Europe’s Elon Musk Problem: He and other tech oligarchs are making it impossible to conduct free and fair elections anywhere.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/03/musk-tech-oligarch-european-election-influence/681453/
by nimicdoareu
49 comments
>Quite soon, democracies around the world might find that they have to choose between their alliance with the United States and their ability to run their own elections and select their own leaders without the pressure of aggressive outside manipulation.
During an American election, a rich man can hand out $1 million checks to prospective voters. Companies and people can use secretly funded “dark money” nonprofits to donate unlimited money, anonymously, to super PACs, which can then spend it on advertising campaigns. Podcasters, partisans, or anyone, really, can tell outrageous, incendiary lies about a candidate.
They can boost those falsehoods through targeted online advertising. No special courts or election rules can stop the disinformation from spreading before voters see it. The court of public opinion, which over the past decade has seen and heard everything, no longer cares. U.S. elections are now a political Las Vegas: Anything goes.
But that’s not the way elections are run in other countries.
In Britain, political parties are, at least during the run-up to an election, limited to spending no more than £54,010 per candidate. In Germany, as in many other European countries, the state funds political parties, proportionate to their number of elected parliamentarians, so that politicians do not have to depend on, and become corrupted by, wealthy donors. In Poland, courts fast-track election-related libel cases in the weeks before a vote in order to discourage people from lying.
So suspend them.
Build build own public owned social network.
Like old days twitter.
Or just by tech and run own clone, runned by EU sponsored non profit organisation.
Block all others…..
My only hope at this point is that the acceleration on display by the tech-oligarchy is going to make a mark. Musk and his cohort of billionaires have gone full mask off and I hope that European countries will be able to parse that prior to upcoming elections. I acknowledge that there are those like AFD for whom this won’t make any sort of difference, but for the rest of those who may have been fence sitters, the current state of the US march toward tech-oligarchy-fascism , in speed goose-step, will be a wake up call.
Ok so do something about it
The EU needs to grow a pair and stand up to fascist America. Ban X and Facebook
Europe should have its own firewall, and any ruzziwn shill should be tried for treason and crimes against humanity.
Go back to ballot boxes.
Ban it!!!
It’s been that way for a while. It’s just dialled up to 11 now.
Simple solution: block social media for a while just before elections. ANY social media. It won’t kill anyone (maybe it’ll deflate some egos, but that’s a good thing) and will make sure this kind of interference drops to a lesser degree.
And use paper ballots, not the shitty electronic booths that are completely hackable.
In the aftermath of the horrible year of 2016 I complained to my friends and family that I fear the democratic societies are no longer able to run proper elections without an entirely new approach to social networks and targeted political campaigning.
This started to be painfully obvious around the Brexit referendum (after the joke of a referendum in Netherlands on Ukraine which clearly served as a pilot project). Especially with the scandal about Cambridge Analytica, one of the new groups of psychopathic immoral cretins marrying modern means of user profiling with micro-targetted campaigns and advanced opinion moulding strategies.
*”You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time”*
Social media user targetting and echo chambers made it possible to lie to most people most of the time in a way we’ve never truly experienced. A hostile actor can now speak in 1000 tailored voices to 1000 people profiled to be susceptible to something at once and the full picture will stay hidden from the rest.
The media of the old also lied and misdirected, but it was all in the open, visible to all, and the contradictions were fewer and easier to call out.
Until we figure out a lasting solution for this, elections and referendums are fundamentally compromised.
The name Luigi has become a verb. Eg: He needs Luigied.
During an American electionDuring an American election, a rich man can hand out $1 million checks to prospective voters. Companies and people can use secretly funded “dark money” nonprofits to donate unlimited money, anonymously, to super PACs, which can then spend it on advertising campaigns. Podcasters, partisans, or anyone, really, can tell outrageous, incendiary lies about a candidate. They can boost those falsehoods through targeted online advertising. No special courts or election rules can stop the disinformation from spreading before voters see it. The court of public opinion, which over the past decade has seen and heard everything, no longer cares. U.S. elections are now a political Las Vegas: Anything goes.
But that’s not the way elections are run in other countries. In Britain, political parties are, at least during the run-up to an election, [limited to spending no more than £54,010 per candidate](https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-spending-and-pre-poll-donations-and-loans-uk-parliamentary-general-election/spending-limit). In Germany, as in many other European countries, the state funds political parties, proportionate to their number of elected parliamentarians, so that politicians do not have to depend on, and become corrupted by, wealthy donors. In Poland, courts fast-track election-related libel cases in the weeks before a vote in order to discourage people from lying.
