Mixing news into social media, sharing stories to Facebook, turned it from a coffee shop into a town square with a million soap boxes.
Bad actors then seized that format and used it to spread propaganda and disinformation.
That's not to say that the basic forms of social media were perfect, far from it. They're just as susceptible to manipulation. There's just something about Facebook's link to (mostly) real identities that elevates it to a hugely effective propaganda platform.
That only happened after Facebook decided to editorialize everybody's main view. People were not even used to sharing news at that point, but it was the only thing that Facebook allowed to spread.
Anyway, I'm not sure about causality. But claiming that fake news spreading through a heavily editorialized medium is proof that people can not handle self selecting their information is a complete non-sequitur.
That's a great point, I hadn't considered that. Thank you!