Domestic actors on both sides of the aisle have been experimenting with social media manipulation ever since Russia taught them how well those tactics can work — from misleading “news” stories to fake Facebook events to trolls stomping around Twitter. These misrepresentations would be troubling in any environment. In an age of warfare over what is real, they are downright dangerous. But, while the government can act against foreign incursions, the First Amendment prevents most attempts to clamp down on information operations carried out by citizens. Political candidates, by and large, have a right to lie, and they have a right to buy up a bunch of bots to pollute platforms with propaganda without voters knowing the difference (except perhaps in California, which as of July 1 has a “bot law” of its own). They just have to choose not to.