Web 2.0

Lina Khan believes A.I. disruption demands that regulators take a different approach from that of the Web 2.0 era.

And while the New York Times was certainly never assured of making it through the news revenue crisis that accompanied the rise of Web 2.0, its survival odds were greatly enhanced by its preeminent stature among American national newspapers, as well as its mission-driven leadership from the family that has controlled the Times for generations.

This was during the glorious dawn of the Web 2.0 revolution—an era of unbridled Obama-era optimism—and as the media made its digitized transition, conventional wisdom said that reporters needed to develop their own bespoke personal brands.

Ultimately, the profit motive baked into Web 2.0 from the start was going to supersede any interest in sustaining robust communities, and we’re simply seeing that play out most starkly in the two cases where the executives at the top have consolidated the most power and are least interested in the users who spend time there, or the people at the company trying to improve it.

Because there’s a paradox that all of these so-called Web 2.0 companies, which rely on users to generate, share and even moderate content, have in common — and it’s leading, inexorably, to their downfall.