The claim that big tech itself is a threat to democracy needs to be debated. While they do manipulate their customers and sell their personal information for profit, the companies themselves have also been manipulated by the various groups in the world that are the actual threat to democracy.

The political polarization might not be caused by technology but instead only amplifies it.

One example where the tech companies are "guilty" is by having everyone live in their own confirmation bias bubble which is enabled by the algorithms they created. What we seem to forget is that we all lived in confirmation bias bubbles before the internet.

We all believed our own local version of what the United States was until the various points in history where the dissonance was interrupted.

Now globalization and social media have shown people how different their respective views happen to be, feeding the polarization even more, and we find it easy to put the blame on technology.