The modern form of power stemming from controlling a social media platform doesn't lie in completely blocking out inconvenient information (old-fashioned censoring) or spreading that one official truth (Volksempfänger-age propaganda), it's the power of subtly augmenting some groups of voices while giving others less exposure. It's mostly a destructive power because the most reliable way to use it is to blow up harmless disagreements into crippling internal conflicts - and all without anyone noticing that they are being played.

The present-day equivalent to the train that carried Lenin from Zürich to Petrograd would be a little tweak in a social feed visibility algorithm in some corporate codebase.