The local news crisis is deepening America's divides
Not very relevant to the topic but maybe not all is lost for the print media.<p>I have switched away from online news to the print ones in the last few months because:<p>- this way i can avoid popups, jumping pieces of content intentionally distracting me so i pay attention to ads<p>- ads are not as stupid there (i don&#x27;t live in the U.S. and i see US-centric ads which are totally, completely out of relevance to my demographic - from &quot;senior living homes&quot; to private jet flights - with every kind of crazy shit in between but nothing i ever buy or can think of buying)<p>- content itself is a lot better edited, not clickbait-y (because you can&#x27;t fucking click on paper!) and overall seems to be written by actually literate people, not some peasants that seem to write online news pieces recently<p>All in all, it dawns at me that at least for now, the Internet has been a failure. It failed to deliver any positive life changes we&#x27;ve been promised 25 years ago, and brought about many negative ones. There are only two online resources relevant to me that seem to make any positive value: Tinder and Upwork. Even of them, Upwork seems to be a detriment to developed nations (including U.S. that created it), serving mostly as a vehicle of scams for fraudsters from the poor ones.<p>Buying tickets online? It killed the airline industry. I can&#x27;t fly comfortably anymore unless i get that private jet, which i can&#x27;t afford. This is directly because of Internet facilitating price comparison, and people &quot;optimising&quot; airlines by price alone down to the drain.<p>Trading stocks online? Only brought about day traders - one more form of gambling. I&#x27;d be more than happy to go to the bank and buy a paper mutual fund certificate, and lock it up in my safe.<p>News online brought &quot;targeting&quot; and &quot;optimisation&quot; through search bubbles and as a result, a society destroyed by political divisions.<p>Taxis online? Only a benefit in poor countries or in terribly terribly overregulated ones in rich countries (think NYC). They killed livelihoods of millions of people and killed quality of service elsewhere.<p>The list goes on. Internet seems to be more than just a failure - it is a pure evil. It confronted us with ourselves (as opposed to some polished, educated, even if overly rigid, central authority that served as an interface before), and we turned out to be monsters we had no idea we were.<p>And because this thing has no way out of it, i am terrified at the realisation that only thing that can save us may be some form of communism, where the State will simply ban or mandate so many things it will not be a market economy anymore.<p>Including, most probably, a ban on free speech. I can&#x27;t see a way for free speech to work in a world of search bubbles and online anonymity. Craziest conspiracy theories will inevitably replace reality for a vast majority of people - who vote - this way.<p>And democracy without free speech is a joke.