But Internet has also centralized a lot after the 90s from the infrastructure side. With a modem it was a no-brainer to expose a service on the open internet, n

But Internet has also centralized a lot after the 90s from the infrastructure side. With a modem it was a no-brainer to expose a service on the open internet, now with DSL Routers being standard it's a bit more difficult - of course this has good reasons also. So people would just try out various server software and run it, today only few people would do that. Even among the tech-savvy population, most would resort to SaaS. Especially P2P software had a hard time, nowadays popular P2P networks seem to be just there to do stuff that would be too risky otherwise instead of actually democratizing information. I mean in the 90s it was normal that people would build a homepage with content they like, now it has to have cutting edge design and be super entertaining for the visitor. So what happens is, only professional Content creators create content like before the internet. (I wouldn't count Twitter messages as content, that's barely enough space to voice a differentiated opinion...) With the local news that's of course a thing, on the other hand my parents and other people of that generation used to usually read a local newspaper and a nation-wide magazine or newspaper. I don't think the group of people actively engaging in local politics has ever been really large. Not sure whether to count sharing political "artifacts" on Facebook should be considered actively participating in politics. It's just clicking one button.