Character is constructed on the small choices we make. 2026 will demand nice — even better — character. Or we lose all of it.
That was my waking thought on Christmas Day. If 2024 was the tipping level yr for democracy, when half the world voted with fewer safeguards than ever earlier than, 2025 taught us what occurs after we don’t #HoldTheLine, after we don’t struggle for our rights.
We’ve watched know-how make all the pieces quicker, meaner, extra polarized — insidiously manipulating us for revenue. The knowledge armageddon accelerates: from social media to chatbots. We’re alone collectively, trusting machines with our most intimate secrets and techniques.
If the battle that started greater than a decade in the past was for our consideration, in the present day, the battle is for intimacy.
Belief has been systematically destroyed and our youth crippled, battling for which means towards unimaginable odds. Some have paid with their lives, from Sewell Setzer, 14, whose mom, Megan Garcia is suing Character.AI and Google for inflicting his suicide, to our personal Emman Atienza, whom I watched develop as a child and whose premature loss of life at 19 sparked the “Emman Atienza Bill” to guard our youth.
From the Vatican to Manila
In January, 2025, I kicked off the Jubilee on the Vatican, standing earlier than the large “Resurrection” sculpture impressed by Hiroshima. I reminded the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics of what I stated in the Nobel lecture: that an atom bomb has exploded in our data ecosystem.
From the Vatican to keynotes in Warsaw, Athens, Paris, to New York, the place I helped open the eightieth UN Basic Meeting, to Munich, the place hundreds of younger leaders gathered beneath flags from each nation, to Manila and Rappler’s Social Good Summit with Amal and George Glooney, this yr taught me that 2026 is after we both flip this round or watch democracy (and journalism) crumble.
What 2025 confirmed us
Huge Tech stopped pretending, wielding political energy to take off any guardrails on their platforms. Mark Zuckerberg deserted fact-checking, declaring that lies and information deserve equal standing. Elon Musk and DOGE attacked the US authorities paperwork at its core. As I instructed the Vatican, the boys who management transformative know-how wield godlike energy, however they lack the knowledge of God.
The brutal statistics:
However 2025 additionally proved that radical collaboration works and often is the solely means ahead.
At Rappler, our Matrix protocol chat app turned the biggest information neighborhood within the Philippines. In September, we federated with the 65-member Philippine Press Institute, SunStar Cebu, and the Day by day Guardian. We’re exhibiting you’ll be able to construct alternate options to Huge Tech. Now we’re working with regional information organizations.
At our Social Good Summit in November, the Clooneys set concrete plans to use AI for good (and crammed our corridor with love — sure, they did), Oleksandra Matviichuk, whose Heart for Civil Liberties received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, made us all cry and introduced Ukraine’s conflict house to Manila. Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Carole Cadwalladr and Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first digital minister, outlined the issues and happy our nation’s starvation for options.
That turned clear in Rappler’s anti-corruption investigations, when our neighborhood got here collectively each just about and in public protests, to carry authorities officers accountable.
I joke that the Philippines has moved from hell to purgatory, however Western democracies can be taught a lot from what we’ve got gone by means of. There isn’t any silver bullet. Within the worst of instances, you stay by your values, taking your loved ones, your neighborhood with you. Constructing character selection by selection — but it surely’s not straightforward.
After I have a look at Europe, I see its democratic leaders standing on wooden being eaten by termites. In the event that they do nothing, that wooden will rot and break. Proper now, they nonetheless have power and legal guidelines, a few of which have but to be carried out. However stress is constructing.
Why time is working out
Each indicator exhibits that journalism has six to eight months earlier than our enterprise mannequin collapses and our communities splinter additional. Democracy follows inside a yr: not a line, however a gradual loss of life by a thousand cuts.
The Trump administration’s December Nationwide Safety Technique abandons democracy promotion and treats alliances as purely transactional. Days in the past, Secretary of State Marco Rubio banned 5 Europeans from coming into the US, together with Thierry Breton, architect of the EU’s Digital Companies Act, and leaders of organizations combating towards disinformation. The US authorities now treats democratic regulation of platforms as “extraterritorial censorship.”
American platforms form world data ecosystems, however now American coverage actively opposes democratic governance of those programs. When governments attempt to regulate Huge Tech for public security, they face US sanctions.
If America falls, the world tilts.
What occurs in America in 2026 determines data integrity globally, however its residents are beginning to struggle again. People are pushing Trump approval rankings to file lows, handing important wins to Democrats within the November off-year elections.
I see the shift in my very own expertise: talking with Jon Stewart in a particular present after the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night time present in September 2025. It turned the road within the sand totally free speech, triggering outrage. In March, How one can Stand Up To A Dictator, my guide printed in 2022, hit #10 on the New York Instances bestseller checklist; by October, it was #3. Residents around the globe need to know easy methods to defend their rights.
The mom of all battles
Disaster is alternative. When governments abdicate, residents step up. I’ve seen it in each day protests in Georgia (393 days as of December 26), in Romania’s braveness, within the numerous struggles on the entrance traces — whether or not in academe, civil society, or authorities.
This time final yr, the Nobel Girls’s Initiative held a personal zoom with Narges Mohammadi, the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner, briefly launched from Iranian jail. She was smiling, resolute. “Girls. Life. Freedom.”
Rappler received all its circumstances. Me? 11 legal circumstances down to 1. From hell to purgatory. That’s progress — proof that we are able to #HoldTheLine and #ReclaimOurRights.
So don’t be overwhelmed. Don’t be depressed. Don’t disengage.
Each authoritarian system depends upon our exhaustion and resignation. They need you to consider that nothing you do issues.
They’re incorrect. We held the road within the Philippines with the help of so many right here and overseas. Be part of Rappler+ in case you are not but a member. Or think about a yr finish donation for journalism that appears for systemic options.
We aren’t alone. In Brazil, Bolivia, Moldova, Zambia, South Korea, their democracies bounced again. It begins with understanding the distinction between information and lies — with data integrity.
For 2026, the mom of all battles is Data integrity. Win this, and we are able to win the remaining. Lose this, and we lose all the pieces. So construct character in each selection in 2026. It’s what this yr calls for. – Rappler.com
