I'll always attempt to steel man the opposition. If you're dumb, and you think that a Disinformation Governance Board is a good idea, this is probably your best argument. A maniac killed three girls. People believed that the murderer was a migrant. It turned out that that wasn't true. Still, people are causing serious damage out of anger spurred on by false information.
Still, the UK seems to (once again) be learning all the wrong lessons. Those of us on the better side of the pond should be looking at the UK as a cautionary tale, not as a blueprint.
In this country, we definitely need to crack down on rioters. We need to stop pretending that there's a blurred line between peaceful assembly and lighting things on fire. It looks like the UK is trying to do that.
Still, this doesn't justify the Orwellian response of throwing grandmas in prison for sharing false information. The UK is literally jailing people for opinions and false information for the same amount of time Alec Baldwin was facing for killing a person.
Opinions, no matter how wrong or vile, shouldn't be illegal. Getting your facts wrong shouldn't be illegal. There's no way to create a government program or agency tasked with the power to decide what it true or false without creating a horror story.
I talked about this recently. Ferguson was just subjected to riots again on the tenth anniversary of Michael Brown's death. The whole narrative surrounding Michael Brown is based on a lie. I doubt that a Disinformation Governance Board would jail people for incitement for falsely claiming that officer Darren Wilson got away with murder. People shouldn't go to prison for perpetuating that lie. The people who should go to prison are the people who took those lies to heart, and decided to actually harm people.
Still, why do I doubt that a Disinformation Governance Board would punish people for spreading the lies about Michael Brown and Jacob Blake and so-on that spurred violence and riots? Well, first of all, we do have the First Amendment. Second of all, the Democratic Party flourishes with this intersectional narrative. A Disinformation Governance Board would deem the narrative to be true enough even though it's completely false.
We have to learn to deal with falsehood. A choking climate is only going to breed more violence and conspiracy theories.