12 ms·

The FCC has repealed a 42-year-old rule blocking broadcast media mergers

368 points by uptown 9y ago

not_that_noob 9y ago
The ghosts of Pulitzer and Hearst thank you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–American_War#Hearst_and_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–Amer...
Qw3r7 9y ago
Someone needs to go wake up Teddy Roosevelt. As rude as it would be to wake him up, we need someone to recognise that the amount of consolidation the country is reaching is incredibly dangerous. This teetering near Deus Ex level amounts of consolidation. Yes, the current aims at Google and Facebook are nice to see. But, the deregulation of media companies is allowing anti-consumer practices. Even the video game industry is starting to receive backlash for its "non-gambling" practices and the lootbox. Pardon for the rant, that kind of seems everywhere. But, allowing something like this to form is dangerous, especially with how strong lobbying is now. With facebook actively suppressing certain ideologies, the soon to be larger media companies will now have no issue writing off conflicting ideas as well.
- interstitial 9y ago
  Just poke Mark Zuckerberg on facebook. He's really good at saving us from anti-consumer practices.
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  I completely agree with you, however I find this bit a little mysterious: > With facebook actively suppressing certain ideologies The only ideologies I've heard of Facebook suppressing lately are Neo-Nazi and alt-right groups following the Charlottesville stuff. I don't take issue with these ideologies being suppressed. Am I missing something? EDIT: Apparently so because someone just went through my history and down-voted all my comments...
  - Qw3r7 9y ago
    I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. Evelyn Beatrice Hall Suppression of opinion implicitly violates the Bill of Rights.
    - fhood 9y ago
      Sorry, this is my personal nitpick but suppression of opinion by facebook does not violate the bill of rights.
    - spaceseaman 9y ago
      I do not consider Nazi ideology an opinion. Their ideas are purely based on maintaining a power dynamic. There's no logic or legitimacy to their ideas, and thus they are not opinions. They change the ideology as needed to maintain power and promote their own strength. For a historical viewpoint, simply look at how often the German Nazi party would change what classifies as being a Jew or "undesirable". It was only ever about putting fear into people and maintaining control. They had no real opinions on why these people were undesirable - those could be made up after the fact. If Nazism was an opinion, I would be willing to defend it. But it's not, and it thrives when it's given the legitimacy as such. EDIT: To try and tie this back to the topic at hand, are blatant lies still "opinions"? What about death threats and hate speech? My point is simply that we already make distinctions about what kind of speech is free, so I feel that Facebook instituting policies that align with these existing rules makes sense - even though I feel that they are becoming too large to be the de-facto source for information on the Internet.
      - thisacctforreal 9y ago
        Friendly reminder that downvotes should be reserved for comments you don't want to see on the site, not for comments you disagree with.
        nl 9y ago
        Friendly reminder that PG said the opposite. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  It's wild how we can look back in history, identify a time just like this with all the same problems, and pick out the very man perfect for these circumstances. Hell, at this point we just need to locate his spiritual reincarnation and turn him or her loose, knowing they are perfect for the job. They said history is a circle, but this is just so blatant.
  - jmcgough 9y ago
    It's even more concerning now, considering how much control and visibility into our lives companies have, thanks to mobile phones and digital tracking.
- nawtacawp 9y ago
  I don’t game. Trying to find more info on the “non-gambling”? Not sure what that is.
  - spaceseaman 9y ago
    Just look up the EA Star Wars Battlefront 2 stuff. It's a big old mess. You pay money for crates which randomly drop items that improve the game experience. Some people consider it gambling because you are preying on the same tendencies in people for your own gain. People also don't get any real value for their "gambling". Other people say this makes it not gambling, etc. That's a very simple oversimplification of the subject - there's a lot of articles out there about it right now.
    - cokeandsympathy 9y ago
      It's turning a game into a skinner box designed to extract as much money as possible from those who buy the game. It operates on the same basic principles as slot machines.
      - spaceseaman 9y ago
        Pretty much. The counter-argument goes that people "should know" and be responsible with their money, but I'm not a fan of that argument. It relies on people being perfectly rational actors that they just aren't. I'm personally in favor of instituting regulation for these things. Even if it is just purely from the "we have to protect the children" angle - children are arguably the main market for these strategies after all.
  - fnovd 9y ago
    EA recently released a statement that their "Loot Box" mechanic, a system by which players can only purchase items by buying them in a randomly-generated bundle, does not constitute gambling. If you were looking for a specific item, you may have to purchase hundreds of these boxes. EA argues that since the box you purchase is guaranteed to have some kind of item, the rules and regulations that apply to gambling with legal tender do not apply.
- cokeandsympathy 9y ago
  The current aim at Facebook book is to harvest as much of the world's attention as possible to resell to advertisers. Users are not it's customers, the businesses that pay it to advertise are. It's primary goal is to suck you in and keep you using it by any means necessary, ethics be damned
- notyourwork 9y ago
  > Even the video game industry is starting to receive backlash for its "non-gambling" practices and the lootbox. I'm not understanding how this is related?
