[voidhorse]

While this is true, the stakes are higher which I think acts as a balancing mechanism.

The traditional entertainments always have a profit-motive. They cannot publish anything too insane as they worry it might unduly effect profits. So there’s at least some gatekeeping and some critical apparatus that is not quite peer review but that at least provides some critical filter and dampening mechanism, even the most morally deplorable entertainers often tried to keep the unsavory aspects of their lives off the stage because they understood the potential dangers of alienating audiences once the truth of their morales came to the surface.

The internet has a far different structure and the motives for creators differ. A profit motive still exists, but other factors are more prevalent. In fact, I’d argue that the internet has allowed views previously considered more fringe to make their way into the more rigid systems of traditional television etc. since the success of radical views on the internet has convinced the traditional media that such radical views are not in fact a harm to profit motive but may actually increase profits (you can see this most clearly in the increasing radicalism of the views expressed by political television pundits, who by the way, often go so far as to reference views espoused online)