If you operate the only place people search for answers, you can give people the wrong answers, and if they don’t know enough about the subject to spot it, you can change their minds. That’s just lying, not mind control.
The idea that Big Tech can mold discourse through bypassing our critical faculties by spying on and analyzing us is both self-serving (inasmuch as it helps Big Tech sell ads and influence services) and implausible, and should be viewed with extreme skepticism.
Cory Doctorow responds to Shoshana Zuboff questions about mind control powers held by platform capitalists and instead suggests it is a case of lying. As he summarises in his newsletter: