A big (biggest?) reason is that popularity is largely independent of quality. Things get popular for lots of reasons heavily affected by the shape of social networks and early choices by a small number of people involved—often based on what they have and have not heard of more than an analysis of what is better or worse. Quality plays a small role at best.<p>This Nautil.us article[1] does a good job of summarizing the relevant research on the issue and references some supporting studies.<p>&gt; <i>My own research has shown that fame has much less to do with intrinsic quality than we believe it does, and much more to do with the characteristics of the people among whom fame spreads.</i><p>Put another way: the web has a direct impact on billions of people less because it&#x27;s any good and more because popularity is inherently a power law and it happened to come out ahead. This doesn&#x27;t invalidate any criticisms of quality!<p>It&#x27;s perfectly possible if not likely for something popular to be crappy because most things are crappy and that&#x27;s not enough to stop them from getting popular. Then they require tons of engineering effort and hacks to scale and improve again not because of quality but because of legacy. The web is what&#x27;s there already, after all!<p>That&#x27;s how things are, but that doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s inevitable or a good state of affairs.<p>I really wish people wouldn&#x27;t conflate popularity, quality and success. The first two operate on different axes and the last, if it doesn&#x27;t, <i>should</i>.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nautil.us&#x2F;issue&#x2F;5&#x2F;fame&#x2F;homo-narrativus-and-the-trouble-with-fame" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nautil.us&#x2F;issue&#x2F;5&#x2F;fame&#x2F;homo-narrativus-and-the-troubl...</a>