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Comment by Solvitieg | Hacker News Reader

Even if you opt-out from Twitter, etc.

Your political leaders and journalists are tuned in.

Thus your life is still affected.

that's precisely why I think journalists and the public sector ought to put their money where their mouth is. Open web standards can be adopted today with the effect of turning any of these groups into their own Twitter. That particular genie is impossible to push back into its own bottle. They had better catch up or get left behind.

The audience will follow. Trust me, I know audiences move around. They've moved around so many times in recent history and since the conception of the Internet.

Never going to happen. Journalists and politicians couldn't care less about open web standards. They care about where the audience is.

Many pols actually prefer single points of, ah, influence, so they're going to fight you.

Even if you stop subscribing to

   (National Review|Atlantic|NYT|Reason|New Yorker|...)

your political leaders and journalists are tuned in.

Thus your life is still affected. Ergo, we should .... ???

We should make sure that the media landscape contains a wide range of political thought, including ideas that you or I might individually find wrong-headed and offensive. That's how we ended up with the Fairness Doctrine from the 50s to the 80s, when broadcast media was monopolized to a comparable degree as social media today.

Sure. But that presumably does not mean requiring that The National Review carries articles providing a strong case for "cultural Marxism" or that Marxism Today carries articles supporting neoliberal trade policies. In fact, it presumably doesn't mean requiring that any particular medium or outlet carries anything in particular at all.

As you note, there's even less of a monopoly today than there was 50-60 years ago. So why should Twitter (or Facebook or any other similar medium) require any special attention?

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