Sophie L. Vériter

Misinformation, disinformation, fake news, propaganda, algorithmic amplification, influence operations, bots, AI bias,… 😵‍💫 How to deal with what looks like information chaos? What is at stake for Europe? 👉🏼 A few takeaways from my PhD thesis: universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025/0…

read my latest: open.substack.com/pub/globalsoci…

I wrote my PhD thesis on how states construct and manage information environments, and who benefits from controlling them. When I heard that a so-called “information market” @Polymarket running on @Polygon was labelled a “truth machine”, I knew I had to dive deeper.

My latest piece on EDM culture, agonistic spaces, and why the dance floor might be more politically relevant than parliament right now: sophiepomme.com/silvia-salis-t…

I never thought my love of techno and my work in democratic theory would end up in the same essay. Then, an Italian mayor named Silvia Salis organised a rave and emerged as Meloni's biggest contender.

Foreign Ministers of Ireland, Slovenia and Spain, have written to HRVP @kajakallas on the urgent situation in the Middle East. Read full letter here: gov.ie/en/department-…

An underreported skill in politics: using international legitimacy to bury a domestic crisis. Sánchez this week is a textbook case of narrative displacement. Don’t rebut a damaging frame, change the arena where the questions get asked.

I've taught European history for 30 years. Americans have always asked me how the Holocaust was possible, how Germans could have enabled a madman reveling in mass murder to carry out his plans. Now we can see in real time how this is enabled; now we have front-row seats.

Whether this happens or not, the clock is ticking: every leader has until 8pm tonight to defend their credibility. Speak out — clearly, unequivocally — or own the silence.

The demand for European tech is real. The infrastructure, the awareness, and the political will haven't fully caught up yet. Is #DigitalSovereignty about to become a campaign slogan? via @techpolicypress

What they likely will change for Europe are the speed of EU regulatory #enforcement timelines, stronger political #will to tackle platforms’ harmful design, and Meta’s reduced ability to argue in any proceeding that its choices were benign or unintentional.

The verdicts on Meta are morally and rhetorically powerful for Europe, but they won’t open floodgates of civil lawsuits the same way they might in US courts.

Two landmark verdicts in a week against @Meta: one in California for #addictively designing platforms harming children’s mental health, and one in New Mexico for concealing child sexual #exploitation. What are the implications for Europe?