It's more that we created a climate where academic discussion, devil's advocacy, and outright anti-human political stances are no longer tolerated in the public sphere without comment and ridicule, because we watched how they are both used to derail progress on important topics and how they provide fascists, nationalists, and racial supremacists and opportunity to find each other and organize.

I perceive the Wild West that the internet started as to be in a phase of cooling and public consumption, where that cooling is including cracking and bifurcation. Sections of society are not finding common ground and likely will not find common ground in my lifetime, but the systems we have built are tuned towards global broadcast bidirectional communication right now, not quiet conversation. It will be interesting to me to see how that changes.