I believe that the decentralization of manipulation (taken in a very broad sense as an effort to modify people's views) spells trouble for democracies. The mass

I believe that the decentralization of manipulation (taken in a very broad sense as an effort to modify people's views) spells trouble for democracies. The mass media of old, with all its flaws, created a shared pool of information managed by well-educated people, some of whom understood that they had the power to keep democracy running (keeping populists away from the "manipulation machine," curbing blatant manipulation attempts, and so on). Decentralized manipulation, by contrast, just runs amok creating echochambers and polarization.