I think that the sockpuppet problem is a manifestation of the larger crisis of truth. Look how, now that we've even better access to easily verifiable information, we still have salaried media professionals and politicians pushing lies about simple objective facts.

Whatever unwritten structures that used to prevent that kind of thing have broken down, and it's not just social media doing it. Trump was a perfect manifestation of this problem - he was able to lie about everything and everyone in the most trivially contradictable ways, but faced no consequences for that. Instead, some professional media organizations backed him up.

Only now are we finally seeing lies crest into the territory of legal action, and only with the most extreme cases - like the Dominion lawsuits.

For every smaller kind of dishonesty, it seems like there is no consequences to brazenly lying. Anybody can lie about anyone as long as it's crafted such that the victim isn't in the position to sue (particularly if the victim isn't an individual but an amorphous group, and so showing standing and damages is functionally impossible).

I mean, we've basically left it up to the social media companies like Twitter to enforce basic social contracts like "lying about a global disease in ways that encourage the spread of disease is a bad thing", and their users are bristling at that.