mistypedlambda

Neoclassical economics tells the story that algorithms drive differentiated news and other content because different users seek different content out, and the market obliges. This form of gentrification, like many other forms, is generally downstream of an equilibrium around different preferences, whether stated or just manifest. Given how many commerical forces shape the structure of the internet as a marketplace of ideas, I don't think this is the only thing going on, but I think it's ignored at one's peril.

> Platforms like reddit and 4chan still operate this [non-algorithmized/gentrified] way, but most social media platforms use existing IRL personal networks to link users and push content.

This passage in particular struck me as revealing. Reddit is a meta-community with a notorious echochamber problem while 4chan is a meta-community with a notorious troll/dirtbag problem. That the majority of internet users tend to avoid both isn't due to unfair competition over their eyeballs from Facebook et al. so much as an appetite for curation, content accountability/surveillance, content differentiation, community standards, and all the other forms of "online gentrification".

The same attitude that bemoans the existence of content differentation as a cause of problems rather than a response to existing conditions that are far harder to improve seems to drive the belief that the appetite for fake news will evaporate if fake news is made harder to find. I consider both rather wrong-headed.