During an American election, a rich man can hand out $1 million checks to prospective voters. Companies and people can use secretly funded “dark money” nonprofits to donate unlimited money, anonymously, to super PACs, which can then spend it on advertising campaigns. Pod­casters, partisans, or anyone, really, can tell outrageous, incendiary lies about a candidate. They can boost those falsehoods through targeted online advertising. No special courts or election rules can stop the disinformation from spreading before voters see it. The court of public opinion, which over the past decade has seen and heard everything, no longer cares. U.S. elections are now a political Las Vegas: Anything goes.

But that’s not the way elections are run in other countries. In Britain, political parties are, at least during the run-up to an election, limited to spending no more than £54,010 per candidate. In Germany, as in many other European countries, the state funds political parties, proportionate to their number of elected parliamentarians, so that politicians do not have to depend on, and become corrupted by, wealthy donors. In Poland, courts fast-track election-­related libel cases in the weeks before a vote in order to discourage people from lying.

Nor is this unique to Europe. Many democracies have state or public media that are obligated, at least in principle, to give equal time to all sides. Many require political donations to be transparent, with the names of donors listed in an online registry. Many have limits on political advertising. Some countries also have rules about hate speech and indict people who break them.

Countries apply these laws to create conditions for fair debate, to build trust in the system, and to inspire confidence in the winning candidates. Some democracies believe that transparency matters—­that voters should know who is funding their candidates, as well as who is paying for political messages on social media or anywhere else. In some places, these rules have a loftier goal: to prevent the rise of anti­democratic extremism of the kind that has engulfed democracies—­and especially European democracies—­­in the past.

But for how much longer can democracies pursue these goals? We live in a world in which algorithms controlled by American and Chinese oligarchs choose the messages and images seen by millions of people; in which money can move through secret bank accounts with the help of crypto schemes; and in which this dark money can then boost anonymous social-media accounts with the aim of shaping public opinion. In such a world, how can any election rules be enforced? If you are Albania, or even the United Kingdom, do you still get to set the parameters of your public debate? Or are you now forced to be Las Vegas too?

Although it’s easy to get distracted by the schoolyard nicknames and irresponsible pedophilia accusations that Elon Musk flings around, these are the real questions posed by his open, aggressive use of X to spread false information and promote extremist and anti-European politicians in the U.K., Germany, and elsewhere. The integrity of elections—­and the possibility of debate untainted by misinformation injected from abroad—is equally challenged by TikTok, the Chinese platform, and by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, whose subsidiaries include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. TikTok says the company does not accept any paid political advertising. Meta, which announced in January that it is abandoning fact-checking on its sites in the U.S., also says it will continue to comply with European laws. But even before Zucker­berg’s radical policy change, these promises were empty. Meta’s vaunted content curation and moderation have never been transparent. Nobody knew, and nobody knows, what exactly Facebook’s algorithm was promoting and why. Even an occasional user of these platforms encounters spammers, scammers, and opaque accounts running foreign influence operations. No guide to the algorithm, and no real choices about it, are available on Meta products, X, or TikTok.

In truth, no one knows if any platforms really comply with political-funding rules either, because nobody outside the companies can fully monitor what happens online during an intense election campaign—and after the voting has ended, it’s too late. According to declassified Romanian-intelligence documents, someone allegedly spent more than $1 million on TikTok content in the 18 months before an election in support of a Romanian presidential candidate who declared that he himself had spent nothing at all. In a belated attempt to address this and other alleged discrepancies, a Romanian court canceled the first round of that election, a decision that itself damaged Romanian democracy.

Not all of this is new. Surreptitious political-party funding was a feature of the Cold War, and the Russian government has continued this practice, sometimes by offering deals to foreign business­people close to pro-Russian politicians. Press moguls with international political ambitions are hardly a novelty. Rupert Murdoch, an Australian who has U.S. citizenship, has long played an outsize role in U.K. politics through his media companies. John Major, the former British prime minister and Conservative Party leader, has said that in 1997, Murdoch threatened to pull his newspapers’ support unless the prime minister pursued a more anti-­European policy. Major refused. Murdoch has said, “I have never asked a prime minister for anything,” but one of his Conservative-­leaning tabloids, The Sun, did endorse the Labour Party in the next election. Major lost.

