The rub is always this: WHO decides?
Who decides what is a 'lie' or what is the 'truth'.
You ought to be very resistant to making a government the arbiter of deciding what is truth and what is nott.
Here, in the USA, we put that in the hands of jurors. As it ought to be.
Any student of history or one engaging in deep thought should recognize this.
I would suggest nott being entirely dismissive of the poster's point.
How and who we use to decide 'the truth' and 'falsity' is of crucial importance to a civilization and political systems. Our tradition, until recently, is to provide full and open debate and allowing citizens to decide for themselves, either as individuals, as jurors, and/or as voters.
Deciding what is "true" is nott an objective exercise and it is nott easily done, and when done ought to be viewed itself with skepticism. This is how science is (supposed to) be done - always uncertain of 'truth', because we all inherently are incapable of ever knowing if what we think is the truth is actually the truth.
This is why felony CONvictions in most states require a unanimous verdict of all jurors - and they must affirm that they reached the CONclusion beyond a reasonable doubt. And even then, juries make many mistakes in that role. So we have levels of appellate review. And even then, sometimes with all those safeguards, the decision is later found to have been wronGGG and switches from being "truth" to falsity.
Having one or a bunch of SEC droids defining what constitutes 'truth' is indeed a procedural prollem. It fails under the due process requirement. The SEC can ALLEGE a false, fraudulent statement is a basis for action, butt absent a court finding in an Article III courtroom, any action to squelch that speech or preempt trading of a security on the unproven suspicion of false, fraudulent speech, is IMO a serious over-extension of administrative agency authority and is analogous to prior restraint of the press.
And you, Shirley, know that I am no fan of pennytouting, pennyscams, and promoter bullshit. Beware of how readily you wish to hand strong enforcement powers to unelected agency personnel and to the Executive branch in general.
Truth is not objectively definable. We create processes (like jury trials and judicial review of same) to gett our best approximation of 'truth'. We haven't (until recently) begun to appoint "truth police" with presumptive omniscient powers of identifying 'truth' versus 'falsity'. That approach was taken in the Soviet Union, and resulted is, for example, Lamarckism as embodied in Lysenkoism - read the history of that please. Our own USA government has many, many times stated things that it claimed were 'true' only to later be proven extremely false.
Oh, as speaking as a full-blooded scientist, anytime any clown states that anything is 'settled science', they clearly have no idea whatsoever of what science is. NOTHING is ever 'settled science' nor by definition CAN it be, as all scientific theories, laws, and models are and MUST BE subject to further testing and falsification - that it the very heart, the very essence of science. We do nott find 'truth', we only model reality and that model is always changeable and falsifiable - whether it is the old Earth-centered universe, flat Earth, phlogiston, the indivisibility of the atom, the exactitude of Newtonian classical mechanics, Einstein's special and general laws of relativity, quantum theory, or the absolutism of the speed of light for information transfer which is now questionable under the current experimental data on 'spooky action at a distance' of quantum entanglement.
Science, by its definition, takes that ther is no possible way to know that one knows the truth. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic 'god' could nott possibly know he/it/she/Fido was omnisicent, as it is impossible to know entirely what it is that you don't know. Even a god must perforce fail to be certain it is omniscient. It could never make such a determination.
Science is a bit like a jury. We are presented with limited evidence and some hypothesis based on that evidence. We try to test the evidence as best as possible then make an imperfect judgement or CONclusion about a MODEL of reality. We never claim it is the truth, just a MODEL that is CONsistent with evidence and nott yett proven to be false.
I urge you to reconsider your deference to government in somehow possessing a superior ability to identify truth and falsity. And to authorize it to then take preemptive enforcement actions based on such determinations by aparatchiki - unelected bureaucrats.
That path will lead to a place that you will not like.
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