Who would decide what is fake news? The federal government? Perhaps a free speech Czar appointed by the president of the US? The current president of the US certainly does talk about fake news a lot. But no thanks.
Beyond fighting a Fabian struggle in favor of critical thinking and quality information flows (which are lacking all across our society, even if that lack is particularly obvious with a certain political group) I'm by no means certain what a good, useful, and just response ought to be.
I am confident that the danger is real and needs to be acknowledged. We need to find paths forward if we're to have any hope of keeping our civilization. And that means talking (and doing something) about the "propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies". Sticking our heads in the sand and screaming "Free Speech!" while the tidal wave informational sewage rolls over us isn't going to be sufficient.
The problem with your viewpoint is that, unless you plan to remove the ability of large swaths of the population who have been "robbed of their ability to think critically" to vote, ending democracy as we know it, whichever authority you construct to define what is "true" may not remain under the control of you and people who think as you do and then it will become Orwell's Ministry of Truth in all but name. Game over; civilization loses.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" as they say. Forgive us old-school liberals if we choose not to follow you down that road.
Why do we have to have a single central authority? We ought to at least be willing to speculate about AI-mediated Blockchains of Truth that reward factually accurate reporting. Or about ways to smoothly tell users how accurate the source they're reading has been in the past, or how to implement smart filtering of information streams to protect our own minds so that we can avoid wasting time on cognitive hazards.
The point is that we have options beyond just sitting back and giving up. The problem is real, as are the risks to responding poorly. But that doesn't justify not responding at all.
Either the people collectively get a say in what is "factually accurate", an ill-defined concept in the first place, or they don't (authoritarianism); the mechanics do not matter. And if we accept your premise that large swaths of the population have been "robbed of their ability to think critically", then whatever the system decides is "factually accurate" will be corrupted if the people have a say in it. Or, in other words, "garbage in, garbage out".
If there are other options, please articulate them.
Something must be done. This is something. This must be done!
And,
This won't work. Therefore, nothing will work. We should do nothing!
I understand and agree with those who reject the first. But turning from the first only to embrace the second is also a mistake.
I simply started with a seemingly easy question: who decides what is and is not fake news? Trying to answer that question yourself hopefully helps illustrate just how challenging it is to find a solution that isn't worse than the problem. But hopefully with enough pondering on that question, one does start to lean in the direction that any solution must include individuals ultimately deciding for themselves what is and isn't fake news.
Does that imply nothing will work? For sure it does not. But it might imply we are already there: the best cure for fake news might be working harder to make real news more persuasive. It could be a boring matter of will and effort - a lot of grunt work. By talking to the journalists engaged in that work, you would uncover the actual challenges and perhaps ideas around the technologies that could better empower that change. Or not. The internet itself was supposed to help us become better informed. Clicks + adverts + automatic measurement, rinse, and repeat; proved that ideal wrong. At least for now.
And I don't see how it fulfills your previous claim:
> and doesn't require some nefarious government czar.
Because someone has to decide who the experts are. Peer review in science is performed by those who have a degree from a government accredited institution.