Hm, a bunch of relatively shortsighted and narrow-scope bullet points.<p>I like to summarize the trends and inaccuracies in the article as the "mainstreamization of the internet as the primary mode of life". The internet is now the primary technology for play, work, general communications, commerce, social life, and human knowledge. 10 years ago, the internet still had tinges of being a hobbyist project, and you probably wouldn't be able to find your grandma on Myspace or another equivalent. That era was a smarter, more innocent, and smaller time for the internet, though even then it was vast and deep.<p>The arrival of the TV cohort to the internet (via Myspace and Facebook's gateways) necessitated a departure from the non-commercialized function-emphatic early days of the net. The media companies correctly view these people as their money farm, and allowing them to escape to the internet isn't acceptable. As a result, we now have internet commodities (user information, paywalled content) that are sustained by the masses. In some ways, the commodification of the internet resulted in unification many smaller content and social sites into a few giants. During this unification, the depth and variety of content on the internet took a huge hit.<p>At this point, mainstream internet is approaching the locked-down nature of TV, though to the user there is significantly more freedom of customization of content to be consumed. For the most part, people who use the internet for Netflix and Facebook (and probably a few other big name sites) are viewing the same pre-prepared frame of content that they were via the TV, and getting more out of it as they did before in terms of content.<p>I have to say, there is very little for intelligent/technical people to consume on this mainstream internet relative to the days of yore. Watering everything down for proliterian consumption means that the deep, obtuse, technical, inscrutable, or complex content and discussion is forced far away from the "front pages" so as not to confuse or frighten the primary consumers who are largely treated like children. Of course, there's still bastions of sanity, but you'd need to seek them out or find them via word of mouth. It's not so bad, but effectively places like HN are tiny fiefdoms that are far removed from the reddit/facebook/netflix/whatever dreck that is dominant.