While I partially sympathize and agree with your pessimism, you underestimate the impact of regular users disengaging from various places of the internet exactl

While I partially sympathize and agree with your pessimism, you underestimate the impact of regular users disengaging from various places of the internet exactly because it gets more and more meaningless, watered down, and doesn't provide any value over super brief validation. And while that super brief validation is still a very strong hook for metric tons of people out there, people do start to disengage. The sense of novelty and wonder is wearing off for many. I'm seeing it among my acquaintances at least (and they are not the least bit technical and don't want to be). That the future of the internet looks very grim is unequivocally true though. But there's a lot that can and will be done still.