#oligopolies — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #oligopolies, aggregated by home.social.
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As a matter of fact, I think Hollywood has been really loosing quality since 2023. There seems to be an almost total absence of new prestige TV shows and movies being talked around.
"Hollywood has long put out important truth-telling films, from “All the President’s Men” to the documentary “Citizenfour.” Some of the most celebrated films and TV shows — such as “The Godfather,” “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” — explored daring, controversial themes. Much of this content was created when film and TV functioned through open markets involving separate studios, exhibitors and distributors. After the industry allowed widespread consolidation, streaming companies began to take over. If a studio like Warner Bros. ceases to exist as an independent entity, we will lose yet another company to fund, produce and distribute that kind of art.
There’s good news, though. It comes in the form of a word that reliably counteracts fear: solidarity.
When over 4,000 artists are willing to sign a letter encouraging state attorneys general to block the merger — and more are signing every day — that matters. When elected leaders, from the California attorney general Rob Bonta to Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York start speaking out, holding hearings and starting investigations, that matters, too.
We also have an existing blueprint for success to thwart this merger. After the federal government approved a merger between Nexstar and Tegna, two affiliate station conglomerates, a bipartisan group of state enforcers challenged the combination and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the deal. A jury recently found that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, acts an illegal monopoly, and another jury decided against Meta and Google in a case about social media addiction.
The oligarchs are still in charge. But they are starting to lose their grip on power."https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/opinion/hollywood-merger-fear-paramount-warner-bros.html
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As a matter of fact, I think Hollywood has been really loosing quality since 2023. There seems to be an almost total absence of new prestige TV shows and movies being talked around.
"Hollywood has long put out important truth-telling films, from “All the President’s Men” to the documentary “Citizenfour.” Some of the most celebrated films and TV shows — such as “The Godfather,” “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” — explored daring, controversial themes. Much of this content was created when film and TV functioned through open markets involving separate studios, exhibitors and distributors. After the industry allowed widespread consolidation, streaming companies began to take over. If a studio like Warner Bros. ceases to exist as an independent entity, we will lose yet another company to fund, produce and distribute that kind of art.
There’s good news, though. It comes in the form of a word that reliably counteracts fear: solidarity.
When over 4,000 artists are willing to sign a letter encouraging state attorneys general to block the merger — and more are signing every day — that matters. When elected leaders, from the California attorney general Rob Bonta to Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York start speaking out, holding hearings and starting investigations, that matters, too.
We also have an existing blueprint for success to thwart this merger. After the federal government approved a merger between Nexstar and Tegna, two affiliate station conglomerates, a bipartisan group of state enforcers challenged the combination and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the deal. A jury recently found that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, acts an illegal monopoly, and another jury decided against Meta and Google in a case about social media addiction.
The oligarchs are still in charge. But they are starting to lose their grip on power."https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/opinion/hollywood-merger-fear-paramount-warner-bros.html
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As a matter of fact, I think Hollywood has been really loosing quality since 2023. There seems to be an almost total absence of new prestige TV shows and movies being talked around.
"Hollywood has long put out important truth-telling films, from “All the President’s Men” to the documentary “Citizenfour.” Some of the most celebrated films and TV shows — such as “The Godfather,” “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” — explored daring, controversial themes. Much of this content was created when film and TV functioned through open markets involving separate studios, exhibitors and distributors. After the industry allowed widespread consolidation, streaming companies began to take over. If a studio like Warner Bros. ceases to exist as an independent entity, we will lose yet another company to fund, produce and distribute that kind of art.
There’s good news, though. It comes in the form of a word that reliably counteracts fear: solidarity.
When over 4,000 artists are willing to sign a letter encouraging state attorneys general to block the merger — and more are signing every day — that matters. When elected leaders, from the California attorney general Rob Bonta to Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York start speaking out, holding hearings and starting investigations, that matters, too.
We also have an existing blueprint for success to thwart this merger. After the federal government approved a merger between Nexstar and Tegna, two affiliate station conglomerates, a bipartisan group of state enforcers challenged the combination and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the deal. A jury recently found that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, acts an illegal monopoly, and another jury decided against Meta and Google in a case about social media addiction.
The oligarchs are still in charge. But they are starting to lose their grip on power."https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/opinion/hollywood-merger-fear-paramount-warner-bros.html
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As a matter of fact, I think Hollywood has been really loosing quality since 2023. There seems to be an almost total absence of new prestige TV shows and movies being talked around.
