"The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth." -Garry Kasparov.
And
"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore." This latter quote is, rather ironically, a false quote! (falsely attributed to Hannah Arendt). But I still think it contains truth.
Selective truth is far more effective, and more common, propaganda. Not in omitting important context from a story, but by omitting or burying (or simply never seeking out) entirely stories you don't want heard, and emphasizing stories you do want heard. In essence, holding up a funhouse mirror to society.
This is the propaganda you get when all your reporters think they are being honest and uncensored, but they all deeply care about the same set of issues, and are deeply ambivalent about another set.
Our intuitions, outrage, and knee-jerk reactions are being weaponized to gain clicks, votes, donations, and "action".
Many a dictatorship has fallen in the wake of social media revolutions. I wonder how long democracy can last?
In a would-be-funny-if-it-weren't-tragic ironic twist both of the two main US parties see themselves as the last guardians of democracy and frame their opponents as Evil, against which "any means necessary" is the only reasonable course of action.
(Yes, the party you disagree with is way worse and it's all their fault, this whataboutism indeed has to end, absolutely)
And here we all are.