True, but what is different this time is the cost and reach of propaganda. It is a lot cheaper, easier and faster to send emails, post on FB/Twitter, throw a website up... etc compared to 40-50 years (or even 30) ago when you had to use newspapers and television. What is even more horrific is you can tailor these message down to a individual person
I am very skeptical of people that advocate for a more top down approach to information exchange.
Plenty of legitimate voices advocating for public good, let's say as an example, get swept up in these attempts to better centralize and manage information.
That's not a good thing.
Communities have always relied on a highly slanted version of the truth to make decisions. Propaganda and truth have both gotten cheaper to spread. The evidence is that the truth is doing a much better job relative to what it used to (I can see actual visual evidence of what is happening in Hong Kong, for example, in near real time).
The downside is that it is cheaper for the government to track individual activities, but that is a slightly separate topic.
Which benefits non-state actors as much as it benefits state actors.