  - jack9 9y ago
    The phrasing was poor. > But, the deregulation of media companies is allowing anti-consumer practices. > Even the video game industry is starting to receive backlash for its "non-gambling" practices and the lootbox. The implication is that it's standard to implement anti-consumer practices like gambling (not called gambling) into consumer products (games). The VAST majority of games now, in a trend starting since circa 2005, has been to milk the customer via chance-based microtransactions, aka the "freemium" model. Games that do not use this, are heavily criticized by industry and critics as oversights or even unfair. i.e. You mean I might pay $X for a game and what if I don't like it? Now I'm out all $X!
Top19 9y ago
I hate mergers and think they’re dumb, but maybe this is for the best. Isn’t the problem with internet news is that it comes from everywhere, enforcing a kind of chaos of truth and a race to the bottom? Maybe we should have near monopolies in media, so that a certain laziness pervades and people don’t care about ratings?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  I upvoted you not because I agree (or disagree) with you, but because I think you politely presented a well-reasoned opinion and shouldn't be in the grey.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - thephyber 9y ago
    I didn't downvote, but I don't see it as well reasoned. It's essentially the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy[1]. In this case, increased media consolidation has nothing to with how fake internet news is. In fact, I'm of the opinion that further media consolidation will move us further from low-bias information sources and towards more MSNBC / FoxNews extreme partisan news sources. It will likely continue the convergence of entertainment and journalism which only serves to dilute the little media literacy that we still have in the USA. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_wrongs_make_a_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_wrongs_make_a_right
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 9y ago
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
The political mood on media regulation has shifted, at least from where I sit, in the the past weeks. Twitter blew its hearing. Facebook and Google failed to salve the wound by sending deputies. The belief I'm sensing is that the only way to check these companies is through competition from traditional media, including ISPs. If Google and Facebook and Twitter are running roughshod with our data, this thinking goes, maybe the solution is letting others challenge their data monopoly. You and I see the problem with this. It's harder to evade Comcast than Google or Facebook. But every day, that becomes less true. In any case, this is the first step in Silicon Valley's price for what is broadly seen as its arrogance.
- jonny_eh 9y ago
  This is about local TV stations getting gobbled up by a single company, Sinclair. I don't see what Twitter/FB/Google have to do with this.
  - threeseed 9y ago
    Exactly. This has absolutely nothing to do with internet companies. It's all about Sinclair, Tribune and lots of political donations and favours.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > I don't see what Twitter/FB/Google have to do with this Why are "religious rights" and low taxes in the same envelope? Because they're the same constituency. There is no underlying sense to it other than political sense. Media mergers of the kind Sinclair or TWC have pursued, or are pursuing, have traditionally been argued against by Google et al's lobbyists. There just isn't another organized constituency who cares about local radio. But the precedents from local radio spilling into ISPs? Now there's a worry. Those same lobbyists now represent politically wounded clients. When the cats are away, the mice come out to play.
    - turndown 9y ago
      You mean Google, a company that was founded in the late 90s, is responsible for an FTC rule originating 42 years ago? Your entire premise is incredibly flawed; religious rights and low taxes may be part of the same constituency, but opposition to media mergers is not a strict left or right issue.
aaronbrethorst 9y ago
A major beneficiary of the deregulatory moves, analysts say, is Sinclair, a conservative broadcasting company that is seeking to buy up Tribune Media for $3.9 billion. Sinclair requires its TV stations to air segments with a conservative bent: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/media/sinclair-broadcast-komo-conservative-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/media/sinclair-b... Edit: Check out John Oliver's segment on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
- interstitial 9y ago
  John Oliver gets his paycheck from Time Warner.
- bduerst 9y ago
  The best part of that is when Sinclair's Terrorism Alert Desk ran a piece about burkinis. They require all their stations to broadcast it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc&feature=youtu.be&t=15m47s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc&feature=youtu.be...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sha256link 9y ago
I think blockchain will help us with this.
ABCLAW 9y ago
>In his remarks Thursday, Pai said it was “utter nonsense” that his agency's decisions on media ownership would lead to a company dominating local media markets by buying up newspapers and radio stations. >“It will open the door to pro-competitive combinations that will strengthen local voices,” he said, and “better serve local communities.” How? I'm not quite sure how the combination of a more consolidated industry and the removal of local studios results in stronger local voices.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  That's the same kind of thing companies will say when they remove a bunch of features and drop a product: it is to better serve you, the customer. Never mind that it is complete nonsense.
  - amptorn 9y ago
    "No, see, us making more money always makes it possible for us to serve you better." And do you serve us better? "Oh no. God, no."
    - colejohnson66 9y ago
