Cybersecurity & Tech Democracy & Elections

Lawfare Daily: How Social Media Threatens Democracy, with Rick Pildes

Kate Klonick, Richard H. Pildes, Jen Patja
Tuesday, November 4, 2025, 7:00 AM
Discussing the link between social media and threats to democracy.
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On today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Kate Klonick sits down with NYU law professor Rick Pildes to discuss his article, “Political Fragmentation in Democracies in the West,” which was featured in a  New York Times opinion column by Thomas Edsall on the link between smartphone and social media use and threats to democracy.

The two discuss the admittedly sprawling topic from a historical perspective—comparing the impact of the internet to that of the printing press, the radio, and cable television on social orders. But they also discuss how this technology that once held such promise for democracy is now impacting the United States political system in a unique way—in particular, the ability social media has to further polarize a two-party system's information ecosystem while also revolutionizing small-donor-based campaigns. The result is some very anti-democratic outcomes from what was seen as such promising democracy-empowering technology.

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Cybersecurity & Tech Democracy & Elections
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Kate Klonick

Kate Klonick

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Kate Klonick is an Associate Professor at St. John’s University Law School, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, Harvard Berkman Klein Center and a Distinguished Scholar at the Institute for Humane Studies. Her writing on online speech, freedom of expression, and private internet platform governance has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post and numerous other publications. For the 2023-2024 academic year, she was a Fulbright Schuman Innovation Scholar in the European Union where she was a Visiting Professor at SciencesPo and University of Amsterdam researching and writing about the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.
Richard H. Pildes

Richard H. Pildes

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Professor Pildes is the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law and Co-Faculty Director for the Program on Law and Security at NYU School of Law. His scholarship focuses on legal issues concerning the structure of democratic institutions and politics, separation of powers, administrative law, and national-security law. A clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall at the United States Supreme Court, Professor Pildes has been named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Carnegie Scholar.
Jen Patja

Jen Patja

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Jen Patja is the editor of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, and serves as Lawfare’s Director of Audience Engagement. Previously, she was Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics and Deputy Director of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier, where she worked to deepen public understanding of constitutional democracy and inspire meaningful civic participation.
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