With deep learning and techniques such as text and image generation, as well as the existence of motivated and well-funded state or corporate organizations, I fear the age of social media as social manipulation is just the beginning.
Which I suspect is actually a good thing. People will eventually become resistant to such manipulation. It happened in the world of computer BBSes back in the day. It also happened in the world of USENET after that. Compuserve, AOL, ... it's always the same thing. You end up with a group of people with extreme troll resistance which I am pretty sure carries over into day to day life and politics.
Facebook, and the like have exposed more people than ever before to online trolling. It is very possible that the result might be a world where people tend to think for themselves.
> It is very possible that the result might be a world where people tend to think for themselves.
Would be nice, but I don't think that's realistic. Look at the past few millenia of religion in human civilization and it becomes increasingly clear that humans are not just vulnerable to, but seem to be actively courting, brainwashing. It's the default state. And religion and brainwashing have plenty of expressions in the tech world, and science, too. Most people just aren't critical thinkers.
Brainwashing fills needs intellectual honesty cannot, which is why it has historically won and will continue to win.
The closest we've come to filling those needs with intellectualism has both manifested itself as pseudo-intellectualism and an almost religious take on Enlightenment era philosophy.
