Has CIA been misusing social media? What could anyone do?

A colleague recently pointed me to a press report on this very serious issue:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-is-a-tool-of-the-cia-seriously/

My reply:

My concern is that there are dozens upon dozens of unscrupulous groups all over the world taking advantage more and more of what technology allows them to do 

with censorship, harsh measures against anything which does not fit a narrow playbook, and dishonest manipulation of public opinion.

In many ways, it is a classic "race to the bottom," erosion towards a Nash equilibrium. 

I feel a bit guilty I have not done more on the technical side, to start addressing the concrete issue: how could Facebook have reduced the fake news problem by automated, transparent technical means WITHOUT hiring lots of new human censors (let alone the horrible subcontracts and links to outside political groups). I am "biased" by an experience I had myself while outside the US, which I described after a lot of humor buried in a long blog post: https://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2018/11/from-obama-and-zuckerberg-to-oumuamua.html

But we should not be steadfast in ignoring horrible first person experiences. 

This technical approach is at least one way to start groping for a kind of moral highground here, a path to avoid becoming just one more cannibal in the war of all against all, 

a path towards a hope for something more like a Pareto optimum. But several things discouraged me as I started to get into it. 

First, one well-connected guy insisted that Facebook is now a media company, and should be managed the way they manage other media companies they buy up for political purposes. Fair IT not welcome. In truth, when there are dozens upon dozens of nasty wolf packs out there from all over, all of the front line wolves would unite to try to bite anyone who would have tech to partially defang them. Maybe the folks who pay their salaries hope for some result other than blood and gore, but the wolves are there on the front lines. 

(Again, let me emphasize that I am not even thinking of the CIA much as I say this. There are lots of other wolf packs out there besides the one(s) they run, and they themselves are victims of others.) 

Second, Google decided to shut down its competitor to Facebook at about the same time. I wonder what to make of the new New York branch as well, but that's just a question mark. 

My next task assigned by me to me is to look for Xi Jinping's latest speech. The relation between human subjective judgments and market design for a free marketplace of ideas... will be crucial all over the world.