Ownership

President Donald Trump stepped on stage in Phoenix (AZ) on Aug 22 with something clearly eating at him. Minutes into his style rally, we learned what: It wasn't the white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis who threw the nation into chaos and allegedly killed a woman in Virginia. Or the intractable 16-year war in Afghanistan that he just announced he's revving up. It's the media.

President Trump spent nearly a third — if not more— of his 90-minute rally rehashing his public remarks in the wake of Charlottesville and complaining that he was widely criticized for them. In fact, about the only time he mentioned the racial tensions and violence stirred up last week was in the context of defending himself. The president was so frustrated with media coverage of him that he printed out copies of some of the remarks he gave in the wake of the violence. He read them aloud to the crowd, pausing to express total disbelief that the tone of the coverage wasn't more positive.

Sinclair is vigorously defending its proposed merger with Tribune to the Federal Communications Commission as both in the interest of the public and of its company, which it says needs to scale up to be better able to compete with a growing number of less-regulated competitors. In fact, it says what deal opponents don't understand is that the deal will help "save" free, over-the-air TV. That came in a filing in opposition to the petitions to deny the deal, which was due by end of day Aug 22.

In the comments, Sinclair alternated between providing data to support its assertion the deal is in the public interest, countering some of the criticisms, and dismissing others as not transaction specific, or not relevant to the merger review. “Sinclair firmly believes in the mission of local broadcasting and this filing fully explains the public interest benefits that this transaction will provide as a result of the efficiencies and scale created by the combination of Sinclair and Tribune," said Chris Ripley, president and CEO of Sinclair. "This acquisition will help to ensure the future of the free and local television model for both Tribune and Sinclair’s local communities.” In the comments, Sinclair said, "At bottom, each of the petitioners is either trying to use this proceeding to stifle competition for its own economic interests or is still living in a pre-cable, pre-internet, pre-smartphone world, untethered from the economic realities of the current media market. Sinclair and Tribune ask the Commission to see these transparent and/or naïve attempts for what they are, dismiss or deny the petitions in full, and grant consent to the proposed transaction."

The Coalition to Save Local Media, comprising companies that want the Federal Communications Commission to block the deal, said Sinclair and Tribune have still failed to justify its approval. That came in response to Sinclair's 47-page, plus exhibits, response to petitions to deny the deal, which Sinclair filed with the FCC Aug 22 in response to those critics. That response basically restated the criticisms they leveled in their petitions to deny and Sinclair addressed in its filing. "Sinclair-Tribune has failed to explain how this multi-billion-dollar merger is in the public interest," the coalition said. "This merger continues to raise substantial legal and policy questions — including compliance with Federal Communications Commission rules — that remain unanswered by Sinclair-Tribune." Coalition members include the American Cable Association, A Wealth of Entertainment channel, Cinemoi, Common Cause, Competitive Carriers Association, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, DISH, ITTA – the Voice of America’s Broadband Providers, Latino Victory Project, NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association, One America News Network, Public Knowledge, RIDE TV, the Sports Fans Coalition and The Blaze. “A combined Sinclair-Tribune would create the single largest operator of local broadcast stations in the country, reaching 72 percent of American households, and lead to higher prices and fewer choices for consumers," the group added. "Additionally, the combined company would effectively control the market for certain broadcast equipment and impede deployment of mobile broadband, limiting competition and choice for the distribution of content and broadband services nationwide."

The Web is a key space for civic debate and the current battleground for protecting freedom of expression. However, since its development, the Web has steadily evolved into an ecosystem of large, corporate-controlled mega-platforms which intermediate speech online.

In this report, we explore two important ways structurally decentralized systems could help address the risks of mega-platform consolidation: First, these systems can help users directly publish and discover content directly, without intermediaries, and thus without censorship. All of the systems we evaluate advertise censorship-resistance as a major benefit. Second, these systems could indirectly enable greater competition and user choice, by lowering the barrier to entry for new platforms. As it stands, it is difficult for users to switch between platforms (they must recreate all their data when moving to a new service) and most mega-platforms do not interoperate, so switching means leaving behind your social network. Some systems we evaluate directly address the issues of data portability and interoperability in an effort to support greater competition.

