This is an amazing point and one that I resonate with heavily. Often the focus is solely put on government at the federal level which is important no doubt. But what gets thrown to the wayside is how important politics are at a state/provincial level as well as municipal. Its easy to get hopeless about major shifts in the political spectrum, but being involved locally is a great remedy to this because change starts from the bottom up.

Another fear I have from this is how this will affect the content of these podcasts and web shows. It opens up the gates to business practices that might hinder certain speech on their platforms. We already seen corporations bow down to the current administration in the US by playing ball with whatever insane demands are made. What happens if content on these platforms has to continue to be filtered in order to better fit specific narratives? Obviously there are policies and guidelines users on open platforms have to follow and that's not what I am equating to. Moreover, who has the control of the information?

This is a statement that does drive me up the wall as it is unfortunately a huge issue. The internet is an incredible aspect of our every day lives and its openness is often taken for granted. I do however think it has also opened the floodgates for many opportunists seeking to make a profit at every single corner. It feels like many open source sites is under threat by a hyper-fixation on monetizing every detail. And if its not content, or advertising, its our data being sold to corporations many of which the common person hasn't even heard of. It's disheartening to see the trajectory form in this way.