If we choose to 'fight' fake news, meaning we try to automate its removal from social networks, we'll end up censoring a good deal of speculative news which takes leaps of logic and is controversial but not 'fake' in the sense that it's trying to pass falsehood as fact. This is obviously problematic if we want to foster free and open discourse.

The alternative is to not do anything at all, but that leaves our democracies open to attack from malicious actors.

These both lead to bad outcomes. So let's consider alternative approaches.

I believe 'fake news' is a symptom as well as a cause of political polarization. The less polarized and divisive our politics is, the less willing people will be to blindly accept fake news. Basically the potential receptive audience to fake news will decline. Given that approaches which try to attack fake news directly both have negative consequences, I think if we instead try to target other sources of polarization in society the fake news problem itself will become less serious.

Let's start with getting money out of politics, instituting term limits for congress, finding an alternative to gerrymandering for the creation of electoral districts and most importantly growing the economy.

These are challenging and nontrivial approaches but will ultimately attack the root cause of fake news spread. It is much better to treat a disease at its source than to just treat its symptoms.