Everyone always says things are dysfunctional or bad but never says how. Manipulating people through social media has been a thing since there's been social media. Only today more people are aware of it than ever. Same with news agencies with axe's to grind. Journalists have been using their barrels of ink to push their angles since there has been newspapers. Today more people are aware of it than ever.
Agree but there are two new issues today that I can think of -
1. Targeting is much more sophisticated. Today you can round up every lunatic who hates squirrels or whatever by tomorrow morning and influence what people need to focus on.
2. Messed up social signals i.e. like counts/views/retweets/upvotes etc are just misguiding people left and right. If I don't know what to make of something/too busy/too distracted etc I fall back on these highly inaccurate proxies to make decisions. This is happening all the time and not just to the poor or semi-literate but too highly educated folks. Everyone is unconsiously nudged to support X or Y cause, org or person purely based on these numbers. Take those numbers away and it would be a very different world.
I know this is just person experience, but many of the people/organizations I follow on Facebook have posts that are often quite filled with people who disagree with them, explained in rational and professional courtesy. I don't personally experience this mob of group think, but I see popular/unpopular ideas espoused and their weakinessness explored in the comments (not without the internet's normal levels of trolling and batshittery of course).
Of course I curate who I follow often based on the courteousness of their followers - so self-selection and all that.
