In 2018, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was testifying before Congress as Facebook went through an early round of investigation. At that time, University of Virginia media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan described the company’s mode of operation: “It wants to discern patterns so that they can see what we like, who we care about, how passionately we care about certain things. And then, when it can mathematically distill those patterns, it can compare us to other people like us. That helps them put more things into our news feeds that are likely to generate interest, which hooks us even more. It’s the...