Dan Primack

Elon Musk doesn't seem to have much of a vision for how to actually run Twitter, if his takeover bid succeeds. He's not alone. A small group of tech moguls believe America is in the midst of what they call a "free speech" crisis, and they're investing time and money to change the terms of public discourse. But so far, they've made more headlines than progress.

Conservatives are aggressively building their own apps, phones, cryptocurrencies and publishing houses in an attempt to circumvent what they see as an increasingly liberal internet and media ecosystem. Many of these efforts couldn't exist without the backing of major corporate figures and billionaires who are eager to push back against things like "censorship" and "cancel culture." It's still not clear whether demand will match supply.

The upcoming sale of Yahoo and AOL to a private equity firm for $5 billion represents a massive media markdown. At their dotcom bubble peaks, Yahoo and AOL were valued at more than $125 billion and $200 billion, respectively, or $193 billion and $318 billion in 2021 dollars. AOL made one giant mistake. It famously bought Time Warner for $182 billion in cash and stock in 2000, saddling the company with debt just before the dotcom bubble burst and the rise of broadband made AOL's dial-up services virtually obsolete.

Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genakowski, now a partner with The Carlyle Group, is troubled by the Department of Justice's efforts to block AT&T from buying Time Warner. He said, "This lawsuit creates unprecedented uncertainty for media companies trying to scale in this new media world where cord-cutting is pressuring revenue and they're competing now with multiple, much larger tech companies.

Apparently, Todd Park is planning to step down as Chief Technology Officer by year-end.

He is expected to take on a new White House role, working from Silicon Valley to recruit tech talent into government roles.

He won early praise for his 90-day development of the initial Healthcare.gov rollout, and in 2012 was picked by President Barack Obama to replace Aneesh Chopra as CTO. In this role he helped oversee the repair of Healthcare.gov’s subsequent (and disastrous) relaunch.