Am really wondering who 'they' is in your view?
Couldn't it be that the algo's of all these (social) media is in fact feeding the user with what the user's preferences are? Whether they are selected by an 'external' algo, or by the user algo him/herself (by controlling the TV/Radio buttons as well as selective hearing)?
Welcome to 2023 ;)
But it's so obvious who "they" are, dear Watson. The owners of the platforms, their shareholders, their political proteges - in a single word: the overlords. They created the algos, they scrapped the data to feed into the algos, and they are now running the simulation just like that invisible, yet incredibly powerful computer was running the Matrix.
That makes it interesting. We are all part of the Matrix? I mean we are all part of some gigantic simulation?
Would be nice in a way: Then it doesn't make sense at all to even discuss overlords and all.
In such a situation, we just find another simulation we can try. Maybe no overlords in that one? We can jump back and forth, or further to new simulations.
How cool is that?