Earlier quoted context omitted.
In response to something you didn't actually say - news is a classic example of when a free market may be bad, but all the alternatives people tried were much worse! And on what you did say - total agreement. The news has always been terrible. The internet has brought the cost of broadcasting so low actual honest or expert opinions and can make it out as well as the orthodoxies of people who can afford media companie…
Edit: I'm sorry for the lengthy post, but I felt giving rough examples was necessary to convey the point. It's true that some unofficial quality voices are disrupting established narratives ... but I'm sorry to say this isn't the shift that matters, because 99% of the 'unofficial sources' are considerably worse than just 'bullshit' in the press. The 'Giant Kraken Monster' of fake news is really shocking, and it's tak…
1. Use narrative engineering to persuade angry, frightened, gullible people to tune in and self-select.
2. Use narrative reinforcement to make them angrier and more frightened.
3. Wind them up and point them at a target.
4. Profit politically, and possibly also financially.
It doesn't matter what the narrative is. As long as it has an outgroup that can be accused of doing terrible things that arouse fear, rage, and disgust, almost any narrative will do. It could be vax conspiracies, it could be election conspiracies, it could be any number of other hot-button topics.
It's no different to how official propaganda works. [1] It isn't even all that different to conventional advertising.
The only difference now is that it portrays itself as covert, revolutionary, transgressive, and individualistic, where during the glory days of Time it used to present itself as wise, objective, and paternal.
But in fact it's just the same old farmed behaviour modification reinvented for social media.
[1] The suggestion that there was ever any kind of benign separation between old-fashioned patrician journalism and the US establishment is itself obvious bullshit. Historians have written books about this. This is just one intro.