According to the FGS Global Radar report 14 per cent of people agreed with the statement, “The best system for running a country effectively is a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with elections,” rather than democracy.
That rose to 21% of people aged between 18 and 45, while only 8% of people over 55 preferred that system to democracy.
The report is published as Donald Trump returns to the White House and while the billionaire Elon Musk has been wielding influence over public debate across Europe using his social media platform X.
It also comes as Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta will ‘dramatically reduce censorship’ and will look to recommend more political content on its platforms.
Zuckerberg talks of prioritising free speech, but it seems to be more about cosying up to the new US administration with whom he has been building bridges.
So rather than factcheckers Meta, like X, will rely on other users to add caveats and context to contentious posts and Zuckerberg has even acknowledged that this means that Meta is going to catch “less bad stuff”.
The move comes when people are losing faith in the political system and are becoming more susceptible to misinformation and radicalisation and, because of Zuckerberg’s decision, people are going to now be exposed to more radical messages online and will find it harder to discern the truth.
If Zuckerberg’s attitude to censorship is to roll-back as many restrictions as possible what hate figures and groups will be allowed back? People don’t tend to factcheck and there is certainly a growing tendency to trust online content at face value.
Having spent an afternoon on TikTok the misinformation being distributed, the inaccuracies that go unchallenged and the blatant disregard for facts and the preference for opinion is truly scary.
Musk’s intervention in UK politics is an example of someone with no idea as to how the UK constitution works, with his calls for Keir Starmer to be removed from office by the king, yet via his platform he can reach millions of people.
Zuckerberg said Meta would work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are looking to censor more content and he targeted Europe where he claimed there were an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship – or maybe that’s protecting users of all ages from harmful content, misinformation, and false facts.
As Meta cuts back on tracking online hate speech and disinformation brace yourself if you’re a woman, an LGBT+ person, someone of colour, an expert or a scientist for a world where facts and the truth no longer seem to matter.
