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>people being informed of what is really happening in closed-off autocracies and dictatorships from the first-hand accounts

This extends to democratic systems as well. It seems as if a veil has been lifted on the workings of governments and corporations because information and reporting is no longer processed and packaged by a compact, semi-corrupt media system or fourth estate. No one is going to believe a Weapons of Mass Destruction lie anymore, few are buying into the Ukraine crisis etc, multiple government dissenting views on Covid have proven to be accurate despite censorship and banning. Time scales are shortened, information leakage is everywhere, distribution avenues are many orders of magnitude larger than they used to be, and people really do have a lot more time to look at and think about things. It seems like we are just now more aware of the crap that is happening at large corps/govs.

There is a fifth estate now – a formidable alternative to legacy media, of small and independent, more numerous and interesting, analysts and interpreters of the world and human affairs. This is enabled by more easily usable social media – it is twitter/YouTube/podcasts. This is special and new and I am thankful for it. Now, we have to diminish the negative addiction and consumption effects that these same systems can have.

I suspect these systems do not actually need that much money to operate and manage, and can eventually be treated as water/energy utility type businesses - regulated to fixed profits and with anti-addiction rules. This is no longer advanced technology.



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