I have no idea what the thing you call "structural inequality" is, so I can't say whether I believe it exists or not. It could be you call by this term some well-established phenomenon, and then I'd agree it exists, or it could be that you call some imaginary bugaboo like engineers taking your free will with their evil algorithms, and then, absent any empirical evidence of its existence, I do not believe in it. Hard to say without understanding the term.
> Without an acknowledgement of the massive power imbalance between mass media corporations on the one hand and the citizenry on the other, there's no possible discussion here.
I certainly see discussion going on right here, so it is possible, but if you mean by that "without you accepting my point as an axiom without proof, I am not ready to continue because my winning is not guaranteed and I have no means to prove my claims" then I agree that continuing the discussion in this situation is not the best move for you. If, however, you are ready to prove your points, you are welcome to do it anytime you like. Free will, you see :)
As far as I can see, there's no "massive power imbalance", on the contrary - the press is often criticized for catering for the basest instincts of the masses and being too easily swayed by a short-term fads and frivolities of the public. Scandal-of-the-day, however minor and vapid, often supplants more deep and important topics. If this criticism is true - and I believe evidence suggests to a large measure it is - then the public is the one to hold the power. If nobody wants to click on clickbait, if nobody comes to your site to view and click on the ads, if nobody reads whatever content you are providing - where is your power? What is your power? You can publish anything and nobody would even know about it, and pretty soon you couldn't publish anything because your servers will be shut down for the lack of payment.
I would say if we can see anything, it is that media corporations are too timid, foolish and cowardly to do anything but what the lowest common denominator demands from them. Clicks and ad impressions are kings, and who makes those clicks? The citizenry does. Nobody stands with the gun to your head and demands you to click or visit certain site. You decide it on your own power. If you don't like the result - maybe time to think what you can change?
The best version of the OP’s arguing is for individual ability and choice, and the ability of a person to make a difference of their own volition.
This is a fundamentally important right because without it, we are all automatons.
The issue is that in many cases we humans make bad choices, on a truly unimaginable scale.
This is also very much a part of being human - good choices exist only if bad choices exists.
The issue is that sometimes we can agree that people will consistently make poor choices, for a variety of forgiveable reasons.
While we could conceivably go after each individual, explain and educate them in precisely the way required to convince them that they should wear seat belts - it’s is often practically impossible to do so.
Which is why we introduce laws and regulations. All cars must have seat belts - and you must wear them.
Because as a species we are able to make meta cognitive calls or simply- decisions about decisions.
As a species we don’t want our people dying, for something as trivial as not wearing a seat belt.
It causes families to lose parents, parents to lose children - often because they were just at the wrong place and time.
Getting people to wear seat belts causes large scale good, over an individuals choice to put themselves and others at risk.
>"We evidently know what we mean by length if we can tell what the length of any and every object is, and for the physicist nothing more is required. To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is measured are fixed: that is, the concept of length involves as much and nothing more than the set of operations by which length is determined. In general, we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations."
>Bridgman has seen the wide implications of this mode of thought for the society at large:
"To adopt the operational point of view involves much more than a mere restriction of the sense in which we understand 'concept,' but means a far-reaching change in all our habits of thought, in that we shall no longer permit ourselves to use as tools in our thinking concepts of which we cannot give an adequate account in terms of operations."