Social media access to user data (whether foreign or domestic) is bad, but it is a distraction from the real evil: behavioral management at scale. When you can target specific demographics and control what they see 8-10 hours of the day, you can change what they think, say, do, and most importantly, how they vote. People are literally being programmed (euphemistically, "conditioned") by the specific triggers and stim…
how does this differ from newspapers, books and the spoken word?
This is by design, btw, cf. e.g. "Digital Madness: How Social Media Is Driving Our Mental Health Crisis--and How to Restore Our Sanity " [1]; not itself a primary source but it seems to be well received.
My point being, it's like cigarettes with a message. The message being divisive in all likelihood, in order to override rationality with emotion and increase engagement. [2]
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5362930/
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Madness-Driving-Crisis-Restor...
[2] How social media shapes polarization: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cHDXsRpzZ84svIv5L-7tfnOvJ-p...