Free exchange among peoples is alive and well. It is easier today to make a website and share anything than it has ever been in the history of civilization. All this is is the reining in of a few greedy corporations that offer information-sharing platforms in exchange for exploitation. New communities will pop up, and old ones resurface.
How are people being exploited? Where is the harm?
It’s you vs a team of 200 PhDs who’s entire job is to make you spend more time on the platform and make more clicks. It’s invasive marketing on a level that has never occurred in human history, and also happens to have the effect of amplifying the craziest voices. It’s hijacking people’s psychology, creating fights when peace would be better, because fights are less boring. And you pay for it, just with the dissolution of society where you might’ve talked to your neighbors. How many families have been split because of Facebook radicalization of conservatives? Mine for one.
I believe strongly that the social media and internet ad business models are at best amoral but responsible for the second order effects, much as coal plants are responsible for pollution. At worst they are making money off of making people crazy by giving every crazy person a megaphone and making sure you have to hear from them.