      > "No, see, us making more money always makes it possible for us to serve you better." The key word there is “possible”. Money makes it possible to better serve you. They just choose not to.
  - hexane360 9y ago
    "The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes. As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we're looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we'll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay. We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets. Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can." Quote from EA when asked why heroes took ridiculous playtime to unlock, skippable with microtransactions, for a $60 game.
rayiner 9y ago
Non-paywall article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-media-regulation/u-s-regulator-votes-to-loosen-media-ownership-rules-idUSKBN1DG2R9 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-media-regulation/u-s-r.... In my view, the media ownership rules were indefensible. First, they were not driven by the sort of legitimate economic concerns that usually drive anti-consolidation efforts. They were not (at least, not primarily) justified, for example, on the basis of media companies being able to exercise market power to charge too much for advertising. Instead, they were justified by the government's desire to influence the content of media. A well meaning desire, perhaps, but still a fundamentally illegitimate exercise of government power. Second, the broadcasting-license tail was wagging the merger dog. The FCC's purpose is to address the "tragedy of the commons" that might result if people could use public broadcast frequencies freely without concern for others. It's not an antitrust agency, and has no expertise in that area. It has overextended its authority over broadcasting licenses to exercise control over mergers in industries it has no jurisdiction over (in this case, newspapers).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jnordwick 9y ago
  This is a very underrated comment. The second point, that the FCC is not the correct body, was something I had never thought of before. Why is the FCC trying to make anti-trust rules? The FDA doesn't make anti-trust rules for companies it oversees.
  - ikiris 9y ago
    Because Congress specifically delegated that authority to them for this domain. Go read a history book.
  - makomk 9y ago
    Curiously enough, one of the other controversies in the news right now is the DOJ - which normally enforces anti-trust rules - supposedly telling AOL that they'd have to sell off either Turner Broadcasting or DirecTV if they wanted to merge with Time Warner due to competition concerns. Apparently this was an evil attack by Trump on the media, nothing whatsoever to do with the issues caused by one company owning both a major pay TV provider and a major provider of content.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Lev1a 9y ago
"greater consolidation" == "easier establishment of monopolies" (probably)
campuscodi 9y ago
Pai should be in jail. This is absurd. The guy is lying to everyone's face from a government function. When has ever a consolidation not lead to a monopoly and when has a monopoly not been abused?
cletus 9y ago
So: > One long-standing rule repealed Thursday prevented one company in a given media market from owning both a daily newspaper and a TV station > Another rule blocked TV stations in the same market from merging with each other if the combination would leave fewer than eight independently owned stations > The agency also took aim at rules restricting the number of TV and radio stations that any media company could simultaneously own in a single market. Now, let me first say that Trump and Ajit Pal have been, are and will be a disaster for media and broadband regulation. That out of the way, let me say this: These rules were crafted in an era when we had: - Local newspapers - A limited number of more broadly distributed papers (state, national) - 3 Broadcast TV networks (4 including PBS) where local stations were affiliates. - The importance of radio for entertainment and news - Limited market penetration of cable TV and far less channels and content choice than we have today So compare that to today: - We can have a virtually unlimited number of TV channels through cable and the Internet - Radio has a vastly greater array of options through satellite radio (eg Sirius) and the Internet (eg podcasts) - Newspapers are a dying breed, replaced with online news distribution. - The barrier to entry to creating, promoting and getting an audience for, say, a local issue blog is comparatively cheap now. Previously it either wasn't possible or was orders of magnitude more difficult. So it would be foolish to say the the media landscape hasn't changed drastically in 40 years. Now the devil is in the details here. So if there can be less than 8 independent stations in a market, how many can there be? 6? 4? 3? 2? Because there's a difference. Honestly there's far more scandalous and outright dangerous things to get outraged about with this administration.
- lsiebert 9y ago
  Barrier for entry is lower, but it's also harder to get paid for local news. Local coverage of political activities pretty much sucks except in major cities.
- adjkant 9y ago
  Just because the landscape has changed does not mean that the rule is irrelevant today. This change is politically motivated, not one of "this rule is outdated". There's a very low barrier to entry for new tech companies these days, but they all get bought out by Facebook, Google, Amazon. The end result, despite this low barrier to entry, is a conglomeration of power. If a single company buys up many small media companies and forces content, there is incredible power in that and frankly one of the most dangerous things that this administration has actually accomplished. Sinclair is just one example.
liveoneggs 9y ago
cox communications must be salivating to finish dominance on the atlanta market
shmerl 9y ago
