if the internet is supposed to be a truly public platform, that is to say a space where different opinions can collide productively then the internet at the moment is clearly losing.

It's not that the trolls occupy the corners, it's that they occupy the big, visible public spaces of the internet, while everybody else is driven into digital sanctuaries. That clearly is a failure if the stated goal is to genuinely democratise knowledge and discourse.

I'd even go further than the author and say that we're way past a 'potemkin internet with a nice facade'. The facade is pretty darn ugly as well. The kind of stuff people are willing to post under their actual name is pretty scary.

What if the so-called trolls are actually just the majority of people?

big, visible spaces of the internet - you mean the media?

sure, those are affected to. The comment sections originally intended for discussion on most big media sites are toxic even with moderation or have become so bad that some news sites have ended the experiment altogether.

That's a pretty sad result given that the whole idea was to break down the barrier between journalists and readers.

Not only the comments, the actual articles are full of trolling, too.

For something like /r/the_donald, you're right. But for something more general, like general Twitter, you're not.