That incident now seems almost quaint. Even at the height of its influence, the print edition of The Sun sold 4 million copies a day. More to the point, it operated, and still does, within the constraints of U.K. rules and regulations, as do all broadcast and print media. Murdoch’s newspapers take British libel and hate-speech laws into consideration when they run stories. His business strategy is necessarily shaped by rules limiting what a single company can own. After his journalists were accused of hacking phones and bribing police in the early 2000s, Murdoch himself had to testify before an investigative commission, and he closed down one of his tabloids for good.

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Social media not only has far greater reach—Musk’s personal X account has more than 212 million followers, giving him enormous power to set the news agenda around the world—it also exists outside the legal system. Under the American law known as Section 230, passed nearly three decades ago, internet platforms are not treated as publishers in the U.S. In practice, neither Facebook nor X has the same legal responsibility for what appears on their platforms as do, say, The Wall Street Journal and CNN. And this, too, has consequences: Americans have created the information climate that other countries must accept, and this allows deceptive election practices to thrive. If countries don’t have their own laws, and until recently most did not, Section 230 effectively requires them to treat social-media companies as if they exist outside their legal systems too.

Brazil broke with this pattern last year, when a judge demanded that Musk comply with Brazilian laws against spreading misinformation and political extremism, and forced X offline until he did. Several European countries, including the U.K., Germany, and France, have also passed laws designed to bring the platforms into compliance with their own legal systems, mandating fines for companies that violate hate-speech laws or host other illegal content. But these laws are controversial and hard to enforce. Besides, “illegal speech” is not necessarily the central problem. No laws prevented Musk from interviewing Alice Weidel, a leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, on X, thereby providing her with a huge platform, available to no other political candidate, in the month before a national election. The interview, which included several glaringly false statements (among others, that Weidel was the “leading” candidate), was viewed 45 million times in 24 hours, a number far beyond the reach of any German public or private media.

Only one institution on the planet is large enough and powerful enough to write and enforce laws that could make the tech companies change their policies. Partly for that reason, the European Union may soon become one of the Trump administration’s most prominent targets. In theory, the EU’s Digital Services Act, which took full effect last year, can be used to regulate, fine, and, in extreme circumstances, ban internet companies whose practices clash with European laws. Yet a primary intent of the act is not punitive, but rather to open up the platforms: to allow vetted researchers access to platform data, and to give citizens more transparency about what they hear and see. Freedom of speech also means the right to receive information, and at the moment social-media companies operate behind a curtain. We don’t know if they are promoting or suppressing certain points of view, curbing or encouraging orchestrated political campaigns, discouraging or provoking violent riots. Above all, we don’t know who is paying for misinformation to be spread online.

In the past, the EU has not hesitated to try to apply European law to tech companies. Over the past decade, for example, Google has faced three fines totaling more than $8 billion for breaking antitrust law (though one of these fines was overturned by the EU’s General Court in 2024).

In November, the European Commission fined Meta more than $800 million for unfair trade practices. But for how much longer will the EU have this authority? In the fall, J. D. Vance issued an extraordinarily unsubtle threat, one that is frequently repeated in Europe. “If NATO wants us to continue supporting them and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance,” Vance told an interviewer, “why don’t you respect American values and respect free speech?” Mark Zuckerberg, echoing Vance’s misuse of the expression free speech to mean “freedom to conceal company practices from the public,” put it even more crudely. In a conversation with Joe Rogan in January, Zuckerberg said he feels “optimistic” that President Donald Trump will intervene to stop the EU from enforcing its own antitrust laws: “I think he just wants America to win.”

Does America “winning” mean that European democracies, and maybe other democracies, lose? Some European politicians think it might. Robert Habeck, the German vice chancellor and a leader of that country’s Green Party, believes that Musk’s frenzies of political activity on X aren’t the random blurts of an addled mind, but rather are “logical and systematic.” In his New Year’s address, Habeck said that Musk is deliberately “strengthening those who are weakening Europe,” including the explicitly anti-European AfD. This, he believes, is because “a weak Europe is in the interest of those for whom regulation is an inappropriate limitation of their power.”

