About 30 years ago we had the sitcom bubble. Tulip mania was in the 1630ies, about 400 years ago.

There always have been attempts to exploit others for personal gain and people following that.

The new thing is the speed in which this happens globally. But there had been other accelerators bringing equal jumps. Introduction of cross ocean telegraph cables, flight, book printing, ...

True, modern technology makes results globally available with very little marginal costs.

However on the spread of ideas the last item mentioned on the list above is extremely interesting to study: Book printing brought translations of the Bible into more places and took reproduction and interpretation of those texts out of the hands of the few (mostly the church) to broader masses (for as long as people could read) which lead to lots of political conflicts and redistribution of power in Europe with impact to colonies worldwide. By people following one interpretation of a text and derived rules more than another. To a large degree since books with ideas could now be replicated within days instead of years. As now ideas are replicated within minutes rather than days.