Before the internet there were competing regulatory and commercial and cultural forces keeping The News the news.

Decentralized uncontrolled flow can also be seen as free rein for select power players who can manipulate the system. It changes, but not necessarily positively, how media power consolidates. And without scrutiny or national corrective pressure, that consolidation of power creates a very different perceived media system than is experienced.

The combined Senate report on the 2016 election interference from Russia — anti-both sides, lying to both sides and claiming it was the other — should have triggered a strict and meaningful reaction. Now we are in a spot where our kids are being mainlined Al Jazeera and Russian Times propaganda filtered only through uninformed useful idiots in short form video while they do their makeup or emulate Joe Rogans podcast. It’s pay for play media, with no scrutiny, bothers make it easy to heat, juice, or manipulate chosen content, hosts, and themes.

Power consolidation at the local/national level prevented it at the global level. At the global level those power structures move around axes we can no longer even name in polite company, and have fully corrupted the political discourse.