> I think ultimately we will (re) learn that constant naive appeals to the lowest common denominator, while a fast way to make a buck, might not be the best long-term strategy.

That's the best case. The worst case is we've broken our attention spans and ability to interact without heavily optimized feel-good hits and get to keep both pieces. At least in politics we seem to have gone quite far down that path and I don't yet see a way out of re-learning proper discussion methods. Bright ideas are definitely needed here.