Sometimes it's too late. The best dictator in the western world isn't the one who sends the army down the streets to shoot protesters, but the one who controls information so that people after years of being dazed by the same propaganda will vote him in power without any coercion. Sadly bad rulers sometimes have more resources than good ones, which turns out in more online/tv/radio/newspaper presence used to spread their propaganda.

If we could force somehow politicians to count on the same exact public exposure, from rallies to apparently trivial things such as tweets, that would possibly change something, but to me a similar scenario in this universe is near science fiction.