Our book dives into a fascinating and, frankly, a bit unsettling pattern: how the powerful – governments, politicians, media bigwigs – tend to get swept up in a “panic” about what they call “misinformation” or “disinformation.” It’s like they believe they know what’s best for us, the common people, and anything that strays from their ideal narrative needs to be reined in. We saw this panic hit a fever pitch in 2024, a year that was supposed to be a shining moment for democracy worldwide. Imagine, nearly two billion people, half the adult population on Earth, all heading to the polls, from the United States to India. You’d think there’d be celebrations, a feeling of hope and progress. Instead, it seems fear was the dominant emotion. Take a look at The New York Times in January 2024, sounding the alarm bells about “false narratives and conspiracy theories” becoming a global menace. They pointed a finger at artificial intelligence, claiming it had supercharged these efforts, twisting our perceptions of reality. Experts chimed in, painting a picture of a “perfect storm of disinformation” threatening the very foundations of free and fair elections. The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), a group funded by the EU, echoed these worries, calling disinformation a “pervasive phenomenon” that more voters were exposed to than ever before. One anonymous senior EU official dramatically warned of “tsunami levels” of disinformation, describing it as a “silent killer” that had “infected” them like a foreign interference. Not to be outdone, Věra Jourová, the European Commission’s vice president for values and transparency, chillingly suggested that AI deepfakes of politicians could be an “atomic bomb” capable of altering voter preferences. The response from the European Commission was swift and, some might say, heavy-handed. They sent stern letters to social media platforms and even set up “crisis units,” anticipating weeks of battling attempts to delegitimize election outcomes. This whole atmosphere reached a peak in May 2024 at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit. Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission and herself a candidate for re-election, made a grand promise: a new “European democracy shield.” This shield would apparently sniff out “malign information or propaganda” and ensure it was “swiftly removed and blocked” by online platforms. This sounds a lot like an expansion of the Digital Services Act, and it would essentially normalize the kind of emergency measures the EU had already used after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Think back to February 2022, right after Russia invaded Ukraine. The EU wasted no time in suspending the broadcasting activities of Russian state-sponsored media outlets like Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik. Their reasoning? They claimed Russia was engaged in a “systematic, international campaign of media manipulation and distortion of facts” that threatened democracy in EU member states. Then, on March 4, 2022, the European Commission clarified that social media companies had to prevent users from broadcasting any content from RT and Sputnik. This was a pretty broad directive, broad enough to even include content posted by individuals trying to counter Russian propaganda. Since then, the list of banned Russian media outlets has grown to over a dozen. Josep Borrell, who was the EU’s High Representative at the time, defended these actions, arguing that Russian disinformation was a “major threat for liberal democracies.” He essentially said that if information is manipulated, people’s choices become biased. From there, he made a leap, concluding that by banning RT and Sputnik, they weren’t attacking freedom of expression but rather protecting it. Now, you could argue that this very statement sounds a bit Orwellian, a classic example of disinformation itself. The EU’s General Court even upheld the ban on RT and Sputnik, claiming it was necessary to stop a “vehicle for propaganda” that supported Russian aggression, even though no member state was actually at war. The court argued that the ban was temporary, thus preserving freedom of expression. However, the conditions for lifting the ban – such as Russia having to “cease propaganda actions against the Union” – made its temporary nature seem more like a theoretical concept than a practical reality. It leaves one wondering if the true goal was to suppress information simply because it didn’t align with the official narrative, rather than genuinely protecting people from manipulation.
So, with all this doomsday talk about online disinformation, were the fears actually justified? The 2024 European Parliamentary elections took place in June, followed by snap elections in France and the UK. Contrary to the shrill alarm bells that had been ringing, it turns out that neither “fake news” nor foreign interference managed to undermine the will of the people. EDMO, the very organization that had been warning about potential problems, concluded that “no major last-minute disinformation-related incidents have been detected.” And that much-hyped flood of deceptive deepfakes? It didn’t seem to impact the elections either. In September 2024, the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national hub for data science and AI, analyzed AI disinformation in the EU, French, and British elections. Their findings were quite clear: “no clear evidence that such threats had any impact on influencing large-scale voter attitudes or election results.” The stark contrast between the elite’s panic and the reality on the ground shouldn’t have been a surprise, really. It was a replay of the panic that surrounded the 2019 European elections. Back then, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had warned that “in our online world, the risk of interference and manipulation has never been higher.” Yet, when those elections were over, the Commission concluded that no widespread disinformation campaigns had been identified, a finding that independent researchers corroborated. These ongoing concerns seem largely fueled by the assumption that Russian disinformation played a significant role in the 2016 US presidential election, bringing Donald Trump to power. However, several studies have since cast serious doubt on the impact of disinformation campaigns (Russian or otherwise) on elections more broadly. A 2023 study using long-term survey data, for instance, concluded, “We find no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.” Despite all these signs of democratic resilience, the elite’s warnings about catastrophic disinformation simply continued, full throttle.
