The last time the extent of Hillary Clinton’s tech “savviness” or lack thereof, became public knowledge was way back in 2016, when she lost the presidential election, amid, among other things, the (classified) emails scandal.
Now, Clinton has graduated from not knowing how email works, to feeling she is qualified to discuss the impact of immeasurably more complex technology, such as AI.
To give Clinton the benefit of the doubt, it has been a long time, and perhaps she has used that time to educate herself.
However, it also turns out that nearly a decade later she still blames her loss to Donald Trump on the since-debunked conspiracy theories about “election disinformation” that supposedly decide the outcome of that vote.
So, Clinton-the-victim’s comments now, half a year before the next US presidential election and amid mainstream media’s “disinformation/AI panic” might read as little, if anything, more than political campaigning.
She claims this is her focus now: still talking about the alleged wrongdoing done to her in 2016, still alleging this was all about “disinformation” – and that it was all “primitive” – compared to what she anticipates is happening now.
Clinton also plays her audience by at once “admitting” that she and hers are ignorant (“I don’t think any of us understood it. I did not understand it. I can tell you, my campaign did not understand it”), to then claim that, for some reason, she should now be taken as an authority.
Not about social media, memes, the “dark web” (or, God forbid, the concept of email…) but also, the regulation of online providers/content. Enter the CDA Section 230 debate – where it seems each side of the ideological aisle interprets its importance according to their political needs of the day.
“Their, you know, the so-called ‘Dark Web’ was filled with these kinds of memes and stories and videos of all sorts…portraying me in all kinds of… less than flattering ways,” Clinton said. “And we knew something’s going on, but we didn’t understand the full extent of the very clever way in which it was insinuated into social media.”
Clinton is now quoted in the press as saying that tech companies – enjoying, and, conservatives say, indulgently abusing their Section 230 protections over third-party content (to favor liberals) – suddenly should no longer have those privileges.
An experienced observer may see this turn of events – somebody like Clinton apparently advocating for Section 230 to be abolished – as simply a maneuver to pile on more pressure on major tech companies to be careful “not to slip” in their “censorship diligence” this election season – or else.
Either way, this is what Clinton said: “Section 230 has to go. We need a different system under which tech companies and we’re mostly talking obviously about the social media platforms – operate.”
