How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

by Maria Ressa

today, more autocracies in the world than there are democracies.

Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without all three, we have no shared reality, and democracy as we know it—and all meaningful human endeavors—are dead.

Democracy is fragile. You have to fight for every bit, every law, every safeguard, every institution, every story. You must know how dangerous it is to suffer even the tiniest cut. This is why I say to us all: we must hold the line.

You don’t know who you are until you’re forced to fight for it.

Meaning is not something you stumble across or what someone gives you; you build it through every choice you make, the commitments you choose, the people you love, and the values you hold dear.

The first was always to make the choice to learn. That meant embracing change and mustering the courage to fail; success and failure are two sides of the same coin. You cannot succeed if at some point you haven’t failed.

You are responsible not just for yourself but also for the world around you, your area of influence.

Staying silent or compliant changed nothing. Speaking up was an act of creation.

When you’re vulnerable, you create the strongest bonds and the most inspiring possibilities.

When you try to change the system, it fights back.

three assumptions implicit in everything Facebook says and does: first, that more information is better; second, that faster information is better; third, that the bad—lies, hate speech, conspiracy theories, disinformation, targeted attacks, information operations—should be tolerated in service of Facebook’s larger goals.

the government’s anti-democratic “death by a thousand cuts” strategy was using the strength of the internet and exploiting social media’s algorithms to sow confusion and doubt.

don’t become a monster to fight a monster.

To social media platforms, I said, “Your business model has divided societies and weakened democracies.

I refuse to live in a world like this. I demand better. We deserve better.