Since the early days of the web, and even more so with the advent of social media, there has been widespread talk of the promise of a horizontal world, free from traditional hierarchies, where speech would flow freely and whose foundations would be trust and recognition. Everyone would be able to speak out, be heard, influence and weigh in on public or internal debates, without any authority filtering or organizing the exchanges. The web, and then social networks, would have achieved what decades of sociology and democratic demands had failed to...
