@coachtony This essay, at the Sunlight Foundation, talking about a famous quote, seems to capture the feeling of the web 2009:
https://sunlightfoundation.com/2009/05/26/brandeis-and-the-history-of-transparency/
One way to look at the Substack essay is that they are still back in that era, and haven't learned from the following 10 years.
Light shining on terrible ideas was not in fact enough to make them dissipate. Rather horribly, we learned that they can gather force.