Direct propaganda? Not too much. However, the amount of content in the 1980s and 1990s that was in some way funded by the DOD was a bit crazy. Likewise, stuff like NED funded content. If one considers corporations part of the state, then the percentage of content that was propaganda would likely be more than 40%.

Today, this would be harder to figure. Because anyone can use a VPN and pose as a person in any country, any country’s intelligence people could be carrying out misinformation/disinformation campaigns at any time. How much of the left or right content on FB that mom is reading is from genuine actors vs intelligence actors? How many calls for violent action on the left and right are just FBI entrapment or Russian attempts to destabilize the USA?

When all of this was being built, this angle never occurred to me. It should have, but it didn’t. I naively thought, as so many did, that the ability of people to connect across national boundaries, across racial and gender lines, and across socio-economic divides would lead to a better, safer, and happier world. Sadly, I was completely mistaken. The internet became worse than life AFK on those fronts, people joined echo chambers, and radicalism increased.

Nearly same thing but instead of smacking the screen you'd actually press the physical button on remote control and run in circles with channel's list to find anything remotely interesting.

The trick is you hold the controller in your limp hands, with your fingertip resting on one of the channel buttons. Usually the plus. So when you want to swipe you just extend your index finger just a fraction of an inch. And the screen changes. They dialed in the interface over years, and have gotten it to a process with almost no work involved.