How Massachusetts Could Stop Fake News
Even lying is protected speech, but here are three ways to help
Freedom of speech means includes speech you don't agree with or even speech that is factually wrong. So how could one state like Massachusetts help prevent fake news?
#1. Require that social media companies record when and where an image first appeared and place that information beside every posted and reposted image.
#2. Implement community corrections for posts.
#3. Insure the "truth score" or number of times a post has been corrected appears on the subject account next to posts.
Due to the decisionin favor of Dartmouth College in Dartmouth v Woodward (1819), where the legal personhood of corporations was decided to be an inherent and essential part of Amercan law, there is little that a State can do against any social media or web based entity.
Social media companies are not the public forums, they are legally private individuals. Their sites are walled gardens with legally binding terms of service (which 99.99999%) of people do not read). The TOS allow these companies to enforce and self regulate (no matter how imperfectly, yes I'm looking at you Twitter and Youtube)their users.
If the Fed were to pass laws requiring transparency in images by mandating meta data of images posted online, that might be helpful. Ultimately, true defence against fake new is an educated, critical thinking, well informed public. Yes the true weapon against fake news relies on individuals using their common sense to detect BS when someone is attempting to spoon feed it to them, and the say "Thank you, no." stay curious, stay informed, read widely.
When Critical Thinking is looked upon as a buzzkill, when fact checkers are associated with certain historical empires and realms its an easy dodge for the intended audience that wants to hear confirmation in what they already believe.
Like recently the aurora visible across the US, the conspiracy crew claim its HAARP, somehow a few acers of antennas and a few megawatts can not only cover a chunk of the Northern Hemisphere but also alters the weather and climates and that idea is accepted as fact, but showing data of the 27 gigatons of CO2 pumped annually into the atmosphere from merely burning carbon to boil water and move pistons is dismissed as a lie, or then the whataboutism games of a secret cabal of Green meanies wanting money while the legacy money of fossil capitalism rakes in tens of billions every quarter in an industry we also subsidize.
Go back a year to East Palestine train derailment, I seen lots of crazy in the local comments on facebook and WKBN, and this was some concerted attack/effort to poison us and the damage the crops, but the failed crops of 100 degree days in the South and Southwest thats spacelasers and HAARP.
Hell Flatearthers rail on the tag message on You tube with every one of their videos as suppression of the "Truth" about flat earth, all while ignoring that the same exact tag shows up on our debunking videos that counter their beliefs.
Social Media is like the gift to any intelligence service, they dont need to send assets into harms way, they dont even need to recruit willing participants overseas they can just post stuff out there to be picked up and spread around as fact.
I remember reading a Nintendo game strategy book in the early 90's and the one comment was about Tetris how the Soviet Union won with this game having never fired a single shot or missile at us.