> "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're watching" Right now, I'm tentatively less concerned about them watching us. They haven't militarized t

> "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're watching" Right now, I'm tentatively less concerned about them watching us. They haven't militarized the state this way yet & we'd need to slide a lot more for the boot stomping the face of mankind to get away with such total cooption of technology against thought-rights. Even if it is merely total corporate (not governmental) coersion/corruption against the population, I'm still not afraid of this bluster & abuse being gestured at the citizenry. What does scare me is communication moving the other direction, not the bottom being read by the top but from the top being broadcast down. This scares me very very much. Because Ellison's already control: CBS, Paramount, Tik-Tok And might control: WB, Discovery (including HBO, CNN). Larry's threat against democracy & the sanctity of human thought is serious stuff & perhaps things might escalate to where this becomes a real hazard. But the hazard today is that the Powell Memorandum (1971) is way underway and that the explicit plan all along has been for wealthy interests to use a political party as a vehicle to takeover and control the information that people get, to shape the media digest as the ultra-wealthy please. The Internet has thrown somewhat of a wrench into this plan. But when more solid targets like Media Matters begin to form, it feels like the lawsuit-o-rama, of for example Musk filing existentially thermonuclear lawsuits in the US, Singapore, and Ireland, in an attempt to brutally over-the-top nuke the site from orbit (for daring to show the world the insane antisemitic and conspiracy nonsense he personally advocated engaged with and promoted, as well as for showing Nazi and very closely related content next to paid advertisements). Not just Felony Contempt of Business Model, Capital Contempt for showing what we did. (Of course there's like none of the loud free speech advocates around, duly angry about this one.) I am super afraid of Ellison's relationship with society, of what his incredible force of wealth gets bent to. But right now AI is far down my list, versus what's already here now, what the wealthy do to suppress other views, and when they deny the world their own chance to speak the truth & strive towards a just equitable & good planet. Ellison's media empire will one way or another be a first line player for decades. Overall Ellison's media companies seem not so far so pernicious, but it's so hard to guess whether lack of media coverage for large protests going unreported for example is reasoned choice or whether it is active suppression; it feels like already what doesn't get covered and who doesn't get airtime leaves the cutout shape of a hopeful progressive agenda behind. Whether you agree with me politically or not, i sure hope we can agree that having very few people in charge of the media is a bad end. And imo it's more than a clear and present danger to our democracy, it's already deeply deeply underway.