This isn’t a modern thing - most people rely on their social network about what is true and those social networks can be infected with cultural disease and rot and die just like the body. The problem is that cultural diseases have impacts to the entire species since we’re social creatures and technology has further shrunk the distance between cultures and the time disease takes to spread making it difficult to contain.
“The Anti-Mask League was an organization formed in San Francisco, California, United States to protest an ordinance which required people in that city to wear masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic. The ordinance it protested lasted less than one month before being repealed. Due to the short period of the league's existence, its exact membership is difficult to determine; however, an estimated 4,500 citizens showed up to a meeting to protest the second ordinance in January 1919” [1].
I’m not seeing anything comparable, or as epidimeogically relevant, as what we have today. Organic social spread is slow and controllable. Online social media is instant wildfire everywhere.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...
Which has major consequences, if you hand something that is prone to "tantrums" ever more powerfull technologies. It will blow itself up! And if you do not hand ever more powerfull technologies, that thing will throw a tantrum!