> rich enough to buy the newspaper

That's not how it worked. The moment Gutenberg invented the printing press, printers popped up everywhere and printed anything and everything. That means newspapers, newsletters, pamphlets, flyers, advertisements, bills, leaflets, everything.

It was cheap to print, not remotely restricted to the rich, and you certainly did not need to buy a newspaper. Schools print newspapers, businesses do, too.

A lot of it was political, too. For a famous example, see "Common Sense".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense

newspapers have reach, which is in the context we're talking about when making comparisons to twitter.

sure, you could cheaply print stuff, but you had to (pay people to) stand on a lot of street corners to get your message out there.

Thomas Paine made money off of Common Sense.

Really this is central to how the USA started, as there were several among the founding fathers who printed newsletters.

Yes, we should have never given those poors access to say whatever is on their minds, right? At least not in front of other people...

It'll be the end of civilization.

Everyone should agree with the rich and powerful.

Isn't that basically what the Allegory of the cave is advocating for?

If you are uneducated (and almost certainly poor), you do not see reality for how it is, but instead you see shadows against the wall. Only through the process of a dialectical education can you begin to see reality for how it is. As a result, only the educated enlightened individuals should become kings or the guardians of a state.

Any system which agrees with this allegory (and most of Western Philosophy implicity agrees with it) also results in the notion that poor people should not be enfranchised at the same level as wealthier people because they cannot be trusted to govern.

If you reject this allegory, than the fundamental justification for hierarchy (some are more fit to rule than others) and correspondingly the state is shattered

> Isn't that basically what the Allegory of the cave is advocating for?

My interpretation of the allegory is that it suggests that everyone "should" employ epistemic humility.

I think it would be more sensible to fix the education system than to appoint uneducated people to government positions just to increase the representation of poorer people.

I don't know how you follow this to any conclusion that doesn't advocate for locking down the entire internet.

That genie is out of the bottle.

It's more about education and a skeptical but not paranoid and nihilistic mind, than about "rich and powerful". You should be "this tall to ride". In this case, "this tall to broadcast your thoughts to millions of people".