Free societies don’t just depend on free markets for goods and services – they rely on free and functional markets for information. Liberal democracy assumes that, given access to accurate facts, diverse viewpoints and open debate, truth will win out. But what happens when that information market is broken – when attention, not accuracy, becomes the currency? When visibility replaces credibility?
This is the crisis we’re facing now: a collapse in the market for truth – or our closest approximation of it. And authoritarian regimes are exploiting it.
Leaders like Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Narendra Modi have discovered a 21st-century version of censorship: not by banning ideas, but by flooding the system with noise. Instead of suppressing dissent, they overwhelm it – exploiting our psychology and turning digital platforms into engines of confusion.
Trump’s 2016 rise to power wasn’t built on traditional persuasion – it was built on an intuitive understanding of the digital attention economy. His infamous strategy to ‘flood the zone with shit’, to quote his former adviser Steve Bannon, amounted to information warfare. If you can saturate the environment with conflicting, emotionally charged messages, you destroy the value of credibility. When everything is disputed, we default to what we already believe and who we instinctively trust: our close peers and those who lead our in-groups.
The effects go far beyond Trump. In India, Modi’s government pressures tech platforms to suppress dissent and boost nationalist narratives. In Turkey, Erdoğan combines arrests with online manipulation. In Hungary, Orbán has effectively nationalised much of the media landscape, crowding out independent journalism. What unites these leaders is a common playbook: manipulate the digital public square to distort perception, not just control speech.
These tactics work because they exploit how humans process information. We don’t rationally weigh every fact. We rely on shortcuts – reputation, emotion and social consensus, for instance. But platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, driven by engagement algorithms, exploit those shortcuts. They prioritise content that triggers anger and fear. The more emotionally charged, the more visible it becomes. In this context, truth can become just another signal, lost in the noise.
In a functioning market, bad products fail. But the digital attention economy doesn’t reward reliability – it rewards virality. This perverse incentive structure allows misinformation to thrive. Tech platforms – intentionally or not –have become infrastructure for influence, used by strongmen to bypass traditional gatekeepers and drown out criticism.
The result is a broken epistemic ecosystem. If everyone lives in a personalised information bubble, there is no shared baseline for public debate. People feel overwhelmed and cynical. Voter engagement drops. Polarisation rises. And demagogues fill the vacuum with simplistic narratives and scapegoats.
This isn’t just a political problem – it’s an economic one. Democracies rely on informed citizens making reasoned choices, just as markets rely on informed consumers making rational decisions. But in both cases, information asymmetry and distorted incentives lead to failure. The market for truth is no longer self-correcting.
So what can be done?
First, incentives must change. Social media platforms need to face real pressure – regulatory, reputational or competitive – to prioritise integrity over virality. That doesn’t mean censorship. It means raising the visibility of credible sources, labelling synthetic or manipulative content and reducing the reach of coordinated disinformation.
Second, civic infrastructure must be rebuilt. Media literacy, fact-checking tools and independent journalism are essential if we want a functioning marketplace of ideas. Just as markets need trusted referees, democracies need institutions that uphold a shared factual baseline.
Finally, we need to stop treating democracy as just a political system – it is also a knowledge system. Freedom of choice is only meaningful when people can access accurate information. Without it, liberalism degenerates into theatre, and elections become popularity contests governed by algorithmic distortion rather than reasoned debate.
Free markets depend on transparency, accountability and fair competition. So do free societies. If we don’t fix the market for truth, authoritarians won’t need to silence their critics – they’ll just bury them in noise.
Justin Hempson-Jones’ book, ‘Influence: Understand it, Use it, Resist it’, is out now.
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
