We like to complain that lawmakers don’t understand tech, but let’s talk for a minute about technologists who don’t understand the law. Actually, it’s much worse than that—many prominent technologists use their platforms to regularly spout willful misinformation about the law.

When any legislation is proposed, a popular game is to claim that it will destroy the Internet, or make machine learning illegal, or something equally implausible. After many fruitless attempts at gentle correction, I’ve realized that this kind of misinfo is deliberate.

Of course there are some dumb laws, rules, and court decisions about Internet tech (and everything else). But that’s no excuse for ignorance. Most of the techies griping about the GDPR, for example, haven’t bothered to read the GDPR or anything authoritative on the topic.

Why do they do this? One obvious motivation is to protect commercial interests threatened by regulation. A more subtle and depressing motivation is cultural: mocking regulators and feeling intellectually superior has long been common in the tech world as a bonding activity.

So there’s a large, cheering audience for the uninformed cynicism spewing forth on panels, op-eds, and on Twitter. As a society we’re too credulous when an expert in one narrow domain—especially a high-status one like Internet technology—starts making stuff up about other topics.

Let’s stop enabling this behavior. Let’s make it safer and easier for actual experts to correct, challenge, or call out BS by powerful people. Finally, the media has an important role: don’t amplify nonsense just because it came from a famous person.