[njarboe]

"Anyone can publish anything targeting anyone" happened in the past when the printing press was developed and paper got cheap enough that people could just print up pamphlets or newspapers and give them away on the streets. Around the 1880's. Yellow journalism. All sorts of different points of view getting spread. Communism, anarchism, etc. Then going father back at the very beginning of the printing revolution we had protestantism and religious wars that lasted a century (Hundred Years War, etc.) The internet is this but with even lower hurdles to publication and extremely wide and inexpensive distribution.

[compiler-guy]

The invention of the press certainly made broad publishing much more viable than it was previously, but the capital requirements to distribute a broadsheet to the entire world, even in 1990 were beyond the reach of pretty much everyone except a few very large corporations and governments. Hence the aphorism "Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one."

The capital requirements today are an internet connection, a phone, and about ten minutes of typing. For the vast majority of people today, the ability to publish to the world is beyond the wildest dreams of William Randolf Hearst.