You probably shouldn't "murdoch aside" conservative media control. He's a huge huge huge part of it himself, in the entire english speaking world! Sure, profit

You probably shouldn't "murdoch aside" conservative media control. He's a huge huge huge part of it himself, in the entire english speaking world! Sure, profit chasing plays a part in it. A big reason why Youtube and Facebook push you down right-wing hate rabbitholes at the slightest hint that you might bite is simply that hate, oversimplification, and bullshit lies just drive engagement better than a 30 minute video essay on just how complicated this one tiny subsection of homelessness is and how much human labor and time it takes to work on it. Humans like easy answer. Humans "engage" more (in ad-company parlance) with hate and things that cause anger. In a free meme market, the most shallow, most hateful content will always rise to the top. But letting those incentives play out that way is a choice. Letting everything consolidate, an activity that is known to be detrimental to a free market, as long as they lower prices for a couple years before taking advantage of their monopoly is a very dumb choice. Reagan made plenty of dumb choices, but there were enough smart people in his cabinet to tell him exactly how this would play out. You don't live through the cold war and not know that owning the largest media narrative is power. And oh boy is it.