When you say weaponized, do you mean done for a foreign government's interests rather than a person's financial gain? You seem to believe that people can't be

When you say weaponized, do you mean done for a foreign government's interests rather than a person's financial gain? You seem to believe that people can't be trusted to think for themselves and must be shielded from lies to protect them from their own stupidity. I agree on the first part, but not the second which is arrogant authoritarianism. In democracy, the voters are also the ones who experience the consequences of their decisions and them having the ultimate power over themselves is what protects them from extremes. They might hurt themselves a little bit but it's still themselves doing it, so they won't go too far and can change their mind next election if they made a mistake. If there's something new and unique about social media that actually breaks democracy worse than anything since the ancients Greeks, then perhaps you'd have a point, but I don't see any evidence of that. I think people will adapt to false information and learn to decide what to believe, just like they currently make decisions about how much to trust any stories they hear. There's nothing wrong with having a few conspiracy theorists or people who believe a wrong version of history. They keep everyone else on their toes and we can't really be sure that it's not us who's wrong. Remember when God obviously created the world and anyone who disagreed was punished for spreading dangerous fake knowledge?