>It's a free for all with very thin walls between social spaces, almost no human oversight, and run by the most despicable and immoral people on God's green earth. So I am inclined to agree with the people who say that kind of social media is a bad influence and should be curtailed.

It was the same in the past. The difference is that the house odds were different. You didn't have algorithms cramming the worst of the worst down your feed, forums, IRC, message boards and the like weren't built with the goal of maximizing engagement. Heck, even vote based communities which inevitably turn into low common denominator groupthink producing cesspits are mild compared to modern stuff.