• by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, April 14, 2025

Last week's Vancouver TED conference delivered a chilling wake-up call through four speakers who, from different vantage points, converged on an unmistakable warning: Our digital ecosystem isn't just broken -- it threatens the foundations of democracy, truth, and human autonomy itself.

These speakers didn't merely diagnose the crisis. They named it, mapped its architecture, and issued an urgent call to collective action before it's too late.

The Architecture of Totalitarianism

Journalist Carole Cadwalladr, returning to the TED stage after her landmark 2019 talk on Facebook and democracy, delivered perhaps the most urgent warning of all: "In years to come, allowing your child to be data-harvested from birth will be considered child abuse."

Drawing historical parallels to child labor in coal mines, Cadwalladr argued we're at a similar inflection point with children's data. "The entire business model of Silicon Valley is surveillance," she explained. "It harvests our data in order to sell stuff. We are already living inside the architecture of totalitarianism."

With characteristic directness, she named what she sees unfolding: "It's a coup. You probably don't want to hear that, but we can't fight it if we can't see it, and we can't see it if we don't name it."

Cadwalladr coined the term "brolligarchy" for this new alignment of power: the merging of global tech platforms with autocratic political forces. "There is an alignment of interests that runs through Silicon Valley to what is now a coming autocracy. It's the type of power that the world has never seen before."

Her warning carried special urgency: "Coups are like concrete. When they stop moving, they set. It is already later than we think."

Profit Over Safety: The Digital Public Square

Gen Z activist Deja Foxx didn't just share her personal story -- she exposed how fundamentally broken our digital public sphere has become, particularly for those most vulnerable to harassment and exploitation.

From her viral moment confronting a senator at 16 to becoming the target of a cyber mob in 2021, Foxx's journey illustrated the dual-edged nature of technology: Platforms that enable unprecedented voice simultaneously subject users to profit-driven systems that amplify hate and harassment.

"In a world where 39% of adults under 30 get their news on TikTok, this isn't some frivolous teenage pastime,” she said. “This is the new public square. And we should not be forced to participate in hate-for-profit business models just to participate in that public discourse."

When the platforms failed to protect her during intense harassment, Foxx discovered a troubling truth: the systems that dominate our digital lives aren't designed with user safety as a priority.

"We deserve respect for our rights, privacy, and safety by design, not as an afterthought," she said.

Foxx emphasized that these platforms, despite their outsized influence, are remarkably young  --younger than she is. Their youth underscores how rapidly they've transformed society, while also suggesting they're far from immutable institutions.

The Global War for Truth

UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid delivered a sobering assessment of our digital information landscape. As a forensic image analyst with three decades of experience, Farid has witnessed firsthand the explosion of manipulated images and the convergence of two dangerous forces: AI's ability to create convincing fakes and social media's tendency to amplify misinformation.

"I contend that we are in a global war for truth, with profound consequences for individuals, for institutions, for societies, and for democracies," he said.

Farid explained how AI has democratized deception. "With Generative AI, anybody can create any image of anything, anywhere at a touch of a button," he warned, highlighting real-world consequences: "fake videos of doctors promoting bogus cures for serious illnesses. A Fortune 500 company losing tens of millions of dollars because an AI impersonator of their CEO infiltrated a video call."

The outlook is grim. Farid estimated that nearly 50% of online images may now be fake or manipulated, with his advice succinct: “Stay off of X, and stay off of everything else, for that matter."

The Chaos Medium

Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack and its chief writing officer, has witnessed firsthand the collapse of our information ecosystem and its catastrophic effects on society.

"We're living through the most significant media disruption since the printing press,” he said. “It's a transformation that explains everything from political polarization to algorithms now doing the jobs of editors. And it's creating a hell of a mess."

MacKenzie framed our media crisis in historical terms. We've moved from what he calls "the temple" (centralized media with gatekeepers) to "the chaos medium" (a cacophonous landscape where everyone has a voice, but power remains concentrated in the hands of platforms).

When algorithms replace editors and rage drives engagement, we're left with a system that rewards our worst impulses. The towering institutions that once structured our information diet have fallen, replaced by engagement-maximizing platforms indifferent to truth and hostile to nuance.

The Call to Action: While the Concrete Is Still Wet

These four speakers didn't just sound alarms; they issued a call to arms for citizens to reclaim digital spaces while there's still time.

Cadwalladr offered practical resistance through "digital disobedience": "We have to learn how to digitally disobey. That can be as simple as the drop-down box. Don't accept the cookies, don't give your real name. Download Signal, the encrypted messaging app."

Farid called for personal responsibility: "Don't be part of the problem. There are serious, smart, hard-working journalists and fact-checkers out there who work every day to sort out the lies from the truth. Take a breath before you share information, and don't deceive your friends and your families and your colleagues, and further pollute the online information ecosystem."

MacKenzie urged us to nurture "the green shoots of a garden" emerging from the wreckage: "The chaos of our current media moment cannot last. But no one's quite sure what the new landscape's going to ultimately bring. That's why our choices today matter so much. Every subscription, every share, and every minute of our attention is a vote for the culture we want to flourish."

And critically, Foxx reminded us that younger generations are already building alternatives: "In my experience, teenage [users] are the digital strategists of our time. In an internet not built for us, we have built narrative and political power one viral video at a time." The platforms she highlighted demonstrate that an internet built around community, consent, and care -- rather than engagement at any cost -- is not only possible but already emerging.

Together, these four voices converge on a crucial point: the digital world is not a force of nature but a human creation that can be reshaped through collective action. As Cadwalladr warns, "Coups are like concrete, when they stop moving, they set." The infrastructure of surveillance, misinformation, and algorithmic manipulation surrounding us is wet concrete -- we can still reshape it before it hardens into permanence.

The time to act is now, while there's still time to build the internet we deserve, not the one being constructed to exploit and control us.

The Cadwalladr talk is now up live, and has already been viewed more than 500,000 times.