If the social media moguls could've remained non-cunty and not polluted their products with their toxicity, they could've had a tool that could see the state of the world in almost real-time. That would've been a very powerful tool.
I suppose these sorts of conversations happen over chats now, which are E2EE (famous last words..).
Interestingly I guess China is able to observe the state of the Chinese community, via WeChat. Geez, even monetary transactions are tracked. Maybe the Chinese Clippy could ask "Hey Li, you're spending less on bubble tea, how are you feeling?".
Win-win, win-lose, lose-lose. It's game theory.
When locked into and committed cooperation (win-win) it's optimal to tell the truth. When locked into competition (win-lose) it's optimal to mix truth and lies.
American social media platforms consciously chose win-lose. They chose short term profits + deception over long term trust + cooperation with their users.
It didn't have to be this way, and it doesn't have to stay this way. Civilizations and those in power have biased to cooperation and win-win before and can do it again.
It may be naive to think that things will start trending to cooperation, win-win and truth telling now (seems to be trending the opposite), but a generation from now, maybe...
History if full of cycles.