DEMOCRACY DISCONNECTED: SOCIAL MEDIA’S CAUSTIC INFLUENCE ON SOUTHEAST ASIA’S FRAGILE REPUBLICS president in the solar system.” While many online laughed it off as obvious satire, some Duterte supporters appeared to take the news quite seriously.83 Rappler’s investigative journalism into various alleged misdeeds by the Duterte government culminated with a decision by the country’s Security and Exchange Commission in January 2018 to revoke the company’s operating license on a charge that it had violated a constitutional provision on media ownership because of funding originating from overseas. The company has refuted the allegations against it and continues to operate pending the outcome of a legal fight.84 The fate that has befallen Rappler is similar to the harassment experienced by other news outlets throughout the region. In Cambodia, the Hun Sen government has shut down a number of radio stations across the country that had broadcasted programming from outlets such as Voice of Democracy, Radio Free Asia, and Voice of America.85 It has also forced the closure of the English-language Cambodia Daily after 24 years in operation.86 At the same time, Chinese media organizations have been making inroads following the completion of a memorandum of understanding on information cooperation signed in 2017.87 The silencing of independent journalism only adds fuel to the raging fire of disinformation engulfing the internet in Southeast Asia. In the absence of trustworthy and reliable sources of information, the public is left to fend for itself as forces take hold that threaten a dissolution of hard-won democratic freedoms. The question remains as to how much worse the situation is likely to get and what measures can be taken to change course before it’s too late. UNITING IN THE DIGITAL FUTURE The volume of information surrounding us continues to multiply at an exponential rate brought about by advances in technology and economies of scale. According to a forecast by the technology firm Cisco, it would take more than 5 million years just to watch the amount of video that will circulate on the internet globally each month in 2021.88 As difficult as it is today to sort fact from fiction online, technology currently in development portends a future in which even our own eyes and ears may serve to deceive us. In 2015, a team of researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham experimenting with off-the-shelf voice impersonation software demonstrated an ability to take between three to five minutes of a target individual’s recorded voice to create a synthesized version capable of deceiving both humans and sophisticated biometric security systems. The following year, an international research team garnered widespread media attention for a tool it developed that would allow users 83 “Busted: NASA Hailed Duterte as ‘the Best President in the Solar System?’ Fake, but Some Supporters Believed It!,” Meme Buster, August 25, 2016, https://memebuster.net/nasa-hailed-duterte-best-president-in-the-solarsystem/. 84 Carmela Fonbuena, “SEC Revokes Rappler’s Registration,” Rappler, January 15, 2018, https://www.rappler.com/ nation/193687-rappler-registration-revoked. 85 Holly Robertson, “Suddenly it’s Open Season on the Press in Cambodia,” The Washington Post, August 30, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/08/30/suddenly-its-open-season-on-the-pressin-cambodia/?utm_term=.883bee4c569b. 86 Thomas Beller, “The Devastating Shutdown of the Cambodia Daily,” The New Yorker, September 12, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-devastating-shutdown-of-the-cambodia-daily. 87 Nathan Vanderklippe, “In Cambodia, Independent Media Close as Chinese Content Moves In,” The Globe and Mail, December 29, 2017, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/in-cambodia-independent-media-haveclosed-as-chinese-content-moves-in/article37464168/. 88 “The Zettabyte Era: Trends and Analysis,” Cisco, June 7, 2017, https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/ collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/vni-hyperconnectivity-wp.html. Foreign Policy at Brookings | 17