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> Many technotopians thought the Internet would be the great liberator, toppling the gatekeepers and elites. Disintermediation! That certainly happened. > But
by CRConrad 5y ago
> Many technotopians thought the Internet would be the great liberator, toppling the gatekeepers and elites. Disintermediation! That certainly happened.
> But what happened was gatekeepers killed off the old guard, feasted on their corpses. The larger trend was a massive consolidation, an unprecedented power grab, and ridiculous transfer of wealth.
So, yes and no: Disintermediation happened, but the erstwhile disintermediators turned out to be / became the new gatekeeper elite.
(Also, to some extent, they were probably the exact same old gatekeeper elites who just adapted to a new role.)
- specialist 5y agoI'd love to learn more about the disintermediation thesis. Especially: Did it even happen? Or was it just merely the defunding of news institutions? The best notion I've come up with is reapplying Chomksy's five filters of mass media model to social media. My hunch is the Owners stole the Advertisers lunch money. But I'm no media critic (academic), so it's just a guess. It'd also be cool if someone "followed the money", as you suggest. It'd be pretty wild if the shareholders behind the Owners remained the same. Huh. Writing this out, it's now obvious that Flak stole almost all of Media Elite's power and money.