As I recall the “misinformation” label was erroneously applied, heck even the “Russian disinformation” trope was walked out to suppress some pretty damaging factual information this election cycle.<p>These systems are just outright abused for political purposes. It’s just gaslighting to claim they serve some higher purpose.<p>I don’t think it’s illegal for platforms to censure information for obliquely political purposes, but I personally find it extremely distasteful.
In the same way that it's Facebook's prerogative to spread misinformation on their website, it's the user's prerogative to understand that they shouldn't trust what they read on Facebook. There is no way to stop the spread of misinformation on social media, attempting to curtail it to some degree is a PR business prerogative not an actual solution to the problem. Ultimately this is a cultural issue, we need to train the next generation to understand that anything read on social media should be implicitly distrusted; citing something you read on social media should be regarded as the intellectual equivalent of citing something you saw in a movie once. Yes, true things can be depicted in a movie, but nobody believes the movie is an acceptable source for itself, if a film claims to depict true events, it is expected that reliable sources will not contradict the film.
I tried to buy ads for a nonprofit I volunteer for (drive donor traffic) and Facebook said they have a ban on social issue advertising, in place SINCE the election. Seems rather strange to ban such advertising after the election.
Private mega-corporations like Facebook should never be deciding what information is "mis"-information, especially during an election. We as Americans should decide what speech we want to be legal or illegal and use proper transparent legal channels to enforce these collective decisions, whether that speech happens on the street or on-line.