Don't think for a second this wasn't intentional. The powers of the status quo do not want regular people to have control over their media, and the tech-saviness of the younger generations was absolutely seen as a threat that had to be curtailed by taking the end-user power and control over the operation of their product back out of their hands and solely into an elite few who bequeathed it to them as if by magic. There was a renaissance that had to be dumbed back down, and they succeeded in doing just that.

Edit: And now instead of usenet, and how decentralized it was and how great it could have become we have..... :reddit-logo: