The entire point of the social media industry is to agitate its users emotionally, because this increases involvement. If there are subtler patterns these are very situational, and smothered by the need for involvement and growth. As to how much you can condition people, we're animals with a baseline that's not open to change except at extreme margins, and cannot reliably be changed.
Even if the system does not condition or change anyone in predictable ways, the info overload can still break the brains capacity to match internal world model with the external world. After which emotions and emotionally resonant content rule. Rationality dies. And you don't need social media to produce it, just an info explosion.
The entire point of the social media industry is to agitate its users emotionally, because this increases involvement. If there are subtler patterns these are very situational, and smothered by the need for involvement and growth. As to how much you can condition people, we're animals with a baseline that's not open to change except at extreme margins, and cannot reliably be changed.
Even if the system does not condition or change anyone in predictable ways, the info overload can still break the brains capacity to match internal world model with the external world. After which emotions and emotionally resonant content rule. Rationality dies. And you don't need social media to produce it, just an info explosion.