> social media brought down the attention span to zero

> people just no longer critically process information, and move on to the next thing

Sadly I don't even think this is true. I think "people" in general have always been like this, and social media hasn't really changed that. You mentioned the barrier to entry dropping to zero. I think most of these issues are almost solely a result of that. The intellectual bias that used to be present in "the discourse" has been erased. The politicians/CEOs no longer have doubts, there's no reason to hedge. They know exactly how easy it is to manipulate the populace.