At least with the press, historically, the editor was a human being (generally with a known set of allegiances), rather than an algorithm; and people had to pay

At least with the press, historically, the editor was a human being (generally with a known set of allegiances), rather than an algorithm; and people had to pay for their news, which kept the publisher accountable. If people had multiple (interoperable) Facebooks to choose from, and had to pay for them based on how often they visited the site, I imagine the news / social media landscape would look a lot different.