You are giving too much credence to the analytical capabilites to a lynch mob, and you are underestimating how much AI lowers the barrier for creating realistic 'proof' for incitement.

Also there are no mob 'leaders'. These are everyday folks, these are you and me and my neighbours.

A student pissed at a teacher could create a fake AI video of his teacher at night, and wake up to no pesky teacher and feel no remorse over what happened while he slept.

The student was not a mob leader, just some dumbass who was angry at their teacher for giving bad grades, and had access to simple AI tools (soon available online for a trivial fee, if not free).

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Be honest, are you 100% sure of the status of that facebook account you deleted in 2018? Zuck never deleted it, that content is still there to be mined and abused. Also not that hard to just log in to the damn thing and post something spicy.

I don't remember if old posts can be edited in FB, cause that would allow the person to really gild the lily.

> people would trust rumour less, not form mobs more

I believe you are right. When the first unbelievable clips appeared on Facebook (where the most gullible people are), you could see the old ladies cheering "oh how wonderful! where did you film that?" Now in the comments section you will mostly see people saying "sheesh, stop polluting my feed with these fake AI-generated spam". Don't get me wrong, many people still fall for them, but the tendency seems clear - after all, we managed to survive because of learning.

I feel like the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle is involved here. If the bar is lowered to the point where it takes less energy to generate inflammatory video "evidence" than it does to debunk it the shitheads win. I feel like we can all agree that AI has the potential to lower that bar.