Ownership

President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, under chairman Ajit Pai, has been clearing the way for a merger between Sinclair Broadcasting and Tribune Media, two television companies that together own hundreds of local news stations. However, the situation may soon become more complicated for Sinclair and its ally at the FCC. The company’s competitors, such as DishTV, are speaking out. Perhaps more important to the Trump administration are other conservative news outlets, who, recognizing the threat that Sinclair could pose to their business, are taking a stand. As this crony capitalist drama plays out, watchdog groups, meanwhile, are looking for holes in the Trump administration’s approach.

The recent rise of all-encompassing internet platforms promised something unprecedented and invigorating: venues that unite all manner of actors — politicians, media, lobbyists, citizens, experts, corporations — under one roof. These companies promised something that no previous vision of the public sphere could offer: real, billion-strong mass participation; a means for affinity groups to find one another and mobilize, gain visibility and influence. This felt and functioned like freedom, but it was always a commercial simulation. This contradiction is foundational to what these internet companies are. ]

These platforms draw arbitrary boundaries constantly and with much less controversy — against spammers, concerning profanity or in response to government demands. These fringe groups saw an opportunity in the gap between the platforms’ strained public dedication to discourse stewardship and their actual existence as profit-driven entities, free to do as they please. Despite their participatory rhetoric, social platforms are closer to authoritarian spaces than democratic ones. It makes some sense that people with authoritarian tendencies would have an intuitive understanding of how they work and how to take advantage of them.

In a conversation with Peter J. Boyer of The Weekly Standard, Steve Bannon said, “I have my hands back on my weapons,” the most important being his conservative website, Breitbart News — a “machine” he promised to “rev up” for what the site’s editor-at-large Joel Pollak described in a hashtag on Twitter as “#War.” The reported target list included President Trump’s opponents “on Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate America,” Bannon said. If Bannon does move forward with a rival to Fox News, he will face the herculean task required to get a new channel onto cable systems, especially as people increasingly give up cable for online streaming services. If he were to acquire an existing channel, he would still have to persuade cable operators to carry it as Breitbart TV. Bannon could team up with smaller competitors on cable, Newsmax or One America News Network. This much is certain: With Bannon out, expect more informational chaos, more sound and more fury, but signifying what?

In recent months, industry pundits sat up and took notice when online advertising giant Google started doubling down on its TV advertising investment. The tech company more than doubled its TV ad spend during the 2016 holiday quarter, laying out $109.8 million for ads promoting its Google Pixel mobile device. Launching Google Home meant a further $5 million for a single 30-second spot in January.

What’s remarkable is that Google is one of the most prominent TV spenders. The company built on digital advertising seems to know something about TV advertising that other brands don’t: In many cases, there’s just no substitute for it.

Because of its “extreme hostility toward Muslims,” the website Jihadwatch.org is considered an active hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The views of the site’s director, Robert Spencer, on Islam led the British Home Office to ban him from entering the country in 2013. But its designation as a hate site hasn’t stopped tech companies — including PayPal, Amazon and Newsmax — from maintaining partnerships with Jihad Watch that help to sustain it financially.

PayPal facilitates donations to the site. Newsmax — the online news network run by President Donald Trump’s close friend Chris Ruddy — pays Jihad Watch in return for users clicking on its headlines. Until recently, Amazon allowed Jihad Watch to participate in a program that promised a cut of any book sales that the site generated. All three companies have policies that say they don’t do business with hate groups

Is the term "google" too generic and therefore unworthy of its trademark protection? That's the question before the US Supreme Court. Words like teleprompter, thermos, hoover, aspirin, and videotape were once trademarked. They lost the status after their names became too generic and fell victim to what is known as "genericide."

What's before the Supreme Court is a trademark lawsuit that Google already defeated in a lower court. The lawsuit claims that Google should no longer be trademarked because the word "google" is synonymous to the public with the term "search the Internet." "There is no single word other than google that conveys the action of searching the Internet using any search engine," according to the petition to the Supreme Court. It's perhaps one of the most consequential trademark case before the justices since they ruled in June that offensive trademarks must be allowed.

Stephen K. Bannon, who left his post on Aug 18 as President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, has resumed his role as chairman of Breitbart News, the provocative right-wing website that propelled him to national fame. Hours after his departure from the White House was announced, Bannon led the evening editorial meeting of his former publication, Breitbart said on its website. “The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today,” the editor in chief of Breitbart, Alex Marlow, said in a statement. Bannon’s previous tenure as chairman of Breitbart coincided with the site’s move to the epicenter of the nationalist brand of right-wing conservatism that swept Trump into office last year. His return to the site is likely to reinvigorate Breitbart’s role as a gathering spot for Trump’s most ardent populist supporters.

While tech’s crackdown on violence-inciting white nationalist sites came rapidly following the turmoil in Virginia, it took years of cajoling by activists and advocates to get Silicon Valley ready for action. “We put out our first report about cyberhate in 1985,” says Brittan Heller, director of technology and society for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In 2012, the ADL inaugurated its Working Group on Cyberhate. “This was one of the first bodies to get organizations across the tech industry to talk about these issues,” says Heller. The ADL doesn’t publish a list of its members, but Heller says it includes “all the major tech companies like Facebook and Google, Apple and Microsoft, Twitter.”

In 2014, the Working Group put out best-practice guidelines for tech companies to handle online hate—like clearly explaining terms of service for users and providing mechanisms for people to report abuse. That same year, the Southern Poverty Law Center began its Silicon Valley push. “In 2014, we decided that we needed to at least make an effort to work with the tech companies to de-monetize hate,” says Heidi Beirich, director of SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

Tech leaders still have no coherent vision for how to police hate speech without becoming tyrants, themselves.

[Commentary] It took the death of a young woman at the hands of one of the neo-Nazis she was protesting to force the ever-expanding media universe to face a question it has been evading for years: Where’s the line?

Unlike the last big communications revolutions — brought about with radio and then television — this one came with no barrier to entry in terms of expensive equipment like towers and studios. There have been no governmental limits like broadcasting standards and licensing requirements. But as the downsides of informational democratization become more evident — the opening it has provided for nefarious state actors, terrorists and hate mongers — those who have some control over the web’s content stream have had a hard time figuring out where to build some much-needed dams. The trouble has come in finding the line between what some may find offensive and what is objectively dangerous speech. But at this point, if we can’t set a line at neo-Nazis and white nationalists inciting hatred and violence, can we set any line at all?