| A much more accurate description of what's actually happened is that all the profits of the news media industry were captured by an oligarchy that was able to successfully (and illegally) take over and dominate the market for digital advertising. There's quite a bit of money in online media and quite a bit of demand for it, including the type of reported media described here. Not all of it, and not every model works in the internet era, but enough to matter and make the story look very different than it does today absent actual illegal conduct. Due to anti-competitive behavior, various forms of advertising fraud, and obvious violations of various antitrust laws, basically all the money was siphoned off to make people at Google and Facebook rich. Worth noting that the point of view I'm outlining here is not some old man screaming conspiracy theories, it's the official point of view of the United State Department of Justice: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl... Decent explainer: https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/google-is-stealing-from-... As a general life heuristic, every time you see someone saying "well yeah that's just like the natural way the market works nothingcouldabeendoneaboutit" you should be highly, highly suspicious. |