Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its accompanying propaganda wars are a stark reminder that, as Aeschylus already knew in the sixth century BC, the first casualty of war is truth.
And as Russia attempts to manage the minds of its people with a clampdown on ‘fake news’ – choking online information flows and criminalising free expression – the direct connection between virtual and real-world harms comes into sharp focus. Unlike in Vegas, what happens online does not stay online, although traces of it may linger there forever. Peace and democracy rely on freedom of information and the right to form and hold our opinions freely. Increasingly, these freedoms are both enjoyed and destroyed online.
States around the world are all grappling with the dangers we are exposed to online. In the UK, the Online Safety Bill, which had its second reading in Parliament this week, recognises the need to protect “content of democratic importance”. But it fails to recognise that the content is often not the problem. The bigger threat is systems that work to undermine democracy by curating information flows that mould our worldview.
