Multiple US court cases have repeatedly affirmed the concept that money is speech because access to media costs, but if that’s true and explicitly part of how it works, then media will always be dominated by those with the most money to create media.

All media ends up being shitty and awful because it’s a business. It’s always a business. When the Internet got big, businesses showed up and took a framework for cheaply exchanging information across large distances and turned it into Cable 2.0, because cable is inherently more like what they want than a powerful framework that empowers citizens to speak their minds or whatever. You know what people would do if they were really empowered to create their own media, and more importantly, create it on their terms? Nothing that makes businesses happy. They want you strapped in to an emotional manipulation machine that exists to convince you to buy things. They only want you posting because it helps them figure out what to sell to you and how.

Social media is an outrage machine for the exact same reason cable news is filled with horrible and terrifying imagery – it hits your emotional buttons and keeps you coming back. Social media just makes the manipulation even easier and more fine-grained.