Astonishing recent advances in generative AI mean that in a matter of seconds, with a prompt and a few clicks, anyone can generate a fabricated news story, a convincing deepfake video, or an audio recording of a politician saying something they never actually said. What once needed a coordinated effort by teams of skilled propagandists can now be achieved by a mischievous teenager with a laptop, or indeed any non-technical person with an axe to grind.

But the response to this new wave of disinformation may itself pose an iatrogenic danger. Across the democratic world, governments are racing to pre-empt the chaos of a supposedly post-truth media landscape, not only by requiring that platforms flag or remove falsehoods, but by engineering systems that filter, shape, and curate what citizens see online. Under the banner of “information integrity,” we are drifting toward a regime of censorship.

Australia offers one of the clearest illustrations of this paternalistic instinct. In November 2024, the government passed a world-first law banning all Australians under the age of sixteen from having social media accounts, which will come into effect on 10 December. The stated aim was child safety. Tech platforms were ordered to prevent under-16s from creating or running accounts, or face fines of up to fifty million Australian dollars.