I read an article in this month’s CACM that I thought might be of interest on Daily Kos. In Proposal: A Market for Truth to Address False Ads on Social Media, Marshall W. Van Alstyne of Boston University writes:
When it comes to political ads on Facebook, anything goes. On Twitter, nothing does.
...
Between promoting false ads and rejecting truthful ones, here's a better way: create a "market for truth."
...
Each politician or PAC that places an ad would put a large sum of money in escrow as an "honest ad pledge" that their claims are true.
Anyone could challenge the truthfulness of the ad by posting a fee to cover the cost of independent fact checking, and would be awarded all, part or none of the escrow depending on the fact checker’s ruling.
The size of the honest ads pledge, that is, the lie price, could be any escrow amount set by the social media platform but really should be the expected size of the harm done.
Van Alstyne suggests that the truth market could work even if the lie price is not known in advance, since a politician who lied repeatedly would lose multiple escrow pledges. He also argues that it would not be necessary for the escrow pledge to be mandatory.
In the U.S., skeptics might object that an honest ads pledge would not withstand First Amendment scrutiny if the pledge were mandatory.
...
If the market for truth is fully functioning, then unwillingness to pledge an honest ad is itself a signal that the author is likely lying because honest ads incur no added cost.
I think the idea of a truth market is interesting, but since it would only apply to advertising, it wouldn’t do much to curtail the endless stream of lies on Trump’s Twitter feed.