Do you think that anything at all should be done to fight foreign actor disinformation?
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.)
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.
Liberalism in general never worked before the U.S.A. and has never worked for more than a few decades anywhere else.
Giving up liberalism just because an illiberal country is producing propaganda seems... stupid.
So, I agree.
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".
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?
That will go much farther towards combating misinformation then trying to suppress even outright lies by force.
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.