Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Who Will Control Access to Internet News?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Who Will Control Access to Internet News?

Click here to access article by Russ Baker from his blog WhoWhatWhy.

Google has entered the fray to do battle with Facebook and others as the place where online content lives.

If these efforts are successful, people will increasingly stop visiting websites as we know them. They will get all their news from Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, and a few other large providers. We will see the gradual diminution of brands until online journalism is purely about which story grabs us.

It was inevitable that our masters in the ruling capitalist class would make efforts to control what information we receive over the web just as they have done with other media. I see this especially true of the hand-held electronic devices, but I think that their efforts to control what we access on the web via computers is much more limited. We just need to be informed, alert, and exercise more judgement about the nature of the web. Baker's information is helpful in this effort.