The central problem is being missed by everyone.

In Ender’s Game, written in 1985 — before the Arpanet was opened to the public as the Internet — Orson Scott Card envisioned social networks as rings of debate, in which one could be invited to a more trusted ring based on the fortitude of one’s ideas. These rings were not controlled by individuals, government agencies, or companies, but were essentially rings of moderation — perhaps not unlike how Wikipedia moderates articles.

In today’s Internet, anyone can post any junk, and have a whole flock of morons follow them and create their own little community of nonsense or hate. There needs to be a moderation system of some kind — not controlled by the government, but controlled by thoughtful people — perhaps professors nominated by universities, with diversity of viewpoints being one of the criteria.

There is no system of quality control in the Internet. That has made it a ghetto, and a place where nothing can be trusted. It is egalitarian, which sounds great, but the reality is that it has come to be dominated by the lowest common denominator of humankind’s ideas. It is not working.