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> Whatever awful things I can say about Facebook or Twitter, I have to concede some degree of gratitude to them for eviscerating the mainstream media.

Except Facebook is entirely driven by engagement with absolutely zero value placed on truth, it drives all posts towards a supermarket check-out lane tabloid sensibility. I'm not sure how that can be considered an improvement on any axis.

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Because then there's one big enemy we can gang up on instead of a million little ones that scatter like roaches.

I don't know, it might make the single target bigger. But monopolisation almost always hurts the consumer. At least where there were a million little crappy news sources, there were a few good ones.

Is that such a bad thing?

Is it better to have a few "authoritative" sources everyone believes that exhort us all to do something stupid, like Vietnam or Iraq, and we trust them, and we do it with minimal-to-no hesitation? Or, is it better to have a million little squabbling social-media echo chambers and gridlock?

So far, I think I prefer the latter.

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