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I hope that doesn't sound too pessimistic. I wouldn't say all is lost, especially since there are definitely positive developments, of which the Fediverse is just one example among many.

Overall, however, I fear that technology alone will not change society, since it is always embedded into society itselfs and therefore functions according to its inherent logic.

So in Western countries, I unfortunately have little hope for the "mainstream internet" with its ruthless platform economy, because real change for the better would either require meaningful antitrust regulations or has to be forced by the consumers themselves —both seems highly unlikely, as the past 20 years have clearly shown in my opinion: Today, there are even more and even more powerful global monopolies, while people just won't stop to buy their stuff at Amazon because it is usually a little cheaper and so convenient that hardly anyone is willing to even consider all the comparable offers that do exist.

The same seems to be true of the media: fewer, but even more powerful conglomerates with significantly greater reach than before and platforms that can pretty much do whatever they want without losing too many users (x obviously censoring many viewpoints and run by a open fascist, reddit killed it's API as if it wasn't important so on and so forth).

In short, I fear that unregulated turbo-capitalism has done to the internet what it always does once monopolies have formed: Enshitification.

And this "enshitification" of our most important media channels is now showing it's ugly face in all the negative impacts on most democracies worldwide. I mean democracy only works with free discourse, the willingness to compromise, and reasonably informed voters. Unfortunately all of this contradicts the logic of today's so-called social media—at least when it comes to the few major platforms with their own political agendas and their greed for profit.