Like the good old days when the media was basically complicit in support of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction?

It seems to me that the news has always kind of been mass bullshit. What has changed is we democratized the production of mass bullshit.

Now everyone can make their own version of "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!"

Not to mention, podcasts go deeper on subjects than any investigative journalist ever really could given the format.

> sucked the oxygen out of journalism.

They helped monopolize the industry. Willingly destroying the utility of RSS for end users is a prime example.

> Google/Twitter/Facebook need a constant stream of new links

Yet people can't understand that "AI" is just a tool to rip off copyright. For almost _precisely_ this reason here.

> we see societally stem back to people not paying for media

The problem is there is not infinite bandwidth for media. If a free option exists people will gravitate towards it. The real problem is that media sales people and media editors are allowed to be in the same room. We used to understand the value of a "firewall" in this context.

It has nothing to do with the people. It has everything to do with those holding the profit motive. They'll willingly destroy useful things in order to tilt the field in their direction. Social problems rarely have a distributed social cause.