I agree with the influence part. Although, Given tracking of users by Facebook, Twitter (Clicked items, Time spent, browsing & sharing patterns) & Google (Chrome history, Android), I doubt people should act surprised to find such even in current state.

And, given most of the content is curated based on people we follow in our social media feeds, I wonder if it will encourage individual contributors to work on their unique content and help in capturing majority share of a focussed set of readers value rather than being a part of narrative.