I've thought about this a lot too and I think about a few things:

- The barrier to creating and distributing content was higher (it still had to capture people's attention).

- We didn't have all the tools to artificially create content, just our imaginations.

I'm no doomer by any means, and I think it's useful to look back at history for clues as to how to manage it but it's hard to find clues when the situation is so different.

I still believe education and critical thinking are the best antidote for disinformation, but higher education in the US has continued to come under attack (and perhaps rightfully so with the costs rising extremely out of proportion to inflation).