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Ask HN: Do you think the "democratic Internet" is over-stated?

3 points by aridiculous ↗ HN
A recent TED talk explaining YouTube virality says that tastemakers determine the initial spike in views. If a celebrity tweets or a journalist writes about a video, that creates the conditions for virality.

It got me thinking that, despite all the talk of a flat democratic Internet, the basic system of hierarchy (or oligarchy) from pre-Internet publishing and media is still fully in place. It's just that different small number of people determine what gets mass exposure.

What are your thoughts on this, particularly in regard to how it diverges from the public meme of a truly "democratic" Internet?

1 comment

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wmf
The term "democratic" is generally over-applied. For example, open source is not democratic — developers have no formal responsibility to their users. (Of course, if it was really democratic you'd have to pay taxes.)

I wouldn't call the Internet an oligarchy (it also has random information cascades), but there are definitely power structures at work that are not democratic (or meritocratic). It may be dangerous to believe that the Internet is more free than it really is, because that implicitly legitimizes those power structures. (In other words, if the system is fair and you're winning, you obviously must be winning fairly so let's not question how you got there.)