For those concerned about the divisive influence of social media, this summarizes the main points from a Wondrium presentation on propaganda. You are right to be concerned.

In the aftermath of WW II, the political theorists and journalists were concerned that something similar would happen in America. The flywheel would be propaganda generated by the media. They concluded that this would not occur with print and radio media, because they were broadband (everybody heard the same thing), competed to represent diverse viewpoints, and feedback from consumers was low bandwidth.

These shields against indoctrination have been eviscerated by social media. Agents of authoritarian thought analyze our dialog and determine how best to drive wedges between us. They tailor messages to confirm our biases, in the process creating captive information spaces where they guide users into illusion.

The competition to represent diverse viewpoints is also disappearing as media conglomerates buy up local print and radio operations. We have disturbing nation-wide patterns of editorial synchronization with political campaigning.

What social media companies herald as “information democracy” is only true when we show the discipline to reject anything that is not first-person reporting of experience. Users that build their “knowledge” within a curated environment are almost certainly at risk of indoctrination.