Nor is this unique to Europe. Many democracies have state or public media that are obligated, at least in principle, to give equal time to all sides. Many require political donations to be transparent, with the names of donors listed in an online registry. Many have limits on political advertising. Some countries also have rules about hate speech and indict people who break them.
Countries apply these laws to create conditions for fair debate, to build trust in the system, and to inspire confidence in the winning candidates. Some democracies believe that transparency matters—that voters should know who is funding their candidates, as well as who is paying for political messages on social media or anywhere else. In some places, these rules have a loftier goal: to prevent the rise of antidemocratic extremism of the kind that has engulfed democracies—and especially European democracies—in the past.
But for how much longer can democracies pursue these goals? We live in a world in which algorithms controlled by American and Chinese oligarchs choose the messages and images seen by millions of people; in which money can move through secret bank accounts with the help of crypto schemes; and in which this dark money can then boost anonymous social-media accounts with the aim of shaping public opinion. In such a world, how can any election rules be enforced? If you are Albania, or even the United Kingdom, do you still get to set the parameters of your public debate? Or are you now forced to be Las Vegas too?
Although it’s easy to get distracted by the schoolyard nicknames and irresponsible pedophilia accusations that Elon Musk flings around, these are the real questions posed by his open, aggressive use of X to spread false information and promote extremist and anti-European politicians in the U.K., Germany, and elsewhere. The integrity of elections—and the possibility of debate untainted by misinformation injected from abroad—is equally challenged by TikTok, the Chinese platform, and by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, whose subsidiaries include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. TikTok says the company does not accept any paid political advertising. Meta, which [announced in January that it is abandoning fact-checking on its sites in the U.S.](https://apnews.com/article/meta-facts-trump-musk-community-notes-413b8495939a058ff2d25fd23f2e0f43), also says it will continue to comply with European laws. But even before Zuckerberg’s radical policy change, these promises were empty. Meta’s vaunted content curation and moderation have never been transparent. Nobody knew, and nobody knows, what exactly Facebook’s algorithm was promoting and why. Even an occasional user of these platforms encounters spammers, scammers, and opaque accounts running foreign influence operations. No guide to the algorithm, and no real choices about it, are available on Meta products, X, or TikTok.
The first step is to create awareness of this happening. It seems Elon is helping Europa to realize that. I know its not Elon’s intentions – he is a fascist and a Nazi. But this will educate people and make them realize the danger. It will be a new era in history.
I hope we will ditch Tic-Toc, Meta, X and go Open Source and start a decentralized social interaction out of Oligarchs control. I hope Trump’s action will make Europa stronger and more united against a more fascist world 🙂
You guys don’t need to listen to the opinions of the oligarchs. It’s not like they can force you to do anything
Elon wants revolution, French may how him how it’s done
Our hold on power depends on our ability to censor opposing views
Does any European country use electronic voting for their main elections? As someone who works in cyber security this has me more concerned than anything at least make sure it can’t be hacked.
The moment every social media company is not actively censoring conservatives = no more free elections somehow.
Hillary was right, “we lose total control if social media content is not more regulated”.
Start regulating the internet and stop using American companies. It’s that simple.
20 years ago, I’d have fought to the death to keep the internet unregulated. But the companies, the governments, the billionaires, they have ruined it. It’s an absolute shell of what it was and it causes nothing but harm. 20-25 years ago, it was genuinely wonderful and an absolute wild west of communities and individuals. Now its homogonised, ad revenued to the eyeballs, full of SEO and like 8 websites that actually matter.
Then, begin removing America from our society, if it takes 30 years it takes 30 years, but they need to go. Start replacing them with European alternatives, start up new alternative companies for Europe if needed.
We are letting them have this power because we keep giving them the power to do it. If we shut down X tomorrow in the UK, no one would care within 6-12 months, and Musk gets that little bit more quiet. Tax fucking Amazon and alike properly, make it harder for them to be billionaires. It’s honestly this simple.
“Oh but the economy” yeah, because the economy propping up these wankers has been real fucking slick these last 25 years. If we’re fucked anyway, just rip the plaster off, start up our own manufacturing and industry, work together and stop giving them power we’re giving them.
