Last week’s Vancouver TED conference delivered a chilling wake-up call through four speakers who, from different vantage points, converged on an unmistakable warning: Our digital ecosystem isn’t just broken — it threatens the foundations of democracy, truth, and human autonomy itself.

These speakers didn’t merely diagnose the crisis. They named it, mapped its architecture, and issued an urgent call to collective action before it’s too late.

Journalist Carole Cadwalladr, returning to the TED stage after her landmark 2019 talk on Facebook and democracy, delivered perhaps the most urgent warning of all:

“In years to come, allowing your child to be data-harvested from birth will be considered child abuse.”