Trust is an important word there. In general I think people tend to overestimate the ability of any given entity, let alone individual, to unilaterally influence society. When "revolutionary" action is taken it often tends to be a result of little more than already preexisting sentiment finally reaching a climax. This [1] is a poll of public trust in government, which is a proxy for much of this. The "Trump years" literally don't even cause a notable shift in the trend.
The point I make here is that the issues are more fundamental than e.g. China or Trump or whatever else. We're like flagellants of the ancient times looking to the Heavens for the cause of the plague, while the answer lay somewhat more mundanely on the rats scurrying about their feet. So what IS causing the massive declines in trust? It's no more complex than those fleas, it's the government behaving in an untrustworthy way. The decline started shortly after everything around the assassination of JFK ended up being shrouded in secrecy and lies, which was just the start of a never-ending series of deceitful-looking, if not plainly deceitful, actions.
And now? The en vogue "solution is supposed to be censorship, even more authoritarian levels of social control, and a borderline obsession with making sure people can only access the "right" message, which is little more than a euphemism for propaganda kept at arm's length. Do you genuinely think these sort of things will help improve trust? Look to the countless countries which were able to execute such mechanisms in times of far less externa influence, like the USSR. The government had complete control not only over absolutely all messaging, but even if who could enter or leave the country. And resulted not only in extreme distrust, but a system that predictably collapsed [long] before even reaching its centennial.
Quite simply, if the government wants to regain trust, the best way to do that is to start acting in a transparent and trustworthy fashion. Yet we're going in the exact opposite direction, hard.
This is a very good post, but I think it misses part of the point. You talk exclusively about the erosion of trust between the people and the government. And I agree with your point. But I think the real distinction (and current issue regarding social media) isn’t erosion between the populace and the government, but between the populace and itself. The “othering” and divisive nature of social media, which erodes the “united” in United States.
This bill is only about the external, and a general framework for the establishment of a national firewall. If the government wants to ban all social media, more power to them. It would never pass the 1st amendment, but if it could I'd even support it! But that's tangential, as this bill isn't that.
As for what's causing divides, the one thing I'd observe is that if it were the internet then we'd expect to see divides of a similar magnitude throughout the world, and that is not the case. Some Western democracies, such as Norway, are even becoming less divided. They have no censorship whatsoever besides a handful of file-sharing sites being blocked, and universal access to the internet. Beyond this there are so many possible, and completely viable, explanations for the divisions in America that I think it turns into a Rorschach test. It's like trying to explain the fall of Rome.
You're right; the bill is aimed at adversarial threats to national security. Social media isn't the end, just the means in this case.
>we'd expect to see divides of a similar magnitude throughout the world, and that is not the case.
I'm not sure if this premise holds. For one, I think it's missing the nuance about the size and heterogeneity of the U.S. Take, for example, the thesis that the country is more accurately comprised of multiple different dominant sub-cultures.[1] I think when you expand the other Western democracies similarly, we see analagous divisions (see: Brexit).