FCC working for monopolists - that's already not news. How can this garbage be stopped though? It's like the sickest plutocracy in the works.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  There's a political party that has stated opposition to this kind for consolidation and resisted industry pressure to remove this regulation, and one which has stated it's support for this kind of deregulation and actively pursued it. There's times when the relationship between public posturing, voting, and policy results in murky and opaque, but this isn't one of them.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    > There's a political party that has stated opposition to this kind for consolidation Someone like the Pirate Party? It never made it in US somehow. And for the reference, previous FCC approved Charter + TWC merger, despite being better in general than the current horror.
js2 9y ago
The conclusion of this paper from 2001 supports revoking the rules, or at least that the rules aren’t necessary for their stated goal of providing diverse opinions: "A Tale of Three Cities: “Diverse and Antagonistic” Information in Situations of Local Newspaper/ Broadcast Cross-Ownership" http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1286&context=fclj http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... From the conclusion: This Article examined whether three existing newspaper/broadcast combinations in major markets provided information about the 2000 presidential campaign from "diverse and antagonistic sources." The results show clearly that they did provide a wide range of diverse information. In other words, the Commission's historical assumption that media ownership inevitably shapes the news to suit its own interests may no longer be true (if it ever was). The September 2001 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking demonstrated the Commission's interest in solid empirical evidence about newspaper/broadcast combinations. The evidence of the study reported in this Article suggests that the prohibition on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership has outlived its usefulness.
- eonst430eoan 9y ago
  > The conclusion of this paper from 2001 supports revoking the rules, or at least that the rules aren’t necessary for their stated goal of providing diverse opinions Hmm... From reading your quote, it sounds to me like it's saying that the rules are working properly. What these changes are going to allow is a single company with a known one-sided agenda to buy up all media in several markets. How will that work out?
  - js2 9y ago
    The study looked at three cities where the newspaper and radio station were owned by the same company (“cross-ownership”), due to having been grandfathered in when the FCC rule was created in 1975. The FCC revoked multiple rules, but one of those prevented cross-ownership. The stated goal of all of the rules was to encourage a diversity of views. At least with respect to the cross-ownership rule, this study found it wasn’t necessary for a diversity of views to exist.
dmode 9y ago
This rule was repealed for one and one purpose only. Allow Sinclair Media, a pro-Trump media organization, to buy up local TV stations and blast propaganda news during your 9'o'clock news hour. Here's a great article covering the motivations of Sinclair. It is time to fight back and get rid of Ajit Pai https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/how-a-conservative-tv-giant-is-ridding-itself-of-regulation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/how-a-conserv...
- meri_dian 9y ago
  If a media outlet wants to buy stations and supply more conservative friendly news, how is that any different from Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post and supplying liberal friendly news? For those who would want to counter that buying many local stations outweighs buying a single outlet in the Washington Post, I would bet WaPo reaches as many or more people as all local stations put together in the US through their massive social media and generally online presence. Not only that, while local stations only air news at a set time each day, WaPo articles are persistent and ubiquitous. The scale of outreach and influence for a site like WaPo is really tremendous when you think about it.
  - eropple 9y ago
    One: you have a long row to hoe before asserting that the Washington Post supplies "liberal-friendly news." They may (I would say do) have a moderately liberal-friendly editorial board. Much as the WSJ may (and again, I would say does) have an extremely conservative-friendly editorial board. To conflate the editorial board and reporting is, frankly, either disingenuous or bordering on it. Two: you have an even longer row to hoe to tie together buying one paper and buying as many TV stations as one can to blanket an area. We all know about what Sinclair's up to--given the levels of handwringing put out by the folks on Pai's side of the aisle about the (non-existent, but whatever) suppression of right-wing speech, maybe the notion of choking off differing voices under the Sinclair umbrella rings just a little bit hollow?
    - meri_dian 9y ago
SN76477 9y ago
this is in line with the current republican structure. they want to dismantle any regulations, minimize government and let the pieces fall where they may. The problem is that this isnt the 1850s anymore.
- ikiris 9y ago
  Make America Gilded Again
truxus 9y ago
Don't you think it's about time we removed all the unnessecary independent voices from media so we can stop confusing people? The Russians and Chinese are doing it; we need to catch up - we've got to have unity in our messages. /Sarcasm
sodosopa 9y ago
Those fuckers are gonna kill the web, aren't they?
karmapolic 9y ago
i wonder how the white nationalists are not preying on this Indian guy? after all, everything is business?
beedogs 9y ago
Another horrible idea from the worst Administration any of us will ever live through.
vic20forever 9y ago
We are so fucked.
Friedduck 9y ago
It’s a perfect storm. Kill net neutrality and then restrictions preventing local media monopolies. People have been manipulated by their chosen media like no other time in history, and I can’t see where we go from here. Enterprises will have the singular ability to control what vast swaths of the populace hears and believes. At best it’s a continuance of recent trends, and at worst the failure of the republic.

