The reality is that media panics are never just about the media itself; they are a scapegoat onto which we unload our larger anxieties. An 18th-century English upper class, worried about social and economic upheaval, blamed novels for seducing women into rebelling against their roles; an American intelligentsia fretful about the “empty consumerism” of affluent postwar America panicked that subliminal advertising was brainwashing people. Thus are vast and complex social forces reduced to something malign, but at least manageable.

And so with Facebook: A liberal cultural elite lost an election they thought was in the bag. Trump did an end run around all the institutional gatekeepers who were supposed to keep someone like him out of office. The idea that this could happen is terrifying enough for the old guard, the idea that this could happen, and there might not be any way to stop it, is intolerable. Thus, we must find, not merely a cause, but a cause that is amenable to intervention. Facebook had the grave misfortune of being the nearest goat to hand.