A third possibility, which the social media companies could implement even without any legal or regulatory incentive, would be to get more aggressive about policing not just false content but the known individuals who are most active in amplifying it. In a recent interview, Clint Watts—a counterterrorism expert, FBI analyst, and former member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force—recommended that the number one way to fight disinformation was to “focus on the top 1 percent of disinformation peddlers, rather than trying to police all false content. If you know who they are, removing the worst
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