Economics sort of works ok when money transfers are used to mediate, y'know, the exchange of goods and services. Nearly everything else turns out to be a pretty obvious moral hazard.
The WP is his propaganda tool contributing to maintaining this billionaire-friendly environment. Trump gave the bourgeoisie trillions in tax cuts last year, and Bezos is a major receiver of this present himself. It's hard to quantify, but these captured media together are much more valuable to oligarchs than any other ventures of theirs, certainly more than their space toys. Hence why Ellison would spend $100B of his personal wealth to add CNN to his catalogue, or why Musk spent so much on X and doesn't seem to care too much about making it profitable.
One of the big lessons of the last decade is that media can have billionaires as their primary market. The Free Press got huge because of infusions of cash from the rich. Media that flatters the opinions of billionaires and projects their propaganda into the world can be enormously valuable even if it isn't making traditional cash. It is a return to a patronage model.
Garry Tan has even said this expressly. That the rich should simply own their own parallel media so they can project their will against the will of the people.
Here's a controversial opinion -- it's actually always been this way.
Hearst used his newspapers to manipulate the American public into war against the Spanish Empire.
Government lies (babies in incubators, yellow cake...) were used to push two Iraq wars on the American public by the media.
The abnormal thing is that we had maybe 10-15 years where the press put up at least a pretense of acting impartial as power shifted from pineapple and arms companies to tech monopolies.
I think the bigger change is that wealth is continuing to concentrate. The more wealth accrues under a few hands the more these people are able to exploit disproportionate control over the information environment.
The nuclear agreements with Iran worked very well, Iran followed them and there was peace. Then Trump unilateraly decided they weren't good enough anymore, refused Iran's requests to negotiate new ones, and joined Israel in their forever war against muslims in the goal of establishing a "Greater Israel".
The joint US-Israeli venture is the sole aggressor in this war, that much is clear to everyone not completely brainwashed.
Your analysis is useless, irrespective of how correct it is. There are countries with a freer press that fare better. Throwing your hands in the air and saying "it's all pointless, only fools care about improving things" is detrimental to fixing this mess.
This isn't rude, this is fucking insulting, and you know it.
> Collectively you don’t speak your minds and do not defend those who dare to do so.
Unlike Americans? Your democracy is in peril, not ours. Your press is under attack. Your free speech is threatened. Stop revelling in your ignorance and go do something about it.
Or don't. Maybe the world's ready to move on from American hegemony.
Neither of these two groups you mention hold any meaningful power anywhere, and have zero links with the issue of age verification: your comment is pure disinformation.
During a press conference yesterday, Hegseth, the secretary of war, received a question on Iran from CNN that he didn't feel the need to answer, and then went on a rant about how he can't wait for Ellison to buy the network and rid it of any opposition to the regime [1]. He literally spelt it out.
Free press in the US is already dead, all media belongs to conservative pedophile oligarchs who use it to manipulate the masses and push their warmongering narratives.
> All those free speech advocates are a bit quiet on this, wonder what happened to them.
There are no principled free speech advocates on the right, only people who have an issue with the media not being completely controlled by their side. Their silence then makes perfect sense: they are getting exactly what they wanted.
Yes, they are no longer even pretending to hide, I think that's the thing that really changed. Up to a few years ago there would always be the figleaf. Now, they're just stating openly what they're up to and nobody bats an eye. It's an extreme case of the normalization of deviance. And in a way that is the answer to that age old question: "How could they let it happen?" when contemplating Germany ca. 1936.
Funny how many of the people who only a few years ago weregloating about how private companies can do what they want, and there's no issues with censoring people or spreading propaganda (in clandestine cooperation with the government) are now seeing it blow back in their faces. I mean everybody who isn't stupid knew it was coming, not everybody thought it would come so quickly.
Are you sure that these people were "gloating" about private companies moderating arbitrarily? In the US, this is simply an obvious consequence of the first amendment, as many people have indeed pointed out.
The same people may personally hold wildly different beliefs as to whether this legal situation is desirable or not.
And in European countries, where there is no first amendment preventing the government from interfering with social media moderation policies, the situation is often different, and courts have required social media companies to publish speech which they had intended to moderate; see for example:
No it wasn't that they were moderating arbitrarily, it's that they were censoring opinions and discussions that were deemed verboten and the gloatees agreed with shutting it down. They of course changed their tune about it when something did not go their way.
I tire of this pathetic bothsideism. "Cancel culture" never made it to law, and had zero implications for the people that were supposedly targeted. Case in point: Trump is still president despite being a child rapist that tried to overthrow the American democracy. The Right is uniquely bad for free speech and free press in this country (and the economy, and corruption, and the environment, and peace...). Stop pretending otherwise.
Do you remember Biden or his ministers openly calling journalists names for their "stupid questions" at every press conference? Because that's what the Trump admin does daily. They revoked entry to the white house to some publications they disagree with, they facilitated mergers to put more media in the hands of their allies, they have the FCC threaten "unpatriotic" reporting with sanctions... Need I continue?
> And FWIW, I know plenty of actual conservatives, not Trumpist imposters, who defend freedom of speech
Fucking where?? I am yet to meet a single Republican who condemned anything Trump ever did.
I really can't stand this style of writing anymore, this quick succession of "impactful" short sentences, some of them without even a verb. I don't know if I just started noticing them recently or if it was always like common, but I hate it.
reply