The thing is, the internet was supposed to democratise, but it's ended up centralising (and therefore distorting) discourse

A good example is publishing: until relatively recently, books were how most knowledge was distributed, and publishers were able to gatekeep it

Back in the 1990s, one of the promises of the internet, was that it could break this stranglehold. The argument was that instead of 10-ish major publishers, we could have ten billion

What we've ended up with is 5 or so major platforms. Their algorithms now distort, not only the distribution of information, but the production of knowledge itself (click chasing)

An argument I'm sympathetic to, is that the internet hasn't just been a neutral medium, but has actually accelerated this centralisation

The other aspect is the shrinking role of non commercial institutions, like public sector broadcasters, universities, scientific orgs. These entities had their own biases and groupthink. But they added diversity to the media landscape and helped set useful norms