Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.3d agoPluralistic: Understaffing as a form of enshittification (23 Mar 2026)
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/22/nobodys-home/
Predictions are cable prices across the country will increase with consolidation in media/TV markets, and service providers (DirecTV) agree!
FCC approves the merger of local television giants Nexstar and Tegna, the same day that two lawsuits trying to block the deal were announced.
The $6.2B deal will create a company that owns 265 television stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, most of them local affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.
The Lawsuit argues the merger has run afoul of federal laws designed to protect against monopolies, and was filed in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia. https://apnews.com/article/nextstar-tegna-television-regulation-lawsuit-a6fa29ed77fec7fbd4461a4988dd6730 #TV #Cable #Television #Nexstar #Tegna #FCC #Media #Lawsuit #MediaMerger #AntiTrust #ABC #CBS #NBC #FOX #DirecTV #CableTV #Monopolies
Canada’s media meltdown is hiding in plain sight
A renewed inquiry into media dysfunction sidesteps the role of government policy and ownership consolidation
Marc Edge / March 21, 2026
#Canada #CanadianPolitics #cdnpoli #media #mediaownership #monopolies #oligopolies
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/canadas-media-meltdown-is-hiding-in-plain-sight
Amid intense coverage of Travis Dhanraj’s testimony before MPs, a key detail went largely unnoticed: Ottawa is once again launching an inquiry into what has gone wrong with Canada’s news media. One answer politicians are unlikely to confront is their own role in creating many of the problems now under scrutiny and decline.
"In 2021, the virtual world was the future of the internet. The pandemic had sequestered everyone indoors, heightening the appeal of digital communities. Facebook rebranded to Meta — a sign of the tech giant’s investment in and commitment to the metaverse as the future of the internet. Despite losing billions in VR, Meta released an upgraded version of the Quest 2 headset and began focusing on launching a higher-end Quest Pro. At the end of the year, it announced its plan to plunk down a rumored $400 million to buy the independent VR gaming studio Within, maker of a popular fitness game called Supernatural. Less than five years later, however, it shut the game down, leaving a community of avid fans bereft.
To former FTC chair Lina Khan, there’s a lesson in the ultimate fate of Supernatural, and the community that had grown up around it. She’d know — because she tried and failed to block Meta from acquiring Within.
“You need to have some regulatory humility because you don’t always know on the front-end how certain products are meaningful for certain communities,” says Khan. The FTC’s Meta lawsuit was often framed as an abstract attempt to rein in Big Tech. But in the end, the acquisition’s human cost was obvious — and an example of precisely why antitrust law matters. “Bringing to light that [Supernatural] was a core way for communities to stay healthy shows that there were real stakes here.”"
https://www.theverge.com/report/896820/lina-khan-ftc-meta-supernatural-antitrust
#USA #SocialMedia #VideoGames #VR #Meta #Facebook #Monopolies #FCT #LinaKhan #Antitrust
#Enshitification! #Monopolies! #Capitalism! #Yay!
Exposing bad telecom customer service | Marketplace
"the system is designed to frustrate as many people as possible, so part of the design is people give up"
I don’t think many of the tooters I see on my feed need convincing that our biggest threat (after a certain certifiable case in charge of a big, bigger than you’ve ever seen, country) lies in the privatisation of #infrastructure crucial to #NationalSecurity. But just in case, I’m tooting this article to make that very point, again. We cannot be warned enough…
”If critical digital infrastructure markets are structurally producing unavoidable private monopolies, what does that mean for economic power, political influence and democratic control more broadly? Starlink may be a particularly visible case, but it is part of a much wider pattern now emerging across the digital economy.”
#TechBros #Nepo #Monopolies #OutSourcing #StateCapture
#LEO #Communications
So-called "artists" in favor of monopoly rights and endless rent extraction. What else is new?
"Every invention has brought predictions of copyright’s demise: the daguerreotype, the phonograph, radio, cassettes, home video and the internet. All those predictions were premature, and Britain’s soft power flourished as a result.
A belief has taken hold that progress can’t happen without the abolition of some of our oldest rights. That it’s only theft when individuals steal. That corporations don’t steal, they innovate. If you believe all this, you might as well stock your bookshelves with fantasy."
https://www.ft.com/content/48532284-9244-4ee6-be46-f3bde22b7232
#AI #GenerativeAI #AITraining #Copyrght #Monopolies #Rentism #RentExtraction
Live Nation Gets To Keep Its Monopoly Thanks To Trump’s Department Of Justice
#Paramount will destroy #WarnerBros & other recent nonsense - LIVESTREAM
#CouncilOfGeeks #MediaConsolidation #Monopolies #Hollywood DeathOfCinema
BGDon 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 👨💻
LeftyLabourTechToronto
Miguel Afonso Caetano
Mike. 🩼🇨🇦
RaymondPierreL3
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