I think this 8000+ word article's length is indicative of the "real" answer: it's complicated.

I read the whole thing. Lots of great personalities and examples spanning from AltaVista to Large Language models and everything in between.

I think the quote that resonated with me the most, to summarize this article's main thesis in a sound bite, was this:

You can’t just be the most powerful observer in the world for two decades and not deeply warp what you are looking at

In essence, it's the fault of having a dominant algorithm dictating what the Internet "is". Google is the tool most people use for most of their information seeking. Thus, getting a high ranking from Google is the difference between success and failure.

imho, the only real solution is decentralization. Federated services, local newspapers, new search engines, idk.

And yet, Google is still my default search engine. So I'm part of the problem.