I think this is a fairly predictable spin on what is a far more fundamental issue than "big tech" being some kind of well-organized conspiracy against independent thought.

Either you regard journalism as benefiting from collective effort or you don't. Some people don't like working with others, and I think Greenwald has fairly clearly demonstrated that he's not interested in the slightest bit of oversight of his work. I don't personally see a problem with that but the idea that individual contributors can benefit from being part of a larger institution is equally valid.

Whether or not a given institution is a net benefit to the output of its workers is of course extremely context-dependent, but in this case I'm old enough to have seen both sides of this story. There was a time when it was common for journalistic institutions (back when they had a profit model) to station reporters all over the globe and coordinate efforts on covering news. Obviously on substack I can follow Greenwald to hear about whatever Greenwald is interested in but it's up to me to find a sufficient diversity of writers to cover all the places and topics that I care about, which was traditionally one of the services that news editors at big news bureaus provided.

The drawback to a horde of independent writers self-publishing is that it's easy to get dragged into an echo chamber. I don't think that is the case with Greenwald so I'll invent a reporter: let's borrow the film industry's Alan Smithee. Alan Smithee might spend five years doing excellent reporting and build a substantial following. What happens to that following when Smithee's family is taken hostage by a state actor and he is forced to start producing propaganda for that state? What happens when Smithee is presented with a tremendous amount of money to advocate for a certain cause? This is one of the circuit-breakers that institutional oversight can provide; a collective effort can mitigate the value of coopting a specific contributor. Without that institution, we're all going to have to not only construct our coverage piecemeal from these independent operators, but remain vigilant that the quality and veracity of their work stays consistent, which is even harder to do on one's own.

Obviously the same can happen if someone within an institution gains sufficient political capital within that institution, but there are of course ways to structure an institution to prevent that as well. Oversight boards and ombudsmen are some examples of that.

I personally suspect Greenwald's distaste for editorial oversight colors every single thing he writes, to the point that I place less weight on his reporting now than I did some years ago. I don't think he's lying or otherwise behaving unethically, but I don't think his personal priorities align with mine the way they did back then. It took me a while to come to this conclusion, though, and even now it feels uncomfortable to "admit" that I don't really value his work as highly any more.

So, I'm too involved in the tech industry to be convinced that there's some computer-nerd conspiracy to "control the narrative," but I can clearly see that there are people who prefer to work independently and there are people who value those institutional 'circuit breakers', and I think that's the real root of the debate here.