I don't share your concern. I do see growing pains ahead but, personally, I feel like the death of free and open societies comes from centralized points of control that can be captured by power seeking actors.

What we are seeing with the confluence of generative AI and the connectivity of the internet is the _diffusion_ of control.

Memetics, and propaganda, are being diffused from the previous generation of "nation state" actors and media companies to message boards and feeds.

In 2024, a kid with a few hundred dollars of hardware and an internet connection can out-meme the CIA from their parents' basement.

Counter-intuitively, I believe this will be a net positive for a free society.

The younger generations in my friend groups are already cultivating their own "networks of trust" for getting reliable information about the topics they care about. The internet they've inherited has far too high of a noise to signal ratio for them to not. Instead of news outlets (like the NYT, NPR, Fox, MSNBC, etc.), they talk about individual journalists (i.e. podcasters, X accounts, YouTube channels, etc.).

There are going to be growing pains but, net-net, I think this will be good for cultivating a generation of independent thinkers.

Note: I do have deep concerns about the centralization of moderation decisions and content recommendation algorithms in modern SaaS products.