With education about things, you would moreso know things and you wouldn't so much have belief to be influenced.

f us grew up learning from those who cared enough to teach us. We went to school and learned what was given to us to learn. Some of us went to churches or lived in organizations which taught us different things about ourselves. We were never taught to think about what we werebeing taught, or read, or listened to. We just absorbed what we could from our environment. Eventually we came in contact with social media and some of us took a look at it and decided that it was a great way to contact others that were like us or different, we had another means to learn, to absorb information. There are those who want to be able to change the direction of our development. They want to influence our way of being in the world. Some of us think the others that are out there are like our first teachers and would never lie to us. But we have gained an introduction to social media and we must, if we can, look beyond what is on the screen.
There is now a platform upon which anyone can post anything, true or false. Many of us have not the reason to challenge what we see and therefore take what is put in front of us as true without question. This is the problem, we have been taught, or were originally taught to not really think, critically think about what is in front of us.
It seems to me that some of us make our way to find that we need to be critical about what is put in front of us and check what this is and what this means. Unfortunately, many of us do not have the education or the need to look up the rules of logic and come to understand what reason, thought, and how easy it is to manufacture what ever we want to influence others. We should help others to do this.
Usually when I want to know about something I turn to Wikipedia. It is a grat place to start, a place from which to go to further information. [en.wikipedia.org] gives a test about logic, this is a complicated subject, but if one keeps reading the quotes from other sources make for an interesting read.

No, they are trying to do so..PBS had an awesome mini series called Hacking Your Brain..in which they explored your post, they also explained how to stop it..it was an eye opening expose of this technique.

No... I don't think they are. I don't think that I'mTHAT easily manipulated and controlled. And if they ARE doing so then these companies are mastermind level geniuses who should be running the world government.

The stupid and intellectually lazy for sure.

Not us. Them. Being an atheist, I pass by ideas that I reject. Everybody with their "thoughts and prayers". I've learned to not engage with most people, even actual friends when it comes to the exchange of ideas. Let them live in blissful ignorance, not my job to educate them. The algorithms on Facebook seek to match items of interest and , but they don't fact check and that's how they spread dangerous conspiracy theories. They also advertise heavily and don't vet advertisers. Facebook propagates a lot of scams and dishonest sellers. They act like they're not responsible for any of it.