I find the use of the word "scapegoat" interesting. From the little I know about anthropology, when some calamity befell the village/horde/tribe (disease/drough

I find the use of the word "scapegoat" interesting. From the little I know about anthropology, when some calamity befell the village/horde/tribe (disease/drought/crime etc) the shaman would magically point out the scapegoat as the culprit, who invariably was someone people didn't like to begin with; because of this, such decisions were rarely contested regardless of their plausibility and the scapegoat was promptly disposed of. I suspect that most people are as clueless about what is really going on as those villagers. Those who control the media, though, just like the shaman, are extremely adept at sizing up the public emotion. For what it's worth, if I understand it correctly, the most interesting aspect of this is that using machine learning techniques they managed to translate the actual tags that they wanted to target (gay/square/racist/unemployed/man/rightwing/white/latino etc etc) to the less revealing tags actually offered by fb, and in this way direct propaganda more accurately.