Yes, there was sadly a mismatch between the morality they thought existed vs what actually existed :(. Also, probably vastly underestimated global apathy.
We got extremely, extremely lucky that society is as resilient as it's proven to be against fake news. I don't think very many people predicted that it simply wouldn't matter when photorealistic compromising images of whoever you don't like became available for $5.
> I don't think very many people predicted that it simply wouldn't matter when photorealistic compromising images of whoever you don't like
This goes hand-in-hand with the widespread death of belief in absolute truth in the US and other western nations.
If this technology were released during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, I'd wager it would have had the impact most of us expected it to have, at least for a little while.