There was plenty of darkness on the Internet back in the 90s when I was a kid using it, and I grew up just fine despite having access to hardcore pornography, g

There was plenty of darkness on the Internet back in the 90s when I was a kid using it, and I grew up just fine despite having access to hardcore pornography, gore, and all kinds of disturbed people's writings. I do not think that targeted algorithms make any significant difference in this regard. The "won't somebody please think of the children!!!" moral panic around social media annoys me. Hysterias about shadowy outside agencies infiltrating and subverting society usually annoy me in general, whether they are about Jews polluting the minds of good Germans, communists taking over Hollywood, the CIA being behind every revolution, shadowy Russians interfering in America's elections, or nefarious Chinese hurting American children by giving them access to information. Such theories often have some grain of truth to them. Obviously, there are lots of different groups out there running actual influence and subversion campaigns. But I think that such campaigns are typically nowhere near as centralized or as effective as the subversion theorists claim. The subversion theorists frame things in a way that discounts the agency of the supposed targets of the subversion, and I think this reveals what many of them actually think about those targets. It is an authoritarian mindset. "I, who am obviously a good guy, should protect these pawns from having their minds by subverted by this other power over there. Only I, not those other guys, should have the power to control the minds of the worthless plebs."