You say that the 90s were a time of "ignorance of the masses", but in the 90s, no extremist right wing movement or anti-vacc movement or militia was capable of doing more than distributing xeroxed newsletters. The Facebook age is the supremacy of the "ignorance of the masses", perfected into the most powerful advertising platform of all time, to support corrupt power structures by literally demolishing the average user's sense of reality.

Can the internet still be a tool for empowerment...yea, but that window has been closing for the past decade, and in many countries like China and Russia is now completely shut.