I agree, a bureaucracy banning books and reference material that ran counter to the approved narrative was quite disastrous. Hopefully we don’t repeat that mistake now that everyone is neatly siloed into digital echo chambers.

Personally, I think we did pretty well against the (specifically online) deluge of misinformation and fringe ideas for about a decade or so prior to ~2010. Unfortunately, the “problem” of internet free speech seems to have been solved and now we’re just waiting to see whether the censors or the reactionaries win and what type of fresh authoritarian hell awaits on the other side.