&gt; The crazy thing is that you don&#x27;t need to do any &quot;intense indoctrination&quot;. Facebook has both numbers and time on their side.<p>Exactly this.<p>A 4,900-word essay by Robert Epstein (formerly editor in chief of _Psychology Today_, take that however you may) entitled &quot;How the Internet Flips Elections and Alters our Thoughts&quot; discusses a number of studies that show merely listing search results has the effect of shaping the opinion of undecided people. [0] Furthermore, such suasion seems to increase rather than diminish when subjects are aware of such manipulation.<p>Epstein writes<p>&gt;We have also learned something very disturbing – that search engines are influencing far more than what people buy and whom they vote for. We now have evidence suggesting that on virtually all issues where people are initially undecided, search rankings are impacting almost every decision that people make. They are having an impact on the opinions, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of internet users worldwide – entirely without people’s knowledge that this is occurring. This is happening with or without deliberate intervention by company officials; even so-called ‘organic’ search processes regularly generate search results that favour one point of view, and that in turn has the potential to tip the opinions of millions of people who are undecided on an issue. In one of our recent experiments, biased search results shifted people’s opinions about the value of fracking by 33.9 per cent.<p>So, the point is not whether the indoctrination is intense or even intentional. Merely showing items in a list of search results has the effect of shaping the opinion of people who have not yet formed an opinion.<p>Given that Facebook curates what appears in each user&#x27;s feed and the fact that many people receive much of their news only from social media [1], it would be prudent for democracies to carefully consider what kinds of disclosures, disclaimers, and&#x2F;or disallowances social media companies should be subject to given that in the 21st century such private corporations occupy an unprecedented position in informing the public, regardless of intention.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aeon.co&#x2F;essays&#x2F;how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aeon.co&#x2F;essays&#x2F;how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-...</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.niemanlab.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;new-pew-data-more-americans-are-getting-news-on-facebook-and-twitter&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.niemanlab.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;new-pew-data-more-americans...</a><p>EDIT: Provide 2nd link; grammar