I think there is a qualitative difference. Previous means of influencing politics involved NGO's and political parties actively working different demographics

I think there is a qualitative difference. Previous means of influencing politics involved NGO's and political parties actively working different demographics in order to get them to vote in the organization's interest. These organizations may loosely be considered managerial bureaucracies, whether they are labor unions, or activist NGO's, or political parties. Even large scale media campaigns conducted via mass psychology are essentially managerial or bureaucratic in nature, using mass organizations at a large scale. The new means of manufacturing consent are not in this character. Rather than acting directly on mass groups using mass organizations, they operate by directly targeting individuals and niche groups leveraging algorithms and digital means. It's different paradigm: mass vs niche, mass media vs targeted media, mass psychology vs individual psychological profiling, large bureaucratic organizations vs smaller technologically enabled teams, the management of people vs the management of algorithms. It's two different approaches to power, and hence, two different elite groups. And when you have two different elite groups, you have conflict. It's a new world, a revolution in the making.