The Facebook logo in Davos, Switzerland, in 2017. File Photo by Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA
When Meta announced in January 2025 that it would end third-party fact-checking in the United States and move toward a community notes model, Brazilian authorities demanded clarification about whether the policy would affect their country. The episode offered a timely reminder of something George Orwell could not have foreseen: Some of the most consequential decisions about what millions of people see and believe are now made not by governments, but by corporations whose accountability to democratic publics is limited.
Orwell’s 1984 described a brutal political order in which the state controlled public behavior, memory and thought. Rereading him today provokes an uncomfortable question: What happens when control no longer arrives through a visible dictatorship, but through technologies people willingly use every day?
The question is especially relevant for Latin America. In the region, democratic institutions often coexist with mistrust and weak civic education. Digital power can deepen old vulnerabilities and create new forms of dependence that are hard to see because they arrive under the language of freedom and convenience.
A more comfortable Big Brother
In Orwell’s novel, power belonged to the state. Big Brother watched from above. Fear was the central instrument of control.
Today, the picture is different. In many societies, power has moved partly away from traditional politics and toward large technological platforms. These forces do not usually impose themselves through police violence. They influence what people see and what they fear, operating through data systems that move across society at extraordinary speed.
The result is a Big Brother that does not command obedience. It invites participation. Citizens share their preferences and private lives through devices they carry in their pockets. Social networks offer expression, but they also measure behavior and turn attention into an economic resource.
Latin America is particularly exposed to this dynamic. Millions of people receive much of their political information through social media. In countries where trust in parties and courts is fragile, digital platforms have become a central arena of public life. Rumors travel faster than careful analysis. Anger spreads more readily than reflection.
Truth under pressure
Orwell understood that controlling language means controlling reality. His Ministry of Truth did not seek truth. It manufactured an official version of events.
Something similar occurs when political language loses its connection to reality. A government may describe itself as democratic while quietly weakening the institutions that make democracy real. Censorship may be called protection. Manipulation may be presented as communication.
In the digital world, the problem grows more acute. False information can be produced rapidly and repeated until it seems familiar. Artificial intelligence accelerates the challenge: images, voices and texts can now be fabricated with a realism that makes deception easier and verification harder.
Brazil’s October 2024 municipal elections illustrate the scale of the problem. Despite a court-mandated ban on unlabeled AI-generated content, researchers identified 78 instances of confirmed or suspected deepfakes circulating across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other platforms. One video falsely showed a mayoral candidate instructing voters how to spoil their ballots. Regulation existed on paper; enforcement could not keep pace.
Platform moderation has not compensated for this gap. One 2025 study found that Meta search interventions were triggered for 49 percent of English-language terms that should have violated community standards, compared with only 21 percent of comparable Spanish-language terms. In a region already struggling with low institutional trust, such disparities are not merely technical. They have democratic consequences.
When people can no longer determine what is true, they become vulnerable to those who offer simple answers. The loss of truth does not produce freedom. It produces confusion, and confused societies are easier to divide or manipulate.
Inequality and invisible control
In such conditions, digital society creates a painful contradiction. A person may have a smartphone and access to social media, yet still lack the education or economic position needed to participate meaningfully in civic life. The appearance of freedom can coexist with deep dependence.
If digital systems are controlled by a small number of powerful actors, and if citizens lack the tools to understand them, democracy weakens. Elections may continue, but public opinion can be shaped by forces that answer to shareholders rather than voters.
The challenge is not to reject technology. Digital tools can expand education and expose corruption. They can connect citizens who once had no public voice. The question is whether technology serves the human person, or whether the person becomes a source of data and political manipulation.
Recovering the human center
The new Orwellian danger is not a single world government or one visible tyrant. It is the gradual normalization of a society in which citizens surrender their inner freedom without noticing. Latin America needs a serious conversation about digital literacy, stronger democratic institutions and the human purpose of technology. Citizens must learn not only how to use these tools, but how these tools use them.
The future of democracy will depend not only on laws and elections. It will depend on whether citizens can preserve independent judgment in a world designed to capture attention. Orwell warned us about a society in which power sought to dominate the human spirit. Our danger is more subtle and, for that reason, harder to resist.
Carlos Cantero is a Chilean academic at the International University of La Rioja in Spain and the author of Digital Society: Reason and Emotion. An international lecturer, adviser and consultant, he focuses on adaptability in the digital society, ethics, social innovation and human development. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
