Not every curve is a straight line.

This is always the response to any hint that technology isn't the greatest thing ever. But it's like a no-op. The questions that it leaves open: 1. Were the people saying it earlier wrong? 3. Assuming they were wrong, is there any reason to suspect that their wrongness has any relationship with the wrongness of people questioning the effects of a different technology hundreds of years later?

What happened to 2?

No idea.

Is that necessarily wrong though? Propaganda by word of mouth is less effective than propaganda by handing out pamphlets is less effective than propaganda by obscure internet forums is less effective than propaganda by mainstream internet forums.

And at some point, it becomes more effective than our ability to combat it.

Printing press: http://theconversation.com/five-of-the-most-violent-moments-...

Radio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propaganda

And in some ways it did then too... well, at least once enough people learned to read for it to be possible to distribute information to the “masses” via text. Look up the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” on Wikipedia.