Untrue. There are lots of issues (climate change, for example) where one side (oil companies, in thise case) is spreading information that they know is not true by paying people who claim to be neutral.
The latter is what people are raging against: the weaponization of social/ad networks by disingenuous actors, like authoritarians and oil companies.
When people say they want to "stop disinformation campaigns," they're not talking about sincere individuals on the opposite side of an issue.
It's a very optimistic view and it's certainly how things are often framed. What I've seen over the past few years though, is a very efficient filtering of the internet of almost all content that isn't left learning from all major forums and a shutting down of those that could not be filtered.
Framing this as an anti mis/disinformation campaign is very clever, sometimes pointing at flagrant examples while actually censoring widely.
No, you are mistaken. What is 'left leaning' in the United States would already be considered considerably right-of-center in most of the developed world, besides that, there is plenty of right leaning content out there. What has happened is that a bunch of companies decided to stop supporting some of the more batshit crazy outlets on the extreme rightwing part of the spectrum. But that doesn't mean you won't be able to read the Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator or a ton of other right leaning publications.
It's just going to be a little harder to organize the next insurrection or to spread outright lies. But that's fine.
Framing this as anything to do with censorship is very clever, but it really isn't. For many reasons.
Again, I understand that the crux of your argument is that this discourse (that of the "crazy right wing,") is solely the fermenting ground of lies; however, I find that very difficult to believe, personally, and I believe that--while any side may develop misconceptions--exposure to these allows you to better explore your own beliefs in the face of adversity.
What is crazy is a relative concept--to be cliched, homosexuality was considered a mental illness until fairly recently.
Instead I would say that there's some hot button topics like immigration, racism, climate change, discrimination of all kinds, etc and there's a faction which is for more immigration, aggressively and militantly fighting racism and climate change, etc and several factions which don't agree with the above to different extents. The positions of the pro faction have become the default in mass media, to the point that the media is educating and shaping opinions more than reporting facts. Members of the against factions are typically portrayed as wicked and associated with negative labels such as nazi, right-wing (has become a slur), racist, sexist, etc and silenced or forced to grovel in order to not lose their jobs/reputation/standing, etc.
This is by the way not localized to the US, instead it's visible in several (if not all) Western European countries.
The facts, the arguments should win the day. Not the histrionics.
Sadly, we are human. We are fallable. We see political winds that impact our funding for our research, and we avoid rocking those boats.
In 1918, Einstein's theory of General Relativity was not considered the way things worked. Eddington and Einstein made a prediction about deflection of photons near the sun during and eclipse. Newton's equation gave one result, while GR gave another. Eddington made the measurements, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Theories rise and fall based upon evidence. Attacks on evidence you don't like, or the source of funding for research that raises difficult questions, really doesn't help.
Look up Lysenkoism for a great lesson in why following political/popular guidance can be a really bad idea for science.
You felt the need to identify your field of expertise there. Does this not imply that you actually do believe it matters? There is body of knowledge shared by the experts in a field that help facilitate the process by focusing efforts on productive discourse. Sure every now and then som crazy theory needs to be entertained to advance the field. But it would be a colossal waste of energy to give credence to every amateur with a dissenting view point no?
Was it misinformation or disinformation when the CDC told us not to wear masks? They did it because they thought us dying was better than doctors dying. Which does not inspire confidence in anyone who pays attention and doesn't count themselves members of the in group worth saving according to the CDC.
We're not facing a war on "well, my opinion is that increasing minimum wage will harm businesses," or "my opinion is that we are not doing enough for workers' rights in Silicon Valley." We're okay arguing about those points, because there's actual facts either way and it's largely political. These are dissenting opinions, and they're fine to have in a society. It's healthy even to have those discussions in a moderated community setting where conversation doesn't devolve into personal insult.
But that's not what we're talking about when we talk about disinformation. The war on disinformation that we are facing is on complete and total bullshit: "Anderson Cooper drinks the blood of children and eats babies" - a real QAnon conspiracy. This isn't "dissent" - it's a bald faced lie told in attempt to discredit a journalist. "But you can't prove he doesn't eat babies!" is all the evidence they need - they want to believe it, their 'thought leaders' tell them to, and so they do.
The fact that we can't even get some of these people on the same page about what disinformation actually is just shows you how far down the path these people are. That's how articles like this one get written. We can't even talk about "dissent" because people are too busy trying to tell us lies about facts, and distorting the very definition of disinformation to allow space for their lies. How long are you going to stay in a conversation with someone trying to sell you the sky is polka dotted purple and pink, when you can look up at the blue sky yourself? How long should you bother with them?
Craig Mazin asked us a very simple question in Chernobyl: "What is the cost of lies?" At least five people died because of a große Lüge told about the US election - pure propaganda, a lie so big and grotesque that only 'true believers' could accept it. Thousands are dead because of lies repeatedly told about COVID-19. It's hard to even measure how many people would be alive today if the lies about climate change had been stopped earlier. And they will not be the last, not as long as we keep "both siding" and acceding to dissent on objective fact.
In fact, that would be a very nice project: to trace back any kind of meme (positive, negative, disinformation, I don't care) to its origin.
One of the communities I wondered about for a while was The Great Awakening. They had a way of speaking that was so over the top that I couldn’t help but wonder just how real can it be? Specifically, they keep always calling each other “patriot” the way that Soviet citizens called each other comrade. Except, in the Soviet case it was a long thing in the making while TGA popped up overnight on Reddit so where did that come from. And their way of speaking really smelled to me like there were a ton of bots there. So, can you imagine waking up one day and realize that the political identity you’ve taken on and been discussing with people you now consider friends online has been in fact handed to you by a bunch of boys? And on top of that, the very “friends” you were talking to were largely bots? That’s gotta be a rude awakening to say the least.
So there won't be any rude awakenings, or, at least not many of them.
But I’ve also been reading some stories of people who were seemingly true QAnon believers who after January 20th realized that marshal law wasn’t being declared and that Trump really was leaving and how it seemed to shake them. There was also the woman who called CSPAN if I recall correctly, crying because she felt like Trump betrayed her by distancing himself from the Jan 6th insurrectionists and how she just couldn’t make sense of the world. To think that she is the one who finally saw reality for what it was while others continue to believe that this is all a part of some grand plan... how do you even come out of that?