Our tally for the year
It is almost 2025, but not at any cost. We survived the year with the most elections in history, a blow to the board and a battle between courts and platforms that remains as a precedent in Latin America and the world.
Here is our compilation of the year:
The CEOs of digital policy
This year we talked about Elon Musk more than we would have liked. If we at Circuito were to make a character of the year, it would be hard to ignore the owner of X, proto-conqueror of Mars and Donald Trump's new right-hand man.
In the last months of 2024 Musk jumped into the Olympic pool of politics. Not only did he put his social network at the service of Trump's campaign, but he will also be part of his government. From his X account, where he is also the main influencer, he launches proposals on the public agenda for the next four years in the United States and the world.
This direct involvement in politics is just one symptom of Silicon Valley's new approach to politics. The independence and apparent distance from Washington that the sector has built up over the years is eroding in the face of direct involvement. Last week, for example, it became known that Mark Zuckerberg had donated $1 million to a Trump inaugural fund. While such gestures are not unusual, Meta's owner did not make them for the first Trump administration or for Joe Biden's administration.
It is a sign of a change in Zuckerberg's political perception. After having closed the doors of his platforms to Trump indefinitely, Zuckerberg has tried to smooth things over, and even visited the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
- If you are interested in learning more about this topic, we invite you to read: "Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster", an essay by Charles Duhigg in The New Yorker.
Podcast choices
This year the podcast reigned as the format par excellence to win over voters. Trump returned to power largely driven by a group of influencers of his own lineage, who were in charge of inserting his voice and messages in the ears of millions of followers. This format, complemented by viral clips on TiKTok, became the spearhead of the Republican triumph.
As described by journalist Taylor Lorenz, long-form content has the potential to create deeper bonds with the audience and simulate a kind of interaction with them. According to a survey conducted last year, 31% of listeners in the United States said they trusted the news they received from podcasts more than from other sources.
In Latin America, where podcasting has not yet taken off, it is politicians who have taken the place of interviewers. During the presidential campaign in Mexico, the current president Claudia Sheinbaum launched a podcast in which she talked to influencers, students from public universities and her own work team. Although in Colombia the next elections are still two years away, some potential candidates have been cultivating their audience from their microphones for some time now, such as Sergio Fajardo and Alejandro Gaviria.
AI ghost deflated
The concern that in this election year the content manipulated with AI was going to be decisive in the campaigns did not fully materialize. It is true that deepfakes created with these technologies appeared in all elections -Rest of the World, for example, monitored this type of cases during the year and reports their different nuances-, but the massiveness of the models does not yet imply a real impact on the elections.
An investigation that we reviewed last May pointed out that the effect of this rain of synthetic content in the elections could be another: to increase the general skepticism towards public information.
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The flag of digital sovereignty has been waved
At the end of August, after months of angry exchanges between Elon Musk and Alexandre de Moraes, magistrate of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court, the social network X was blocked in Brazil. At the heart of the discussion was the company's reluctance to comply with orders to remove content and suspend accounts for disseminating hateful content and incitement to violence in Brazil.
For years, Latin America has questioned the ability of large Internet companies to enforce local laws, and the Brazilian case sets an important precedent for the region.
Although the severity of the measure raised questions about proportionality and freedom of expression, there was a general consensus around the sovereignty of the Brazilian state to enforce its laws. Although Musk called De Moraes a dictator, in the end he complied with the orders and paid a fine of US$5 million.
In addition to this episode, this year the discussion on sovereignty vis-à-vis big tech companies was also shaken by the arrest of Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, in Paris.
- In this regard, we recommend this analysis by Paris Marx: "Pavel Durov and Elon Musk are not free speech champions".
The clock is ticking against TikTok
In April, Joe Biden's administration signed a law to ban TikTok in the United States for national security reasons. In the absence of robust regulation on personal data or platforms, this is the largest crackdown on a social media technology company. In theory, ByteDance, the parent company, will have to sell the app or remove it from the market.
Times are not in TikTok's favor, as the rule will come into force on January 19. Although suspicions against the company were raised in Trump's first administration, the future president - who is viral on the platform - has been reluctant to comply with this measure. Despite the fact that he may become an important ally for his livelihood, Trump will assume the presidency one day after the deadline.
However, on January 10, the Supreme Court will hear arguments from TikTok, which has asked that the rule not be applied because it affects the freedom of 170 million users in the United States. The Court's track record in such cases does not promise the best outcome for TikTok.
