Web 2.0 Content - Heading Toward Mediocrity?

I was reading an older post from Shoutblog that, in turn, referenced Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. The post started out describing two friends making an "all time top 10 list" of songs, but found as they voted out choices that weren't the same for both of them, they headed toward the Billboard charts, leaving edginess and originality behind for the common music that everyone seems to know.

The trend that seems to be taking hold of many Web 2.0 companies is to build enough of a community of users to attract a big name buyer like Google or Yahoo!, but is that really in the best interest of the future of Web communities? In order to appeal to the masses of folks necessary to appeal to big sites like that, is it required that some of the fringe elements of the community need to be removed?

Last week, YouTube was blocked in Turkey for a day, until they caved in and removed a video that was said to depict Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, as a homosexual. Greek and Turkish nationals were said to have posted retaliatory videos in response, but YouTube decided to remove the original video rather than lose the Turkish users.

What was lost in that decision? If the only content on Web 2.0 sites is that which is going to offend the fewest number of people, is it any different from the top 10 list of songs taken directly from popular music? If more and more sites follow that lead, you have to wonder what parts of the communities will be lost.