On November 2—the day before the 2026 midterm elections—Vice President JD Vance posted an upbeat message on X, “We got your back, New York!”, accompanied by an infographic detailing how “The Trump Admin Delivers for New York.” Within 24 hours, it had received 10,000 likes.

Eight hours later, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani took to social media to mock Vance’s post with a well-known meme of a young man on a subway platform pretending to slow down a train and open the doors. The message was unmistakable: Vance was taking credit for developments that had little to do with the Trump administration’s policies. Mamdani’s post took less than a day to rack up over a million likes, and on Election Day itself, the vice president was brutally ratioed.

The contrast to the Trump campaign’s online dominance during the 2024 election couldn’t be more stark. Following his debate against a visibly ailing President Biden, Trump put out an Instagram montage of Biden babbling incoherently that quickly reached some 13 million views and 850,000 likes. Trump also won the endorsement of impactful podcasters, influencers, and tech billionaires like Joe Rogan, Jake Paul, and Elon Musk—contributing to the so-called rightward “vibe shift” the country was said to be undergoing.

This rapid change of the Republicans’ fortunes on social media challenges deeply held assumptions about our digital age. Experts, legacy media, and establishment politicians have long claimed that the business model of social media—optimizing for outrage, sensationalism, and conflict—favors illiberal populists. And many have proposed crackdowns to deal with the supposed pernicious influence of social media.

In his January 2025 farewell address, Joe Biden claimed that “We must hold the social platforms accountable” in order to protect our “very democracy from the abuse of power.” In September 2025, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa declared that “Technology platforms have become weapons of mass destruction to democracy.” In 2026, France’s Emmanuel Macron accused social media of “damaging” democracy, while Brazil’s President Lula warned of the “harm” it causes.

It’s now clear that this narrative significantly exaggerates the harms and undervalues the benefits of our online age. In democracies with reasonably free and fair elections, and some degree of online free speech, social media tends to disfavor incumbents no matter where on the political spectrum they sit. In particular, it works against those who fail to address the deep social or economic concerns of the electorate, behave egregiously while in office, or deflect from criticism of their shortcomings through lies and propaganda.

In 2024, for example, Democrats paid the price for failing to acknowledge genuine concerns about immigration, inflation, and censorial identity politics, and for gaslighting the American people by insisting that Biden was fit for office when it was obvious that his cognitive abilities had declined alarmingly. This paved the way for a slew of negative messaging, memes, and mockery that helped Trump win resoundingly against Kamala Harris.

But winning the internet is a fleeting triumph. It turns out that beating a failing incumbent did not make Trump immune to the same dynamics that hurt Biden. Where right-wing podcasters triumphed in 2024, progressive digital media and influencers such as Mehdi Hasan’s “Zeteo,” Ben Meiselas’ MeidasTouch, and the hosts of the “I’ve Had It” podcast built huge audiences during the recent midterms through relentless criticism of Trump and Republicans. Moreover, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and even Nick Fuentes all turned on Trump, as the administration’s unpopular policies, lies, cruelty, and corruption was exposed.

Likewise, Republicans’ perceived indifference to rising costs of living became a real liability on social media. When Mississippi’s Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith suggested that voters concerned about the price of beef should choose another protein, the campaign of her Democratic challenger Scott Colom fired back in a video viewed more than 20 million times on social media: “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator.” Colom is set to become Mississippi’s first black senator since Reconstruction.

The United States is not the only country where these dynamics have played out. In April, Péter Magyar’s Tisza party won a two-thirds supermajority in the Hungarian parliament. Sixteen years of Viktor Orbán’s illiberal rule was swept away in a single election.

In theory, this should not have been possible. Orbán controlled 80 percent of Hungarian media. His government had passed laws targeting the media, protests, minorities, and civil society. But there was one thing Orbán did not control: the internet. It was small, fearless online outlets that broke the story that forced Orbán’s president to resign in 2024. It was a viral YouTube interview that launched Magyar’s political career. It was social media that allowed Tisza’s messaging to outcompete Fidesz’s well-funded propaganda machine in the general election.

Likewise, a decentralized, self-organized, and collectively-led Students’ List defeated longtime leader Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia last month. With television coverage tilted toward the government, social media gave the students a way to mobilize citizens. By the final weeks of the campaign, the students’ central Instagram account had more than 930,000 followers. They used online ads to promote their policies, solicit donations, and recruit election monitors. “Social media saved us,” said one student activist who had been detained and placed under house arrest.

Don’t Resort to Censorship to Fight Populism

Perhaps the most ironic case of the internet turning the tide against populism is Brazil. Since 2019, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has led an investigation into “fake news” in the country, ordering arrests, blocking social media accounts, and suppressing criticism of the court itself. The campaign against fake news and illegal content has only grown in scope since then—electoral judges regularly police political speech and opinions in Brazil. These measures have been defended by Brazil’s left-wing president, Lula da Silva.

Yet the same platforms Lula accused of damaging democracy helped mobilize supporters for his reelection victory over Flávio Bolsonaro this October. In particular, a WhatsApp channel called “Exército do Lula” grew from roughly 50,000 followers after the first round to more than 10.8 million by election night, spreading campaign material and urging supporters to act. The channel itself was twice suspended during the runoff after a complaint from Bolsonaro’s campaign before being restored.

As we approach the end of 2026, there are fresh reasons to be optimistic about the ability of democracy to resist hostile takeovers by illiberal and authoritarian governments. The same tools that too many defenders of democracy want to put under government control are the very same tools that have, in the past few months, helped defeat illiberal and populist incumbents and challengers across three continents.

It turns out that free online speech, far from being democracy’s fatal flaw, may be one of its greatest strengths.

Jacob Mchangama, a contributing writer at Persuasion, is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech, a research professor at Vanderbilt University, and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. His latest book, co-authored with Jeff Kosseff, is The Future of Free Speech.

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