“Authoritarians, dictators, and social media companies,” Colbert begins. “How are they connected in ways we don’t often think about?” And whew, does Ressa have an answer.
“One enables the other,” Ressa replies. “You know, there’s a reason why 60% of the world today is now under authoritarian rule. The number of democracies globally has been rolled back to 1989 levels.”
“In 2016,” Ressa continues. “I stood up and I said: We demand an end to impunity on two fronts. Rodrigo Duterte, our president in the Philippines; his brutal drug war, and the second is Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Because in the end, what happened in the Philippines would not have happened if Facebook wasn’t there. 100% of Filipinos on the internet are on Facebook. Facebook is our internet.”
“In 2016,” she recalls, “I said: America, look at us. What is happening to us is coming for you. When I saw January 6 happen—violence on Capitol Hill—something we have never seen before, but the same methodology, bottom-up social media lies. A fact becomes a lie. Or a lie said a million times become a fact. So, you can’t distinguish! Then it comes top-down from the government, from the president himself. Then you have no idea where truth lies. In our case, all of a sudden, society was splintering. And how do you react?”
“Three sentences I’ve said repeatedly since 2016,” Ressa adds. “If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without these three, we have no shared reality. We can’t solve any problems. We have no democracy. That’s what social media has done. It’s come in and used free speech to stifle free speech.”
And Colbert? He listened and learned. (Ressa, along with obviously being brilliant, is an entirely compelling speaker, too.)
Here’s that clip.
You can check out Ressa’s full segment below.
Marissa Higgins
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