Einstein wrote an essay titled “Why Socialism?” for the first issue of the independent socialist magazine “Monthly Review.” Published in May 1949, the piece included the following paragraph that said (sentences bolded for emphasis):
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
Snopes
The bolded quotes in the paragraph above do amount to the same thing as the various paraphrases we found on social media — that it would be difficult for people to make informed, objective decisions because sources of information would be controlled by private capitalists.
Crucially, however, Einstein was not writing about something that would happen in the future, but what was happening in 1949. That’s a key detail the various paraphrases were wrong about.
Ice on the Moon 