Yes, journals are harmful to freedom of knowladge which might seem ignorant especially to people coming from academia and mainstream who doesn't know better and can't imagine anything else besided wallen gardens they grew up with.
Arxiv is dominated by CS [1] and nothing really changed over the years [2]. Saying about pushing the boundaries of scientific methods it was another rock into journals and the status quo on how it's done like p-hacking and other data manipulations. Being in open with community notes would would have a difference.
Empirical research can exist without journals, science can be for masses and journals are antithetical for sharing making the knowledge exclusive.
[1] https://info.arxiv.org/about/reports/submission_category_by_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv?useskin=vector#/media/Fi...