The entire world realized that now that the Internet has killed off all of the third places / IRL meetings, and social media killed off the decentralized Internet, it's quite easy to fully control the discourse around any topic, since only a few social media organizations effectively decide what everyone sees (even if you're independent, Social Media decides which ideas/content gets traffic).

Question is, how do we get ourselves out of this tar pit?

China has shown the world the way and most countries likes it.

And there is no non-violent solution