"Sometimes the complaints are couched in terms of theft - theft of ad dollars, theft of audience, theft of content. Sometimes it's about power - the unparalleled reach they have into the minds of humanity. They're like tollbooths plopped down onto the open internet, so deeply ingrained in modern life that they're nigh unavoidable. (Go ahead, try to go a week without somehow engaging with a Google product. Heck, even a day.)"
"Publishers have both principled and practical reasons to want to disentangle themselves from platforms and the companies behind them, but in most cases do not prioritize this, because there are other things they want more, in particular audience reach and incremental revenue. That is the hypothesis I offer here, where I briefly outline why the fraught entanglements that publishers and journalists"
Publishers routinely complain about major tech platforms, framing grievances as theft of ad dollars, audience, and content, or as domination of public attention. Platforms are deeply integrated into daily life and effectively unavoidable, making a full exit impractical. Many publishers cannot remove themselves from search engines or social networks without severe audience and revenue costs. Despite asymmetrical power dynamics, news companies continue to invest resources in filling platform feeds. The core trade-off is between principled or practical reasons to disentangle and the immediate benefits of audience reach and incremental revenue, which often take precedence.
Read at Nieman Lab
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