Rising Tide Rents and Robber Baron Rents – O’Reilly

But over time, something went very wrong. Instead of continuing to deploy their attention optimization algorithms for their users’ and suppliers’ benefit, the tech giants began to use them to favor themselves. It first became obvious with social media: recommended posts and amplification of addictive, divisive content in order to keep users scrolling, creating additional surface area for advertising

This is such a good essay. Robber Barons indeed.