This problem exist since social media became popular.
You are noticing this problem now only because you dont have their same political position, I agree with fixing it but you shouldn’t hit only Musk and zuck, you should hit basicly anyone in the world with a website so its almost impossible
Sounds like to me that democracies are fundamentally flawed. Maybe it’s time we transition to a new political system.
Democracy’s biggest weakness is politicians’ fear of doing unpopular things that may put their reelection at risk. Banning harmful social media will never happen because people like social media and whoever tries to take it away will lose votes, while whoever brings it back will gain votes.
Deny defend depose
Stop some of the money they use to interfere in free and fair elections, Europe is a huge market for their companies to lose out on..
It’s not a problem. Ban the algorithms or the business model. Done.
It was always like this, before social media it was TV and talk shows, before that it was newspapers, before that we didn’t really have democracies so ye.
So when tech companies blocked and banned right wing politicians that wasn’t election interference…but when they stopped blocking them it’s suddenly interference????
Come on!
Because people are as dumb as a bag of rocks.
Of course, we don’t count Soros or WEF. They are epitome of democracy
What about all the others previous to them? They founded the status quo so they were seen as good?
Its a simple choice – allow democracy to be subverted via social media or disconnect the main players and develop EU based platforms with strong controls against manipulation, data theft and subversion with open and auditable algorythms.
Our slow and soft response to foreign entitites undermining our democracy is what is making it impossible. This American newspaper portraying us as helpless and incompetent victims is also part of this undermining process btw. Why is it even allowed to post non-european sources on this subredit?
Can someone explain how Twitter prevents fair elections?
How is the ability to hear both sides of a argument from free information sources a bad thing?
Ignore the village idiots they have no real power.
Yes, it a real problem, we need to deal with it, and that’s not easy.
I wanna say, in Denmark it’s less of a problem for the following reason: Our election cycle is rarely longer than 3 weeks, and no one knows exactly WHEN the election comes, as it’s the prime minister and no one else who decides what date the election is going to be. They are often quite coy about it, when asked by journalist the standard answer is “When the time is ripe” or “You’ll find out”.
However it means that outside meddling also becomes more difficult, because they have to get their campaign going really quickly and it takes a long time to influence people via social media. Plus, the political debate takes place in the Danish language and over domestic issuis which are not mastered by many foreigners.
In contrast the election cycle in e.g. Germany is almost half a year, giving the Musks and Putins of this world plenty of time to plan and execute unduely influence of voters.
So it’s fair when left-leaning media outlets cover elections and sway public opinion, but unfair when outlets that don’t lean left do the same thing? What you’re suggesting isn’t about restoring democracy. It’s the exact opposite
Just because “your” party doesnt win doesnt make it proof of election meddling/fraud. Time to grow up children, democracy means sometime you lose, today’s left is freaking weird.
That’s the plan
The corporate Oligarchs gave the Harris campaign 1.5 billion. The campaign reportedly spent $1.7 billion dollars. The Harris campaign had a glittering array of the rich and famous stars give fantastic performances, telling the USA voters in detail why they should vote Harris.
Whole sections of Democrats failed to get out and vote. Other traditional Democrat supporters swung to Trump, and Harris lost convincingly.
Instead of blaming Oligarchs, go figure out why the poor and middle class voted Trump. They gave Trump the numbers, not the rich.
Banning twitter would help
What in the name of God are ye all raving on about?
So ban all those (media apps, TV channels etc as ppl have mentioned) of all those who disagree with your views? How is that not worse than what Elons doing?
Do ye not see the insane irony in that?
Well, I would just like to inform you all that it’s ok to be proud to be German
I think we give too much credit to the social media manipulation.
The people who vote republican in the US, or far-right in any other country, would do so anyways. It is not the tweets from Musk or memes that are making people vote. They create a very loud echo chamber, but populist parties existed long before Trump&Musk.
Propaganda obviously works, but in order for it to work there has to be a genuine dismay to the current state as well.
If the left or centrists parties focused more on solving the root of the problems, instead of trying to demonize their opponents, then they would do much better.
Ic you can’t conduct „free and fair“ elections if other people voice opinions and use their power to do the same stuff you and your allies do, your democracy suck.
Hes a shitter but really the least of our concerns in terms of “free and fair” right now
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