Opinion: Will 2024 be the year fake news destroys democracy?

AI-based disinformation has already begun to proliferate – and gets harder to spot as fake with every passing month. — Photo by Jorge Franganillo on Unsplash

In 2024, democracy will face a test for which it is unready. For the first time since the Internet age began, the world’s four largest electoral blocs – India, the European Union, the US, and Indonesia – will hold general elections in the same year. Almost a billion people may go to the polls in the next 12 months, amid a storm of disinformation and digital manipulation unlike anything the world has yet seen.

The stakes are extraordinarily consequential for the future of democracy itself. In the US, the electoral favourite appears to revel in the possibility of becoming a dictator. In the EU, the far right is poised to surge continent-wide. Indonesia’s front-runner is a former general once accused of human-rights violations. And in India, a beleaguered opposition faces its last chance to stave off what may otherwise turn into decades of one-party rule.