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Why are large social media platforms more like utilities than newspapers?

In my head I would liken your ISP to the USPS or a utility, while platforms I would liken to the press.



Both newspapers and social networks are multicast, but a newspaper is one-to-many and a social network is many-to-many. There's a material cost to publishing a newspaper that doesn't exist with electronic social networks. I don't know if a utility is a good analogy for a social network platform, but I am confident a newspaper is not either.




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