> Focus on education and providing more information, not suppressing the information you don't like.
A: Education is at best only partly-effective as a response — too many malevolent actors follow Steve Bannon's largely-costless strategy of (his literal words) "flood the zone with shit."
B: Mass purveyors of disinformation are thieves — they steal the time of people who take seriously the need to figure out what's true when, say, voting.
C: It's already established that you don't always get to say whatever TF you feel like without consequence — for example, the Federal Trade Commission goes after people for false advertising, and people have been imprisoned for leaking classified information. (At the zoo with my kids years ago, I saw small monkeys scampering quickly around a set of monkey bars in a giant outdoor cage — they shit and pissed whenever the urge struck them, heedless of where it fell. I get much the same impression from people who get indignant when told that they can't say whatever they want whenever they feel like it.)
> Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…
The fact that Jonathan Swift was already complaining about this in 1710, should make us more skeptical of the idea that the internet or social media is this unique threat, that older ideas about freedom of speech don't apply anymore.
Also liberalism continues to power the most peaceful and prosperous regions in the world. Giving up on it because illiberalism is on the rise is equally as stupid.
Why is it the federal governments job? Platforms were already removing actual calls to violence and terrorist propaganda in 2014, what happened was that since 2016 a whole new censorship apparatus was created that was substantially broader than anything seen before not due to new regulations (first amendments is still here) but various extrajudicial mechanisms including senate hearings, “friendly” knocks from DHS agents and the whole 9 yards. Daniel Ellsberg today would be Russian misinformation for saying that America had been bombing Cambodia too.
One of the many question marks with your viewpoint is "How much of what is labeled foreign actor disinformation is actually foreign actor disinformation?"
During much of the last few years, heaps of undesirable stories were labeled by the media or big tech as "foreign bot propaganda" with no proof provided, and a large chunk of even the tech-savvy public bought these claims at face value even though there are methods that could be used to largely verify these claims that were never provided.
It would be trivial for an authoritarian government to label any inconvenient story as "boosted by foreign bots" and totally manipulate and control the news while pretending to "fight foreign disinformation".
I reject that framing. I reject the idea that there this clearly defined thing - disinformation - and the question is how to fight it.
The right framing is: How do we figure out the truth? By letting everyone argue about it, on platforms like twitter, or by entrusting that to a bunch of bureaucrats, who then share their findings and censor anyone who disagrees?
Yes absolutely. The government should be spending a lot of time writing very carefully worded press releases that encourage you to research facts, question their pronouncements, and wording all of their releases with a healthy dose of "I am not certain, but we believe" in order to rebuild the public trust.
That will go much farther towards combating misinformation then trying to suppress even outright lies by force.
The power? Which form of power are you referring to?
The power of law? That's very clearly "Nowhere". Taking down Facebook posts is not authorized by law, and is not compatible with the First Amendment (though to be clear: The Bill of Rights does not create or codify our rights; It just enumerates them). It is in executive policy, which should be having repercussions such as prosecution and censure, and it's a failure of our legislative and judicial branches that there's not been such.
The power of force? They're literally a federal law enforcement department. They have guns and ammo and the training and experience to use them. They will arrest you if you wink at them funny while trying to board a plane.
The power of precedent? They're setting it right now. There were a set of leaked e-mails of government officials getting obsequious replies when asking Facebook for posts to be taken down for "Misinformation". I'm not even against the government pointing out posts that violate Facebook guidelines; I just think they should get the same canned responses that everyone else gets.
It does not help that a key campaigning strategy from the sitting president was suppressing an embarrassing story. I would have had some respect if Biden had come out and said "My No-Account son is trying to profit from my name, and I apologize for that". I have no respect for the sitting president nor the previous.
Unlike DeSantis's Stop WOKE law, these documents do not give the government the power to compel social media companies or anybody else to remove posts. This seems like it will hold up against the legal challenges that Stop WOKE failed.
