This state of information isn't the least bit new, but for some reason many of us are treating it like it is. Wealthy families, corporations, politicians, banks, and so on have always had their hands in what we get to see. The very idea that foreign enemy nations use propaganda has itself been used as a propaganda tactic many times.

What's troublesome for the public is that the culture does not instill a healthy level of individualism when it comes to interpreting information; we are encouraged to trust experts and to otherwise follow one of two distinct camps on any given topic. People don't believe they have time to understand things on their own, nor do they believe they have the capacity to do so. In actuality, this is nonsense, given how many people manage to at least pass through high school, and how much time adults spend consuming entertainment. In their defense, it takes an inordinate amount of work to sift through the detritus that makes up at least 80% of prose on the internet; most articles simply can't get to the point, but I guess creative writing majors need something to do.

I truly think the best thing for the average person right now is to not take information-for-sale seriously. They are better off knowing less, not more. The idea that information has a linearly distributed benefit is a fallacy. The more information, the more vectors for pathological information.