"Hollywood has long put out important truth-telling films, from “All the President’s Men” to the documentary “Citizenfour.” Some of the most celebrated films and TV shows — such as “The Godfather,” “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” — explored daring, controversial themes. Much of this content was created when film and TV functioned through open markets involving separate studios, exhibitors and distributors. After the industry allowed widespread consolidation, streaming companies began to take over. If a studio like Warner Bros. ceases to exist as an independent entity, we will lose yet another company to fund, produce and distribute that kind of art.
There’s good news, though. It comes in the form of a word that reliably counteracts fear: solidarity.
When over 4,000 artists are willing to sign a letter encouraging state attorneys general to block the merger — and more are signing every day — that matters. When elected leaders, from the California attorney general Rob Bonta to Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York start speaking out, holding hearings and starting investigations, that matters, too.
We also have an existing blueprint for success to thwart this merger. After the federal government approved a merger between Nexstar and Tegna, two affiliate station conglomerates, a bipartisan group of state enforcers challenged the combination and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the deal. A jury recently found that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, acts an illegal monopoly, and another jury decided against Meta and Google in a case about social media addiction.
The oligarchs are still in charge. But they are starting to lose their grip on power."https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/opinion/hollywood-merger-fear-paramount-warner-bros.html
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As a matter of fact, I think Hollywood has been really loosing quality since 2023. There seems to be an almost total absence of new prestige TV shows and movies being talked around.
"Hollywood has long put out important truth-telling films, from “All the President’s Men” to the documentary “Citizenfour.” Some of the most celebrated films and TV shows — such as “The Godfather,” “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” — explored daring, controversial themes. Much of this content was created when film and TV functioned through open markets involving separate studios, exhibitors and distributors. After the industry allowed widespread consolidation, streaming companies began to take over. If a studio like Warner Bros. ceases to exist as an independent entity, we will lose yet another company to fund, produce and distribute that kind of art.
There’s good news, though. It comes in the form of a word that reliably counteracts fear: solidarity.
When over 4,000 artists are willing to sign a letter encouraging state attorneys general to block the merger — and more are signing every day — that matters. When elected leaders, from the California attorney general Rob Bonta to Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York start speaking out, holding hearings and starting investigations, that matters, too.
We also have an existing blueprint for success to thwart this merger. After the federal government approved a merger between Nexstar and Tegna, two affiliate station conglomerates, a bipartisan group of state enforcers challenged the combination and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the deal. A jury recently found that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, acts an illegal monopoly, and another jury decided against Meta and Google in a case about social media addiction.
The oligarchs are still in charge. But they are starting to lose their grip on power."https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/opinion/hollywood-merger-fear-paramount-warner-bros.html
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"Today, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and Reporters Without Borders, Inc. demanded records from Paramount Skydance Corp. regarding potentially corrupt acquisitions and deals that could result in relinquishing editorial control of major news outlets to the Trump administration. Public reports suggest that David Ellison and his father Larry may have tried to secure regulatory approval to acquire Paramount and now Warner Bros. Discovery by, among other things:
- Making a “side deal” to settle President Trump’s spurious lawsuit against “60 Minutes” by providing $15 million to $20 million worth of free advertising.
- Installing a pro-Trump GOP donor without journalism experience as “ombudsman” at CBS News to evaluate complaints of “bias” and to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.
- Promising to make “sweeping” changes to CNN, and to potentially fire anchors and commentators whom Trump dislikes.Since Paramount Skydance announced its most consequential Trump-friendly changes at CBS News in October — acquiring The Free Press and appointing Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief — the company’s market capitalization has decreased by 40%, wiping out more than $8 billion in shareholder value."
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"An influential government adviser close to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves held 16 undisclosed meetings with top US tech executives, the Guardian can reveal.
The No 10 business aide Varun Chandra discussed regulatory changes, AI and Donald Trump’s second administration with tech corporations during confidential meetings between October 2024 and October 2025. In one meeting he offered to help a top executive meet the prime minister directly.
Chandra’s dealings with six major technology companies – Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Apple and Meta – took place as the government developed policies to secure investment from Silicon Valley, including multimillion-pound energy subsidies and preferential planning approval for datacentres in what ministers have called AI growth zones.
While largely unknown outside Westminster, Chandra, who ran a corporate intelligence firm founded by former British spies before joining government, is a central figure in Downing Street and is a key champion of the government’s push for economic growth."
