Some wonder if the U.S. is living under a dictatorship. My answer is yes… but not the classic kind, with a thick-mustached general, dark sunglasses, and a three-hour-long speech broadcast nationwide. No, the American dictatorship is more sophisticated—more… modern. There are no tanks in the streets, just trending topics on Twitter; no official censors in red and green uniforms, just invisible algorithms deciding what’s “true” and what’s “fake news.”
Welcome to Dictatorship 2.0, where the supreme leader doesn’t wear a uniform or stage a coup—he just has powerful friends who run social media and change the rules of the game. In this version, the one who controls the algorithm controls the narrative, and the narrative controls the world.
Social media is no longer that free space where uncles shared Tweety Bird memes and aunts warned you that your ex was dating someone new. Now, they answer to the MAGA regime. Take TikTok, for example—it’s practically Trump and Elon Musk’s personal security guard, deleting any video that dares suggest the former president isn’t America’s ultimate savior. I tried posting content about protests against them, but TikTok just said, “Oops, looks like this video doesn’t comply with our community guidelines. Have you tried dancing to a trend instead?”
And don’t even get me started on Facebook. Post something critical, and the algorithm sends it into a digital abyss where only your grandma might see it—if she remembers how to log in. I tried tricking the system by renaming videos, using euphemisms, even writing “Drumpf” instead of “Trump,” but the algorithm is craftier than a cat pretending not to hear you.
So yes, we are in a dictatorship—just not one with military boots. Instead, it’s run by billionaires in sneakers, deciding what we can and cannot see. George Orwell would be either proud… or terrified.
