The hypocrisy of American democracy and the urgent need for a social network of public interest

At the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance delivered an arrogant and cynical speech, intending to lecture European leaders on democracy and freedom of expression. However, this stance stands in stark contrast to the political reality in his own country.

The current U.S. administration is led by a president who shamelessly insults independent journalists, stigmatizes critics, and excludes from his press conferences those media outlets that do not align with the official truth. Anyone who does not reproduce his alternative facts is lying and therefore does not deserve to be invited. As if press conferences were private parties and not exercises in accountability, and as if the function of the media were to flatter presidents and not control them. Bukele or Maduro have nothing to envy.

The outlook is even bleaker. Trump, directly or through sympathetic officials, is pushing multimillion-dollar investigations against independent media outlets for coverage that does not satisfy him. And social media has completely bowed to his wishes: X is the kingdom of disinformation, Meta dismantled its fact-checking program and is operating with famished content moderation policies. The case of TikTok is emblematic. After a law was passed to force its sale, the platform — which knows very well how to deal with autocrats — managed to seduce the president. Without giving explanations, for example, it suspended critical accounts that had millions of followers. Thus, by the president’s grace and despite the will of Congress, TikTok continues to operate in the U.S. The government’s message is clear: whoever does not conform to its wishes will suffer the effects of fierce retaliation. Whoever praises it will be blessed.

In this dystopian context, the president intends to hand over the most sensitive personal data of millions of citizens to the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, obsessed — and ecstatic — with absolute control. This, combined with advanced artificial intelligence systems and networks like X, would give him a power of manipulation and intimidation that dictators of the past could have only dreamed of.

But as a good autocrat, Trump is not satisfied with actions that violate freedom of expression and threaten privacy: his administration has also usurped the functions of Congress and intimidated judges to try to prevent them from exercising their constitutional duty.

Meanwhile, and for now at least, Europe has resisted this authoritarian wave. The U.S. vice president’s claim to give lessons in democracy is ironic coming from a government that systematically undermines its own democratic pillars.

One notable aspect of the vice president’s speech was his criticism of Romania for cancelling and rescheduling its elections after a campaign of foreign interference using TikTok was exposed, in violation of the country’s electoral laws. These were not just ads for a few thousand dollars, but a multimillion-dollar strategy designed to manipulate on a large scale. Yet Mr. Vance said he was more concerned about this response than Russia — that is, he is more concerned about democratic controls on election disinformation than the invasion of Ukraine. Unsurprisingly.

Many pro-Trump voters live in disinformation bubbles fueled by conspiracy theories promoted by the president himself and his entourage. For example, fervent supporters of the presidential pardon for those responsible for the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, do not recognize the violence exercised during the attack. It seems that they never saw the violent images of the assault. Videos that were broadcast on all news channels and shared on social media by hundreds of thousands of people failed to penetrate the walls of MAGA echo chambers, solidly built with conspiracy theories and robust disinformation campaigns.

A high percentage of young adults in the United States do not know what the Holocaust was, and some even deny that it ever happened. Many people insist, against all available evidence, that Trump won the 2020 election, that immigrants want to replace plump Irish descendants, and that vaccines cause autism.

It is clear that these beliefs have deep cultural roots and multiple explanations, but without a doubt one of them is their usefulness for some ideological currents and the lack of transparency and responsibility of digital platforms.

The point is not to turn social media into arbiters of truth, but to prevent multi-million dollar campaigns driven by political or economic interests from using trolls, bots and other artificial intelligence systems to spread disinformation on a large scale. These campaigns not only use algorithms to amplify misleading content, they also brutally harass dissenting voices online to silence them. And they succeed.

The effectiveness of these strategies increases with the use of personal data to carry out micro-segmentations so precise that they directly influence the decisions of the people they are targeting.

It is nothing new to say that this parallel world of tailored truths and alternative facts threatens rights as important as freedom of expression, privacy, political rights, and democracy itself. Although some fear that regulating these practices will lead to state censorship, this risk is manageable if regulation is democratic, independent, and transparent. The Digital Services Act is a good start but other complementary measures are needed. UNESCO has developed an interesting proposal on the subject, which deserves to be discussed.

An additional proposal would be to create a social network geared to the public interest, through a transparent and autonomous public-private partnership, similar to successful models such as the BBC, that fosters a digital environment free of manipulation and violence. Such a platform could return economic benefits to independent journalism, serve as a vehicle for the dissemination of small and large businesses or artistic and cultural proposals, and offer a space for political leaders, of all stripes, to express themselves without forcing users to be on networks to which they do not want to belong. It would be a safe space for democratic debate, with transparent and fully auditable design decisions and moderation policies. The very survival of democracy depends in large part on the creation of new digital spaces that promote constructive debate and strengthen public trust, rather than exacerbating social divisions or undermining institutions. If we want to preserve democracy as a conversation based on shared facts, we must build a digital environment in which such conversation is possible. And the United States is not the model. On the contrary, it is time to tell the emperor that he is naked.

*Catalina Botero Marino is a lawyer, former Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and a former member of the Meta Content Advisory Board.

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