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Goes a loooooong way back, 19th century I think. It wasn't a new term when the German govt was using it to criticise "unpatriotic" media coverage during the First World War..
Anyway.
IMHO the biggest difference between then and now is when the Nazis used media to whip up hatred and mainstreamify previously-extreme views it took a lot of work by a lot of very talented and hardworking Nazi propagandists. Goebbels wrote the book on community manipulation through media and he had a whole Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda working at it.
Now? All automated. AI drives this shit now and it's far more efficient and effective than anything Goebbels and co did, because they were just meat. We've got algorithms now. Facebook will whip up hatred and hysteria and spread fictions that look like news and radicalise populations because the algorithm has proven that that's the best way to increase pageviews and thus maximise shareholder value. Everything that Goebbels and his entire Ministry worked at for for over a decade is now available instantly with the click of a mouse for a price so low it's essentially free.
Hell, at least Goebbels and the Nazis had principles and were trying to achieve a sociopolitical goal. Facebook has perfected and automated world-wide hate-generation as nothing other than a revenue stream.
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