368 points by uptown 9y ago

The ghosts of Pulitzer and Hearst thank you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–American_War#Hearst_and_Pulitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–Amer...

Qw3r7 9y ago

Someone needs to go wake up Teddy Roosevelt. As rude as it would be to wake him up, we need someone to recognise that the amount of consolidation the country is reaching is incredibly dangerous. This teetering near Deus Ex level amounts of consolidation. Yes, the current aims at Google and Facebook are nice to see. But, the deregulation of media companies is allowing anti-consumer practices. Even the video game industry is starting to receive backlash for its "non-gambling" practices and the lootbox. Pardon for the rant, that kind of seems everywhere. But, allowing something like this to form is dangerous, especially with how strong lobbying is now. With facebook actively suppressing certain ideologies, the soon to be larger media companies will now have no issue writing off conflicting ideas as well.

interstitial 9y ago
Just poke Mark Zuckerberg on facebook. He's really good at saving us from anti-consumer practices.
spaceseaman 9y ago
I completely agree with you, however I find this bit a little mysterious: > With facebook actively suppressing certain ideologies The only ideologies I've heard of Facebook suppressing lately are Neo-Nazi and alt-right groups following the Charlottesville stuff. I don't take issue with these ideologies being suppressed. Am I missing something? EDIT: Apparently so because someone just went through my history and down-voted all my comments...
- Qw3r7 9y ago
  I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. Evelyn Beatrice Hall Suppression of opinion implicitly violates the Bill of Rights.
  - fhood 9y ago
    Sorry, this is my personal nitpick but suppression of opinion by facebook does not violate the bill of rights.
  - spaceseaman 9y ago
    I do not consider Nazi ideology an opinion. Their ideas are purely based on maintaining a power dynamic. There's no logic or legitimacy to their ideas, and thus they are not opinions. They change the ideology as needed to maintain power and promote their own strength. For a historical viewpoint, simply look at how often the German Nazi party would change what classifies as being a Jew or "undesirable". It was only ever about putting fear into people and maintaining control. They had no real opinions on why these people were undesirable - those could be made up after the fact. If Nazism was an opinion, I would be willing to defend it. But it's not, and it thrives when it's given the legitimacy as such. EDIT: To try and tie this back to the topic at hand, are blatant lies still "opinions"? What about death threats and hate speech? My point is simply that we already make distinctions about what kind of speech is free, so I feel that Facebook instituting policies that align with these existing rules makes sense - even though I feel that they are becoming too large to be the de-facto source for information on the Internet.
    - thisacctforreal 9y ago
      Friendly reminder that downvotes should be reserved for comments you don't want to see on the site, not for comments you disagree with.
      - nl 9y ago
        Friendly reminder that PG said the opposite. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
sliverstorm 9y ago
It's wild how we can look back in history, identify a time just like this with all the same problems, and pick out the very man perfect for these circumstances. Hell, at this point we just need to locate his spiritual reincarnation and turn him or her loose, knowing they are perfect for the job. They said history is a circle, but this is just so blatant.
- jmcgough 9y ago
  It's even more concerning now, considering how much control and visibility into our lives companies have, thanks to mobile phones and digital tracking.
nawtacawp 9y ago
I don’t game. Trying to find more info on the “non-gambling”? Not sure what that is.
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  Just look up the EA Star Wars Battlefront 2 stuff. It's a big old mess. You pay money for crates which randomly drop items that improve the game experience. Some people consider it gambling because you are preying on the same tendencies in people for your own gain. People also don't get any real value for their "gambling". Other people say this makes it not gambling, etc. That's a very simple oversimplification of the subject - there's a lot of articles out there about it right now.
  - cokeandsympathy 9y ago
    It's turning a game into a skinner box designed to extract as much money as possible from those who buy the game. It operates on the same basic principles as slot machines.
    - spaceseaman 9y ago
      Pretty much. The counter-argument goes that people "should know" and be responsible with their money, but I'm not a fan of that argument. It relies on people being perfectly rational actors that they just aren't. I'm personally in favor of instituting regulation for these things. Even if it is just purely from the "we have to protect the children" angle - children are arguably the main market for these strategies after all.
- fnovd 9y ago
  EA recently released a statement that their "Loot Box" mechanic, a system by which players can only purchase items by buying them in a randomly-generated bundle, does not constitute gambling. If you were looking for a specific item, you may have to purchase hundreds of these boxes. EA argues that since the box you purchase is guaranteed to have some kind of item, the rules and regulations that apply to gambling with legal tender do not apply.
cokeandsympathy 9y ago
The current aim at Facebook book is to harvest as much of the world's attention as possible to resell to advertisers. Users are not it's customers, the businesses that pay it to advertise are. It's primary goal is to suck you in and keep you using it by any means necessary, ethics be damned
notyourwork 9y ago
> Even the video game industry is starting to receive backlash for its "non-gambling" practices and the lootbox. I'm not understanding how this is related?
- jack9 9y ago
  The phrasing was poor. > But, the deregulation of media companies is allowing anti-consumer practices. > Even the video game industry is starting to receive backlash for its "non-gambling" practices and the lootbox. The implication is that it's standard to implement anti-consumer practices like gambling (not called gambling) into consumer products (games). The VAST majority of games now, in a trend starting since circa 2005, has been to milk the customer via chance-based microtransactions, aka the "freemium" model. Games that do not use this, are heavily criticized by industry and critics as oversights or even unfair. i.e. You mean I might pay $X for a game and what if I don't like it? Now I'm out all $X!

