I will die of thirst though if every source of water has a megacorp in the supply chain that can cut me off from it.
Imagine a world where your tap water is ultimately sourced from Dasani. And imagine Dasani can cut off my water if I say bad things they don't like. That is the world we live in: s/tap water/information/g, s/Dasani/tech megacorps/g
To reach a significant audience on the internet, you must go through a tech megacorp at some layer in the stack. And that tech megacorp can decide to cut you off from the internet at their layer in the stack if they don't like what you are saying or if Twitter mobs put pressure on them to do so.
No it isn't. Again, you can rent a VPS for under $10 in almost any country in the world.
> To reach a significant audience on the internet
This is not necessarily true, but it isn't really the point. You can put stuff up and people can access it.
You are not entitled to maximum easy discovery. You are not entitled to be advertised and promoted to a significant audience. The internet is a pull medium not push. If people want to hear what you have to say they can.
"I said some garbage on Rush Limbaugh's show, so he hung up on me"
"So then I put it on Facebook, but Facebook censored it"
"So then I put it on Youtube, but Google censored it"
"So then I self hosted, but then Cloudflare censored it"
"So then I hosted it out of my own house, but then Comcast blocked it"
"Oh well, I'm not in jail so that means I still have free speech I guess"
I would say the above are signs of a decaying democracy.