Yes, there's certainly less of a monoculture now that people have greater choice in what media they consume. Personally I have trouble seeing that as a bad thing. Greater diversity of taste, culture, and opinion makes for a richer, more interesting society in my opinion. Though I recognize it does have downsides.
I wonder if there's a way to keep the positive effects of such diversity but mitigate the drawbacks. Certainly echo chambers are undesirable.
There are other people in those bubbles, it's not an isolated void. HN is one such bubble. Yes it's a smaller bubble, there's not nearly as many people here as there were watching broadcast television back in the 1980s, but it would be wrong to say there is no culture here. Same goes for the millions of other small communities out on the web and social media. But as I said, it's certainly true there are downsides associated with that diversity.
> I wonder if there's a way to keep the positive effects of such diversity but mitigate the drawbacks
The answer society mostly settled on is representative democracy.
You appoint qualified candidates via consensus, and then give them the microphone and some measure of control as long as the consensus stays strong. This is sort of what we have now with influencer culture.
The flaw has always been human nature. It turns out that half of all people are of below average intelligence and they consequently make bad decisions. Especially if the smarter half use them as pawns to assume control, which is what US politics has become.
Once the Morlocks and the Eloi have settled into their roles the entire thing falls apart and democracy dies screaming.
> It turns out that half of all people are of below average intelligence and they consequently make bad decisions.
Worse than that; it turns out that even people of above average intelligence consistently make bad decisions! AND they still attempt to control others!
I wonder if there's a way to keep the positive effects of such diversity but mitigate the drawbacks. Certainly echo chambers are undesirable.