Top19 9y ago

I hate mergers and think they’re dumb, but maybe this is for the best. Isn’t the problem with internet news is that it comes from everywhere, enforcing a kind of chaos of truth and a race to the bottom? Maybe we should have near monopolies in media, so that a certain laziness pervades and people don’t care about ratings?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
I upvoted you not because I agree (or disagree) with you, but because I think you politely presented a well-reasoned opinion and shouldn't be in the grey.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thephyber 9y ago
  I didn't downvote, but I don't see it as well reasoned. It's essentially the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy[1]. In this case, increased media consolidation has nothing to with how fake internet news is. In fact, I'm of the opinion that further media consolidation will move us further from low-bias information sources and towards more MSNBC / FoxNews extreme partisan news sources. It will likely continue the convergence of entertainment and journalism which only serves to dilute the little media literacy that we still have in the USA. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_wrongs_make_a_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_wrongs_make_a_right
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
9y ago

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

The political mood on media regulation has shifted, at least from where I sit, in the the past weeks. Twitter blew its hearing. Facebook and Google failed to salve the wound by sending deputies. The belief I'm sensing is that the only way to check these companies is through competition from traditional media, including ISPs. If Google and Facebook and Twitter are running roughshod with our data, this thinking goes, maybe the solution is letting others challenge their data monopoly. You and I see the problem with this. It's harder to evade Comcast than Google or Facebook. But every day, that becomes less true. In any case, this is the first step in Silicon Valley's price for what is broadly seen as its arrogance.

jonny_eh 9y ago
This is about local TV stations getting gobbled up by a single company, Sinclair. I don't see what Twitter/FB/Google have to do with this.
- threeseed 9y ago
  Exactly. This has absolutely nothing to do with internet companies. It's all about Sinclair, Tribune and lots of political donations and favours.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > I don't see what Twitter/FB/Google have to do with this Why are "religious rights" and low taxes in the same envelope? Because they're the same constituency. There is no underlying sense to it other than political sense. Media mergers of the kind Sinclair or TWC have pursued, or are pursuing, have traditionally been argued against by Google et al's lobbyists. There just isn't another organized constituency who cares about local radio. But the precedents from local radio spilling into ISPs? Now there's a worry. Those same lobbyists now represent politically wounded clients. When the cats are away, the mice come out to play.
  - turndown 9y ago
    You mean Google, a company that was founded in the late 90s, is responsible for an FTC rule originating 42 years ago? Your entire premise is incredibly flawed; religious rights and low taxes may be part of the same constituency, but opposition to media mergers is not a strict left or right issue.

aaronbrethorst 9y ago

A major beneficiary of the deregulatory moves, analysts say, is Sinclair, a conservative broadcasting company that is seeking to buy up Tribune Media for $3.9 billion. Sinclair requires its TV stations to air segments with a conservative bent: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/media/sinclair-broadcast-komo-conservative-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/media/sinclair-b... Edit: Check out John Oliver's segment on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc

interstitial 9y ago
John Oliver gets his paycheck from Time Warner.
bduerst 9y ago
The best part of that is when Sinclair's Terrorism Alert Desk ran a piece about burkinis. They require all their stations to broadcast it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc&feature=youtu.be&t=15m47s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc&feature=youtu.be...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sha256link 9y ago

I think blockchain will help us with this.

