Barack Obama's post-presidency glow is finally wearing off.
The man who promised hope and change is now advocating for something far more sinister.
And Obama made one admission that should terrify every American.
Former President calls for "government regulatory constraints" on social media
Barack Obama can't stay out of politics long enough to let Democrats figure out their own messaging problems.
The 44th President recently sat down with journalist Heather Cox Richardson, whose left-wing Substack he personally endorsed, for what should have been a friendly conversation about current events.
Instead, Obama said the quiet part out loud about what Democrats really want to do to free speech in America.
"Part of what we're going to have to do is to start experimenting with new forms of journalism and how we use social media in ways that reaffirm facts and separate facts from opinion," Obama declared.¹
"We want diversity of opinion. We don't want diversity of facts. That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media."
And then came the kicker that should make every American's blood run cold.
"By the way, it will require some government regulatory constraints," Obama admitted.²
That admission just exposed what Obama and his allies have been planning all along.
He tried to soften the blow by claiming this would be done in a way "that's consistent" with the First Amendment.
But then Obama contradicted himself by arguing that platforms should crack down on speech "in the sense of inciting violence" — something that's already not protected under the First Amendment anyway.
"There is a difference between letting all voices be heard versus a business model that elevates the most hateful voices or the most polarizing voices or the most dangerous, in the sense of inciting violence, voices," Obama continued.³
What Obama's really saying is that he wants the government to decide who gets heard and who gets silenced.
Obama has a long track record of attacking the First Amendment
This isn't Obama's first rodeo when it comes to undermining free speech rights.
Back in 2022, Obama gave a speech at Stanford University where he called for increased regulation of social media platforms under the guise of fighting "disinformation."⁴
At that event, Obama claimed to be "pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist" while simultaneously arguing that Big Tech companies needed more government oversight.
Even then, Obama was laying the groundwork for the censorship regime that would explode under the Biden administration.
The Biden White House created a government-Big Tech censorship complex that accomplished exactly what Obama is now proposing openly.
Federal agencies pressured social media platforms to suppress dissenting voices on everything from COVID policies to election integrity questions.
Biden even tried to create an actual Ministry of Truth called the Disinformation Governance Board, appointing TikTok performer Nina Jankowicz to run it.⁵
The board was disbanded after public outrage, but the censorship efforts just moved underground to other agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg later admitted that Biden administration officials "repeatedly pressured Facebook to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire."⁶
Former Twitter executives confirmed they censored the Hunter Biden laptop story after FBI warnings about "misinformation."
This is the playbook Obama helped create, and now he wants to make it official government policy.
The real agenda behind Obama's "regulatory constraints"
What makes Obama's latest comments so dangerous is how reasonable they sound to people who aren't paying attention.
"Yeah, we should crack down on hateful and dangerous speech," some might say.
But Obama's talking about giving the federal government power to determine what counts as "facts" versus "opinions."
Who exactly gets to decide what's true and what's false?
The same people who told us the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation?
The same officials who claimed COVID vaccines would stop transmission?
The same bureaucrats who insisted the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory?
Obama's proposal is every tyrant's dream: the power to control information by deciding what qualifies as legitimate "facts."
His call to suppress "hateful" and "polarizing" voices is especially chilling because those terms are deliberately vague.
They can easily be weaponized to silence anyone who criticizes government policies or challenges the official narrative.
Look at what's happening in the United Kingdom, where police make over 30 arrests per day for "offensive" online messages.⁷
A large portion of those arrests target criticism of immigration policies that have led to serious public safety problems.
The pattern is always the same: create or worsen a problem, silence critics of that problem, then use the crisis to justify even more control.
Obama and his allies spent years building the censorship infrastructure during the Biden administration.
Now they want to formalize it with "government regulatory constraints" that would give federal bureaucrats official authority over online speech.
Former Trump administration official Mike Benz put it perfectly when he responded to Obama's comments: "His whole apparatus is set up to end the First Amendment."⁸
The Trump administration dismantled much of the censorship machinery when it took office in January, issuing executive orders to restore free speech and end federal interference with online platforms.⁹
But Obama's latest comments show Democrats are already planning their comeback strategy for when they regain power.
If they get another chance to control the federal government, the First Amendment may not survive their "experiments" with censorship.
Obama's admission wasn't a slip of the tongue.
It was a promise.
¹ Vigilant Fox, "Barack Obama Proposes a Scary Idea for Social Media," The Gateway Pundit, October 29, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ CNBC, "Obama calls for tech regulation to combat disinformation on social media," April 22, 2022.
⁵ HotAir, "Obama: Let's 'Experiment' With Government-Censored 'Diversity' of Opinion in Journalism, Or Something," October 29, 2025.
⁶ House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "Mace Calls on Biden-Harris Administration to Provide Transparency on Current Censorship Efforts," September 26, 2024.
⁷ Vigilant Fox, "Barack Obama Proposes a Scary Idea for Social Media," The Gateway Pundit, October 29, 2025.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ The White House, "Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship," January 20, 2025.
