The days when experts worried about people being radicalised online in small dark corners of the internet now seem almost quaint compared to how fringe ideas have become mainstream and taboos have been smashed.
A lot of that has to do with how easily people can find a tribe of others with similar views, organise, and spread disinformation on social media. And more importantly, how all that can be manipulated.
"You're not talking about grassroots activity so much anymore," said Alex Stamos, a US expert on disinformation and director of the Stanford Internet Observatory.
"You're talking about top-down activity that is facilitated by the ability of these folks to create these audiences."
In the US, conservative television news outlets and radio also help spread top-down messages.
The biggest subverter of American democracy is the current leader of the country who is actively trying to overturn his election loss and the will of most voters with debunked claims of fraud. Everything is being carried out in plain sight.
As his legal challenges fail, President Donald Trump is attempting to influence state election officials. States are expected to certify election results by December 6.
The effort will likely delegitimise President-elect Joe Biden's victory for Trump's millions of supporters and appears to be an attempt to sabotage his upcoming term.
Biden won by the same Electoral College margin as Trump in 2016 and by a popular vote margin of at least 6 million.
Yet polls show Trump has managed to convince many supporters that the election was stolen and many Republican officials are enabling him.
Even though Trump is prolonging the inevitable, and the attempt has become a farce, it is still dangerous for the political system to undermine facts and amplify disinformation.
Four years ago, fingers were pointed at Russian interference in the US election. This time it is a self-own.
There has been a multi-pronged permission structure: The President's party officials and sympathetic media give Trump free rein; his behaviour enables his base to publicly give vent to grievances; and they fuel his power.
AP reported that Zignal Labs tracked millions of social media posts about mail voting in the months before the US election and found huge spikes immediately following several of the US President's Twitter tweets.
Harvard University researchers looked at posts and stories about voter fraud and decided that: "Fox News and Donald Trump's own campaign were far more influential in spreading false beliefs than Russian trolls or Facebook clickbait artists."
Other countries, including our own, should not be smug and complacent about these developments.
Different countries deal with trans-national problems and we are all plugged in online and subject to common influences. The US experience with Trump has been similar to some extent with Britain and Brexit.
Democracies rely on leaders and people following laws, customs and traditions and doing the right thing. But what happens if they don't and people cannot agree on objective facts? And why are so many people susceptible?
A lesson from the pandemic is that public trust requires a sense of fairness and being supported in return. People need to feel involved, not shut out, anxious and angry.
As automation and inequality increases, the need for a basic level of income and job security will grow - or so will instability.
