Sorry, but fighting ‘fake news’ is not a job for any government

Optimism, I feel, is the enemy of democracy. When considering the merits and drawbacks of a proposed policy or law, one should always ask: “How much fun could the worst political leader imaginable have with this?”

In other words, what kind of mischief could, say, President Donald Trump, who threatened to lock up one political rival and falsely accused another of spying on him, get up to with a law that expanded state surveillance powers?

Or: What hijinks might ensue if he, after seemingly encouraging his supporters to assault protesters at his rallies, were to water down an incitement-to-violence law?

Or — or! — let us imagine not a President Trump, which even now is quite unimaginable enough, but instead a Prime Minister Trump, whose inclination would be to reject any news item unfavourable to him as disinformation while he materially benefits from the support of a hostile foreign power known to spread disinformation: Whatever could he do with a policy or law that sought to influence what qualifies as real news and what news must be banned or flagged as fake?

Of course, I couldn’t possibly say that Minister of Democratic Institutions Karina Gould is considering any such policy or law. That would be fake news. Maybe. According to her, depending on her determination as the sole arbiter of what is real and what is fake. Or maybe not! Who can say ... aside from her, of course.

Even then, Gould has been having a hard time saying much about the government’s plans for fake news — so reports CBC, a news outlet that is probably not fake by virtue of receiving government approval in the form of funding, unless of course the existence of such funding is itself fake news.

“Nobody actually has a real answer to it,” she has said.

“Everyone is trying to do different things,” she has said.

“We need to take action,” she has said.

Thank God politicians are here to clarify the truth of the matter for us.

But to that last point (if indeed it was made!): Do we? Do we really need to take action? Is there indeed any action that any government can take at any time to arbitrate between truth and lies that won’t result in more lies and less truth should the worst government imaginable come to power at the worst time imaginable?

One action, taken by France, that the government might imagine here: Vow to implement emergency blocks on websites that the government determines are fake.

Such blocks would only occur during election seasons, a detail that is somehow intended to make us feel better rather than a great deal worse. This is what I read on BBC’s website, which has not been blocked because it is not in France, and because it is not a French election season and because a demagogue who wants to cripple his opponents is not in power yet. You imagine this going badly? Another action then, taken by Germany: Enforce a law that requires social media sites to discern fake news when flagged by concerned citizens, and to quickly remove the content. One wonders whether these sites will find it easier to hit the delete button than thoughtfully consider each complaint. Which reminds me!

If you are reading this article in Leipzig, I would like to express my sincerest thanks to all Russian bots — er, I mean, concerned citizens — for their tacit support.

We could trust the courts to protect free speech rights. But trust must start with our representatives. We trust them too much.

We trust that the politicians in power aren’t bad people, which is usually true, and that, therefore, all the politicians who will eventually come to power won’t be bad people either, which is probably not true.

It’s difficult to imagine a policy solution to the fake news problem that the worst leader imaginable wouldn’t find occasion to enjoy implementing a little too much.

I can scarcely imagine a worse person than a politician to discern news from political propaganda; if politicians wish to protect democracy from the very worst of their successors, they might leave it alone.