> Something like historical feudalism was troubling because people couldn't just walk away from it. A string of fiefdoms is actually a pretty decent organisatio

> Something like historical feudalism was troubling because people couldn't just walk away from it. A string of fiefdoms is actually a pretty decent organisational model as long as you don't have to inhabit ones that are hostile to your interests. The problem is, online discourse (especially about politics) has gotten extremely limited over the last decade in where it's taking place - it's either Twitter, Reddit or Facebook. Politics journalists are still primarily going off of what's trending on Twitter, and "generic" journalists copy off of Reddit, and boomers off of Facebook. The early days of the "modern Internet" era were more accessible - one had blogs, many of them selfhosted, web link rings, newsletters and whatnot - but spam and other rampant abuse (e.g. DDoS attacks, troll campaigns) made participating in discourse outside of the big "walled gardens" so incredibly tedious that barely anyone does that any more, and technologies/platforms like IRC or Usenet failed to keep up with technology progress or kneecapped themselves (remember Freenode?).