In the age of broadcast media - yes we now have to talk about them as a thing of the past — the emphasis was what we used to call ratings. In a nutshell, it was about money but a different method of earning money than the method of views as we see in the age of social media. There used to be gatekeepers of information, which were these faceless villains whose job it was to act as this giant filter, allowing only certain kinds of news and views (not the YouTube views but the opinion one) to pass through to the newsroom.

Once the general masses everywhere moved to social media, the news broadcasts and the opinion makers also moved there. Now they earn money through views instead of what was called ratings. And that migration also prompted the gatekeepers to move over there. Once there, they realised that they couldn't really suppress views expressed by people but they could suppress how many people it would reach by playing with the........

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