Yaël Eisenstat: Democracy’s Cyber Defendant

In 2018, Yaël Eisenstat joined Facebook as the head of Global Elections Integrity for political ads. Six months later, she left, disappointed and disillusioned, exposing how Facebook profits financially from voter manipulation. In her talk at the John Adams Institute, she will be addressing the outsized and worrisome role that social media and artificial intelligence play in politics, both in the United States and around the world.
Before joining Facebook, she had worked for years to strengthen and defend democracy-as an intelligence officer at the CIA, a diplomat at the State Department and a White House advisor.
Eisenstat is now a Senior Fellow at Cybersecurity for Democracy, working on policy solutions for how social media, AI-powered algorithms and generative AI affect political discourse, polarization and democracy. She has worked at the Anti-Defamation League as their Director of the Center for Tech and Society, published at the world’s most established media outlets, and delivered TedTalks and keynotes across the globe.
Yaël Eisenstat describes herself as someone who goes into the belly of the beast seeking to initiate lasting change. While that change is sometimes slow to come, Eisenstat remains hopeful, if wary. She shared her insights into how she combines her professional positions with being an outspoken advocate for the state of democracy: both on and offline. This year, more than half the world’s population heads to the ballot box in democratic elections, providing the perfect opportunity to examine how we could change the cybersphere to benefit, rather than hinder, the democratic process.
Eisenstat was joined on stage by the artistic duo Jakob Ganslmeier and Ana Zibelnik who presented part of their art work visualizing the dangerous and intricate landscape of radicalization within the online realm (not in the video on request of the artists).