Comment by root_axis

Most of the growth in these spaces has been cultivated by the massive marketing power of these titans. I think viewing this as oligopolies taking over culture is misleading, rather, these massive corporations have invested huge marketing budgets into bringing consumers into the market, and the net result is that they now make up the glut of it. To use an analogy to the internet, it's not that all the intelligent discussion, homespun websites, and intimate message boards have disappeared, rather, they have been dwarfed by the influx of new people who were not participating in these spaces before they were lured in by the forces of the attention economy. This is "eternal September" writ large across the cultural landscape.