I did say "if I agreed/believed it". But if it were true, that's where I believe the discourse would end up. But to be fair, PR stunt dynamics are better under

I did say "if I agreed/believed it". But if it were true, that's where I believe the discourse would end up. But to be fair, PR stunt dynamics are better understood these past two decades compared to the 80s. The last decade alone, you can see the reaction of the public to news instantly, react to it and see the public reaction-reaction instantly, with well formatted analytics. That's the only reason I don't immediately dismiss the idea like it was a flat-earther conspiracy theory. There's plenty of analytics to try making a solid plan to do something like that. At the same time, I have zero proof that it's ever been done intentionally. There's a book called Weapons of Math-destruction. In it the author talks about Facebook's potential ability of swaying public discourse and increasing the chances of certain votes using their analytics knowledge. While the author said it's a scary thought, it could never happen and there's no evidence it has been done or would be done. This book came out 2016 (books are typically published about 6-12 months after manuscript is accepted, so written roughly 2015). So... yea.