I live near Dalkeith, which had more witch trials per capita than any other place in Scotland, and perhaps the world. They have been well investigated by historians, and it looks like, on the whole, they were guilty as charged. There was a prevalent pattern where somebody ended up alienated from the community, and adopted the "neighbour from hell" role. Since they didn't have social media to use for anonymized malicious rumour spreading, it would have seemed that witchcraft was the obvious technology to use to get back at your fellow villagers - the knowledge was no great secret. Except if you let it be known you'd cursed someone, and it happened that they really did suffer something horrible, you might have to answer for it. There was never a suggestion of an overarching satanic organization, it was all individual small-town nastiness.

Maybe we might have something to learn from the witchfinders? OK, burning Facebook rumour-mongers at the stake might be a bit over the top, but maybe we could think about the pillory and tongue boring?