MK

The inherent contextlessness of platforms like Twitter also works in the opposite direction, though: It’s easy to use the language of social justice to justify anything we want, and by doing so, weakens real, meaningful activism.

Social media showed that everyone has the potential to reach a massive audience at low cost and high gain—and that potential gave many people the impression that they deserve such an audience.

A democratic cultural politics would be developmentalist — oriented to learning, growth and discovery — rather than presentist. 

Anybody can speak, but in an increasingly saturated cultural environment, nobody may be listening. Gatekeepers may no longer control what gets published, but algorithms control what gets circulated. Who sees what — in the domain of culture as well as news and commentary — is governed by opaque and proprietary software.