I don't think it's you.

Over its course the Internet and Web took over just about all communications, including culturally anchoring things like TV, radio, and newspapers. The takeover accelerated with the rise of broadband, Facebook and smartphones, and is nearly complete. The whole world's here.

This means people who want to advertise, influence, or control large numbers of people also followed.

On my Instagram, sometimes I'll see local news, and the fake accounts are very obvious, they all post practically the same thing and all of their profiles follow similar patterns. Maybe this will go away when everything becomes ID-gated.

The optimism of 2005 was pre-smartphone, pre-social-media, and well before everyone's grandparents were constantly regurgitating political posts on Facebook.

> Do people even want better communities

Most people do not want to put in the work to make them, but they'll certainly join and passively let people run themselves into the ground entertaining them for free. It doesn't make sense to do all the work for lazy people unless you're just wanting to broadcast to the largest audience possible.