ABCLAW 9y ago

>In his remarks Thursday, Pai said it was “utter nonsense” that his agency's decisions on media ownership would lead to a company dominating local media markets by buying up newspapers and radio stations. >“It will open the door to pro-competitive combinations that will strengthen local voices,” he said, and “better serve local communities.” How? I'm not quite sure how the combination of a more consolidated industry and the removal of local studios results in stronger local voices.

jacquesm 9y ago
That's the same kind of thing companies will say when they remove a bunch of features and drop a product: it is to better serve you, the customer. Never mind that it is complete nonsense.
- amptorn 9y ago
  "No, see, us making more money always makes it possible for us to serve you better." And do you serve us better? "Oh no. God, no."
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    > "No, see, us making more money always makes it possible for us to serve you better." The key word there is “possible”. Money makes it possible to better serve you. They just choose not to.
- hexane360 9y ago
  "The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes. As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we're looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we'll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay. We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets. Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can." Quote from EA when asked why heroes took ridiculous playtime to unlock, skippable with microtransactions, for a $60 game.

rayiner 9y ago

Non-paywall article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-media-regulation/u-s-regulator-votes-to-loosen-media-ownership-rules-idUSKBN1DG2R9 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-media-regulation/u-s-r.... In my view, the media ownership rules were indefensible. First, they were not driven by the sort of legitimate economic concerns that usually drive anti-consolidation efforts. They were not (at least, not primarily) justified, for example, on the basis of media companies being able to exercise market power to charge too much for advertising. Instead, they were justified by the government's desire to influence the content of media. A well meaning desire, perhaps, but still a fundamentally illegitimate exercise of government power. Second, the broadcasting-license tail was wagging the merger dog. The FCC's purpose is to address the "tragedy of the commons" that might result if people could use public broadcast frequencies freely without concern for others. It's not an antitrust agency, and has no expertise in that area. It has overextended its authority over broadcasting licenses to exercise control over mergers in industries it has no jurisdiction over (in this case, newspapers).

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jnordwick 9y ago
This is a very underrated comment. The second point, that the FCC is not the correct body, was something I had never thought of before. Why is the FCC trying to make anti-trust rules? The FDA doesn't make anti-trust rules for companies it oversees.
- ikiris 9y ago
  Because Congress specifically delegated that authority to them for this domain. Go read a history book.
- makomk 9y ago
  Curiously enough, one of the other controversies in the news right now is the DOJ - which normally enforces anti-trust rules - supposedly telling AOL that they'd have to sell off either Turner Broadcasting or DirecTV if they wanted to merge with Time Warner due to competition concerns. Apparently this was an evil attack by Trump on the media, nothing whatsoever to do with the issues caused by one company owning both a major pay TV provider and a major provider of content.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Lev1a 9y ago

"greater consolidation" == "easier establishment of monopolies" (probably)

campuscodi 9y ago

Pai should be in jail. This is absurd. The guy is lying to everyone's face from a government function. When has ever a consolidation not lead to a monopoly and when has a monopoly not been abused?

cletus 9y ago

So: > One long-standing rule repealed Thursday prevented one company in a given media market from owning both a daily newspaper and a TV station > Another rule blocked TV stations in the same market from merging with each other if the combination would leave fewer than eight independently owned stations > The agency also took aim at rules restricting the number of TV and radio stations that any media company could simultaneously own in a single market. Now, let me first say that Trump and Ajit Pal have been, are and will be a disaster for media and broadband regulation. That out of the way, let me say this: These rules were crafted in an era when we had: - Local newspapers - A limited number of more broadly distributed papers (state, national) - 3 Broadcast TV networks (4 including PBS) where local stations were affiliates. - The importance of radio for entertainment and news - Limited market penetration of cable TV and far less channels and content choice than we have today So compare that to today: - We can have a virtually unlimited number of TV channels through cable and the Internet - Radio has a vastly greater array of options through satellite radio (eg Sirius) and the Internet (eg podcasts) - Newspapers are a dying breed, replaced with online news distribution. - The barrier to entry to creating, promoting and getting an audience for, say, a local issue blog is comparatively cheap now. Previously it either wasn't possible or was orders of magnitude more difficult. So it would be foolish to say the the media landscape hasn't changed drastically in 40 years. Now the devil is in the details here. So if there can be less than 8 independent stations in a market, how many can there be? 6? 4? 3? 2? Because there's a difference. Honestly there's far more scandalous and outright dangerous things to get outraged about with this administration.

lsiebert 9y ago
Barrier for entry is lower, but it's also harder to get paid for local news. Local coverage of political activities pretty much sucks except in major cities.
adjkant 9y ago
Just because the landscape has changed does not mean that the rule is irrelevant today. This change is politically motivated, not one of "this rule is outdated". There's a very low barrier to entry for new tech companies these days, but they all get bought out by Facebook, Google, Amazon. The end result, despite this low barrier to entry, is a conglomeration of power. If a single company buys up many small media companies and forces content, there is incredible power in that and frankly one of the most dangerous things that this administration has actually accomplished. Sinclair is just one example.

liveoneggs 9y ago

cox communications must be salivating to finish dominance on the atlanta market

shmerl 9y ago

FCC working for monopolists - that's already not news. How can this garbage be stopped though? It's like the sickest plutocracy in the works.

