‘This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like’

Six years ago, award-winning journalist Carole Cadwalladr ‘walked into the lair of the tech gods’ at TED to highlight Facebook’s role in Brexit. A single phrase she uttered there led to years of legal threats against her. This April, she returned to dissect the full-scale ‘digital coup’ that has been unleashed in the wake of her warnings being ignored

It’s a coup. I know you probably don’t want to hear that. But we can’t fight it if we can’t see it. And we can’t see it if we don’t name it.

The Russian and American Presidents are now speaking the same words; they are telling the same lies. We are watching the collapse of the international order in real time, and this is just the start. Coups are like concrete. When they stop moving, they set. It is already later than we think.

Some of you in this room might know the people in this image on the right.

I call it ‘tech bros in hostage situations’. It’s a message to you. This is Putin’s playbook. He allows a business elite to make untold riches in exchange for absolute loyalty. Some people are calling this oligarchy, but it’s actually bigger than that. These are global platforms. It’s ‘broligarchy’. There is an alignment of interests running through Silicon Valley to what is now a coming autocracy – a type of power the world has never seen before.

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