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I think the situation in the USA is quite unique. UK and Australia is not (as of yet) in any serious risk of their democracy being undermined in the next election.

Sure you can say they could have had similar measures before the Kyrgyzstan or the Belarus elections. But there bad actors were perfectly able to undermine the democracy without the aid of social media.




Taking all the necessary steps so that one exact candidate (Trump) won't win the next election is "undermining democracy" already, especially as those steps now come from both business (Twitter, FB) and the media (Washington Post, NYTimes).

Maybe the Democrats and the people who are called "liberals" don't realise it just yet, but they've lost the game because they've started playing Trump's game. Like I said, they might technically win it this time around, but the next "Trump" will probably be younger and even more charismatic, and he (or maybe a she, why not?) will have to conquer a public scene which will have already known by that point that the democracy rules don't exist for either party, so why care for the democratic process anymore?

If it matters I'm not from the US, have never set foot there, just saying how I see things from half a world away.


If fact-checking the election results biases against one candidate and not the other, I suggest the issue is the behavior of the candidates, not Twitter.


It's unfortunate how few people on the inside don't see it this way. The slippery slope is real and we shouldn't start sliding down it just to beat Trump.


The slippery slope towards... Checking facts?


That bad actors can only influence US elections through social media sounds like a very bold claim


Wholeheartedly agree; at best, they just don't care enough about the other elections.


Note I never said “Influence election”. I said the more vague term “undermine democracy”. That was on purpose.

Social media is used for personal and political gain throughout the world. You could argue (and I wouldn’t disagree) that brexit happened because bad actors used social media to undermine democracy in the UK. However the UK is still democratic (at least to the same extent that it ever was). The same can not be said if Trump uses social media to declear him self a winner in a partially tallied election.

I think the nearest international example if the current (very likely) US situation is the Venezuela presidential election of 2018, where Juan Guaidó declared him self the president even though Nicolás Maduro won the election. But even then social media wasn’t the medium of choice to go about it (international leaders were; albeit international leaders that used social media).


It might because USA doesn't have something similar to 77th Brigade.




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