CONTINUED...
One of the undeniable facts about the internet is it has brought all classes of society to the playing field. There are still some things out of reach, especially if they cost alot but the internet has made it possible for companies (or individuals) to empower others almost at will.
So, the question then becomes "what are we supposed to do with all that power?".
I sort of think there have been a lot of directions different countries have taken in terms of how they are enabling their citizens. But one thing seems certain, the US govt has mostly been hands-off in terms of how the internet is used by its citizens.
On the other hand you have malicious governments who now have the ability to leverage the lower classes of their societies in "new and innovative ways". I think about just how "hands-on" a government needs to be with its poor in order to produce the kinds of mass deception they're trying to create. These are quite possibly Manhattan Project levels of efforts going into these mills (or whatever they're called these days).
I don't really know at this point if we can fault our government for not being more hands-on with how our lower classes are utilizing the internet. We are trying at the corporate level it seems for example with Twitter and Facebook blocking the virality of fake news, etc.
What I think we should really be asking our elected officials is how can we not be more pro-active in stopping these (likely) massive projects that are happening in other countries and making the information public for all to see. In fact I'm even wondering whether or not many of our elected officials even know the depth of it due to the (possibly) top-secret nature of the intel.
But when I piece this all together I get the impression that there is a lot of pro-active coordination in foreign countries leveraging their lower classes to fight this cyber war. On the other hand I see our lower class (and likely to some degree middle and upper classes) as being full on manipulated by what's going on out there.
We really do need more transparency around what the highest levels of our government know about this stuff in order to enable us to leverage this information at the federal, state, and local levels.