Big Tech and Broken Truths

By Kavisha Pillay

Does anybody remember Signalgate?

This time imagine a group chat between the Tech Bros: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, where Democracy, Facts, Mental Health, and Human Rights get added to the thread by ‘accident’. 

In the latest episode of The Grifty Gang, a satirical series by the Campaign On Digital Ethics, we tried to imagine what that digital dumpster fire would look like. It’s unhinged, chaotic, and unfortunately, it’s not far from the truth. 

There was a time when the internet was widely believed to be a revolutionary force for good, a space that could democratise knowledge, empower communities, and bring people together across borders and barriers. That ideal hasn’t disappeared entirely, there are still countless moments when the internet fulfills its original promise. However, over time, something fundamental has shifted. 

What we are left with today is not a digital commons, but a privatised empire controlled by a few powerful men, whose platforms thrive not only on connection, but also on crises. Their profits increase when trust collapses, when fear dominates, and when society begins to unravel. 

Democracy is no longer just under pressure from corrupt politicians or broken institutions. It is under threat from Tech Bros, weaponising the very technologies we once believed would strengthen it. Their algorithms are designed to maximise engagement, usually at any cost. What keeps people engaged is rarely nuance, compassion, or truth. It is conflict, division, and emotional volatility. 

What’s most staggering is the degree to which harm has been normalised. It’s no longer shocking that conspiracy theories trend, that elections are manipulated, or that mental health crises correlate with time spent on social platforms. These are predictable outcomes of platforms engineered to provoke compulsive behaviour, emotional intensity, and polarisation.

And yet, the tech overlords feign surprise. They roll out cosmetic fixes, a few labels here, “community notes” there,  but never address the core design choices that incentivise chaos. 

In the midst of this, Facts have become fragile. The pace of digital content creation now far outstrips our collective capacity to verify it. Viral falsehoods travel faster than careful truths. Entire online ecosystems are built on conspiracy, fantasy, and distraction, not because people desire to be misinformed, but because lies are cheaper to produce and easier to sell. The platforms don’t mind. They will monetise whatever content performs best, regardless of its social cost. 

This erosion of reality has consequences beyond the screen. It warps elections, radicalises individuals, and destabilises democracies. When people no longer agree on what’s real, it becomes impossible to hold power accountable, because the very foundations of evidence and public reason begin to collapse.

In this money making scheme Mental Health is treated as collateral damage.

Social platforms operate on a basic psychological formula: trigger the user’s emotions, keep them scrolling, harvest their data, and sell it to advertisers. The result is a generation of people who are more anxious, more polarised, and more lonely, but ironically, also more “engaged.” Rather than address these harms at their root, platform owners respond with half-measures, offering self-care tips and “wellness features,” while continuing to engineer systems that profit from our emotional disarray.

Then there’s Human Rights. Once central to the internet’s utopian promise -  now treated as a nuisance. Censorship decisions are made in boardrooms. Entire movements are throttled or silenced by opaque moderation policies, while genocidal propaganda and hate speech are allowed to trend. The platforms claim neutrality, but in practice they govern speech, shape culture, and influence policy, all without democratic oversight or sufficient legal accountability.

In this war-game, the public continue to act as if reform is a matter of polite dialogue, of asking nicely, of hoping the same companies profiting from destruction will one day choose responsibility over revenue.

They won’t. Ask our friends who have been fighting the fossil fuel industry for decades.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

There are alternatives. We can reimagine and demand a digital public sphere that centres ethics, dignity, and human rights. We can build new governance frameworks that treat platforms not as untouchable giants, but as entities subject to democratic norms and public interest regulation. We can demand algorithmic transparency, data justice, and platform accountability. We can resist the idea that harm is the cost of innovation.

The future of democracy should not be decided in a billionaire’s group chat.

It should be shaped by all of us.