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@InsurgoFormica
I think there would be a correlation, but in my view it is caused by multiple factors and not by an employment-inflation nexus (despite the NAIRU model). For example, we already know from recent experience with #GreedFlation when #bigMoney and the #Oligopolies were looking at shrinking opportunities to make a killing (super profits and stock market manipulation), that increasing profits is inflationary and has an adverse impact on jobs security, increases cost of living and gives rise to unemployment when small businesses are squeezed out. You’d think that the system would self-balance somewhere if not for greed and corruption and an controversial addiction to growth at all costs. A balanced (regulated) economy could sustain its society where ‘no one is left behind’ but where Millionaires are few and billionaires do not exist. This is no a ‘leftist’ view, simply being humane and compassionate. -
@InsurgoFormica
I think there would be a correlation, but in my view it is caused by multiple factors and not by an employment-inflation nexus (despite the NAIRU model). For example, we already know from recent experience with #GreedFlation when #bigMoney and the #Oligopolies were looking at shrinking opportunities to make a killing (super profits and stock market manipulation), that increasing profits is inflationary and has an adverse impact on jobs security, increases cost of living and gives rise to unemployment when small businesses are squeezed out. You’d think that the system would self-balance somewhere if not for greed and corruption and an controversial addiction to growth at all costs. A balanced (regulated) economy could sustain its society where ‘no one is left behind’ but where Millionaires are few and billionaires do not exist. This is no a ‘leftist’ view, simply being humane and compassionate. -
@InsurgoFormica
I think there would be a correlation, but in my view it is caused by multiple factors and not by an employment-inflation nexus (despite the NAIRU model). For example, we already know from recent experience with #GreedFlation when #bigMoney and the #Oligopolies were looking at shrinking opportunities to make a killing (super profits and stock market manipulation), that increasing profits is inflationary and has an adverse impact on jobs security, increases cost of living and gives rise to unemployment when small businesses are squeezed out. You’d think that the system would self-balance somewhere if not for greed and corruption and an controversial addiction to growth at all costs. A balanced (regulated) economy could sustain its society where ‘no one is left behind’ but where Millionaires are few and billionaires do not exist. This is no a ‘leftist’ view, simply being humane and compassionate. -
@InsurgoFormica
I think there would be a correlation, but in my view it is caused by multiple factors and not by an employment-inflation nexus (despite the NAIRU model). For example, we already know from recent experience with #GreedFlation when #bigMoney and the #Oligopolies were looking at shrinking opportunities to make a killing (super profits and stock market manipulation), that increasing profits is inflationary and has an adverse impact on jobs security, increases cost of living and gives rise to unemployment when small businesses are squeezed out. You’d think that the system would self-balance somewhere if not for greed and corruption and an controversial addiction to growth at all costs. A balanced (regulated) economy could sustain its society where ‘no one is left behind’ but where Millionaires are few and billionaires do not exist. This is no a ‘leftist’ view, simply being humane and compassionate. -
@InsurgoFormica
I think there would be a correlation, but in my view it is caused by multiple factors and not by an employment-inflation nexus (despite the NAIRU model). For example, we already know from recent experience with #GreedFlation when #bigMoney and the #Oligopolies were looking at shrinking opportunities to make a killing (super profits and stock market manipulation), that increasing profits is inflationary and has an adverse impact on jobs security, increases cost of living and gives rise to unemployment when small businesses are squeezed out. You’d think that the system would self-balance somewhere if not for greed and corruption and an controversial addiction to growth at all costs. A balanced (regulated) economy could sustain its society where ‘no one is left behind’ but where Millionaires are few and billionaires do not exist. This is no a ‘leftist’ view, simply being humane and compassionate. -
@gusseting
I kind of agree with you, about the controling aspects of the #FossilFuelLobby. On the other hand, if not for fossil fuel, there would be other lobbies seeking #StateCapture. It is in the #moneyedClass interest to excert as much influence as money can buy after all. Remember the Tabacco Lobbies of yore? Same thing. Today we can also point to the #GamblingIndustry and increasingly #DefenceIndustries.Unfortunately, with power comes #Greed and #Corruption and #TheRich like it that way. All we can do is stay one step behind our #Leaders ensuring we don’t fall too far back. And the only way to do that is through the ballot box, consistent activism and community-led campaigns (including petitions, protest sit-ins/marches and boycotts, etc.).
I’m hopeful that consistent messaging by communities eventually cuts through to polies and that our govt (of whatever ilk) will eventually push back against #Zionism and its growing influence in everyday Australian social life because it is so egregious atm.
Also more peeps ought to have a good long think about it all and take a moral and ethical stand vis a vis #Gaza, #WestBank #Lebanon, etc. not much help if peeps keep watching #FoxFakeNews and similar #Cronies IMO.
