PewDiePie's Battle for the Soul of the Internet

The "soul" of the internet was freedom. Using algorithms to exploit socially derisive and derivative tropes for profit isn't freedom. Manufactured consent isn't freedom. If this is what we're defending now, then the battle was lost long ago. Welcome to the war against facts and reality itself while the defenders of it are the new enemy.

Worth a read. Liked this quote:

> Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya once recalled his work with Facebook this way: “We trumpeted [our platform] like it was some hot-shit big deal. And I remember when we raised money from Bill Gates…And Gates said something along the lines of, ‘That’s a crock of shit. This isn’t a ‘platform.’ A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.’” The brilliant Microsoft founder knew that his own Windows operating system was a true platform because, as Microsoft openly bragged, the company itself captured only a minority of the value created through the Windows ecosystem. Facebook, YouTube and Google are in a completely different category—because the vast majority of the wealth they generate is controlled by the social-media oligopolies themselves. They aren’t platforms so much as rent-seeking agents that oversee a set of critical economic protocols.