When a conspiracy theorist instructed their followers to send public records requests to the State Department to prove I had been involved in the arrest of Pavel Durov (I wasn’t, obviously), they got nothing back. But that didn’t pierce the veil of lies they had fallen victim to.

This week’s newsletter is about transparency in democracies: how it’s weaponized and what’s at risk if we don’t make changes (but probably not the ones you assume).