In the grand scheme of things, we need to break up #Oligarchies , #Oligopolies and get serious about progressive #TaxReform.
/getting wordy here, better stop…/
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Canada’s media meltdown is hiding in plain sight
A renewed inquiry into media dysfunction sidesteps the role of government policy and ownership consolidationMarc Edge / March 21, 2026
#Canada #CanadianPolitics #cdnpoli #media #mediaownership #monopolies #oligopolies
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/canadas-media-meltdown-is-hiding-in-plain-sight
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Cory Doctorow - Rescuing the Internet From “Enshittification” | The Daily Show
#CoryDoctorow #enshittification #monopolies #oligopolies #bigtech
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The big grocers are ripping us off. We need a public option for groceries.
#Canada #CanadianPolitics #cdnpoli #NDP #NDP2026 #AviLewis #monopolies #oligopolies
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"The adtech problems drew a monopolization case, and Google lost that one too. And though the remedy is still to come, few think Google will be fundamentally restructured.
And that’s a tragedy, because the shift to AI is perhaps more significant than the shift to mobile. As with the early search market, there are several companies offering foundational AI services, like OpenAI, Microsoft, Perplexity, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and so forth. The two key resources determining which model wins are, same as search before, data and distribution.
Google, as you’d expect, is repeating its search monopolization playbook with Gemini. It is self-preferencing Gemini across its lines of business, which is what it did with Android and search. It is cutting deals to insert Gemini into every major retail channel, which is analogous to its payments to phone makers to thwart rival search engines. Then there’s its deal with Apple, which is virtually identical to what Judge Mehta found to be the original Apple-Google arrangement enabling the illegal monopolization of the search market.
Mehta’s failure to impose a remedy was permission for Google to repeat this scheme with generative AI. And now it has. This deal will ensure that Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot product will become dominant in the most important mobile ecosystem in the world. And its experience structuring adtech markets suggest that if it mediates the entire economy, many tradition businesses will wind up like newspapers, eliminated as Google appropriates profit margins for itself and destroys the ability of consumers to differentiate products based on quality, innovation or other values. It could be an extinction level event for many commercial areas, like the death of the open web, and a dramatic narrowing of consumer choice."
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/will-google-organize-the-worlds-prices
#Google #AI #LLMs #AISearch #PriceFixing #Monopolies #Oligopolies #Competition #Antitrust
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"Out of the financial crisis came the anti-monopoly movement, the network of people who think that concentrated economic power is coercive and dangerous. That movement is based on the view that every human is touched by God and meant to be free, but also that too much power is inherently corrupting. They largely center themselves within business, focusing on the importance of fair competition as both a check and a spur for the ambitions of citizens. It is the most powerful anti-oligarchical ideology in America today. And we can see it reflected in the voices not just of people organizing the anti-monopoly movement, but writers at Barstool, Michael Jordan, municipal officials suing fire truck makers, and and endless number of viral videos describing to Americans how their society really works.
So that’s my case for optimism. America is starting to regain its common sense, the public is finally seeing oligarchy for what it is, and the culture war itself has started to ebb. Politicians can no longer ignore that voters are saying that they care about prices and affordability, with the subtext that it’s really expensive for a kid to play hockey because some guy with five yachts wants another one. If that’s the theme when voters head into the voting booth, well that’s how countries start changing."
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-case-for-optimism-in-the-next
#USA #Monopolies #Oligopolies #Corruption #Antitrust #Competition
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"The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation to assess whether Google has breached EU competition rules by using the content of web publishers, as well as content uploaded on the online video-sharing platform YouTube, for artificial intelligence (‘AI') purposes. The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage.
(...)
The Commission is concerned that Google may have used:- The content of web publishers to provide generative AI-powered services (‘AI Overviews' and ‘AI Mode') on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content. AI Overviews shows AI-generated summaries responsive to a user's search query above organic results, while AI Mode is a search tab similar to a chatbot answering users' queries in a conversational style. The Commission will investigate to what extent the generation of AI Overviews and AI Mode by Google is based on web publishers' content without appropriate compensation for that, and without the possibility for publishers to refuse without losing access to Google Search. Indeed, many publishers depend on Google Search for user traffic, and they do not want to risk losing access to it.
- Video and other content uploaded on YouTube to train Google's generative AI models without appropriate compensation to creators and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content. Content creators uploading videos on YouTube have an obligation to grant Google permission to use their data for different purposes, including for training generative AI models..."
