Ownership

The online tumult of the 2016 election fed into a growing suspicion of Silicon Valley’s dominance over the public sphere. Across the political spectrum, people have become less trusting of the Big Tech companies that govern most online political expression. Calls for civic responsibility on the part of Silicon Valley companies have replaced the hope that technological innovation alone might bring about a democratic revolution. Despite the focus on algorithms, A.I., filter bubbles, and Big Data, these questions are political as much as technical.

Regulation has become an increasingly popular notion; the Sen Cory Booker (D-NJ) has called for greater antitrust scrutiny of Google and Facebook, while Stephen Bannon reportedly wants to regulate Google and Facebook like public utilities. In the nineteen-thirties, such threats encouraged commercial broadcasters to adopt the civic paradigm. In that prewar era, advocates of democratic radio were united by a progressive vision of pluralism and rationality; today, the question of how to fashion a democratic social media is one more front in our highly divisive culture wars.

After Charlottesville, Nazis, white supremacists, and the alt-right have become a lot less welcome on the web. So they’re building their own.

“Enough is enough,” read the Gab-makers’ Medium post from Aug. 10, two days before the Unite the Right rally. “The time is now for patriots and free thinkers inside and outside of Silicon Valley to organize, communicate in a safe way, and start building,” the post read, calling for the formation of a new group called the “Free Speech Tech Alliance,” which would build an alternative infrastructure where the alt-right wouldn’t be burdened by the social-justice priorities and liberal values of Silicon Valley—nor by the arguably monopolistic powers of the major nodes of the information economy, like Facebook, Google, Apple, and their peers. Gab, and a growing number of its compatriots in the “alt-tech” movement, want to build their own internet, one that can be a haven for hate.

The tech industry's top CEOs are demanding President Trump and Congress continue a program that protects young undocumented immigrants from being deported. "Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our economy," the CEOs wrote in a letter posted on FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization. "With them, we grow and create jobs. They are part of why we will continue to have a global competitive advantage." The letter was signed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Meg Whitman, Microsoft's Satya Nadella and Netflix's Reed Hastings, among 350 others. Tech investors and board members, including Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett and General Motors' Mary Barra also signed the letter.

[Commentary] The think-tank world has come to be dominated by a distinctly modern kind of doublethink, which combines a rational understanding that corporations spend money to influence public policy with an instinctual belief that some of the institutions that benefit from it–often those that employ the thinker or his friends–function with complete independence. The New America Foundation runs several programs, including the Open Technology Institute , which researches issues that affect Google directly. The scholars who work on those projects don’t think of themselves as Google shills, and it’s hard to believe that they significantly changed their opinions in order to secure think-tank gigs. But it’s also hard to believe that their research isn’t affected by the funding that allows them to do the work they do.

Which leads us to the other big problem in the think-tank world–how the presence of so much corporate money distorts what work gets funded in the first place.

[Robert Levine is an author and journalist who writes about the media and technology businesses]

With so many Googlers in government, Google had an outsized influence on policymaking during the Obama years. But today, Google is in a different situation.

Most obviously, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt worked hard to get Hillary Clinton elected president, and Clinton lost. The issues don't end there. Given Silicon Valley's liberal views on social issues and Schmidt's love for Democratic politicians, it was probably inevitable that conservatives would sour on the search giant. But the larger problem for the search giant is that the company has been losing support among Democrats as well. A growing number of liberal thinkers believes that the concentration of corporate power was a major problem in the American economy. And few companies exemplify that concentration more than Google.

As expected, the companies and groups that lined up to oppose or strongly criticize the proposed Sinclair/Tribune merger were not ready to bury the hatchet and sing kumbaya in response to Sinclair's vigorous defense of the deal's public interest benefits. They lined up to take their shots in reply comments due at the end of the day Aug 30. In filing after filing, members of the Coalition to Save Local Media said Sinclair had fallen far short of the mark and the $3.9 billion dollar deal should be denied.

"Sinclair has failed to explain how this multi-billion-dollar merger could possibly be in the public interest,” said Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black. “That’s supposed to be the requirement the FCC is charged with overseeing. It’s a concern that a merger that would be so harmful to rural areas, independent news stations and citizens could even be considered.” The Competitive Carriers Association signaled in its comments that Sinclair had not assuaged their concerns about its power as force in the post-incentive auction repack—Sinclair/Tribune will have more repacking stations than any other group.

