Who's doing this to my internet?

It is a lot. Record companies don't want you to buy online, they want you to prop up their traditional multi-middleman distribution schemes, so they can go on paying a artists a fraction of a percent of profit from the record sales, and only after the band's high-risk "startup loans" are repaid.

Think of all the expenses that don't have to happen when distribution goes online, and yet the price stays the same (or goes up, now you're paying for the convenience.)

Google wanted to challenge Facebook and had a huge userbases on lots of different platforms...you can see the reasoning which would lead them to add everyone to an umbrella google social network. The Verge saw a way to make money with relatively little investment on their part - a seductive offer. Soundcloud (presumably) found a business plan with a clear path to profit and evaluated it to be the best option.

In the end, all of these companies exist to make money. Those that do stick around to be criticised, those that fail are irrelevant! Buzzfeed is a great example because it's so polarising - it's criticised for having low quality content, and yet it's extremely popular, a perfect example of something that people clearly do actively want to use. If you had an isolated choice reduce your userbase by 20% but increase profit by 10x, that's an easy business decision to make.

I just find it difficult to make sweeping criticisms of these companies and the internet as a whole - these are independent evolutions, each of which can be criticised on their own demerits. Of course the internet will evolve to consist mostly of what the majority wants - this isn't inherently good or bad.

For instance, I can't obtain my bread from the baker by trading my scientific publications with him, because he is not interested in turbomachinery acoustics. But a chain of value-trading is established linking funding companies, their customers, me, all the way to the baker using this tool.

He can continue the chain by purchasing a TV without needing to send X amount of bread to Samsung. Also, he can't store bread without going stale and worthless, but he can store money. Amazing invention! I doubt complex economies and products could be feasible without it.

As for the "wrong turn" of the internet, I think it's just the transition from amateur to professional, same as it happened with sports in the XX century:

> Before the advent of the Open era of tennis competitions in April 1968, only amateurs were allowed to compete in established tournaments, including the four Grand Slams. There was no prize money and players were compensated for travel expenses only [Wikipedia]

Nowadays people can (and does) live by practicing a sport or publishing content on the internet, so it is only normal that the strategy has changed into a more business-oriented focus.

The author mentions she pays for an NYTimes subscription presumably because she gets a lot of value from their content. I pony up the same for a handful of websites and services that I choose to support. It's certainly not a democracy but there is some logic to "voting with your wallet".

I hate ads as much as the next person but one thing I hate even more is a great service or product going the way of the dodo because there's no viable way to make something free forever.