Yes, the internet’s always been toxic, but the audience has changed. It used to be a small subset of the world population that had the money, time, and know-how to get on the internet. Now it’s the entire world, and it seems to me that the average media-consumption sophistication has gone way down. Trolls used to be a smaller fraction of the whole, and easier to ignore. Now, the signal-to-troll ratio is all out of whack.
> It used to be a small subset of the world population that had the money, time, and know-how to get on the internet. Now it’s the entire world
This. It's not that polarization and toxic ideas didn't exist, it was arguably much worse in the past with slavery, genocide, etc.
You had entire countries publicly advocating for violent racism and citing sources that they claimed supported their views. It's pretty harsh to call us post-truth but not them. Their lies led to brutal consequences for millions.
And it used to be the media was a pretty strict funnel (pre-Internet, pre-TV) where you had to be interesting to someone with power like a politician or an editor to get mass exposure for your ideas. Everyone else was relegated to preaching in the park. Now, we have virtual parks (websites) and preaching can reach millions.
