2) This isn't the normal cynicism we all sometimes feel about "the nonsense they write in the papers". This is different. The guy at the barbecue, a husband of my cousin, went around asking people if one really could believe the news media. I wonder if this is how it grows. They get you wondering and then offer up "the truth" and send you to websites that "won't lie to you".
3) Social media and comment sections isn't how they recruit. They just use that to stay in the same filter bubble. They recruit by talking their friends into it. It's a form of subversion where you kind of take someone aside and reveal the "truth" to them. It's the same old tricks you see depicted in old WWII and Cold War educational films warning you about Nazi/Soviet agents. I thought we were beyond such obvious tricks. The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.