Ownership

In the aftermath of [recent horrific mass shootings], some of the responses from internet companies include ideas that point in a disturbing direction: toward increasingly centralized and opaque censorship of the global internet. Facebook, for example, describes plans for an expanded role for the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, or GIFCT.

Apparently, the Justice Department antitrust enforcement staff have told T-Mobile and Sprint that their planned merger is unlikely to be approved as currently structured, casting doubt on the fate of the $26 billion deal. In a meeting earlier in April, DOJ staff members laid out their concerns with the all-stock deal and questioned the companies’ arguments that the combination would produce important efficiencies for the merged firm.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg oversaw plans to consolidate the social network’s power and control competitors by treating its users’ data as a bargaining chip, while publicly proclaiming to be protecting that data, according to about 4,000 pages of leaked company documents largely spanning 2011 to 2015 and obtained by NBC News.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Rep David Cicilline (D-RI) that the White House is rejecting their request for information that would shed light on whether President Donald Trump tried to sway the Justice Department into opposing the AT&T-Time Warner merger. Cipollone said that the documents requested by the lawmakers were shielded under confidentiality protections afforded to the president and his advisers.

A Q&A with former Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps.

In some ways, the world’s largest social network is stronger than ever, with record revenue of $55.8 billion in 2018. But Facebook has also never been more threatened. Here are some dangers that could knock it down.

The harsh reality behind Big Tech's power consolidation is clear in these five trends:

1. Data begets data, and that begets power
2. Size begets more heft and dollars.
3. Automation screws a lot of workers.
4. Algorithms favor the fortunate in big business.
5. Tech is also making big, bigger in media.

It’s no longer debatable: The system makes the big, bigger and the rich, richer. The rest of America stagnates or suffers. Since 1980, the incomes of the top 1%tripled, the top 10% doubled, and the bottom 60% of prime-age workers were flat. This may manifest on the campaign trail as a referendum not only on reversing the tax cuts and implementing a Green New Deal, but then moving in the exact opposite direction — President Donald Trump as the last gasp of trickle-down economics. It's hard to imagine a more worthy debate at a more important time for America.

Accusing Twitter and Facebook of suppressing conservative voices, Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) floated an overhaul to a key law that protects Internet platforms from legal liability for content posts on their sites, breaking up the companies, or even charging them with fraud. His three-part playbook: 

There can be little doubt that the major digital companies have gained a level of economic control akin to the industrial barons of the Gilded Age. It is important to take steps to introduce much needed competition into the digital marketplace. Clearly, a more active review of mergers is necessary, even when the acquired company is comparatively small.