[nonrandomstring]

Could be. That conversation was a decade ago when people trusted information online. As you say the most popular means of getting information are defective.

On the problem of critical information existing inside the dishonest systems and companies who have an interest in distortion I previously wrote:

  "With opportunities to fix our digital world from /within/ the system
  vanishing, book publishing remains a bastion of open intelligence.
  What you hold in your hands (or have as a non-DRM file) may soon be
  one of the few remaining means to circulate critical opinions that
  would quickly be censored online."

That's why I still write books intended to be printed and read as real-world paper objects. I don't think it's paranoid or over-stating things to say there's more to the "disappearance" of blogs than SEO and the old being buried by the new. There are understandable reasons why Google, Facebook and other surveillance rackets - giant social engineering scams at enormous scale - want to suppress authentic speech. Burying it in a tide of noise may be tactical, not some unfortunate side effect.