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/de/ip_25_2964
#AI #GenerativeAI #Google #EU #AIOverviews #AIMode #YouTube #Oligopolies #Competition #Antitrust
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Right-wingers are the ones who are still fighting Identity Politics. The rest of the political spectrum has moved on to more pressing issues as affordability and cartelization. At this rate, we'll reach 2050 and they'll still be waving the "woke" bogeyman. What a complete joke!
"Mr. Ferguson is transforming the F.T.C., an independent agency that aims to protect consumers and police corporate power, into an enforcer of President Trump's social and political agendas, according to more than a dozen former colleagues, antitrust experts and acquaintances. With investigations and hearings that inform the country’s policies on culture war issues, critics said Mr. Ferguson was testing the agency’s regulatory limits.
Many of the agency’s chairs have mirrored the political priorities of the presidents who appointed them. But Mr. Ferguson has made his connection unusually explicit, referring to the agency as the “Trump-Vance F.T.C.” In doing so, the 39-year-old could imperil the agency’s appearance of political impartiality when bringing lawsuits, critics said, making them harder to win. Some fear Mr. Ferguson could use his regulatory might to pursue Mr. Trump’s foes or to crack down on causes important to the left.
“There have been other chairs of the agency, other commissioners, who’ve said the president’s views are highly influential,” said William Kovacic, a former Republican chairman of the F.T.C. “But it’s the first time in the agency’s history that we’ve had a chair that has so completely aligned his program and his position with that of the president.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/technology/ftc-andrew-ferguson-regulator.html
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rooseveltinstitute.org/publications... Break down this concentration in EVERY sector of the #global #economy. No more #cartels, #oligopolies, #monopolies, etc. Just make real #competition the default. #democracy #justice #humanrights #media #socialmedia #climatechange #adaptation #migration
The Political Economy of the U... -
https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/political-economy-of-us-media-system/
Yep - break down this concentration in EVERY sector of the #global #economy. No more #cartels, #oligopolies, #monopolies, etc. Just make real #competition the default.
End ALL #billionaires #plutocrats #oligarchs - this cancer must be excised ASAP for the survival of the rest.
#democracy #justice #humanrights #media #socialmedia #climatechange #adaptation #migration -
"Apple warns iPhone users to stop using Google Chrome. “Unlike Chrome,” it says, “Safari truly helps protect your privacy.” Apple’s warning now includes secretive fingerprinting. And Chrome’s not the only Google app you need to stop using.
Apple says “Safari works to prevent advertisers and websites from using the unique combination of characteristics of your device to create a ‘fingerprint’ to track you. To combat fingerprinting, Safari presents a simplified version of the system configuration so more devices look identical to trackers, making it harder to single yours out.”
Digital fingerprinting has made an alarming comeback this year, with Google reversing its ban on this secretive, obfuscated technology that cannot be disabled. Given tracking cookies offer opt-outs, it’s bad news for users that fingerprinting do not."
#Apple #iPhone #Google #GoogleChrome #Oligopolies #BigTech #Privacy #DataProtection #DigitalFingerprinting
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"Apple warns iPhone users to stop using Google Chrome. “Unlike Chrome,” it says, “Safari truly helps protect your privacy.” Apple’s warning now includes secretive fingerprinting. And Chrome’s not the only Google app you need to stop using.
Apple says “Safari works to prevent advertisers and websites from using the unique combination of characteristics of your device to create a ‘fingerprint’ to track you. To combat fingerprinting, Safari presents a simplified version of the system configuration so more devices look identical to trackers, making it harder to single yours out.”
Digital fingerprinting has made an alarming comeback this year, with Google reversing its ban on this secretive, obfuscated technology that cannot be disabled. Given tracking cookies offer opt-outs, it’s bad news for users that fingerprinting do not."
#Apple #iPhone #Google #GoogleChrome #Oligopolies #BigTech #Privacy #DataProtection #DigitalFingerprinting
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"Apple warns iPhone users to stop using Google Chrome. “Unlike Chrome,” it says, “Safari truly helps protect your privacy.” Apple’s warning now includes secretive fingerprinting. And Chrome’s not the only Google app you need to stop using.
Apple says “Safari works to prevent advertisers and websites from using the unique combination of characteristics of your device to create a ‘fingerprint’ to track you. To combat fingerprinting, Safari presents a simplified version of the system configuration so more devices look identical to trackers, making it harder to single yours out.”
Digital fingerprinting has made an alarming comeback this year, with Google reversing its ban on this secretive, obfuscated technology that cannot be disabled. Given tracking cookies offer opt-outs, it’s bad news for users that fingerprinting do not."
