Back in the 1990s, computer geeks half-jokingly referred to the Internet as “The Net of a Million Lies.” 

The anonymity it offered meant users could pretend to be anyone, and could say anything. 

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” as the famous New Yorker cartoon put it.

Online anonymity today isn’t what it once was. But this weekend we learned how extensive — and how damaging — the Net of a Million Lies remains. 

While users of X (formerly Twitter) are allowed to use anonymous handles and write their own personal descriptions, the company’s servers are privy to key details about every account holder. 

Ordinarily the service doesn’t police what you say about yourself.

Ordinarily.

But on Friday Elon Musk, having figured out that a lot of influential X accounts weren’t what they claimed to be, activated an X feature showing where users were actually posting from — and uncovered (at least) a million lies. 

Turns out a lot of users claiming to be disillusioned Trump voters, or anti-Israel Americans, are actually foreign frauds.

Like the one that posted: “Trump is Israel First. I’m done with MAGA. I hope Republicans lose.”  

Americans turning on Trump over Israel?  

Nope. The account was based in Turkey.

Likewise the woke-right “groyper” movement supposedly elevating white supremacist Nick Fuentes seems to be largely a foreign sham, and “Ron Smith, MAGA Hunter,” a prolific anti-Trump poster with a substantial following, turns out to be from Kenya. 

Many users billing themselves as “Native American” with accounts specializing in divisive racial attacks on white people are actually foreign, and mostly from Bangladesh. 

And so on, and so on.

“This is an absolutely massive story of foreign ops shaping our political and cultural discourse,” Dave Rubin wrote. “Will the set of influencers who fell for it look in the mirror?”

It’s ironic, of course, that the 2016 screams of “foreign influence” on the Trump campaign have now been replaced by actual evidence of foreign influence — mostly aimed against Trump. 

But there’s a bigger story here.

The United States, for all its size and power, is prone to the whims of public opinion — and its communications are largely open to outsiders. 

It’s hardly surprising that some of those outsiders will seek to take advantage of our nation’s freedom of expression. 

For many years, and continuing today, that external influence has been manifested in foundations, grants, donations, lobbying and — hello, Biden family! — outright bribes. 

If you can redirect a multitrillion-dollar government by spending a few million on campaign contributions or “consulting” contracts, that’s a pretty good deal.

But fake X accounts are even easier, and even cheaper. 

It costs virtually nothing for a malign operator to set up accounts, farm engagement and accumulate enough followers to be — or at least to seem — influential. 

Causes that are not actually popular can be made to look like they have genuine momentum behind them, even if that “momentum” is just a few nerds pecking keyboards in Third World countries.

And X is an ideal outlet for this scam because lazy journalists — and there are a lot of those — often rely on it for easy-peasy cut-and-paste clickbait stories. 

Find a few colorful tweets to elevate and quote, and boom — you’ve got a controversy or even a “movement.”

It’s especially effective if the tweets support a preferred media narrative, like “MAGA is splitting” or “Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs in the tent right next to mine.” (The latter, as it turned out, was tweeted from Poland.)

And once again, Elon Musk was the man who drew back the curtain.

We’ve heard a lot in recent years about “misinformation” and “disinformation” on the Internet, which officials in both the United States and the increasingly totalitarian European Union have used as an excuse to censor ideas they don’t like.

Inevitably, the ideas they dislike are those coming from their political opponents.

But Musk on Friday didn’t censor people for lying. He revealed them as liars. 

Rather than repression, he chose illumination. 

“Know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” as it says in the New Testament.

Or perhaps, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Musk chose transparency over “security,” and in so doing he ripped the masks off tens (hundreds?) of thousands of fake accounts that have been doing real harm to America’s political discourse — without silencing anyone. 

More effectively, too: Censoring deliberately divisive accounts makes it look like you’re hiding something.

Exposing fake ones makes clear who’s doing the hiding.

Learn from Elon. He’s a smart guy.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.