Even with clear evidence that democracy was more robust than they feared, the alarm bells kept ringing. EDMO, sounding almost like a medieval inquisitor searching for heretics, declared that “The European information space must be kept clean and monitored all the time.” European politicians readily agreed. When Ursula von der Leyen was re-elected as commission president on July 18, 2024, she doubled down on her proposal for a European Democracy Shield. In that same month, Cyprus, an EU member state, even proposed a law that would criminalize the spread of “fake news” with penalties as severe as five years in prison. And after Germany’s 2025 election, the new Christian Democratic Union-led coalition platform boldly asserted that “The deliberate dissemination of false factual claims is not protected by freedom of speech” and promised to establish a new media oversight body specifically targeting “information manipulation.” These moves highlight a growing trend where governments and powerful institutions, under the guise of protecting the public, are increasingly seeking to control the narrative and define what constitutes “truth.” It’s a dangerous path that can easily lead to censorship and a chilling effect on open discourse, eroding the very foundations of free societies.
Interestingly, while the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has taken a more permissive stance on bans related to hate speech, it has shown a stronger skepticism towards vague or overly broad disinformation laws. In cases involving Poland and Ukraine, for example, the ECHR emphasized that governments have limited room to restrict political speech, especially during elections, and found violations of free speech. However, it’s worth noting that these particular cases predate the post-2016 elite panic surrounding disinformation. In a 2019 decision, the court did rule in favor of an applicant, but it also upheld a Polish election law requiring courts to address “untrue information” within 24 hours. This was justified by the need to quickly correct election-related “fake news” to preserve electoral integrity. The court also highlighted that the speech in question wasn’t excessively “vulgar or insulting.” In contrast, in 2021, the ECHR rejected a complaint from a local newspaper that had been fined under the same Polish law for publishing unverified defamatory claims about a mayoral candidate, specifically pointing out the lack of factual support. So, the ECHR’s case law suggests that while it might be more wary of disinformation laws than it is of hate speech bans, it doesn’t necessarily extend to protecting demonstrably false claims. Nor does it protect the kind of hyperbole, selective outrage, and strawman arguments that are so common on social media, where the lines between truth, falsehood, and opinion so often blur into a confusing mess of grey areas. This nuanced approach from the ECHR, while not an absolute shield, does offer some hope that there are still checks and balances against overly aggressive attempts by states to control public discourse.
Ultimately, what we’re witnessing is a recurring pattern of “elite panic” that, while understandable in its concern for societal well-being, often leads to an overreach in attempts to control information. The impulse to protect the public from “misinformation” and “disinformation” is not inherently malicious, but the methods employed can inadvertently stifle the very freedoms they claim to protect. The 2024 elections, like their predecessors, demonstrated a remarkable resilience among voters and a robust democratic process, despite the dire warnings. The evidence repeatedly suggests that the impact of foreign interference and “fake news” on large-scale voter attitudes and election outcomes is often overstated. Yet, the calls for tighter controls persist, driven by a persistent fear that the “information space must be kept clean and monitored all the time.” This ongoing tension between the desire for control and the fundamental right to free expression is at the heart of the challenge. The danger lies in allowing these fears to fuel policies that normalize emergency measures, expand surveillance, and ultimately erode the critical ability of individuals to engage in free and open debate. The very fabric of democracy relies on the free exchange of ideas, even those we disagree with or find challenging. When governments and powerful institutions take it upon themselves to be the sole arbiters of truth, we risk creating a society where dissent is silenced and alternative perspectives are demonized, paving a slippery slope towards illiberalism, all in the name of protection.