He's right and the rest of the article supports this statement. It isn't some magical sci find weapon to instantly control people. But it is bad and is used for agenda setting.

"The media doesn't tell you what to think, it tells you what to think about"

I'm not sure I agree with that. The media quote, I mean. There's plenty of media companies (on both sides of the political spectrum) that are definitely trying to tell you what to think. Maybe not all of them, but there are some.

"Tells my what to think" it's a common idiom in English, meaning not just that you were told", but that you were commanded and followed*. It's basically synonymous with "controls how I think", and almost always used as a negation. That is, someone will say "he doesn't tel me what to think" to express that their thoughts are still their own and independent.

In that context, "The media doesn't tell you what to think, it tells you what to think about" is meant to be taken as "The media doesn't control how you think, but it defines the discussion." I think this is just a case where an author decided for alliteration over clarity. Sometimes that's a useful path, as alliteration can help phrases stick in the social consciousness. In this case it's just confusing.

To be fair this is true of any mass media - radio, television, etc. To a degree, books (aka printing press - check out "yellow journalism") as well. Marshall Mcluhan talked about "hot" and "cool" mediums, and I think the internet may be some sort of mutant hybrid (too weird to die), but, there is definitely somthing about TV /internet being more "mind controlling" than books.

https://www.quora.com/What-did-Marshall-McLuhan-mean-by-hot-...

Any effective advertising is mind control, in a sense. It convinces you to take an action you wouldn't have otherwise taken. Sometimes that action is bad for you, but the advertising has convinced you that it's good for you (or that the alternative is scarier).

The better Facebook can convince you to take an action, the more value its platform has. The Darwinism of the ad industry meant that the top ad-tech companies were eventually going to be really, really good at changing people's behavior.

Using language like "mind-control ray" is also targeted for persuasion (Or "mind-control" as you put it).

You don't know who will read it because of algorithms or just because someone did not log in and so on...

Those tools are just media and offer you visibility to a certain degree.

And of course you adapt your presentation style to reach a specific audience.

The information economy as self-inflicted panopticon?

Just basic agenda setting theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory

I find your comment rather frightening.

And in a way: Spot on!

(paywall) Jaron Lanier on fighting Big Tech’s ‘manipulation engine’ https://www.ft.com/content/a3ea16f6-7edd-11e8-bc55-50daf11b7...

Most people aren't particularly tempted to shape their behavior to Facebook. They just use other channels for things they don't specifically want everyone to see. If some people are so uninvested in their thoughts that "open up a group chat" is an insurmountable barrier... well, they were going to be mind controlled by a stiff breeze, so it's hard to blame Facebook.