there is a differenceBrehs in this thread have a more nuances view of this issue than me but I don't really understand all this shyt about the 'vulnerability' that Western 'democracy' has to fake news or bots or whatever
Misleading voters is as American as white supremacy, and I feel like the only reason these old people are freaking out is they don't really understand it
I absolutely feel that treason and collusion should be punished, preferably capitally because I would hate my taxes to go to housing and feeding these tax evaders.
But how is this fake news different than the misinformation spread by the Mormons to influence that California vote on gay marriage? They were using traditional and social ads to mislead people about the MEANING of yes or no vote.
In this case, American citizens were being misled about things related to the election, but it's not like the Russian bots were in the voting booth with them.
And it's not like they thought they were voting for someone else, they knew what they were doing. It's not the government's job to think for it's citizens or censor the information they have access to, that's up to the citizens.
You wanna keep this from happening again? Stop cutting education budgets.
Better yet, stop allowing these christian charter schools to pop up with govt funding in Pennsyltucky that misinform hundreds of thousands of people on all sorts of basic facts.
internal integrity
national actors are easier to uncover and control than foreign ones
so an example must be made
but I agree with your larger point and solution
but for now I want to see Trump get his comeuppance