A Simple Solution to Crush Digital Misinformation

I have an elegant solution in how I believe governments could curb digital misinformation, and I want your opinions. I want to know, does this make sense? Does it not? Should we be pushing this forward or just let it go? And I'm going to get to what that idea is in a moment, but let's first talk about the problem, right? With the event of the digital age of communication, we have a problem, right, with keeping all our free speech freedoms and enjoying things like entertainment and satire and fiction, but also not to be misled or made to believe falsehoods around decisions of our society, of our government, of our personal wealth. Things of that sort. And there is tremendous amounts of fraud and theft and criminal scams and, and political parties trying to pull people one way or another in making up stories or slanty things. It's— there's misinformation and there's disinformation. And technically the difference is misinformation is just not accurate. Disinformation is the purposeful intention of spreading misinformation. And it really is one of the supreme threats to a democratic society. And unscrupulous people have been very successful in misleading people, groups, citizens for their personal power and financial gain. And this misinformation and disinformation We've seen things like this happen and greatly impact people where they truly believe something that was wildly crazy and untrue. In fact, if you go back and look at the War of the Worlds radio show, and that was in 1938, that caused a national panic in the United States. People listening to their radios believed that aliens had invaded and were attacking. More recently, if you look at some of the fake tweets that happened, some of them caused market flash crashes. And we've seen how fake news has polarized the political landscape within the US in the last election. And you gotta start asking yourself, right? Is the Earth really flat? Are aliens invading? Is the coronavirus made up? Uh, does the universe circle the Earth? Were dinosaurs never part of the history of our planet? Is your dictator really superhuman? All these things, right? People can believe in them, especially if their primary method of ingesting news is talking about this, is making it sound real. And that undermines us. That undermines us when we believe the news about some fake investment or this scam, or what to believe about a political stance one way or another. People can be made to believe just about anything in the absence of truth. So what's the solution? Well, it's easy to understand, but it is more difficult to implement. So let me put that caveat out there. But it is completely doable. And I'm thinking right now for the United States, but it could be duplicated really anywhere around the world where you had, you know, a free nation, responsible government, things of that sort. And it centers around labeling. Yes, labeling. It works. Look at the food or drug labels that you see. Look at the fiction versus nonfiction areas in a library. It actually makes sense, right? And we don't want to get rid of the creativity of free speech, of opinions and speculation and crazy theories. We want that, right? That's part of free speech. That's part of who we are. But we also don't want that intermingled, right, with actual facts, right, things that have proof behind them. It's great to talk about those, but we have to be able to separate that, otherwise people may get confused. So the proposal is simple. Number 1: any online or digital site that that uses the word news in its title, content, self-reference, whatever, it can only publish facts. Which means news agencies need to do what, what they've done for a long time. The credible ones actually do research and validate facts and, and whatnot before they present it. So There's no satire. There's no opinions, editorials, no user comments, nothing like that. Nothing that is not fact-based. And for that, they would need to push the content to maybe another site that does not purport itself to be a factual news outlet. And it can be a sister site, sure, but it can't use the word news in it. It can't describe itself as news. News will be the reserved word for something that is trustworthy and factual. Okay, and this will kind of change the world a little bit because news sites will then be fully accountable for what they publish. They must do the fact-checking, and they must be held accountable under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And punishments would include fines, regulatory enforcement, which could shut them down, and even criminal charges if it is related to fraud or political manipulation, something of that sort. They will also be civilly liable when the incorrect information on a news site harms somebody, right? Somebody, an innocent victim. They should be able to sue them. This puts in a lot of controls. This puts in a lot of friction if a news organization wants to publish questionable information, unvetted stories, or pure speculation or fiction. This will drive significant changes in the news industry. It separates those who are trying to ethically report facts from those who are willing to sensationalize stories for more viewers and kind of blend in entertainment into that. It now separates the two so each can compete in their own separate markets with like vendors, thereby evening the playing fields. All of the other sites All of the ones who don't use news, right, as a description or claiming that they give news, they're not under any kind of restrictions and they're free to post whatever they want. Far right or far left political narratives? Sure. Entertainment satire? Yep. Fake stories, fiction, opinions, comments from everyday people. Editorials from well-known personalities. Absolutely, whatever you want. The key is for the everyday user to very quickly and easily delineate between factual and non-factual information, and it has to be easy, it has to be consistent. And in that way, it can be recognized by everyday citizens even in a rush, not thinking about it, right? This source is trusted, news source. The rest, entertainment, maybe, maybe not true, don't know, right? Might be interesting, might be entertaining. But you've got two different types of sites. Now, neither side, let me, let me say this, both the legitimate news outlets and the entertainment venues probably none of them like this idea. And to me, that's a good thing, because this is really a compromise. And the group out there that will absolutely oppose this idea the most vehemently will be the organizations who purposefully try to deceive people for their gain. It holds them accountable financially, maybe even criminally. So let's clean up our act. Digital communication ecosystem that we're in, well, it has connected people around the globe for tremendous benefits, but now it's being misused in terrible ways to take advantage of citizens. We're in a hole, and it's time to work our way out. It won't be easy, but if we do nothing, it will be more difficult tomorrow and every day thereafter. It's not the people's fault. When all the sources that are believed to be truthful are bombarding you with fictitious information, there's no grounding for what is real. We see dictators and countries around the world where freedom of speech doesn't exist. They use these tactics to control and dominate their citizens. Just look at the countries where the government controls all of the media and news stories. Freedom requires free speech, but liberty requires the truth. We need a framework that provides both. So if you like this idea, share it. Send it to your representative. Leave a comment. And if you hate it, explain why. Exercise your right to free speech and step forward to protect your liberty.