The dream of the internet as some sort of great democratizing force is already dead and buried, but for any who still believes, this must surely be the final nail in that coffin. Controlling the narrative is only a problem for existing democracies with press freedom. All bets are off once the threat model includes control of the media. So cherish your freedom of speech, and exercise and defend it. I don’t know what t…
The threat that you're modeling against is not a threat to the internet. The internet is a group of technologies enabling near-realtime dissemination of information. It has no implicit promise of freedom of speech or press, democracy, or any other political ideal. Even the World Wide Web has no such implicit promise. The great democratizing force to which you refer is the ability to publish content, and to an extent…
That's the magic part: you don't have to be explicit to promote certain thing, you just create the ground tech-knowledge to enable the easy access of such thing, and hand everything else over to natural progression.
The Internet for example, enables everyone to exchange information with everyone else. That's textbook democratic-builtin design. Some undemocratic nations are so fearful such network, they go as far as creating their own little net to protect their pathetic little propaganda, the propaganda that those nations don't even dare to show to the world. And even that, they still have to fight a propaganda war (actual names might be different) in their own little net to keep democratic force in check.
Internet is democratic, there should be no question about that.
The problem about the Internet today, is that most people thinks Amazon+Google+Facebook+Twitter+other big brands is the Internet. They forgot that they can host things themselves without those big tech companies.