I didn’t outline a systematic approach to combatting misinformation, including empirical evidence and best practices. However, such things exist. Will something as difficult to do as patrolling misinformation inevitably result in examples where it went awry? Yes, of course, but that doesn’t diminish the need for it to be practiced, nor does it somehow suggest we don’t have any ability to do it well.

We’ve always had methods for combatting misinformation. All of science is ultimately just that. Police do it, courts do it, journalists do it, etc. It’s a big responsibility, but something we have always done and will always do. Society can’t function without efforts to distinguish truth from falsehoods.

A dictator is an extreme concentration of power. That’s not necessary to accomplish this. No one is arguing that one source be the arbiter of all truth in the society. It is filtered through at every level of the society, from individuals who greet claims with skepticism to teams of fact checkers at various organizations.