Die jungen Putin-Versteher

An article appeared in the Berner Zeitung, dated 20 April 2022, with the above title; an entire page. The title is translated as "the young Putin understanders." The general tone of the article is dismay that some young people are so insensitive or stupid or brainwashed or whatever as to actually understand, or even sympathize with, the Russian special operation in Ukraine. Never mind that their own poll shows that something like 20% of the population agrees; the fact that young people, even more than older people, could fall for this seems to be surreal for the authors. I mean, one could understand it if it were mostly old fogies who were so deluded, but no, the poll clearly shows that the younger you are, the more likely you are to be so egregiously politically incorrect.
Sabine Frenzel led the polling effort. Here's a direct quote from the article:

Fuer Frenzel koennen die sozialen Medien eine "extreme Gefahr fuer die freie Meinungsbildung und damit die Demokratie" sein, zumindest solange nicht klar sei, wie verlaesslich Informationen auf diesen Plattformen seien, und kaum jemand verstehe, wie Algorithmen bestimmen wuerden, wer welche Informationen bekomme.

This translates to:

For Frenzel, social media could be an "extreme danger for free opinion formation, and therefore for Democracy," at least as long as it is not clear how reliable information is on these platforms, and hardly anyone understands how algorithms could determine who gets which information.

So, let's see what she's saying here. Presumably the "extreme danger" is that people might get the "wrong" information, and therefore come to have "wrong" opinions. This, apparently, could endanger democracy itself. After all, we don't know how reliable the information is on the various social media sites, and they might even be using secret algorithms to present their (mis)information to the "wrong" people. Forget all that nonsense about free speech, to protect democracy we have to ensure people only see the "right" information. Surely we can't let people sort out the facts for themselves; that would require critical thinking, which some might say the authors of this article seem to lack. No, no, it simply won't do to just let everybody see everything; we have to spoon-feed them the proper facts and opinions, we have to protect them from misinformation. Anything less endangers democracy, and therefore our very way of life.

"Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship."
― Bruce Coville

"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes."
― Thomas Payne

"„For the common good" is the most common excuse for uncommon evil."
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies."
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

"Every manmade disaster begins when one man thinks for another. However benevolent they begin, the ultimate outcome is tyranny."
― John Kramer, Blythe