I'm afraid I suspect that it's revealing a bunch of latent biases as the web has grown to reach people from different socio-economic layers and cultural milieus

I'm afraid I suspect that it's revealing a bunch of latent biases as the web has grown to reach people from different socio-economic layers and cultural milieus. These people were always there; we just didn't hear them, because we had a pyramidal media structure controlled by elites. One theory I've heard is that the nation state is over, and the Internet killed it. Demos, the shared group of people that makes up a voting democracy and validates democratic choice as a group will, is breaking down. People are starting to identity at global levels by social class, education and political outlook, rather than national identity. People no longer participate in the same national narrative. I think this would have happened eventually if we only had newsgroups and chain emails, it's just happened faster because we have easier to use software. I don't think some unholy union of state and corporate control of free speech is the answer. If anything, it's a path to civil war, eventually.