In September this year, the Nobel prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa gave a powerful speech to the National Press Club about the ways in which authoritarians manipulate social media. She called for the Australian government to bolster the regulation of technology platforms and issued a stark warning.
“The greatest threat we face today isn’t any individual leader or one government,” she said. “It’s the technology that’s amplifying authoritarian tactics worldwide, enabled by democratic governments that abdicated their responsibility to protect the public… Tech platforms have become weapons of mass destruction to democracy.”
