How the European elections proved that democracies cannot survive without social media regulation
Romania, Poland, Portugal - three countries where elections took place this weekend, and at the same time three examples where candidates/parties offering their voters absolute abominations of hatred and resentment received considerable support.
We can continue to look for explanations that the price of eggs is not that high or that the damn leftists have cornered unfortunate white men and they are snapping back, but hate mongers are gaining more and more support in countries with very different states of economy, migration and political culture in general.
The only common variables in these equations are the creeping revolution in information consumption, where TikTok, YouTube, Telegram or Twitter are finally becoming people's news sources, with algorithms that reliably bring hate mongers to the top of the page.
If we add to this the fact that some of these networks are directly controlled by authoritarian regimes hostile to democracy, and some are successfully hacked for manipulation with bots and advertising budgets, it should come as no surprise that many of these "new faces" are so friendly to Russia or China.
You don't even have to buy anyone directly. If you know that your pro-Russian or anti-Western messages will bring you tons of views and followers, then in the absence of conscience, such free information support will not cause any internal resistance. A lack of intelligence and empathy, as well as an unbridled thirst for power, will help you cope with the realization that you are being used to destroy your own state, as is happening now in the United States.
Regulation of the information space under such conditions becomes a matter of survival for democracies. And the question here is both about the algorithmic models of information consumption and the influence of hostile actors through their own products and manipulation of Western.
Unfortunately, the idea of absolutely unrestricted exchange of information as a guarantee of freedom and fair competition of ideas in the era of social media and artificial intelligence is as utopian as the belief in the end of history.
