| | | | A Liberal Thaw in Eastern Europe | | "Anti-populist" reformer Zuzana Caputova has offered a "ray of hope" for liberalism in Eastern Europe, the Financial Times writes, after the anti-corruption lawyer won Slovakia's presidency with 58% percent of the vote in a runoff over the weekend. She'll become the country's first female president.
Her "values could not be more antithetical to those of populist strongmen in power" elsewhere in the region, the FT writes. Her social politics cut against the grain, too: She supports gay marriage and abortion rights at a time when Europe sees a sharp cultural divide across the former Iron Curtain. | | In Ukraine, a Comedian Upends the Political Order | | It's a "resounding slap in the face to an entire Ukrainian political class," The Economist writes: Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy took the leading spot in Ukraine's first round of presidential elections on Sunday, capitalizing on "total disillusionment" with politicians and assembling a broader coalition than his rivals while saying "almost nothing about his politics."
Zelenskiy will advance to a runoff, and we shouldn't dismiss him as a solid choice to run the country, Michael Bociurkiw writes: Zelenskiy is intelligent, has a team of reformist advisers, and might be Ukraine's best chance at a different direction, after politicians have let the country down for decades, he argues. | | Quantifying Brexit's Damage | | | Brexit has cost the UK 2.5% of its potential economy, the Centre for European Reform estimates, for an annual hit of £19 billion. The group keeps a running tally of Brexit's economic cost, and the latest figures (through December 2018, when the British economy shrank by .4%) reflect continued losses, compared to a computer-selected group of similar economies representing how Britain would've fared without Brexit.
Since the 2016 vote, uncertainty has put a "speed limit" on Britain's economy, the group writes, with foreign and corporate investment in a slump—though a softer Brexit could bring some of it back. | | Is China Taking the Lead in Social Media? | | "Silicon Valley is now looking East," writes Ashley Galina Dudarenok in the South China Morning Post, as Mark Zuckerberg seems to want Facebook to mimic Chinese social-media giant WeChat by shifting focus to messaging and privacy. It's the first time a Silicon Valley tycoon has publicly mused that "a Chinese digital ecosystem is worth learning from and emulating," Dudarenok writes.
WeChat dominates social media in China the way Facebook does in the US, and its multifunctionality—it allows users to shop and make payments—has turned heads. It's part of a larger trend, Dudarenok writes, expecting China to export more tech advancements to the West. | | India Is Awash in Fake News | | Ahead of its upcoming elections, India is facing "information wars of an unprecedented nature and scale," write Snigdha Poonam and Samarth Bansal in The Atlantic, as disinformation is running rampant on services like Facebook and WhatsApp, as well as smaller platforms.
Some of the falsities are being spread "by political parties with nationwide cyberarmies," and platforms' efforts to clamp down aren't working—two disconcerting trends, as democracies figure out what to do about fake news worldwide. | | | | | | |
