HOW WE ARE GULLED
How would you describe the disinformation landscape today?
In the digital age our assumptions about what guaranteed a democratic information environment have been turned upside down. We thought it was ‘freedom of expression’, pluralism, the marketplace of ideas and media going across borders. On the other side you had the totalitarians, the dictators of the Cold War, who had censorship and just one newspaper.
But ‘freedom of expression’ is now used by authoritarian regimes and dodgy democracies to swamp the information environment with disinformation and chaos. Today’s autocrats use online armies of trolls, cyber militias and online mobs to attack opposition and drown out criticism. Pluralism has tipped over into polarization and partisanship so vicious that mature democracies risk not being a model for anyone any more.
At the same time, you have these tech companies that are dominating the landscape, that are outside of any kind of democratic control or oversight and
