This is fair. In this 3 vs. 3 framing, the social media companies are much easier to "convince," since it's easier to defeat algorithms than a person's mind. I

This is fair. In this 3 vs. 3 framing, the social media companies are much easier to "convince," since it's easier to defeat algorithms than a person's mind. I stand by what I said, though. The two types of network are not equivalent. People in the 1960s generally trusted media implicitly. Walter Kronkite has the trust of reportedly 90%(!!!) of Americans at the time. I don't think anyone trusts what they see on Facebook because it is on Facebook. Doubly so for Twitter. (Nevertheless, Facebook clearly wants this kind of trust - it deranks and adds disclaimers to posts it claims are false. Maybe this makes some people think Facebook posts are more reliable. Yet their somewhat repeated failure to mistake political opinions that dominate in the Valley for facts[1] has made me trust Facebook itself less.) Instead, people trust or don't trust what they see filtered through critical thinking, personal experience and individual biases. If a Russian creates pages for "Americans for the Second Amendment" and "Black Lives Matter Network," people already predisposed to supporting those causes will inherently trust the claims a bit more. But very few would be convinced to change their minds based on this. Social media can be used to amplify preexisting polarization, especially given the engagement-based algorithms. (Perhaps that is the lesson we should learn from OP.) But I have yet to see any evidence that state-sanctioned "PsyOps" on social media have been terribly effective at convincing people of lies or narratives that they might not otherwise believe. I have seen gobs of evidence that the mainstream media is still effective at convincing tens of millions of people of the veracity of stories that are propaganda or close to it. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/adam4d/status/969405110324523008 https://mobile.twitter.com/adam4d/status/969405110324523008