@eileenb As @woozle noted, when epistemic (media) systems gain significance, the attract attention:

"Because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place."

Or more accurately: as there are /returns/ to influencing an audience, those influencers will appear: direct & brand marketing, propagandists, polemicists.

So yes, the brands ... will come, like it or not.

https://redd.it/5wg0hp

@woozle @eileenb I see a fairly common progression of interests within a new media channel. Not necessarily in the following order, but close:

1. Technicians -- "shop talk"
2. Artistics and creatives, avant garde.
3. Organisations for internal use: business, government, academia, religion, etc.
4. External comms, management, monitoring, discussion.
5. Direct marketing.
6. Mass entertainment.
7. Mass marketing.
8. Propaganda and polemicists.

Merely changing platforms changes nothing.

@will Sure, but it also depends on those elements' capacities to change the rules themselves.

Bob Dylan: "Money doesn't shout, it swears."

Informational activities which are subsidised by, or reward, financial interests, or political interests, have a capacity to dominate pretty much anything else. Epistemic systems whose incentivisation is /anything but/ seeking deeper truth ... will return that, and /not/ truth.

RAW: Celine's 2nd law.

@woozle @eileenb

@will But other interests /don't/ have the same fears or concerns. Most especially demagogic or factionalising ones. Hell, they even feed off the energy and dynamic. SSC, "Toxoplasma of Rage".
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/

@eileenb @woozle