The return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2024 sent shockwaves through the political establishment. But for close observers of the troubled waters of digital media, his victory felt more like a tragic inevitability – the culmination of a long-festering information crisis that has been slowly poisoning the well of Western democracy.
As former President Barack Obama warned back in 2020, in the wake of Trump’s initial defeat, America risked slipping into an “epistemological crisis” – a complete breakdown of shared reality and the foundations of truth that democracies depend upon to function.
By definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work.
– Barack Obama in 2020
This grim prognosis has now been borne out, not just in America but across the democratic world. Political discourse has coarsened, consensus has unraveled, and the information arena has become a chaotic maelstrom of malicious falsehoods wherever populations elect their leaders.
The Distorting Force of Digital Media
While the crisis has complex economic and cultural roots, the central role played by digital media is undeniable. The sprawling tech giants that shape today’s information space operate by a business model that thrives on maximizing engagement at all costs, even if that means promoting radicalization and irresponsible misinformation.
Megalomaniac tech billionaires like Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X, have enthusiastically harnessed their resources and influence to distort political outcomes, denigrating elected leaders while elevating radical extremists. Hateful rhetoric and disinformation flow unimpeded across their platforms.
This wild west of digital media has created an enabling environment for the worst impulses and elements of society. In 2018, Facebook (now Meta) even admitted its platform had contributed to genocidal attacks on Myanmar’s Rohingya minority by fomenting unchecked hate.
Principled Objections and Practical Challenges
Reining in the distorting force of Big Tech is a daunting challenge. Tech companies argue they cannot be expected to police themselves, while “free speech absolutists” claim any regulation is a step on the slippery slope to censorship.
Wariness of any state involvement in deciding what can be published is a healthy instinct. But there is no jurisdiction that ignores the dissemination of material deemed dangerous to the public.
Society already recognizes reasonable limitations on dangerous content like violent pornography or incitements to terrorism. Expanding regulations to cover deliberate sabotage of the information space by bad actors, while respecting legitimate rights to free speech, is a nuanced but necessary step.
The sheer scale of these globe-spanning tech leviathans is another impediment to regulation. But as Britain’s Online Safety Act demonstrates, democratic governments have both the power and responsibility to hold digital companies accountable for the content they platform and amplify.
The Urgent Need for Democratic Action
Crafting effective regulations that can preserve vibrant online discourse while curtailing malicious pollution of the information ecosystem is a complex undertaking. It will require true political courage to resist the lobbying might of the tech giants.
But it is a challenge democracies must rise to meet, and with growing urgency. The digital realm has become an intrinsic part of our societies’ information infrastructure – considering it off-limits to regulation would be as great a dereliction of duty as refusing to secure the safety of water supplies or enforce traffic laws on public roads.
- Digital platforms shape the boundaries of political possibility
- Unaccountable tech power is incompatible with democracy
- Reasonable content regulations are a societal necessity
The crisis of Western democracy has many dimensions, but the digital arena is where some of the most decisive battles will be fought. How well our societies rise to the challenge of reforming the “megalomaniac designs” of billionaire technologists and rebuilding a fractured basis of shared truth may well determine democracy’s fate in the 21st century. The stakes could hardly be higher.
