We’re seeing the emergence of a post-fact world thanks to fake news

Francis Fukuyama looks at how the leaking of bad information is being used by those who would like to have authoritarian power at their fingertips.

One of the more striking developments of 2016 and its highly unusual politics was the emergence of a “post-fact” world, in which virtually all authoritative information sources were called into question and challenged by contrary facts of dubious quality and provenance.

The emergence of the internet and the world wide web in the 1990s was greeted as a moment of liberation and a great boon for democracy worldwide.