It's a slow burn for sure, but ever single medium has to get rained in by the people with the money to do so. Print, Radio and the Internet (of the 90s) were test vast open means of communication that everyone could use. We didn't think the Internet would go away because there was just so much more bandwidth. And there still is, but the means of discovery was eventually what was limited. It's illegal to broadcast on 102.3-Unused-FM, but no one cares if you're out in the middle of Oklahoma running a pirate radio in a county of 3,000 people. It's _not_ illegal to broadcast on your IP address on the Internet (and it's cheap, $10/month for a little VM), but who cares if no one even bothers to visit.

The Humanity Lobotomy made this video two decades ago. They were right, but got the danger wrong. The danger wasn't Net Neutrality (Washington State has net neutrality laws and Kiwifarms is still struggling to stay up there). It wasn't even CuckFlair's and hosting provider censorship (although that is massive and has had a chilling effect). It's not even the flood of AI shit-pasta.

It's that most of the population will not explore past the bounds of Facebag/Xitter/Instafam/OnlyWhores/BlickBlock. The mega sites are a big diverse soup of AOL Keywords. People can't even take control of their own devices without significant work. There is still an Internet out there, but no one knows to even search for it.

https://files.catbox.moe/m93p2t.webm