dragonwriter 9y ago
There's a political party that has stated opposition to this kind for consolidation and resisted industry pressure to remove this regulation, and one which has stated it's support for this kind of deregulation and actively pursued it. There's times when the relationship between public posturing, voting, and policy results in murky and opaque, but this isn't one of them.
- shmerl 9y ago
  > There's a political party that has stated opposition to this kind for consolidation Someone like the Pirate Party? It never made it in US somehow. And for the reference, previous FCC approved Charter + TWC merger, despite being better in general than the current horror.

js2 9y ago

The conclusion of this paper from 2001 supports revoking the rules, or at least that the rules aren’t necessary for their stated goal of providing diverse opinions: "A Tale of Three Cities: “Diverse and Antagonistic” Information in Situations of Local Newspaper/ Broadcast Cross-Ownership" http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1286&context=fclj http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... From the conclusion: This Article examined whether three existing newspaper/broadcast combinations in major markets provided information about the 2000 presidential campaign from "diverse and antagonistic sources." The results show clearly that they did provide a wide range of diverse information. In other words, the Commission's historical assumption that media ownership inevitably shapes the news to suit its own interests may no longer be true (if it ever was). The September 2001 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking demonstrated the Commission's interest in solid empirical evidence about newspaper/broadcast combinations. The evidence of the study reported in this Article suggests that the prohibition on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership has outlived its usefulness.

eonst430eoan 9y ago
> The conclusion of this paper from 2001 supports revoking the rules, or at least that the rules aren’t necessary for their stated goal of providing diverse opinions Hmm... From reading your quote, it sounds to me like it's saying that the rules are working properly. What these changes are going to allow is a single company with a known one-sided agenda to buy up all media in several markets. How will that work out?
- js2 9y ago
  The study looked at three cities where the newspaper and radio station were owned by the same company (“cross-ownership”), due to having been grandfathered in when the FCC rule was created in 1975. The FCC revoked multiple rules, but one of those prevented cross-ownership. The stated goal of all of the rules was to encourage a diversity of views. At least with respect to the cross-ownership rule, this study found it wasn’t necessary for a diversity of views to exist.

dmode 9y ago

This rule was repealed for one and one purpose only. Allow Sinclair Media, a pro-Trump media organization, to buy up local TV stations and blast propaganda news during your 9'o'clock news hour. Here's a great article covering the motivations of Sinclair. It is time to fight back and get rid of Ajit Pai https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/how-a-conservative-tv-giant-is-ridding-itself-of-regulation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/how-a-conserv...

meri_dian 9y ago
If a media outlet wants to buy stations and supply more conservative friendly news, how is that any different from Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post and supplying liberal friendly news? For those who would want to counter that buying many local stations outweighs buying a single outlet in the Washington Post, I would bet WaPo reaches as many or more people as all local stations put together in the US through their massive social media and generally online presence. Not only that, while local stations only air news at a set time each day, WaPo articles are persistent and ubiquitous. The scale of outreach and influence for a site like WaPo is really tremendous when you think about it.
- eropple 9y ago
  One: you have a long row to hoe before asserting that the Washington Post supplies "liberal-friendly news." They may (I would say do) have a moderately liberal-friendly editorial board. Much as the WSJ may (and again, I would say does) have an extremely conservative-friendly editorial board. To conflate the editorial board and reporting is, frankly, either disingenuous or bordering on it. Two: you have an even longer row to hoe to tie together buying one paper and buying as many TV stations as one can to blanket an area. We all know about what Sinclair's up to--given the levels of handwringing put out by the folks on Pai's side of the aisle about the (non-existent, but whatever) suppression of right-wing speech, maybe the notion of choking off differing voices under the Sinclair umbrella rings just a little bit hollow?
  - meri_dian 9y ago

SN76477 9y ago

this is in line with the current republican structure. they want to dismantle any regulations, minimize government and let the pieces fall where they may. The problem is that this isnt the 1850s anymore.

ikiris 9y ago
Make America Gilded Again

truxus 9y ago

Don't you think it's about time we removed all the unnessecary independent voices from media so we can stop confusing people? The Russians and Chinese are doing it; we need to catch up - we've got to have unity in our messages. /Sarcasm

sodosopa 9y ago

Those fuckers are gonna kill the web, aren't they?

karmapolic 9y ago

i wonder how the white nationalists are not preying on this Indian guy? after all, everything is business?

beedogs 9y ago

Another horrible idea from the worst Administration any of us will ever live through.

vic20forever 9y ago

We are so fucked.

Friedduck 9y ago

It’s a perfect storm. Kill net neutrality and then restrictions preventing local media monopolies. People have been manipulated by their chosen media like no other time in history, and I can’t see where we go from here. Enterprises will have the singular ability to control what vast swaths of the populace hears and believes. At best it’s a continuance of recent trends, and at worst the failure of the republic.