Public Defenses Against the Dark Arts are Weak or Non-Existent

The New York Times reports that almost no candidate running for office in 2020 is making a significant effort to combat snake oil (disinformation) and lies online. The darks arts of lies, deceit and lies-based emotional manipulation are rampant. The NYT writes:

Less than a year before the 2020 election, false political information is moving furiously online. Facebook users shared the top 100 false political stories over 2.3 million times in the United States in the first 10 months of this year. 

A hoax version of the Green New Deal legislation went viral online. Millions of people saw unsubstantiated rumors about the relationship between Ukraine and the family of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. A canard about the ties between a Ukrainian oil company and a son of Senator Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican, spread widely, too.  

Truth and public interest defenses off, disinformation and profit offenses on

The NYT comments that in September, the president’s campaign posted on content Facebook and the president’s Twitter account that included a lie about Mr. Biden’s dealings with Ukraine. That lie was viewed more than eight million times. The Biden campaign sent letters to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Fox News, asking them to ban the content, but it remained up. That is political and corporate defense of lies, profit and/or political advantage. Truth and the public interest are of little or no concern to liars, corrupt political partisans and companies making money or gaining advantage from deceit and lies. 

Facebook sometimes labels a post or ad as false, but usually does not remove the content. Facebook policy is that politicians can run ads that make false claims or statements, including ones that have been shown to be false. Counter-disinformation is usually not a serious strategic objective for parties, campaigns and candidates who claim they are powerless to fight lies. Online companies have few restrictions on what users can say or share if they do not lie about their identity, leaving victims of disinformation and lies unable to effectively defend themselves.

Since it takes time and costs money to ferret out sources that lie about their identity, companies are reluctant to do much to combat the spreading rot. In essence, deceivers and liars are mostly free to deceive and lie with no meaningful repercussions whatever. Essentially all lies, deceit and emotional manipulation are constitutionally protected free speech.

Emotional manipulation via a literal fake flag operation - the goal includes provoking 

anti-democratic social discord, distrust and bigotry, not advocacy of knowledge, democracy or the rule of law

Weaponization, with loss of freedom and the rise of fake consent of the governed

By now, all sources of disinformation have been weaponized. Each side in political disagreement now routinely accuses the other of spreading disinformation and beling self-deluded in believing that partisan lies are truth and/or real truth is lies. There is no way to bridge the vast partisan reality and logic gap. This divide will not go away any time soon, if ever. The current rancid mindsets constitute an imminent existential threat to democracy, the rule of law and civil society. This is what tyrants, oligarchs and kleptocrats dream about. Their dreams are coming true in real time.

A final point is worth making. When partisans and special interests are able to act based on the public’s misplaced acceptance of deceit or on emotional reactions to propaganda provocations[1], the liar-deceiver-manipulators take from people who would have not consented their freedom to oppose the deceit- or manipulation-based act. In essence, spreading of deceit, lies and emotional manipulations in service to false reality, disinformation and narrow anti-public interest interests are the acts of morally corrupt tyrants, oligarchs and individuals, groups, tribes and political parties. The moral corruption arises from the taking of freedom to choose based on reality and reason and replaces it with choices based on false facts and reality and flawed reason. That is immoral.

Footnote:
1. Liars and propagandists work hard to provoke unwarranted negative emotions. That helps make partisan and special interest lies and deceit more believable. Unwarranted negative emotions, especially fear, anger, bigotry, distrust and disgust, tend to overwhelm slow conscious fact-based reason and replace that with fast, narrow unconscious moralistic reasoning. In essence, response to emotional provocation causes most people (~ 98% ?) to tend to see inconvenient reality, facts and truth more as lies and deceit than as real reality and truth. That's the basis of the biological mechanism by which disinformation is weaponized and used against people.