Divisions in the Napoleonic wars were far more lethal than a Roman legion. A division today is many times more lethal than a Napoleonics division. A similar advancement has occurred within the realm of dissemination of propaganda but at a much shorter timeframe. In my opinion humanity is not prepared to deal with the social and psychological effects of this era of cheap, targeted, mass communication. I hope I am wrong.

Once upon a time large numbers of people thought we were actively being invaded by aliens because of a radio broadcast that wasn’t even deliberate manipulation. Nevertheless, we made it through.

This probably isn’t true. This story has persisted for decades based off of newspaper articles from decades ago. It illustrates the power of false information dissemination on readers provided that information is packaged in the right way.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/war-of-the-worlds/

There's no evidence I'm aware of that supports the notion that we are capable, as a species, of weathering the social and psychological effects of the modern communications era and a growing body of evidence that suggest we aren't. Given human psychology around in-group dynamics it seems likely we never will be on anything other than evolutionary time scales.

Indeed. We did not evolve to adequately deal with this new reality.

Anything you think we could do to help people deal with it or in your view is this settled?

I have no idea. As AI generated content becomes more prevalent and as bots become a huge percentage of online comments I hope it will lead to people leaving the internet. For the most part I think the dead internet theory will become a reality. I hope humans will develop coping mechanisms.

We're talking about lizard-brain deep subconscious human behavior here. That's not really something that lends itself to being tinkered with idly. So this seems pretty settled to me. I'm prepared to alter my view if new information comes to light.