In the world of Trump-esque claims of fake news, it is easy to get caught up thinking that political advertising on social media is single handily destroying our democracy.

But the rhetoric that this is a frightening new concept that we have never seen the likes of before is completely overblown.

We have seen in the past week that Twitter have ruled out political advertising, that the Labour Party has refused to participate in Facebook’s ‘ad library tool, and that the Minister of Justice intends to monitor information circulated around the two likely referendums next year.

But there appears to be a whole lot of bother and proposed solutions for regulating social media use by politicians without anyone truly working out whether the consequences of regulation outweigh what actually can be achieved.

With any new regulation, we should be first seeking to define the problem that we want solved, and then whether the proposed regulation addresses this problem.

So what is the issue here?

The problem isn’t targeting based on users data – this is just the online equivalent of talking to a senior citizens morning tea about healthcare, rather than about early childhood fees. Foreign interference in elections in countries like the USA is indeed concerning, but there appears to be little current threat of that happening here – and the tools provided overseas are not really working anyway.

The technological advances that are allowing the use of deep fakes is frightening, but monitoring or restricting what political parties post is not going to change this.

Is it that social media makes it too easy to share information – good or bad? Surely we can’t be complaining that lowering the barriers to people engaging in discussion is a wholly bad idea? Policy debate is no longer limited to a political elite or those that can afford a newspaper – we should be celebrating this.

There should be a high threshold for putting regulatory limits on political discourse.

Limits not only trespasses on our right to freedom of expression but also has the concerning impact of limiting our democratic engagement. Given that we have just seen some of the lowest turn outs ever for local body elections, we should be looking for more ways to engage people in voting.

One of the key ways to engage people in political debates is the use of emotion. Yes people say they hate attack ads – but they work.

And this is what Andrew Little’s proposals for next year’s referendums are targeting - “fairly emotional and irrational responses”. When you are voting on literally life and death decisions like euthanasia, emotion is likely to play a part. Having public servants try to decide what is too emotive, or too partisan will backfire.

How will the Ministry of Justice stop distribution of such content? How will people know that the information they wish to distribute meets the standard the Ministry requires? This proposal is likely to either muffle debate because people are too scared to share their views, or most likely be so tangled up in delays and subject to challenge that it presents no value at all.

My experience is that public servants are very careful (as they should be) to not do anything that could be perceived as having a political impact during the election period. Therefore the most likely outcome is that this unit creates a lot of fuss, without any outcomes.

Possibly what is most frightening about the current proposal is that it will be set up under Ministerial direction – with no referral or accountability to Parliament. We should be strongly resisting any moves that have unelected officials telling elected Parliamentarians about what they can say.

In looking to solutions for fake information being spread on social media, we should not underestimate the spotlight that the internet can quickly shine on information. Just look at how much scrutiny a Trump tweet receives.

Perhaps the answer lies more in holding ourselves and those around us to account on what we share rather than relying on the government to do it for us. Creating policy solutions that don’t address the issues but instead restrict political debate should be avoided.