Cashing the Coup meet-up

Twitter, TikTok and Meta—the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—are putting the integrity of the election on the line through their disastrous recommendation systems. Far-right extremists are operating freely on those platforms. They are allowing them to spread their message and recruit new members, and the platform's algorithms prioritise anti-democratic groups, accounts, and posts while intensively monetising such content. Social media played a fundamental role in January's political violence in Brasil for implementing a narrative of electoral fraud, convincing Jair Bolsonaro supporters to question the presidential election result and organise a violent uprising against democracy. During weeks, there were posts, live transmissions with thousands of people watching, and videos calling insurgents to take to the streets, which remained online for days.  Yet, in failing to clamp down on such content, the violence in Brazil again highlights the central role social media companies play in the fundamental machinery of 21st-century democracy. These firms now provide digital tools like encrypted messaging services used by extremists to coordinate offline violence and rely on automated algorithms designed to promote partisan content that can undermine people's trust. Clearly, social media significantly impacts the trajectory of Philippine, Indian and US democracy, highlighting partisan divisions that have become weaponised by an increasingly sophisticated network of primarily far-right online users — from Brasilia to Berlin to Baliwag to Boston.