My impression (albeit, based partly upon my poor understanding of the world as a child) is that there used to be more general US clarity about the goodness/badness of propaganda, censorship, the press, etc.

I've heard that part of that clarity was because Cold War holding the US in contrast to the Soviets was itself a bit of perception management or PR. I could speculate on other factors, but I'm sure some historians and social scientists understand it vastly better.

Anecdotally, I do remember a time when, say, TV news programs would at least set some good examples of reasoning, not lower themselves closer to the transparently bad Fox News or talk radio behavior, which seemed to be to be even more ridiculous than what we'd been told the Soviets did. (Of course, the US has a history of abuse by those who control presses, but the institution still seemed to have merit.)

And I don't recall hearing of anything, even a decade ago, like apparently large numbers of people acting against their own other interests, solely for the adversarial sports team fan idea of "owning the libs". And also some inexplicably self-defeating behavior from elements of "the other side" (though I don't think that notion of "sides" is accurate or complete.)

I've been wondering whether the US populace used to be better at critical thinking. It's felt that way, but maybe the examples I'm aware of aren't representative.

Where we are now, talking about dotcoms being asked to gatekeep speech, I have only an ordinary citizens' understanding of many of policy issues, but I do have an experienced technologist's understanding that some of these dotcoms haven't been pinnacles of trustworthiness, integrity, etc. And the civic-minded American me wouldn't trust any of those dotcoms very far at all, with something that seems so fundamentally important to what I've grown up believing are bedrock principles of the US.