In a world where some people have a reach millions or even hundreds of millions larger than others, the analogy may be much more apt than you give it credit for

In a world where some people have a reach millions or even hundreds of millions larger than others, the analogy may be much more apt than you give it credit for. What I find so myopic is the insistence that the 2016 election was somehow a milestone in this. The precedent was already there, and the playbook already written. But it was mainly used by the dominant left wing cultural elite to enforce their favored view, so it was seen as justified. It was only when the counter culture on the right started making use of it that the moral panic took off. Before Milo there was Shanley, combining reasonable sounding intersectional medium pieces with an ascerbic Twitter persona to create a one-woman motte and bailey. Who directed witch hunts to industry figures and got rewarded with paying subscribers for it. Before Trump there was DongleGate and ElevatorGate, showing the power of a narcissist who rewrites history to be the underdog, and whose audience doesn't listen to opposing views and experiences. Before Cambridge Analytica, there was the Obama campaign, hoovering up all the same data, except with Facebook's full knowledge and approval, and the progressive media's admiration and blessing for leaving those Stone age Republicans in the dust. In many ways, the big tech companies are just the scapegoat. Nobody was forced to move into Facebook, they did so voluntarily. Nobody was forced to push out buzzfeed level content, they just stared themselves blind on pageviews while losing their core audience. Nobody was forced to abandon critical thinking, they just succumbed to wishful thinking and tribalism.