Great point. Have you read the literature on Parasite Stress and its correlation with the rise of nascent authoritarianism? At one point, the legacy media was peddling the narrative that Trump was a parasite stress reaction to illegal immigration (when by every metric Biden has proved to be far more authoritarian as a president than Trump ever was- institutionally violating long established medical ethics on patient consent and creating a system of arms-length government censorship of malinformation (information which is true, but inconvenient to government politically or in terms of policy)).

The problem is that there is a connection between the potential for somewhat deranged viewpoints within the conscientious dissenter camp and the rising authoritarianism of the Democratic Party. It's a feedback system. The occasionally demented and objectionable rambles of the more extreme within the dissenter camp feed the urge for yet more authoritarian measures amongst establishment forces globally. It doesn't help that although it's yet to be proved that social media acts as a radicalising force for extremist viewpoints (at least on the right), it does seem to act as a social permission slip, by placing deranged individuals in contact with likeminded individuals.

Here in the UK, we've had two Members of Parliament murdered- one a Conservative murdered by an Islamic extremist, and one a Remainer MP murdered by a lunatic ultranationalist for 'betraying her country'. And these aren't isolated incidents. Council Representatives have been threatened. Other Members of Parliament have had phone calls/texts wishing the death of their children.

What social media does do is bring the crazy out of the woodwork, presenting it with targets in the political class. This in turn has a chilling effect on free speech, free expression and political dissent- as politicians are confronted with a stark choice between losing personal and familial safety and the abandonment of by far the most important bedrock principles of liberal democracy.