Also, even *before* the current environment, it was all-but impossible to get conservatives to fund what would become social media or video sites. Far too many didn’t see the point and could not be convinced.
It’s kind of an endemic problem with older conservatives. If it wasn’t a tech around in the 1950s, they don’t see the point and don’t want to invest.
The internet was open for decades. This lockdown/shutdown of the free exchange of ideas, reporting, and opinions is entirely new in the digital realm.
We saw it happening in China and Egypt and other places but for it to happen in the USA is a new turn of despotism.