I fail to see the difference between your arguments. Making the population easier to manage doesn't need to be an explicit goal, it's an emergent outcome of ma

I fail to see the difference between your arguments. Making the population easier to manage doesn't need to be an explicit goal, it's an emergent outcome of many many different policies that target other things and are incentivized. Making money from mass populations works better with more homogeneity of demand, and social media in particular provides a lot of effective levers to promote that homogeneity. It is many people's jobs to influence memetics, and they're succeeding.