Big Tech
And Big Media Need To Clean Up Their Acts
In the classic Oliver Stone 1987 movie “Wall Street”, Charlie Sheen’s character manages to talk his mentor, Gordon Gekko, into buying his father’s airline business. There’s a big to-do about making the airline bigger and better and making all sorts of concessions to get the takeover approved. And then, once the deal is done, our main character finds out that the whole purpose of buying the airline was to destroy it and sell it for scrap. He along with Gekko and the other big-wigs get rich, and everyone else involved with the airline are unemployed.
That’s the kind of feeling this commentator has right now when it comes to AT&T.
For those who do not know, AT&T is not the same American Telephone and Telegraph company that was broken up in the 1980’s. That telephone behemoth actually got bought out in 2005 by one of its split-off companies, Southwestern Bell, later called SBC Communications, and then they renamed themselves AT&T.
AT&T has been on a buying spree, buying out the other splinter companies, buying out Roadrunner, Cingular Wireless, and DirecTV. Then they bought the Big Kahuna... Time Warner, owner of Warner Brothers, Warner Media, HBO, CNN, The CW, DC Comics, DC Universe Online, and the new HBO Max streaming service. This put them in the same league as Disney (which owns ABC and recently bought the 20th Century Fox content), Comcast (which owns NBC/Universal and Hulu), and Viacom (which owns Paramount and CBS).
But before the ink could even be dry on all the merger paperwork, AT&T decided to spin off DirecTV and basically sell off control of the Warner stuff in a merger with Discovery. Oh, they still have some “control” over the two entities, but they won’t be “managing” them anymore.
That’s right folks... DirecTV and HBO Max customers have just been Gekko’d.
You have to wonder why the hell did AT&T do this in the first place. Why buy a huge entertainment empire and the larger of two digital satellite services only to sell them off? Why go through all of the hassles with regulatory bodies over antitrust concerns... just to do this?
Well, we all suspect the reason why, don’t we? Profit. Just like fictional Gordon Gekko bought out the fictional Bluestar Airlines, AT&T bought out DirecTV and Warner Brothers just to make a huge stinking profit. And it’s not like they’re going to be completely out of those two businesses. They still have a stake in them. But they don’t have to deal with the messes those two businesses are involved in. They’re not “the manager” for future Karens to demand to see when they want to cancel their satellite service or complain about R-rated material on HBO Max. All the reward and none of the responsibility.
Sadly, this is just one of many problems that we face concerning Big Tech and Big Media, and, basically Big Corporate in general. Big buyouts and mergers, big sales, big shuffling, jobs lost, competition lost, and all in the name of profit, profit, and profit.
And yet, this is probably the easier of the issues that could be resolved. We have the Federal Communications Commission dealing with the broadcast aspect, and we have the Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce for the antitrust aspects. A rule could be put in place that limits a corporate buyout so they can’t turn around and sell off that merged media business or otherwise end it for a certain period of time. Say, for instance, five years. So when the next mega-corporation decides to buy another media service, they would be chained to that merger for that period of time.
There are other messes that Big Tech and Big Media have made that also need to be addressed.
I’ve mentioned in previous articles about how Facebook and Amazon and Google have been stifling competition. Facebook buys Instagram and WhatsApp, Google buys YouTube and Blogger, effectively ensuring dominance in those fields. It would be no different than if Ford bought out tire and battery companies and then demanded all their vehicles only use those products.
An ongoing issue with Big Media has been the pissing contest between media providers and cable and satellite services. Media providers like Cox Communications and Tenga and Meridith and Sinclair have been upping content prices for their TV services, forcing cable and satellite providers to up their rates to compensate. Then they each run ads whining to the public about how “unfair” the other side is. And now we can add streaming media to that mess, with Google getting in a pissing contest with Roku over YouTubeTV.
YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, they’ve all provided mechanisms for users to make money in addition to their own ad revenue mechanisms. Hell, whole groups of people have made a living off posting pictures and videos because of monetization. Yet that monetization has been at risk for the most asinine of reasons, and it’s not just because conservatives spread lies and misinformation. Some lose monetization because they’re women who happen to show cleavage. Some lose monetization because they dare to criticize a religious belief or a political group and that’s declared “bullying”. Some lose monetization because they swear, and then lose monetization even if they don’t swear.
It's one thing to have a clear set of rules that users should follow, such as don’t show sex or nudity, don’t spread lies about a pandemic or its vaccines, don’t advocate for the violent overthrow of the government, or don’t be violent. But many of the complaints this commentator has come across from social media users have nothing to do with any of that. “Don’t show sex or nudity” becomes censoring women from being seen in bikinis or lingerie or simply bouncing, even though certain social media have challenges that ask women to do just that. “Don’t be violent” ends up censoring people because they simply said something about “ass-kicking” and not be literal.
Of course, we have the conservatives and their false claims of persecution, claiming without proof that they’re being “censored” by social media and then complain about it... where? On social media. The random acts of actual censorship and demonetization only add to their fake claims.
The ultimate goal of conservatives is to get rid of a certain provision called Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It’s the provision that says that providers of content, such as Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or YouTube, cannot be held liable for the content of their users. And yet that is precisely what social media has been trying to do... be the censors. Conservatives want to arrest and/or sue Facebook or Instagram or Twitter execs for what their users post, or for them being blocked for posting lies and encouraging insurrection. And what doesn’t help is that liberals are thinking they should be able to do the same thing.
What also doesn’t help is when you have fascist governors like Florida’s thug Governor DeSantis passing laws that forbid social media from blocking politicians, period. So the people who advocated for the violent overthrow of the government and spread endless lies about voting and endless lies about coronavirus and vaccines would not be blocked if they happen to be members of any level of government.
This needs to stop. This all needs to stop.
Let’s get brutally honest here... Big Tech and Big Media need to get their collective acts together just like any other parts of Big Corporate. If they don’t, then other forces will do it for them, and they really will not like that. We’re already seeing that with Fascist Florida.
Facebook and Google and Amazon and Apple need to understand that they need competition. It challenges them to do better. Apple needed to up their game to out-do Microsoft, and they did. And now Google is trying to do the same. You don’t get that when you buy up and buy out the competition.
As for content, Facebook is learning the hard way right now that whatever standards you set, you need to enforce them universally and be consistent. And your users have every right to make some coin off their work just like you already do. After all, you invited them do to that. Be consistent with that as well.
Section 230 was put into law for a reason. The reason is simple: because Internet access and broadcasting have long been considered a public service like phones and water and electricity. Private-managed, sure. But only because nobody wanted the government to directly manage it all. Just like nobody wanted one private company to end up running the whole phone service in America back in the 1980’s. If you don’t want the government to step in, then it’s up to Big Tech and Big Media to not give the government a reason to.
Clean it up, before the government feels obligated to do it on our behalf.
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