Certainly the problem of attaining a certain viewpoint is just how well informed one is of the relevant events, issues and facts.

Primarily the nature of interaction within the internet changed after US decreed new laws around 2008, after an inquiry involving Facebook's lack of proper moderation and claims of bullying - the outcome was essentially no anonymous person was allowed to participate in a war of words any more. Pretty much all the global forum software had to follow ... if not the forum software, modified TOS within hosting sites.

XKCD's Duty calls [1] summed up a lot of real interaction found in newsgroups and mailing lists from the late 90's and into the early 00's ... and since then the few various large diverse forums where the users could not self moderate additional content.

Not being that anonymous, small trivial matters may well play out without real world repercussions, but the more important matters, especially involving collusion and outright BS for political mileage, there's always some tool that feels its their job, not to settle the argument with facts, but metaphorically with guns blazing for the thorn in real life. If one has ever landed in hot water through not being that careful, and changed course to be extra careful, they've realised the slow erosion of truly anonymous web proxies that set in around 2009, something most unwelcome. It didn't surprise me in the least in the 10's, slowly seeing all sorts of BS slowly gain traction ... and unfortunately the rise of the anti science cult.

It is unlikely to ever go back unless a totally new social interaction comes to be and far removed from the existing internet or communication laws.

As for search engines, like most things that succeed, let them get popular and then start asking for money ... and then more money ...

[1] https://xkcd.com/386/

Edit for typo and clarity