Until recently, Russia was the most important state seeking to undermine European institutions. Vladimir Putin has long disliked the EU because it restricts Russian companies’ ability to intimidate and bribe European political leaders and companies, and because the EU is larger and more powerful than Russia, whereas European countries on their own are not. Now a group of American oligarchs also want to undermine European institutions, because they don’t want to be regulated—and they may have the American president on their side. Quite soon, the European Union, along with Great Britain and other democracies around the world, might find that they have to choose between their alliance with the United States and their ability to run their own elections and select their own leaders without the pressure of aggressive outside manipulation. Ironically, countries, such as Brazil, that don’t have the same deep military, economic, and cultural ties to the U.S. may find it easier to maintain the sovereignty of their political systems and the transparency of their information ecosystems than Europeans.

A crunch point is imminent, when the European Commission finally concludes a year-long investigation into X. Tellingly, two people who have advised the commission on this investigation would talk with me only off the record, because the potential for reprisals against them and their organizations—­whether it be online trolling and harassment or lawsuits—­is too great. Still, both advisers said that the commission has the power to protect Europe’s sovereignty, and to force the platforms to be more transparent. “The commission should look at the raft of laws and rules it has available and see how they can be applied,” one of them told me, “always remembering that this is not about taking action against a person’s voice. This is the commission saying that everyone’s voice should be equal.”

At least in theory, no country is obligated to become an electoral Las Vegas, as America has. Global democracies could demand greater transparency around the use of algorithms, both on social media and in the online-advertising market more broadly. They could offer consumers more control over what they see, and more information about what they don’t see. They could enforce their own campaign-funding laws. These changes could make the internet more open and fair, and therefore a better, safer place for the exercise of free speech. If the chances of success seem narrow, it’s not because of the lack of a viable legal framework—­rather it’s because, at the moment, cowardice is as viral as one of Musk’s tweets.

This article appears in the March 2025 print edition with the headline “Can Europe Stop Elon Musk?”

In my psychology practice, when tears enter the room, they have a way of cutting through the noise—all of the defenses, all of the pretenses. A client’s carefully constructed walls fall away, allowing something deep to emerge. I’ve seen this happen time and again, and it’s why for years I saw crying as one of the purest forms of vulnerability—until I discovered crying TikTok.

The trend is exactly what you might expect: People post videos of themselves crying (or trying not to). Some of these videos are slickly produced; some feature moody music; many rack up hundreds of thousands of views. These displays of vulnerability are, of course, not restricted to TikTok (whose fate, under the new Trump administration, is uncertain). They can also be found on YouTube, Instagram, and other apps, part of a broader online aesthetic. Influencers and celebrities strip down to what can seem like the rawest version of themselves, selling the promise of “real” emotional connection—and, not infrequently, products or their personal brand. In a post titled “Reacting to My Sad and Lonely Videos,” the YouTube star Trisha Paytas watches old footage of herself sobbing and is moved to tears all over again; this sort of post shares space in her channel with clips in which she pitches her own merch. On Instagram, influencers toggle between montages of sadness and sponsored videos that show them cozily sipping fancy tea.

The weepy confessions are, ostensibly, gestures toward intimacy. They’re meant to inspire empathy, to reassure viewers that influencers are just like them. But in fact, they’re exercises in what I’ve come to call “McVulnerability,” a synthetic version of vulnerability akin to fast food: mass-produced, easily accessible, sometimes tasty, but lacking in sustenance. True vulnerability can foster emotional closeness. McVulnerability offers only an illusion of it. And just as choosing fast food in favor of more nutritious options can, over time, result in harmful outcomes, consuming “fast vulnerability” instead of engaging in bona fide human interaction can send people down an emotionally unhealthy path.

[Read: The new empress of self-help is a TikTok star]

Not long ago in American culture, vulnerability was largely associated with weakness. To be vulnerable meant to be helpless or susceptible to harm. Then came Brené Brown, the social worker and research professor who, with her viral 2010 TED Talk, became one of the most prominent voices transforming the perception of vulnerability for a new audience. In her book Daring Greatly, Brown defined vulnerability as the “birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity,” and as a crucial element in personal growth—a liberating message for people raised to suppress their feelings and show toughness.

This was well before the consumerist blending of therapy-speak and personal branding that has become commonplace on social media. It was four years before The Body Keeps the Score got the masses talking about trauma, and it was eight years before Nicole LePera launched the Holistic Psychologist on Instagram, today one of the platform’s most popular therapy accounts. But in the past decade and a half, vulnerability’s trajectory has come to mirror that of many psychological concepts—such as mindfulness, boundary-setting, and self-love—whose lines of insight have been tangled up with the attention economy and the free market.

