[wu-ikkyu]

>feels like the most democratic media I’ve ever seen.

The Democrats thought the same thing too, before Trump won the election. Perhaps you are falling victim to a filter bubble confirmation bias?

A democracy implies independent national sovereignty. When anyone (govt, corp, or rogue hackers) across the world can effectively manipulate your elections at scale, sovereign democracy is no longer a thing.

[paulsutter]

A $100,000 ad campaign overpowered the dems $1.4B budget? The DNC should hire those guys! They're political geniuses!

[wu-ikkyu]

I'm having a hard time finding the link, but there was an article posted here on HN a while back (which the author deleted because of the underhanded nature of the endeavor) about a marketer whose ad campaign for getting a government initiative passed was failing even though they were using all the traditional methods.

Then they decided to spend ~$100 on buying fake reddit upvotes for their initiative and it received millions of views and ended up being highly successful.

It's interesting how far a little money and technological finesse can have such far reaching effects.