The initial promise of the World Wide Web is hard to fathom. John Perry Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” offers perhaps the best encapsulation of the hope at the time. A “cyberlibertarian” and prolific activist for internet freedom, he said: “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere, may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced, into silence or conformity.” The architect himself, Tim Berners Lee, made similarly optimistic projections.

In 1996, Congress empowered internet platforms to give the unfiltered masses a voice by adopting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. User-generated content was not the responsibility of the intermediaries that hosted it. This incentivised inclusion and moderation. Platform holders had the freedom to undertake well-intentioned moderation without taking ownership of everything that slipped through.

In the late 1990s, the “blogosphere” emerged. It exemplified decentralised and distributed knowledge - bloggers created networks that kept institutions accountable. They challenged the elitist hierarchical monopoly on information.

Not until the 2010s did people experience first-hand the inevitable downsides of mass empowerment. The decade kicked off with such promise: the Arab Spring struck many as a miracle of the technology. Unfortunately, it was not all it promised to be.