I agree in part Eric, but would add - I am not sure that our media nor government models have matured to the point where they were ready for the 'feedback' aspect of social media. The public was, but the media and foundations which craft our directional thought, were not. They took the medium as a new means of deploying 'grassroots influence' out to the masses. But sadly, in many subjects, it appears there was no real backing to the 'truth' they sought to impress - or the targeted masses either dissented or were better prepared on the data and inference than were the propaganda crafters themselves.
This is part of the reason why the robust set of data behind some subjects we discourse freely here, irritatingly will just not go away - as they thought they would attain through the teaching of 'skepticism'. In fact, social media only turned out to fan the flames. It truly angers these people, who overestimated their bootstrap strength. Michael Shermer, as it turns out - is not that smart, nor talented at countering the acumen of his critics. Twenty years ago, one would have never known this. He was the King with No Clothes, merrily publishing away in Scientific American - wholly clueless as to any kind of feedback, and the growing distaste on the part of the public (and science and engineering community for that matter) for he and his Cabal.
The Dunning-Kruger study's final key projection related that:
Prediction 4. The incompetent can gain insight about their shortcomings, but this comes (paradoxically) by making them more competent, thus providing them the metacognitive skills necessary to be able to realize that they have performed poorly.²
When they sought to undertake this final step - of 'educating' the public through social media - it backfired. It turned out that our social message crafters and science communicators did not have the grasp on key topics they had presumed; and they performed poorly. Google/Facebook/Twitter et. al. are scrambling furiously now to try and remedy this.
A gigantic irony in Dunning-Kruger.