Yup. It definitely feels like over time the human element of the Internet has been replaced by a corporate one. The most blatant example I can think of is youtube. Nowadays it's so obvious rigged in the favour of already established media and a select few content creators.
Simple, capitalism found a new promised land. The next space to fill up. And manifest destiny within.
Unfortunately but fortunately as well, it's an infinite space.
Early money has built large infrastructure within it. It's been built over time and now is so massive it's hard to comprehend in the real world. It's nearly impossible to compete with them other than them tearing themselves down, but the space is still nearly infinitely large and competitors can still rise in the fringe and who knows after decades maybe rise to the same kinda massive company
So now we must limit the infinite. Cull all of it to the finite they can control. The virtual world is real, the metaverse is already upon us, and unfortunately it's already starting to look like the late capitalism asphalt shopping plazas.
So it's worse cause it's built for the investors and being limited for them too. It's why people beg for the next BIG thing, so that they can find new land or new ways to control this 4th space.
Take me back to the days of FFVII's Aerith Theme midi playing in the background of someone's Geocities site dedicated to Chrono Trigger. The non-consumer driven Web...
Funny, but this isn't the best example. The Atlantic has been a subscription magazine for coming on 200 years now. It's also one of the few places you can get non click bait articles without ads.
The FTC’s lawsuit against Amazon is actually insane. It’s like they have a cheat code for printing money. Google is definitely just as bad, worse even as they control much of the internet, right down to the architecture.