#Apple #iPhone #Google #GoogleChrome #Oligopolies #BigTech #Privacy #DataProtection #DigitalFingerprinting
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"Apple warns iPhone users to stop using Google Chrome. “Unlike Chrome,” it says, “Safari truly helps protect your privacy.” Apple’s warning now includes secretive fingerprinting. And Chrome’s not the only Google app you need to stop using.
Apple says “Safari works to prevent advertisers and websites from using the unique combination of characteristics of your device to create a ‘fingerprint’ to track you. To combat fingerprinting, Safari presents a simplified version of the system configuration so more devices look identical to trackers, making it harder to single yours out.”
Digital fingerprinting has made an alarming comeback this year, with Google reversing its ban on this secretive, obfuscated technology that cannot be disabled. Given tracking cookies offer opt-outs, it’s bad news for users that fingerprinting do not."
#Apple #iPhone #Google #GoogleChrome #Oligopolies #BigTech #Privacy #DataProtection #DigitalFingerprinting
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"Apple warns iPhone users to stop using Google Chrome. “Unlike Chrome,” it says, “Safari truly helps protect your privacy.” Apple’s warning now includes secretive fingerprinting. And Chrome’s not the only Google app you need to stop using.
Apple says “Safari works to prevent advertisers and websites from using the unique combination of characteristics of your device to create a ‘fingerprint’ to track you. To combat fingerprinting, Safari presents a simplified version of the system configuration so more devices look identical to trackers, making it harder to single yours out.”
Digital fingerprinting has made an alarming comeback this year, with Google reversing its ban on this secretive, obfuscated technology that cannot be disabled. Given tracking cookies offer opt-outs, it’s bad news for users that fingerprinting do not."
#Apple #iPhone #Google #GoogleChrome #Oligopolies #BigTech #Privacy #DataProtection #DigitalFingerprinting
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"School districts and local governments across the country appear to be overpaying for basic supplies because of Amazon contracts that bind them to dynamic pricing, according to a new report based on government data and public records analyzed by the non-profit Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
A school district in Denver, Colorado, would have saved about $1m in 2023 had it been able to negotiate for and lock in the lowest of the platform’s continuously changing prices, according to one estimate cited in the report. Denver public schools, which spent $5.7m with Amazon that year, “could have saved 17 percent” had it “consistently received Amazon’s lowest prices”, the report said.
On 15 August 2023, for example, Denver’s school district placed two separate orders for two bulk cases of dry-erase markers, researchers found. The district paid $114.52 for one, and $149.07 for another.
Under dynamic pricing, companies like Amazon use algorithms to continuously readjust prices based on real-time data. Supporters say these tools help companies adjust to changes in supply and demand, but regulators have warned of their potential to set high prices.
Researchers were able to obtain detailed data on roughly 55,000 purchases of repeatedly-ordered Amazon items from 23 public entities, including Denver’s school district. The items included Elmer’s glue, Amazon-brand copy paper, Lysol cleaning wipes and Crayola crayons. On average, the report found, the localities could have saved 17% had they “consistently received the lowest prices Amazon charged” for those items."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/04/us-schools-amazon-algorithmic-pricing
#USA #Amazon #DynamicPricing #Algorithms #Monopolies #Oligopolies #Schools #Competition
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via Alejandro Pisanty ->
"Trump’s Latin America policy appears contradictory only if you ignore the underlying logic. Pardoning a cocaine trafficker while bombing drug boats makes sense when the pardon buys political infrastructure for tech oligarchs while military action pressures governments toward privatization.
The strategy reveals sophisticated understanding of how power operates: through overlapping systems of economic pressure, technological dependency, and military threat, all coordinated to reshape governance structures favorable to U.S. corporate interests.
This isn’t chaotic, impulsive Trump. This is systematic state power deployed to create conditions for massive private wealth extraction. The government provides geopolitical muscle (pardons, military threats, economic leverage) while tech oligarchs provide infrastructure, capital, and ideological cover through “innovation” and “freedom” rhetoric.
When Trump pardons Hernández at Stone and Gaetz’s request, advocating for Thiel and Andreessen’s Próspera investment, where does government end and corporate interest begin?
My previous analysis identified tech oligarchs building physical separation while simultaneously accumulating unprecedented government control through infrastructure provision. The Hernández pardon reveals how that alliance operates in practice. Trump serves as the battering ram, using state power to clear space for oligarch experiments."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/180764752
#USA #Trump #TechnoFascism #LatinAmerica #Honduras #BigTech #Oligopolies
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"Prices have been rising across the economy in ways that are both visible and opaque. There are short-term drivers of inflation due to President Trump’s mismanagement of the economy. But the deeper drivers result from the degradation of capitalism.
