You’re being a bit fatalistic here. Things have turned out badly in part because we made bad choices. We can make better choices, with the Internet and everything else. And we should.

You note at the end that some people were calling for better choices. Not just Internet is great vs Internet is awful, but like hey, we should really look out for the effects of a bunch of this stuff we don’t understand. Honestly, MANY of those voices were from women, and your article would have benefitted from recognizing that. There’s an article going around cataloging many of those female voices… I can’t find it at the moment but if anyone reads this and knows what I’m talking about, please post it here?