social media companies taking money from political actors in exchange for hosting blatant lies and misinformation ... there's a particular example of a social ill that can be prevented. i don't think anyone is tasking a few social media companies with sorting out the major questions that new technologies pose.
What you want is more or less impossible to enact. Political advertisements often appeal to emotion and make statements about hypotheticals, ifs and buts or the future. Even the 350m a week to the NHS bus was only a 'lie' because the math was off. If they wrote '250m a week' on the side the message wouldn't be any different but suddenly it'd be much closer to the, ahem, truth, and could pass as a legitimate ad.
Let's take the following ad as an example:
Technically not true, but if they would replace 'is' with 'could soon' ... well that just becomes a very complicated statement that may well be true. But the message remains more or less the same and will still have the intended effect.
It's the disregard for context and the cunning exploitation of people's ignorance that really makes these messages hit as well as they do. The game isn't just limited to advertising either. We know entire armies of bots and trolls are deployed to sway public opinion. Some multi-million news networks exist only to create ultra selective narratives. Their stories may not necessarily be untrue, but if the wider context is taken into account it becomes clear that their overarching message is totally removed from the truth.
If you want to tackle the issue, what we need is precisely a legal/ethical framework on political and journalistic conduct that can be enacted by an impartial authority that is less likely to be dragged into the political shit-slinging fest. The only place you can settle the argument that a certain political movement is deliberately spreading a false narrative is in a courtroom with a case that can be prepared for months. I don't see any other way to somewhat contain these problems.