For example, the lethal combination of digital technology and tech monopolies picks your pocket in countless ways. Instead of technical advances leading to greater convenience and lower cost, as they logically should, they create strategies for opportunistic price hikes.
When Amazon uses its deep knowledge of consumer preferences to rig markets and undermine competitors, higher prices are passed along. When HP makes it illegal or impossible for consumers to use cheaper non-HP cartridges in their printers, it can charge exorbitant prices. If you are prohibited from repairing your own car or your own iPhone, or as a farmer, prohibited from saving seed for next year’s planting, that invites monopoly profits built on higher prices. Costs rise because the rules are rigged.
It isn’t just the increasing cost of health insurance, but the tax on your time when a health system of byzantine complexity requires you to waste hours to get a simple referral or get a claim paid. Middlemen and algorithms, both in the business of denying claims, are a direct cost to the system and a source of rising out-of-pocket prices to patients. If insurance doesn’t pay, you do. These middlemen also function as a drain on doctor time and thus a tax on doctors’ incomes, as well as a debasement of medical services
In this special issue of the Prospect, we take stock of several hidden drivers of rising costs. David Dayen explores all the ways that technology allows sellers of any product that uses the internet to take advantage of surveillance capitalism to personalize prices and charge more than the market price..."
https://prospect.org/2025/12/01/sources-of-americas-hidden-inflation/
#USA #Rentism #Inflation #Economy #PoliticalEconomy #Monopolies #Antitrust #Oligopolies #IP #Competition
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"Amazon is a technofeudal rentier owning the digital infrastructure on which privateers, states and societies depend. Thankfully, there are signs of a pushback. The campaign that brings workers and citizens together every Black Friday – Make Amazon Pay – recognises this transformation. What began as a fight for workers’ rights has grown into a coalition of unions, climate campaigners, tax justice groups, digital rights advocates and migrant and Palestine solidarity networks. They understand that Amazon’s reach extends across logistics, finance, governance, ecological destruction, surveillance and war.
Its demands – decent wages, safe workplaces, collective bargaining, climate action, tax justice, curbs on Amazon’s vast water consumption, an end to its entanglement with surveillance agencies and military operations – are integrated. Together, they map the much needed unified resistance to technofeudal domination.
In the early decades of industrial capitalism, cross-border worker solidarity was hard. Today, the resistance to cloud capital can use its own tools to coordinate at planetary scale. Campaigns such as Make Amazon Pay offer a glimpse of the alliances required to confront our new cloudalist overlords. It may be only a beginning – but it is a hopeful one."
#Amazon #Monopolies #TechnoFeudalism #Oligopolies #Competition #Capitalism
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"Tuesday’s ruling is clearly wrong on the merits. The government charged that Meta, then called Facebook, broke the law when it bought up its competitors Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014. Judge Boasberg threw out the case by concluding that Meta lacks monopoly power now, when the relevant question should have been whether it had monopoly power at the time.
But even to deny that Meta now holds a monopoly in personal social networking (sharing with friends and family) means ignoring a lot of direct evidence to the contrary. The government presented records of the company’s extraordinary and durable profits ($87.1 billion operating profit on $164.5 billion in revenue in 2024, for example), which is a textbook signal of monopoly power. The company has also subjected users to more and more ads, removed privacy protections and otherwise reduced the quality of its service without losing its user base, which is hard for a company facing competition to do.
Instead, Judge Boasberg held that the recent development and growth of an adjacent market for brief videos such as TikTok and YouTube shorts show that Meta does not — and somehow never did — possess monopoly power. It took an awful lot of strained legal thinking, in other words, to let the company off the hook.
Those failings aside, Judge Boasberg’s ruling is also flawed in a broader sense. Does anyone seriously doubt that Meta is the kind of company that antitrust laws were designed to restrain?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/opinion/meta-facebook-antitrust-ruling.html
#USA #SocialMedia #Meta #Antitrust #Monopolies #Oligopolies #Competition
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"In my view, Wu is a national treasure. He coined the term net neutrality. (The concept—which assures nondiscriminatory access to platforms—has been momentarily beaten down by the courts.) During the Biden days, he, along with FTC chair Lina Khan and assistant attorney general for antitrust Jonathan Kanter, helped thaw out what he calls Antitrust Winter, a free-for-all era of corporate consolidation and anticompetitive practices that empowered Big Tech.
