an authoritarian regime
In his speech last week, Barack Obama was highly critical of Hungary.
The speech
The 44th President of the United States of America gave a speech on the creation and consumption of information. He also talked about the challenges that disinformation poses to America and democracy. His presentation was entitled “Challenges to Democracy in the Digital Information Realm”.
He delivered his speech at a professional conference jointly organised by the Cyber Policy Centre at Stanford University and the Obama Foundation on April 21.
Obama mentioned Hungary, among many other things, criticising the government.
As Portfolio reported, during his hour-long speech at the university, Obama outlined the threat to democracy posed by online disinformation, including deepfake technology powered by artificial intelligence and how he believes the problems can be tackled in the US and abroad.
“I’ve already seen demonstrations of deepfake technology that show what looks like me on a screen saying stuff I did not say. It’s a strange experience, people,”
Obama recalled his experience.
Hungary on the list of authoritarian regimes
As we can read in nyugatifeny.hu’s article, Obama gave examples of how social media is fuelling violence and extremism around the world.
“Authoritarian regimes and strongmen around the world from China to Hungary, the Philippines. Brazil have learned to conscript social media platforms to turn their own populations against groups they don’t like, whether it’s ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community, journalists, political opponents,”
Obama said.
“And of course, autocrats like Putin have used these platforms as a strategic weapon against democratic countries that they consider a threat,”
he added.
Obama also criticised the political state of his own country. He highlighted the events following the 2020 elections. After Joe Biden’s victory, with a few exceptions, Republican Party politicians communicated without evidence of electoral fraud, increasing polarisation and tensions between citizens.
Source: Portfolio, nyugatifeny.hu, rappler.com