Will 2024 Be the Year Fake News Destroys Democracy?
With almost a billion people heading to the polls, countries urgently need to band together to combat a flood of disinformation and digital manipulation.
Indian elections are a spectacle — and a laboratory.
Photographer: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images
In 2024, democracy will face a test for which it is unready. For the first time since the internet age began, the world’s four largest electoral blocs — India, the European Union, the US, and Indonesia — will hold general elections in the same year. Almost a billion people may go to the polls in the next 12 months, amid a storm of disinformation and digital manipulation unlike anything the world has yet seen.
The stakes are extraordinarily consequential for the future of democracy itself. In the US, the electoral favorite appears to revel in the possibility of becoming a dictator. In the EU, the far right is poised to surge continent-wide. Indonesia’s front-runner is a former general once accused of human-rights violations. And in India, a beleaguered opposition faces its last chance to stave off what may otherwise turn into decades of one-party rule.