The return to that world will be very painful and chaotic however.
I think a large portion of the population actively distrust experts.
It’s always been this way. That the you thought otherwise is just evidence of how good a central power was at controlling “the truth”.
Trust doesn’t scale. There are methods that work better than others, but it’s a very hard problem.
I think this will create a push for going back to smaller “gated” communities: think phpbb forums from the early 2000s, maybe with invitation-only sign up (similar to lobste.rs, where somebody already in must invite you, and admins can track who-invited-who).
It would probably be a better experience overall.