Unfortunately it feels more like we've ended up in the era of being relatively-powerless subscribers or digital-sharecroppers instead: Your "more enjoyable" experience is incompatible with what the corporation believes will maximize its profits.
That's happened. The issue is most people don't _want_ to control and configure these things; they want to outsource that to someone else.
And that's where "influences" and "creators" and such step in: they're offering to sit in front of the firehose and tune things for their audience.
> Unfortunately it feels more like we've ended up in the era of being relatively-powerless subscribers or digital-sharecroppers instead
We have more power now, not less. Businesses can be parasitic, but that's not new. Media lying to the audience isn't new. We shouldn't idealize generations past -- it wasn't all rosy.
The idea that we're still individually-empowered by personal computing and have simply outsourced some of it to "peers who care more" is a comforting thought... but it doesn't seem match the current reality.
Most of those influencers/creators/curators etc. exist at the pleasure of large service-owners, who have their hands on the controls to boost/hide/de-monetize them based on whatever makes investors happy. Not just in terms of news and opinion (Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) but also tools themselves when it comes to the encroaching "app stores".
Following someone's self-hosted blog using a content-agnostic RSS reader is the exception now, not the rule.
