"Democracy's challenge isn't distinguishing real from synthetic, but building institutions capable of governing commercial platforms whose business model depends on polarisation."

In other words, there is the alternative viewpoint that "we" (whoever that is...) should be building alternative platforms instead of merely trying to patch the flaws of commercial platforms via regulation. Nor has the regulatory patchwork really delivered thus far. To these ends, there was a recent post also in the Loop about alternative citizen platforms gaining some success throughout the world, including in Europe.

A further speculative point is that in the midst of the today's gloom and doom rhetoric about AI slop and indeed the dead Internet conspiracy (?) theory, a brighter future might emerge on its own. That is to say, a question also remains about whether the current platforms will even survive the avalanche of slop, avatars, agents, and whatnot. It could even be that the so-called mainstream media (or quality media, including public broadcasters) will gain new prominence in case the platforms and much of the Internet in general will turn into an AI hellhole in which no real people want to spend time. Who knows, right?