Word for the day - Monopsony and why it's what's wrong with the internet.
A monopsony is a market structure in which there is only one buyer and many sellers of a good or service. If there is only one customer for a certain good, that customer has monopsony power in the market for that good or service. Monopsony is analogous to monopoly, but monopsony has market power on the demand side rather than on the supply side.
The big tech internet companies are effectively both monopolies and monopsonies. The internet is a new frontier still in its infancy and the culture is adapting to this new space. In many ways the internet is medieval feudal Europe were you the average internet user are the serfs and the big tech firms are the Lords and Ladies of the realm they control everything and if want to do anything on their land you must bend the knee and kiss the ring. Want to post a video that will have any chance of getting more than a few hundred eyeballs then you better hope YouTube approves of your views, want to say something better hope Twitter doesn't shadow ban you, want to share something with your friends better hope Facebooks algorithm doesn't scrub you from their feed.
Like it or not anytime you interact or post on these platforms you are a content creator, an unpaid content creator that generates ad revenue for the platform, you are also a customer that uses their "service" this gives the Silicon Valley oligarchs a unique and new never before seen power over the market. They control all the unseen behind the scenes businesses, hosting services, financial facilitators and others that make the internet function and they use this control to pull the strings in their favor in the marketplace. They are the undisputed sovereigns of this new kingdom and this explains the full court press smear jobs and deplatforming of any organization that threatens their hold on that control. Many start ups arise but never seem to gain much of a foothold and that is intentional. Infowars and Gab are the most prominent victims of this industry collusion both being attacked, smeared, and deplatformed.
Blockchain solutions are a way around this control because they are distributed having no single point of attack and can not be censored. Platforms like Steem.com and D-tube provide a space outside the control of Silicon Valley and they actually pay you for your interaction in cryptcurrency. They are still a bit clunky and don't have the same numbers as the big tech firms but they are growing and could be the future of an independent internet so go check them out.