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Vegan Ethical Dilemma No. 557: To Support Big Businesses or Not?
When presented with two bad options which one does one choose?
Introduction
George Dillard published an article a while ago called, “Beware Internet Middlemen; How a new wave of intermediaries could leave us all less informed”. In this article, he pores upon the massive penetration of intermediaries in all kinds of businesses and how they affect consumer knowledge and consumer choice particularly when it comes to the news and media businesses. He begins by giving us a basic example involving a mattress he wanted to purchase back in his younger days, where TV commercials were busy telling people to avoid middlemen and purchase things directly from the producers, to explain the concept of middlemen.
With the premise of the article set with that very basic example, he goes on to explain how the very same concept has been extrapolated to news and online media today which has turned these platforms into hotbeds of fake news and misinformation, things that radically alter people’s worldview, “posing a risk to the very way that we inform ourselves about the world and make important political, social, and personal decisions.”
“Now, we live in a new era of middlemen. Like the fabled middlemen of 1980s TV…
