Online lies and internet spin paralyze Congress

As an American journalist, I have been threatened with violence, fired and canceled for what I’ve written and for what I had to say on the airwaves since social media has gone wild.

There’s no way to forget the flood of threats and harassing calls I received when my personal contact information was released in a WikiLeaks data-dump of stolen emails belonging to high-level government sources.

My life was threatened after the last Republican president went online to slam me for criticizing his trade policy on a Sunday talk show.

These ugly memories surface now because Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, as well as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and top U.S. intelligence officials, are warning that online abuse is on the rise.

This flood is being pumped by artificial intelligence and "deep fakes" to trash journalism and poison the flow of fact-based news during the presidential election.

Even though the bad guys are getting better at using the internet to damage democracy, the U.S. Congress and law enforcement are doing almost nothing to stop them.

There was a spark of hope when the House recently voted to ban Tik Tok, now the leading news source for many Americans, from operating in the U.S. unless it frees itself from Chinese control.

The Chinese government, as both Republicans and Democrats pointed out, can use Tik Tok data to track people, mislead........

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