How Pervasive Is It? Why You’re Reading This for Free

By Cliff Potts
Editor-in-Chief, WPS News

The Invisible Hand of Attention

Most people believe they choose what they read. In reality, what they encounter is almost always pre-selected—surfaced by algorithms, forwarded by friends, or placed directly in front of them by systems designed to manage attention. Discovery is no longer organic; it is mediated.

If no one points to a piece of work, most people will never find it. If no system amplifies it, it effectively does not exist.

Discovery by Referral, Not Merit

This is not a commentary on intelligence or curiosity. It is structural. Modern information ecosystems do not reward depth, originality, or rigor. They reward velocity, repetition, and conformity.

You are reading this because someone—or something—told you it existed. Not because you searched for it. Not because it rose on merit. The moment that pointer disappears, so does the work.

Free as a Condition of Invisibility

“Free” is framed as generosity, openness, or accessibility. In practice, it is often a requirement imposed by platforms that profit from scale rather than substance. Creators are encouraged to give away their work to build an audience that rarely converts into stability.

The cost of free is not zero. It is borne entirely by the person producing the work—time, labor, expertise, and emotional energy—without compensation or continuity.

The Vanishing Author

As ideas circulate, authorship dissolves. Concepts are repeated without attribution. Analysis becomes ambient knowledge. The originator fades while institutions, commentators, or platforms capture value.

This is erasure without censorship. Nothing is removed. It is simply absorbed until the person behind it is no longer necessary.

Why This Feels Normal

The system works because it feels natural. People are accustomed to endless access without cost. Platforms normalize extraction by making it frictionless. Over time, the expectation becomes entitlement.

Creators who resist are labeled unrealistic, entitled, or out of touch. The burden is always placed on the individual to adapt, never on the system to sustain.

The Scale of the Problem

This is not limited to writing, journalism, or art. It applies to research, teaching, analysis, and lived expertise. Entire fields operate on unpaid or underpaid labor justified by exposure, passion, or eventual payoff.

Most of that payoff never arrives.

Naming the Reality

How pervasive is it? It is the default operating condition of modern culture. If you are not already embedded in institutions with distribution power, your work exists only as long as someone points to it.

The system does not fail creators accidentally. It functions by cycling them out.

What Awareness Does—and Does Not—Change

Recognizing this does not immediately fix it. Awareness is not leverage. But refusing to pretend the system is fair is a necessary starting point.

The first step is naming the environment accurately—without optimism, without illusion, and without moral cover for exploitation.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

APA Citations

Berman, M. (2006). Dark ages America: The final phase of empire. W. W. Norton & Company.
Dean, J. (2009). Democracy and other neoliberal fantasies. Duke University Press.
Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform capitalism. Polity Press.