My view is that it's not. Especially with the advent of video in social media, and with so many people joining we ve regressed to the mean and below. FB & IG are basically a 24 hour reality show or 24 hour home videos, not quality programming. The news are now made from self-reported tweets without cross-checks. and clickbait videos are gradually increasing the noise in youtube, a paid platform. the world's biggest forums (reddit+twitter) are severely narrowminded. Maintaining a nuanced community requires dedicated effort and expenditure (like HN does).

As always on the internet, after the initial panspermia came a period of severe winner-take-all consolidation into monoculture. I m not sure if it would be different in an alternate timeline where the ad money was going to media companies.