We all know this is happening, and it's affecting the world. Season 4 of The Bureau touches heavily on this subject (another reason that show should be watched!), but I find myself personally conflicted on the subject of it.
Yes what is happening here is immoral, in that targeting vulnerable voters with false facts in order to swing, or drive, votes is very poor form.
But what is democracy, if not the ability for people to vote the way they want to? That these people are uneducated enough, or uninformed enough to not understand what is being presented to them does not make them culpable. There is ignorance, yes, but there is also lack of opportunity, or communal misinformation.
How do you address the problem?
Do you ban advertising that is not "authenticated" or has a seal of verification? Can an independent panel truly be independent? what happens when a despot misuses that panel through duress or other means?
Do you remove people from voting who are uneducated?
do you force people to attend a seminar / debate on the subject before they can vote on it?
The root cause here is education, or lack thereof. People are not trained to be able to understand or verify if what they're being fed is true or not.
We've seen evidence from all parts of the world of the press being "manipulated" one way or another when reporting a story. China is the big one. Fox in the US is another.
We see and read that and think... wow - how could that happen?
By what metric do we judge that the UK press is not impacted? I mean, i generally trust the press and what i read in terms of information, and draw my own conclusion. But I can't check the FACTS of the story that i'm using to base that conclusion on, expect by comparing the same news story against other sources, and reconciling them.
In fact, Brexit happened on the basis of this same misinformation, so we are impacted. We just don't think it's utterly compromised our ability to see news impartially. Unbiased reporting today means parroting what people of "status" say, whether that is true or not. It does not involve critique, education, subjectivity or anything else. Working it through, i'm wondering if it should? Perhaps forcing debate and polarising opinions is what the press needs to do, to force discussion by different parties on specific subjects, and to have more opinion pieces....
This whole subject is probably something that will be discussed for and over many decades to come, and it doesn't really have an easy answer...