One downside to lowering the barrier of entry in all of these areas is the lack of any kind of quality control or content curation. Sure, anyone can publish their thoughts online for free, which I agree is a good thing for openness and freedom, but not everyone is equally qualified or competent. It becomes increasingly difficult to sift through the mountains of sub-standard garbage to find things worth consuming (NB I dislike the word “consuming” in this context, but I don’t know of a better catch-all term).

Now sure, the old gatekeepers weren’t perfect at this either and they published a lot of garbage too. But I think this is something that needs to be discussed as content creation becomes increasingly democratized.