Low information, under-educated, soundbite-oriented mass media consumers are these easiest to manufacture consent of, shout nationalist opinions at, and convince them of the moral superiority of the tribe they supposedly belong to. What's changed over the past 30 years is that media consumption has exploded and diverged with the internet and smart phone, making it easier to bypass centralized broadcast-only mainstream media and any meaningful attempt at regulation of the firehose either by the platforms or by regulators. Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference with phony microprotests were just a few known examples, but it's clear that nefarious actors can and will exploit social media to cause chaos and manipulate people into actions in the real world. That's partially a technological problem but it's mostly a people problem of applying pause, reasonableness, and reasonable skepticism to avoid causing direct harm in the real world. Identifying mass and targeted manipulation of sentiment that doesn't directly affect elections or calls to action is a problem for journalists, tech companies, and regulators to identify and minimize through data analysis.<p>Also, ownership of TikTok is largely a symbolic, selective, ideological/political fight rather than meaningfully addressing industry regulation of content moderation, data privacy, algorithmic oversight, mental health/app addiction, or data (re)patriation.