I think, after the election and the billions spent on advertising and air time supporting one candidate and either ignoring or negatively covering others, and then all that ended up being for naught, there was a realisation that that somehow the traditional manufacturing consent machine has broken down.

And almost immediately Google and Facebook issued a press release about how they will be filtering Fake News. While there might be some genuine altruism and desire to make the world a better place, it was also a brilliant business move. They effectively jumped in and filled the void left in manufacturing consent market. They are signaling they instead of companies and political candidates investing their billions in CNN and NBC they should come to them now.