For the highly optimistic bunch who, like me, was thinking that Internet will make the world a better free and democratic place, Spin Dictators by Sergei Guriev&Daniel Treisman is a bitter wake-up call. In fact, what Internet and online/social media tools in particular provided was equal chances: to either do good or bad.
Search for the money and then you may know that people in power, keen to keep being in power at any price, will do their best to manipulate algorithms and get online visibility. Fake news and non-news upgraded to the level of news through SEO-related tricks may prevail compared to the classical information sharing. Spin Dictators can have it all, except one single thing: stand faced with informed readers, who may be as versed as them in the field of media/online knowledge.
The tools may have been used before: television used to play with similar - although at a smaller scale - manipulations. The antidote is a generation of critical thinkers, able to distinguish bad from good, that in no way could believe everything they read. Able to recognize the manipulation of the digital dictators and their misgivings. Informed citizen, aware of their rights and how precious they are to fight for it.
This book is an useful and well -researched source of information that may definitely help understanding the mechanisms of political manipulation but instead of being deterred and skeptical about the chances of democratic survival, to rather realize how one and a society in its entirety can better fight to maintain our democratic rights and freedom.
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