Congress is putting together a bill, the Social Media NUDGE Act, that Congressmen pretend is to combat “misinformation” in our social media.  Misinformation, mind you—mistakes. Not disinformation, deliberate lies.

The legislation applies to commercial enterprises specializing in user-generated content with more than 20 million monthly active users for most of a 12-month period. They must devise plans for “content-agnostic interventions” and submit them to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for approval.
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While [the bill] never refers to misinformation or false information, it also never defines the “harmful content” it seeks to prevent….

Notice, too, that false equivalence. All misinformation is false information. Not all false information, though, is misinformation. Much of false information is disinformation—wrong information put out deliberately to mislead, or to hide truth.

This bill is disingenuous because it assumes “misinformation” must be blocked and Government/Big Tech are to be the ones to define “misinformation.” That’ll be whatever is politically inconvenient to those in power. And those in power will leave their disinformation alone.

This bill is insulting because it assumes us average Americans are too grindingly stupid to understand what is misinformation, what is disinformation, what is uncomfortable information, or the distinctions among the three. We must, instead, be “advised” by our Betters.