Data Analysis
We are the experiment
We are living the future. In Europe this has been banned since October 2025, and the platforms chose to leave the business. Nine days later came the Bolivian runoff.
By Violeta Ayala — Tecnóloga
The experiment
We are the experiment. Nobody's conclusion, the laboratory. The wildest technologies get tested here, in a country where 70 percent of the population does not have its basic needs met.
We are living today what the future will describe as the part that went wrong.
The country where the test was run
2024 census by Bolivia's National Statistics Institute, covering 10.9 million people. Tap each row.
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Seven in ten people do not. The indicator covers housing, services, health and education.
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Four in ten. One price rise pushes them below the line.
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More than two and a half million people.
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Around 400,000 people without the minimum to eat.
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Eight in ten are not. It is the worst-rated indicator in the census.
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Almost a third of the country.
This is the country where AI-driven electoral segmentation was tested, with no rule to limit it.
The first part of this piece described how the segmentation machine worked in the 2025 election. This second part answers the question that follows: what is wrong with that.
The answer is not in the campaign. It is in how serious this is for Bolivia, a country with no data protection law. Nobody is required to tell you what information about you they hold, or to delete it if you ask.
Nobody here broke any data law. There is none to break.
Winning and governing
Governing takes something segmentation does not give you: a base. A sector you answer to. Political commitments. A team that thinks roughly as you do, or does not, but has enough affinity to govern alongside you.
That is built over years and it costs, because it binds you. Winning by segmentation lets you skip the step entirely.
Paz arrived without a party of his own. He ran on the PDC ticket, a small label that served as a vehicle, and his running mate came in during May 2025, after the original candidate resigned.
The first cabinet change came in November 2025, the same month he took office: the Justice Ministry was abolished after the controversy over a minister close to Lara. Today the vice president is filing criminal charges against the first lady.
Paz and Lara had nothing in common. No road travelled together, no shared political history. They are opposites.
A ticket brought them together, not a project. And with no shared project there is no common ethic and no compass. Every decision gets made on the convenience of the week.
The cabinet was assembled from other parties' people. The minister of the presidency, José Luis Lupo, had been the vice-presidential candidate for Samuel Doria Medina's alliance, the rival who came third. Another minister came from the Doria Medina Foundation and had been a delegate for that alliance.
In July 2026, Doria Medina broke with the government. The alliance lasted eight months. He took his people with him.
Figures from coverage by eju.tv, El Deber and Agencia de Noticias Fides between November 2025 and August 2026.
So he owes nothing to anyone. He has no social base. He is loyal to no ideology.
It looks like freedom. It is the opposite. Nobody to pass your laws in the Assembly. Nobody to take to the street for you when the roads are blocked. And no direction to point in, because every group was promised something different. An ideology can be changed. What cannot be done is to have none at all and still ask a country to follow you.
Why it matters here
In Bolivia voting is compulsory. In other countries half a campaign is spent getting people to stay home or turn out. Here everyone turns out, which is why targeting pays off more. Nobody has to convince you to go. Only what you carry with you when you do.
Nine million Bolivians use the internet. We spend three hours and twenty-six minutes a day on social media, an hour more than the world average.
What is banned in Europe
What has no rules at all in Bolivia has been regulated across the 27 countries of the European Union since October 10, 2025.
Regulation (EU) 2024/900, in full application since October 10, 2025. In Bolivia none of these obligations exists.
The platforms themselves left the best proof of what targeting was for: Google, Meta and Microsoft chose to stop selling political advertising in Europe rather than comply with those rules.
Meta explained that the limits on targeting and ad delivery made the service practically impossible to maintain. Once targeting was taken away, the business stopped making sense.
In Europe these rules took effect on October 10, 2025. The Bolivian runoff was nine days later, on October 19.
The same week a continent decided this needed limits, here it was being used without any.
A European voter can demand to be told who paid for the ad that reached them and why it was sent to them. A Bolivian voter cannot ask anything.
The tools that were regulated over there are still on sale here, cheaper and off the record.
The future
That is what is dangerous about the experiment. The machine deceives nobody. What it does is produce governments with no debts and no compass, that win well and govern badly.
And this does not end in Bolivia. The same franchise passed through Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Honduras. It was tested here first, in the country with no data law, with compulsory voting and nine million people connected.
We are living the future.
Segmentation tells you what is hurting each group this week, but it gives no compass. It does not tell you what to do with a country.
Sources
- European Commission, Regulation (EU) 2024/900 on the transparency and targeting of political advertising, in full application since October 10, 2025: labelling obligations, a ban on targeting with special categories of data, explicit and separate consent, a ban on targeting people under voting age, and a ban on non-EU sponsors in the three months before an election. Fines of up to 6 percent of worldwide turnover.
- October 2025 coverage of Google, Meta and Microsoft withdrawing from the political advertising market in the European Union, and Meta's explanation regarding the limits on targeting and ad delivery.
- El Deber, August 2025, on the 2024 census data from the National Statistics Institute: of 10.9 million people counted, only 30 percent said their basic needs were met; 40.1 percent at the poverty threshold, 26.1 percent in moderate poverty and 3.6 percent destitute; and 16.1 percent satisfied with the health service.
- DataReportal, Digital 2025 report on Bolivia: 9.00 million internet users, 71.3 percent penetration, 7.39 million TikTok users and 3 hours 26 minutes daily on social media.
- Plurinational Electoral Body of Bolivia. Date of the Bolivian runoff, October 19, 2025.
- On the cabinet's composition and turnover: eju.tv, August 2026, on the ten ministers gone within nine months and the shift from fifteen to sixteen and then twelve portfolios; El Deber, July 2026, on Samuel Doria Medina's break after eight months of alliance, the six cabinet reshuffles and the abolition of the Justice Ministry in November 2025; and Brújula Digital, November 9, 2025, on José Luis Lupo as former vice-presidential candidate for the Unidad alliance.
- Bolivian press coverage from 2026 on the results of April's regional elections, the 53-day blockade in May and June, the ministerial resignations and the ninety-day state of emergency.
- First part of this piece: How a Vote Is Found, sala.red.
This piece compares the European regulatory framework, in application since October 2025, with the absence of Bolivian rules on personal data protection and political advertising. The first-person line is the author's testimony about what reached her screen; she was not on the electoral roll for the 2025 general election and did not vote in it. The governing facts cited, the electoral defeat, the ministerial resignations and the state of emergency, are documented in the press and in this series; the reading that connects them to the campaign method is interpretive.
