'The Stream' has changed 'The Web'  (https://goo.gl/V6IrQd)  What happened?  When the web was younger, early adopters were over-represented amongst its users.  The intellectual power and diversity of conversation has not been lost, it's just been diluted by democracy -- and many more content consumers.

Unhelpfully, consuming content which others have created is the featured use case of the tablet/smartphone.  The fact that the tablet/phone have largely replaced the laptop for leisure use means that the majority of those with digital access are now separated from the ability to create original textual content.  We're a lot less likely to see a multi-page article from a tablet user now than we were from a laptop user 6 years ago. 

Conversation lost something similar when participation in ham radio declined as radio was eclipsed by TV.

Original article by activist +Hossein Derakhshan:
The Web We Have to Save _The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying.
Why is nobody stopping it?_
https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to-save-2eb1fe15a426