Comcast has sued the state of Vermont to try to avoid a requirement to build 550 miles of new cable lines. Comcast's lawsuit against the Vermont Public Utility Commission (VPUC) was filed Aug 28 in US District Court in Vermont and challenges several provisions in the cable company's new 11-year permit to offer services in the state. One of the conditions in the permit says that "Comcast shall construct no less than 550 miles of line extensions into un-cabled areas during the [11-year] term." Comcast would rather not do that. The company's court complaint says that Vermont is exceeding its authority under the federal Cable Act while also violating state law and Comcast's constitutional rights.

In the hours after European antitrust regulators levied a record $2.7 billion fine against Google in late June, an influential Washington think tank learned what can happen when a tech giant that shapes public policy debates with its enormous wealth is criticized.

The New America Foundation has received more than $21 million from Google; its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt; and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999. That money helped to establish New America as an elite voice in policy debates on the American left. But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Schmidt, who had chaired New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar. The statement disappeared from New America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Schmidt’s displeasure rippled through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington offices where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.” The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.

Those worries seemed to be substantiated a couple of days later, when Slaughter summoned the scholar who wrote the critical statement, Barry Lynn, to her office. He ran a New America initiative called Open Markets that has led a growing chorus of liberal criticism of the market dominance of telecom and tech giants, including Google, which is now part of a larger corporate entity known as Alphabet, for which Schmidt serves as executive chairman. Slaughter told Lynn that “the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,” according to an email from Slaughter to Lynn. The email suggested that the entire Open Markets team — nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows — would be exiled from New America.

[Commentary] The controversy behind the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s $3.9 Billion cash and stock agreement to acquire 42 broadcast stations and other media assets from Tribune Media continues to swirl. If approved, the combined media entity will reach 72% of US households, a figure far beyond the 39% allowed by Congress. Adding fuel to the controversy is that far-right-leaning Sinclair Broadcasting only became compliant with the ‘39% Congressional rule’ when FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, an appointee of President Donald Trump, reinstated the UHF discount rule enabling Sinclair to count only half of its actual audience based on the premise that UHF has a weaker signal than the VHF band. The reality is that, since the move to digital TV, signal issues are a thing of the past, rendering the UHF rule obsolete. So, what’s going on here, and what does it tell us about the future of TV?

While many will try to take ideological sides on this issue, a fair debate begins with honest perspective. Below is a list calling out several false arguments and those groups exacerbated the problem.

• Anyone who tries to defend the re-instatement of the UHF Discount rule. The fact is that the rule was obsolete and brought back to cynically serve a political purpose.
• “The sky is falling!” The loudest critics claiming that Sinclair will have excessive market power, crush the competition, destroy democracy, and other hyperbole happen to be those organizations that are aggressively trying to preserve their own economic interests.
• Tribune executives. Rather than stand on principal, they remain silent about the deal because they stand to gain a lot of money should a successful merger happen. Sadly, many regular Tribune and Sinclair employees stand to lose their jobs, as overlaps and the labor-minimizing efficiencies become the norm.
• The American people. Largely oblivious to how this will impact their local news, US viewers could very well see their community, their nation, and their world through an extremist filter. It is this indifference that enables political officials to take advantage of the situation and skirt the rules to help their cause.
• FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mike O’Reilly. Appointed to serve the best interests of the American people, they instead chose to rule in favor of a far-right political agenda.

Economic and political realities make it inevitable that the Sinclair-Tribune Merger will be approved. If the merger happens, short-term impacts will not be as dire as opponents predict. However, as time progresses, the lack of competition in local TV will inevitably lead to job loss, lower quality programming, and higher cost to consumers. The question that should be asked is this: Is Sinclair making a wise decision in investing in $3.9 billion in dying distribution model?

[Commentary] The Federal Trade Commission approved the merger between internet-giant Amazon and Whole Foods, the original organic grocer. You may be surprised how quickly the merger passed regulatory muster, especially given the public’s desire for strong antitrust enforcement to promote vigorous competition and equity in our economy, including our digital one. You may be wondering: Is this a case of weak enforcement? Is it proof that today’s antitrust doctrine is useless for digital-age companies? Or are critics of growing digital market concentration simply wrong to express concern? My guess is “none of the above.” Here’s why.

We hope the result in the Amazon-Whole Foods merger will neither make people give up on antitrust as an important policy tool, nor drive people to focus all their efforts on a “new antitrust” that tackles everything from quality jobs to social justice. We suggest that advocates strategically use antitrust enforcement and competition policy principles to fully protect consumers and citizens in the digital age. Finally, we strongly encourage a renewed effort to invigorate antitrust enforcement and promote new laws that create the social and economic equity we expect as a society -- and deserve.