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  Democracy in the Digital Wild Though the internet and then later social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter were initially celebrated as instruments of democracy, the last decade has revealed the darker possibilities of digital technologies, as harms ranging from election interference to financial crime to mass violence have proliferated. In Myanmar, Facebook’s algorithms amplified disinformation and hateful content that incited violence against Rohingya Muslims, contributing to a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign that displaced more than 700,000 people and left as many as 10,000 dead. In a sign of the growing sophistication and impact of cybercrime, a ransomware attack in 2021 forced the temporary shutdown of 5,500 miles of the Colonial Pipeline in the U.S. East Coast region, causing gasoline and jet fuel shortages that triggered a rise in gas prices.