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Maybe. But Thiel is not the only model for how to execute a "conspiracy". I often think about the Cult of Scientology, especially when their "Fair game" doctrine was in effect. I wish I still had the article, but one journalist in the 70's and 80's covering them was harassed by them night and day. But probably the most insidious part was that scientologist also covertly insinuated themselves as her "friends".
I think the article I remember might have been about Paulette Cooper? I mean, look at some of these details!
In many ways, elements of the cult conspiracy against a reporter hostile to them are easier today than ever. You don't need to anonymously spread fliers when you can have the algorithm spread information for you. You don't need to break into their physical offices when you own more data on them through their internet usage than was even imaginable to Scientologist in the 70's. You don't need to find any actual people to be their friends when catfishing with fake profiles is so easy!
I'd argue, executing a Scientologist style Operation Dynamite or Operation Freakout is easier than ever, and could largely be automated through the use of algorithms.
As it happens, I've read several books about Scientology also (including the one by David Miscavige's niece), and the problem Scientology has today is the same one a lot of your hypothetical conspiracies would have: yes, in theory the technology exists to do all these nefarious things, but the pulling it off secretly and without opposition is a lot harder. Scientology nowadays has a real recruiting problem and almost all growth is via next generation members raised in the cult, because anyone can get on the Internet and look up "Xenu," and for every dirty trick Scientologists try to pull online, there are thousands of motivated opponents ready to fight back in kind.
Scientology used to run these operations against reporters and succeeded in bullying the IRS into giving them tax exempt status, but it's not likely such tactics would work as well today (if you've seen their attempts to discredit ex-Scientologist critics like Leah Remini, they just look lame and desperate).
Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion by Janet Reitman, is very critical, and yet the church was actually pretty cooperative with her (and to my knowledge, never attempted to intimidate or harass her).
People like conspiracy theories because they have a pleasant explanatory power: things I hate are engineered by shadowy, evil cabals acting in secret. If only they could be exposed or fought! Clearly these things cannot happen organically, or because thousands of factions often acting at cross-purposes bring about a lot of the things I don't like. But people just aren't that organized, they aren't that efficient, they aren't that secretive. The same reason you should be afraid of the state of the world (because there are no "grown ups" in charge somewhere, who have the will and the means to pull a few levers of power and keep shit from getting out of control, the economy and global politics are all basically running on daily ad hoc decisions far more than long-term planning) is the reason you should not get too wrapped up in the idea of Illuminati conspiring to make your life worse.
Getting bogged down in the details of what Scientology, as an organization, is capable of today is totally beside the point that they prove a conspiracy of the type I outline is possible, and easier than ever. Maybe not for them, as they aren't what they used to be. But for someone sufficiently motivated.
Who knows, maybe in 20 years people will be leaving the Current Year cult, spilling the secrets of the things they were "forced" to do at the time.
And once again, forget, for a moment, the notion of a "conspiracy". Going back to Scientology, sure, elements of their attacks were conspiratorial. They had a whole office of dirty tricks. But there was also a prospiracy side to it. They declared a person "fair game", and all their member's knew what that meant. They didn't need to be told to do anything in specifics.
People like Crowder have been declared "fair game" by the successor ideology. Imagine some "rogue employee" at Facebook deciding "LOL, I'm going to manually add Crowder and Mrs Crowder's accounts to the 'hate algorithm' list." Same as how some "rogue employee" (at least when caught) always seems to be adding them to shadowban, suppression, and other soft or hard blacklist. Next thing we know, Crowder and Mrs Crowder are just angry all the time for reasons beyond their ken, and are fighting constantly. Per my last link, the tools already exist! Facebook as algorithms that can manipulate your emotional state, and they can place users on them.
The details are relevant because you're claiming that "Scientology once succeeded in conspiracy shit" is evidence that someone else could do the same thing today, and I don't think that sort of conspiracy (a literal cult trying to destroy an individual with social engineering) is so easy to do today, especially in the dispersed online way you are proposing.
There is no Current Year cult. There's trans activism, BLM, Free Palestine, whatever else you want to categorize under the broad umbrella of "wokeism," but I am fundamentally disagreeing with you that these things are engineered by shadowy cabals somewhere or being manufactured by a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds doing A/B testing on memes. You don't need to wait for anyone to "spill secrets" - we already know how it happens, through social pressure and conformity and agreeableness, not because someone did some Ludovico conditioning on them or inserted fnords into their social media. There are plenty of people who have "escaped the Woke cult" and talked about how and why they bought into it in the first place.
Basically anyone has been declared "fair game" by the successor ideology. The result is Twitter pileons, sometimes deplatforming, but
You seem pretty invested in a very science fictional notion for someone saying you don't really believe this. "Facebook can plug you into a hate algorithm and pretty soon you and your wife are heading for divorce" is kind of like Shiri's Scissor - it's a great concept, works for a short story, but I've seen too many people (including here) take this kind of dystopian brain hacking far too seriously and literally.
Read it again
It's not science fiction.
This seems very intuitive to me, and I'm not surprised that it's true, and I don't discount the power of the algorithm, but it's worth noting that aggregate results among nearly 700,000 users is VERY different from being able to target a specific individual for divorce. Especially over 700,000 users, small effects that a single user wouldn't notice (or even be affected by) show up, even without any sort of p-hacking.
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