What's the Big Deal?

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Rai: We want everyone to be the moral conscieness of the world. If everyone walks around with that vel of responsibility, the world gets better. Ecosystem sucks. And so you can't do it in a top down way. It has to be through a massive responsibility movementad. But when we bring in the lawyers and the people inside,. i'm hoping there's a movement inside te which you're starting, which you're doing. That's our hope.

Maria Ressa is arguably one of the bravest journalists working in the Philippines today. As co-founder and CEO of the media site Rappler, she has withstood death threats, multiple arrests and a rising tide of populist fury that she first saw on Facebook, in the form of a strange and jarring personal attack. Through her story, she reveals, play by play, how an aspiring strongman can use social media to spread falsehoods, sow confusion, intimidate critics and subvert democratic institutions. Nonetheless, she argues Silicon Valley can reverse these trends, and fast. First, tech companies must "wake up," she says, to the threats they've unleashed throughout the Global South. Second, they must recognize that social media is intrinsically designed to favor the strongman over the lone dissident and the propagandist over the truth-teller, which is why it has become the central tool in every aspiring dictator's playbook.