Commentary:
DRI is another group that pivoted to battling disinformation on social media "following the controversial US elections and UK Brexit referendum." Their risk assessment offers a brisk taxonomy of digital threats surrounding elections. Online ads are treated chiefly as vectors for opacity, hate speech as evidence of platform failure, foreign actors as latent saboteurs. In a report on the 2021 Bundestag vote, each section ends with calls for tighter disclosure rules, expanded removal windows and new oversight mandates – recommendations that echo EU proposals already in circulation. The report’s method relies on expert interviews rather than fresh data, yielding a policy wish‑list more than an empirical audit. With funding from Reset, a London‑based philanthropy active in campaigns for stricter platform oversight, this paper sits comfortably within a transatlantic consensus seeing popular mistrust in reigning institutions and politicians as stemming from insufficient moderation rather than substantive political alienation from the centrist parties. Its premise – that "online risks" can be neutralized by procedural fixes – leaves little room for examining how mainstream parties and institutions themselves exploit micro‑targeting, or how media concentration shapes public debate. DRI maps the dangers yet prescribes technocratic hygiene in place of greater democratic participation.