Rhetorical question ahead: Wasn't this a conspiracy theory?What happened? Well, short memory/attention span or straight out ignorance of the masses happened.Wh

Rhetorical question ahead: Wasn't this a conspiracy theory?What happened? Well, short memory/attention span or straight out ignorance of the masses happened.When those ideas first circulated mainly by affected users noticing such practices(shadow-banning for example), those were the first to be burned at the stake.Then whistle blowers came and dropped some well intentioned crumbs first amongst circles of "techies", mainly anonymously.(it was much later on when 'actual proof' was given to the media outlets -- out of which the vast majority disregarded them --) Did not matter in the grand scheme though: employees were fired, media articles did damage control(>for< the company, most often than not; because a Company doing the damage control is partially admitting a degree of truth to the claim), and let's also mention the 'useful idiots' who believed the authoritative voices because 'history is written by the victors': which is now mostly a cyclic numbers game of how well one controls a narrative in the social network(/any other information channel).Considering the attacked entity is the social media platform itself, the discourse medium was inevitable advantageous and easily skewed for the platform to defend itself.The more principled either staid in the mud, fighting skeptics of the rumors, or moved platforms towards less censorious and/or anonymous places.Truth ultimately did not matter, the platform did the required divide & conquer to shift the attention. It's really miniaturized politics, except it's actually worse: there's no democracy(well unless you're talking board of directors and such, but that almost never happens: such optics tank your stock).To quote the hypocritical statement of people who like authoritative voices and also 'like the free markets'[which by the way ideologically speaking is a contradiction, unlike you're by definition a fascist; Granted here we've substituted the authority from the state to the company itself]: "They're a private company, they can do whatever they want."; At the end of the day FB is already ~dead, and Zuck knows this.Some people (users who know the skeletons in the closet, the company, entities that use it to push their narratives) probably will continue to ride it out as long as the naivety of the vast majority continues.