McVulnerability is perhaps an inevitable outcome of what the sociologist Eva Illouz identifies as a modern-day landscape of “emotional capitalism.” “Never has the private self been so publicly performed and harnessed to the discourses and values of the economic and political spheres,” Illouz writes in her book Cold Intimacies. Emotional capitalism has “realigned emotional cultures, making the economic self emotional and emotions more closely harnessed to instrumental action.” That is, not only does emotionality sell goods, but emotions themselves have also become commodities.

As people’s vulnerability proxies—podcasters, celebrities, crying YouTubers—pour out their heart while shilling for their favorite cashmere brands, consumerism becomes unconsciously tethered to the viewing or listening experience. Studies have found that when people spend more time on social-media platforms, they are more likely to buy more things and to do so impulsively—especially when they feel emotionally connected to the content they watch. This is, perhaps, one of the more insidious effects of McVulnerability: It helps encourage a self-perpetuating cycle of materialism and loneliness, in which one inevitably spawns the other.

Yet McVulnerability’s practitioners are also offering supply to satisfy a real emotional demand. As Derek Thompson wrote earlier this month in The Atlantic, more and more Americans are retreating from in-person social interactions, turning instead to smartphones and other devices in search of intimacy. Yes, they may be communicating with friends and family. But they are also spending a lot of time “with” people they don’t know at all.

[Read: ‘Close Friends,’ for a monthly fee]

The rise of momfluencers serves as a perfect example. Many new mothers find themselves isolated and exhausted as they make the transition into parenthood. Maybe their families live across the country, or their friends are too busy to stop by. Starved for community, they might be struggling to find people with whom they can sit down and say, This sucks. On social media, they find influencers sharing tearful confessions about mom guilt or mom rage. But these posts aren’t a substitute for actual community and support. Once the isolated moms put down their phone, they’re just as alone as they were before.

Not all of the vulnerability shared online is devoid of authenticity. It can be genuinely helpful when someone describes their personal trials publicly, such as a survivor of abuse who shares their story, galvanizing others to seek safety. Vulnerability caught on video can also offer a powerful glimpse into the gravity of collective tragedy. An emotional clip about losing a home to wildfires can, for instance, bring to life the human cost of crisis in a way that headlines and statistics cannot. And of course, some parents who share their difficult experiences online do provide a valuable service, offering validation and practical insights (on, say, postpartum depression) that aren’t always accessible elsewhere.

Next to those videos, it’s not hard to see the ways in which McVulnerability, melodramatic and consumption-driven, merely masquerades as a chance to connect. McVulnerability offers a fleeting, convenient, and comfortable digital experience, allowing the people who consume it to skirt past the complications of being in a relationship with another person—although for some viewers, truth be told, that might be part of the appeal.

In my years as a therapist, I’ve seen a trend among some of my younger clients: They prefer the controlled environment of the internet—the polish of YouTube, the ephemeral nature of TikTok—to the tender awkwardness of making new friends. Instead of reaching out to a peer, they’ll turn to the comfort of their phone and spend time with their preferred influencers. At a talk in 2023, the psychotherapist Esther Perel touched on this impulse while discussing what she calls “artificial intimacy”—pseudo-experiences of emotional closeness that mimic connection but lack depth. These “digitally facilitated connections,” she said, risk “lowering our expectations of intimacy between humans” and leave us “unprepared and unable to tolerate the inevitable unpredictabilities of human nature, love, and life.” I understand where my young clients are coming from: Putting yourself out there is uncomfortable. But for the reasons Perel articulated, I also worry that by relying mostly on social media to encounter other humans, they’re forfeiting opportunities to develop the skills that could help them thrive in the flesh-and-blood world.

One of my psychology mentors has a point she repeats often: “Vulnerability is generous.” It can be easier to project invulnerability, to pretend we don’t believe strongly in an issue, to act as if we don’t want. But being vulnerable—exposing ourselves via the unfiltered messiness of life—is one of the biggest emotional risks we can take, and one of the greatest gifts we can offer another person. When you choose to be vulnerable, you are essentially saying: I’m going to stand here as my full self, and I invite you to do the same.

McVulnerability, from whichever angle you look at it, is the opposite of generous. It doesn’t require risk. It may pretend to give, but ultimately, it takes. And it leaves most of its consumers hungry for what they’re craving: human connection—the real thing.