Brexit

[ArtM72]

There is no evidence that Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm linked to the Leave.EU campaign, used botnets or any other illegal activity – it seeks to use the web to manipulate public opinion through legal means. Legal though such methods are, the sinister nature of this manipulation requires robust regulation.

What Brexit should have taught us about voter manipulation | Paul Flynn | Opinion | The Guardian

If you want a relatively easy solution to this make the Tenth Commandment law and its violation a punishable offense.

I've often believed that if one violates what I call the tenth of the "Ten Commandments", and such a violation were recognised as a crime with significant penalties, this fundamental threat to democracy would be greatly diminished. That commandment is "thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor". I call it the tenth commandment because in election seasons it is always the first to fall off the list away from the other nine.

If knowingly promoting and/or forwarding falsehoods, or information that could reasonably been determined to be false, about political adversaries or their beliefs by whatever means were a punishable offense, campaign advertising and activities such as those promoted by Cambridge Analytica could no longer draw upon fake news for their power. As it stands, it is exceedingly difficult to win an election when the adversary is unconstrained by truth. In fact at least in the US the spreading of political misinformation about a candidate is even protected from liable laws because of the public forum in which the lies are disseminated.

Criminalizing the failure to observe the 10th Commandment would not likely have affected Donald Trump's rediculous "I will build a great wall along our southern border and Mexico will pay for it" but it certainly would have greatly diminished the expectation that Clinton was going to prison for the long list of imaginary offenses her adversaries have promoted continuously for decades across the broadcast and social media.

Bottom line, for democracy to succeed a well informed electorate must choose its leaders. Misinformed electorates can, will and clearly have through their votes unwittingly participated in democracy's erosion. That has to stop.