technology

During the Bush years, the US government had finally gotten a proper handle on controlling broadcast news and the new 24 hour news cycle started bombarding people with propaganda. Meanwhile, the internet was a niche thing that mostly only hobbyists and teens understood, which allowed people both uncontrolled access to information, and also a better way to access information than libraries. Anybody who knew how to Google - which was uncommon and new - could answer as much as the most dedicated trivia nerd. Normies were completely unaware of the internet, but the internet people won. Companies made by internet people took over the world, and governments had to scramble to get control over them again.

Now governments have figured out how to control social media, and are using that to bombard people with propaganda all day. Meanwhile, the internet is slowly losing value as an information source, because it's flooded with bots spewing nonsense. Some people - probably teens and hobbyists again - will learn how to navigate the botless, propagandaless portions of the internet, so they still can have better access to information than everybody else. Instead of a moment where information access increased and those who followed it come out ahead, we'll have one where information access decreases, and those who avoid it come out ahead. But the results will still be the same - normies will be completely unaware, and the people who figured out how to avoid reading AI slop will win. Hopefully they won't just use that to make profitable companies and get recouped by the government again.