The 'oligarchisation' of politics online - Digital Threat Digest

Everything that I have learned about the US elections this year has been against my will. Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that whoever controls the White House has significant impact around the world, and I will admit that keeping up with American politics makes me a better analyst. However, as a colleague recently pointed out, the Kafkaesque trajectory of their democratic processes has made it entirely too ridiculous to keep up with; especially while conflicts, war crimes, and all sorts of atrocities go unchecked in other areas of the world. However, the degeneration of this election into a tech-enabled late-stage capitalism dystopian fever dream has made it impossible to remain in the dark about debates, campaign strategies, and the much-awaited vote on 05 November.

In an event that has encapsulated this trend, X-owner Elon Musk has come under scrutiny for his unusual campaign initiatives, which some argue amount to vote buying. Following Trump's first assassination attempt in July, Musk threw his weight behind the Republican candidate, allegedly spending 3 million USD on ads on Facebook, 1.5million USD on Google, and some 201k USD more on his own social media platform. Though the last one pretty much amounts to him high-fiving himself and the five people that outright lie on community notes to support his outlandish claims, Musk has also poured significant financial resources in his campaign group, America PAC. The PAC has recently launched an initiative, in which it pays registered voters in the six key swing states, to sign a petition "in favour of free speech and the right to bear arms". Voters are also paid to refer friends and can gain up to 1million USD in the PAC's daily raffle, which runs every day until 05 November.

US electoral laws state that paying or offering to pay either for registration to vote or for votes is a crime. Allow me to hop around the world and bring you to another tech-enabled dystopia and late-stage capitalism fever dream election that is set to affect the balance of power in Europe - Moldova. Amid showers of presidential deepfakes and allegations that Russia has trained and paid agitators in the country to foster unrest after the elections, Moldovan authorities have accused Ilan Shor and a Russian-backed network of allegedly having paid 130,000 citizens to vote for Russia-aligned candidates, with the BBC finding evidence of vote-buying taking place in Transnistria. In the immortal words of The Office: If corporate asked you to find the difference between the two pictures, could you?

The scenario poses interesting questions about what we deem to be acceptable and within the boundaries of a healthy democracy online and offline. The ‘oligarchisation’ of politics online is inescapable and, though not always as nefarious as we make it out to be, it contributes to undoing practices that safeguard a voter's right to critically engage with the electoral process. While it may not actively be destroying our democratic practices, it contributes to moving the standard for what can or cannot happen on and offline during a free and fair election. If Musk offers money to registered voters who allegedly support the First Amendment, are these voters exercising their freedom to vote, or are they being bribed? Kafkaesque indeed.

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