The damage to democracy can last for generations, though. In 30 years Germany went from 19th century democracy, to socialism, to nazism. What they had was a fi

The damage to democracy can last for generations, though. In 30 years Germany went from 19th century democracy, to socialism, to nazism. What they had was a filter-bubble where the people were constantly told that the cause of their problems was some particular scapegoat and the solution was more state control. Social media produces these filter-bubbles in a far more powerful fashion. Worse, it's setting up conditions for a civil war where one big bubble is told that the problem is "The System" and the other big bubble is told the problem is "those lefties" and both sides are told the solution is to stamp out the other side. The Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Carnegies never built anything like that. They built infrastructure, and leveraged economies. Oil, railroad, finance... not the same thing as social connection engines.