In the grand parent post, we talked about "YT and FB could fix these social issues overnight, if they wanted to: turn off autoplay, turn off recommendations, restore chronological timelines, and dial down the ads.". It is quite different from the great evils of history.
And sure, we should work on reproducing social sciences. it's a big problem.
But i would guess that if you'd describe something like the internet that is today in very general terms(possible to predict once you know that attention/engagement is the lead driver) to psychologists, a decade ago, they would have told you that it may hold some serious potential problems.
Does it mean we need to stop progress ? maybe not, but slowing "progress" in the name of caution may not be a bad trade-off. and once we see the dangers, rolling it back(even against the addicted population's wishes) may also be a decent option.
So mild totalitarianism is be okay?
No, there is no acceptable "middle ground" in which a bunch of Twitter gets in the way of consenting business and consumers and tells people how to run their lives.
The idea of a republic is not that different. Acoording to its tenets, the masses are still not to be trusted to make the decisions because they dont know whats good for them. Instead, they are supposed to choose a small fraction of people who not only are supposed to know whats good for them but would also make decisions that is good for them.
It is not a whole lot less patronizing than 'masses don't know what's good for them'
And "knowledge"? What knowledge? The social sciences largely do not reproduce. For the past few decades, the social sciences have been a mystic cult with political aspirations. We knew more in 1990 than we "know" now.