[Commentary] Silicon Valley is an extractive industry. Its resource isn’t oil or copper, but data. Companies harvest this data by observing as much of our online activity as they can. This activity might take the form of a Facebook like, a Google search, or even how long your mouse hovers in a particular part of your screen. Alone, these traces may not be particularly meaningful. By pairing them with those of millions of others, however, companies can discover patterns that help determine what kind of person you are – and what kind of things you might buy.

These patterns are highly profitable. Silicon Valley uses them to sell you products or to sell you to advertisers. But feeding the algorithms that produce these patterns requires a steady stream of data. And while that data is certainly abundant, it’s not infinite. To increase profits, Silicon Valley must extract more data. One method is to get people to spend more time online: build new apps, and make them as addictive as possible. Another is to get more people online. This is the motivation for Facebook’s Free Basics program, which provides a limited set of internet services for free in underdeveloped regions across the globe, in the hopes of harvesting data from the world’s poor.

Reps David Price (D-NC) and Jared Huffman (D-CA) have collected more than a half dozen co-sponsors for a bill that would eliminate the Federal Communications Commission's UHF discount, which would in turn make it tougher for Sinclair Broadcasting and Tribune Media to merge. Co-sponsors of the Local and Independent Television Protection Act include by Reps Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Jerry McNerney (D-CA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Jackie Speier (D-CA). The bill "requires the FCC to act within 90 days to permanently end the UHF discount; and grandfathers any stations owned prior to Sept. 26, 2013," as the FCC had when it eliminated the discount under previous chairman Tom Wheeler, who has weighed in from his post-FCC perch to say the FCC was bending the rules to benefit Sinclair.

Journalists, congressional committees, and a special counsel are probing the details of what happened during the 2016 election. But two new books contend that the large lines of the problem are already clear. As in the eighteen-seventies, we are in the midst of a technological revolution that has altered the flow of information. Now, as then, just a few companies have taken control, and this concentration of power—which Americans have acquiesced to without ever really intending to, simply by clicking away—is subverting our democracy.

Verizon announced that its existing unlimited data plan is being divided into three new options: Go Unlimited (starting at $75 for a single line), Beyond Unlimited ($85 for first line), and Business Unlimited. Unlike the relatively straightforward unlimited plan that Verizon surprised customers with in February, these new monthly plans are chock-full of fine print and caveats. And in a move sure to anger network neutrality advocates, the regular “Go Unlimited” plan throttles all smartphone video streaming to 480p / DVD-quality. The new plans go into effect beginning tomorrow, August 23rd, so this change is happening fast. Existing postpaid customers can keep their current plan, but some things will change even for them.

A division of Univision Communications has sought to quickly defeat a defamation lawsuit brought over an article published on the sports website Deadspin, saying the complaint is intended to intimidate journalists. Gizmodo Media Group, the Univision unit that runs Deadspin and other blogs the company acquired in 2016 from Gawker Media, filed court papers Aug 21 in New York that seek to dispose of a lawsuit brought by Las Vegas oddsmaker RJ Bell who alleges a story critical of him and his website, Pregame, includes false and libelous statements. Bell is seeking at least $10 million. The article, “How America’s Favorite Sports Betting Expert Turned a Sucker’s Game Into an Industry”, was published in June 2016, months before Univision purchased Gawker Media blogs in a bankruptcy auction.

Lawyers for Gizmodo Media Group argue the sale and Gawker Media’s chapter 11 liquidation plan shield the company and the author of the story, freelance reporter Ryan Goldberg, who has been sued individually. “This meritless lawsuit should not have been brought in the first place and it is nothing more than an attempt to intimidate journalists,” said Gizmodo Media Group spokesman David Ford. Goldberg said in a statement that his article was the result of a monthslong investigation and that allowing the lawsuit to proceed “will chill my work and threaten investigative reporting by freelance journalists across the country.”

Arbitrating the bounds of acceptable content on global tech platforms is an enormous task. Roughly 400 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube each minute. Facebook has more than 2 billion users posting updates, comments, and videos. Increasingly, these companies rely on software. Facebook-owned Instagram recently introduced an algorithm to zap comments from trolls. Both YouTube and Facebook have deployed software to filter terrorism-related content. YouTube delivers anti-ISIS content to users searching for ISIS-related videos with a tool known as the Redirect Method. Facebook says it can identify and wipe out clusters of users that might have terrorist ties. But the software remains imperfect, and so people are almost always involved, too.