Taming the Digital Leviathan

Abstract

Liberal democracies are undergoing a litmus test with the advancements of Web 3.0 fundamentally altering the global democratic praxis. Democracies contend with technologies that alienate, divide, and shape our opinions, choices, and preferences through bubble filters, echo chambers, and bot-driven agenda setting. Social media disinformation has resulted in the truth becoming the biggest causality skewing the power scale to favour the technologically sound and economically invested. Technologies, such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and deepfakes pose an existential threat to democracy. Particularly, deepfakes add to our woes, creating unforeseen implications for democratic governance as world leaders' use of social media to announce governmental policy decisions enhances its dangers including serious political and governmental upheaval. The chapter examines the interplay between social media platforms, digital technologies, and their implication for democracy through the twin prism of legal regulation and conceptualisation of the right to ‘truth'.