Obama calls for more regulatory oversight of social media giants.

The power of the social media giants has been called for greater regulatory oversight by former President Barack Obama.

He said that the companies needed to be subject to the same kind of regulatory oversight that ensured the safety of cars, food and other consumer products.

Tech companies need to be more transparent about how they operate. What content these platforms promote is the bigger issue.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects social media platforms from liability for content that their users post, was supported by the former president. Supporters of such a change believe it would force companies to do more to curb illegal or dangerous behavior.

Mr. Obama urged companies to put social responsibility ahead of profits, while praising the benefits of the internet.

He said that these companies need to have something other than just making money and increasing profit shares.

Mr. Obama spoke at the Cyber Policy Center, which is dedicated to the challenges the digital world has created for democracy in the United States and beyond. He cited his own effective use of social media as a candidate but also his frustration with how Russia's president used social media to influence the outcome of the election.

He said that his failure to fully appreciate how susceptible we had become to lies and conspiracy theories was still nagging at him. He didn't have to. We did it ourselves.

Among the attendees were prominent scholars, former government officials, and representatives of several tech companies, including Alphabet, which owns the likes of YouTube and TikTok. Panelists largely agreed on the problem of misinformation and the toxicity that it causes, but there was little consensus on what specific solutions would work best or be politically possible.

"We're not going to heal or even contain this problem overnight," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author.

The students and young scholars from the Obama Foundation met with Mr. Obama on the sidelines. He asked the founder of Gen-Z for Change how TikTok was more than dance videos.

Mr. Obama told them that it would be their generation that figured it out.