My take while reading OP was that the author simply grew up. When young and idealistic it's easy to believe the utopian marketing. In reality, business is the same as it's always been.

I do think politics has gotten worse in the "post-truth era". And tech certainly enabled that. It's hard to blame anyone in particular, though. One thing we see in the show "Connections" is that it's always hard to predict the consequences of new technology. Even seeing it coming, it's not fair to believe tech workers should have saved us from the rightward swing.