It was mean sarcastic. In case you haven't figured out how awful the fact-checkers are.

An no, if you ban "disinformation" you ban free speech. There is no way to figure out if a flat earther publishes something for disinformation purpose or if he really believes what he writes. Disinformation is best frighted by debunking it, not by removing it. Most people have heard form the flat earth but most dont believe it. Because they can inform themself. That's how it should be. No need to "save" everyone trough authoritarian measures. The risk here is way higher than having to deal with some forever flat earther.

> Disinformation is best frighted by debunking it

I used to believe that as well. Then we did real world practical experiments over the last decade. It's clear most people don't give a shit about informing themselves and will readily believe just about anything.

Not saying the solution is regulating what can / cannot be said, but this idea that free speech is the ultimate thing isn't working when you have groups that can spend troves of cash making their disinformation legitimate enough for the masses.

Both you and i probably believe at least one, maybe more of those things, by the way. It's not all outlandish nonsense, sometimes it's reasonable enough to believe at first glance and you don't bother looking it up afterwards.

I accept this as unavoidable reality. The only way to fight this problem is education. I'm not worried much about the fact that everyone "believes" some stuff that is actually not true. This is and was the case for all time humans where alive. In time where people had the opportunity to debate the different "truths" humanity made progress. In times or societies where this was not possible progress was slow. we dont need and will never get the absolute truth. but wee need freedom to search for it. there is no guarantee that we will find it and even the opinion of the majority can be wrong and often is but it will self-correct as long as pointing out the wrong is allowed. There will always come a time where the wrong becomes obvious to the majority. Pointing out the wrong will be disinformation if the people who decide are in the wrong. We can not have that risk.

So back to the start. You cant have an authority who decide. whats right or wrong has to be proofed/debunked. And it can not be removed afterwards as this would invalidate the debunking. This is a slow and inefficient process we should probably focus on making it better because it works, it just does not work as good and as fast as the modern world would require. The shortcut "solutions" however will most likely not work at all and potentially case more harm than good.

I fully agree with you that education is the ultimate solution, but in the mean time, wtf do we do about the entities that have wealth and power, and are able to influence millions of people on just about whatever the fuck they want?

What do we do when the things they choose to influence the population on are no longer just "the rich getting richer" but become actual existential threats? When they get dictators elected, make climate change worse, endanger lives by producing healthcare misinformation, etc?

Does it matter that, over the long term, there are more idealistic freedom of speech ideals if we don't live long enough to even get to the long term?

I dont know a solution to solve this all either. But I'm worried we make it worse with bad solutions.

Certainly you dont want to give these powerful people the tools to become more powerfully by implementing an authoritarian system against disinformation. Its rather obvious that if these powerful people can not circumvent that system they will become the system. If they can manipulate millions they sure can manipulate or replace the few "decision makers" too. Now you have powerful people spreading disinformation who also have the power to remove any critics simply by labeling it disinformation.