He’s also a good writer. One felicitous trick in his bag is the invocation of obscure, even ancient precedents that provide illuminating insights into contemporary conundrums. To explain the value of net neutrality, Wu tells the tale of a 14th century Englishwoman who was refused lodging at a rural inn for unspecified reasons, and found herself abandoned in the dark; her successful court challenge established the principle that a “public house” must be open to the public.
The Age of Extraction is the third in a trilogy consisting of The Master Switch (about the importance of open platforms) and The Attention Merchants (which focused on how social media and online ads infected the media ecosystem).
I read this latest effort, though, with a bit of wistfulness. It was written before the 2024 election. Donald Trump is mentioned only once, and not in the context of his return to the White House. To be sure, a number of times Wu refers to scenarios where a generic autocratic strongman takes power—guess who comes to mind? But Wu didn’t want to write another Trump book. “I just felt it’s duplicative to say Trump is a crazy madman who is corrupted,” he says. Instead, he wanted to write on issues and ideas, in hopes that his work would retain relevance long after our current leader leaves the scene.
But right now, Trump is in the White House, presiding over the age Wu refers to in his book title."
https://www.wired.com/story/tim-wu-age-of-extraction/
#USA #Monopolies #Oligopolies #Antitrust #Competition #BigTech
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"Economic optimism is in short supply these days, but Tim Wu is optimistic — to a point. In “The Age of Extraction,” he rejects zero-sum doom-saying and declares that “enlightened self-interest” is real. “Prosperity, fairness and growth are not incompatible,” he writes.
But at a time when Big Tech platforms dominate our economic lives, we will have to work hard to re-establish a balance. In fact, Wu suggests, too much optimism is what got us into this predicament in the first place. He resurfaces all the sunny predictions of the decentralized, democratic world that the internet was to bring, and which allowed optimism to slide into complacency.
Information was supposed to flow, a healthy pluralism was supposed to flourish. Lumbering Goliaths were supposed to be felled by scrappy Davids. “Only rarely,” he writes, “have so confident a set of predictions been so wrong.”
Wu has been writing critically about information technologies and monopolies for some time now. “The Age of Extraction” can be read as part of a trilogy that began with “The Master Switch” (2010) and “The Attention Merchants” (2016). His little book “The Curse of Bigness” (2018) warned about the dangers of ballooning corporate power. (Wu helped the Biden administration craft its antitrust policies.) Reality has since caught up to a future he has long warned about. Where Wu’s previous books were once dazzlingly prescient, “The Age of Extraction” reads more like an intelligent and useful guide to a dispiriting present."
#USA #BigTech #Antitrust #Monopolies #Oligopolies #Competition
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#Fdroid's statement re. #Google's attack on your freedom to install the apps you want on #Android devices.
#enshittification #bigtech #monopolies #oligopolies #freesoftware
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"It is simply too risky to count on just a few platforms to invent our future. Yet that is the bet we are making by sitting back and letting Google, Amazon and Facebook dominate.
Making matters worse, the platform-extraction model is now spreading from tech to other economic sectors. In health care, private equity firms have sought to reorganize the industry into what they openly call a platform model. What that means in practice is squeezing more work from doctors and nurses while raising prices. Likewise, rental housing has suffered from the rise of a corporate-housing platform: the centralizing of rental homeownership along with steady increases in rents.
The result is not just bad policy but also a cultural blindness: An entire generation has grown up thinking that extraction, as opposed to building, is the path to riches. That is a prospect at once uninspiring and, for most people, almost by definition, out of reach. To recover the sense of optimism and opportunity that once characterized American commerce, Americans need to be confident that — even if they don’t work for a platform — they can reap what they sow.
Restoring market balance is the key: an economy with many centers of power, not just a few."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/opinion/big-tech-platforms-reform.html
#BigTech #Monopolies #Oligopolies #Antitrust #Competition #TechPolicy #Regulation
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Christoph Niemann ( abstractsunday IG) new cover for the The New Yorker
#broligarchy #Corruption #oligopolies
#trump2 #authoritarianism #justice -
"The corporations that control social media, online shopping, email and more are united in forcing AI on us. There are still choices we can and should make, but on a grand scale new tech and corporate concentration necessitates the regulation of technology and of monopolies; consumer choice is not enough. This lesson has been proven time and time again, and that’s the primary reason Big Tech is all in for Donald Trump. In return for their investment in him they’re getting exactly what they want, namely the ability to abuse their power in the absence of government oversight.
This is the heart of fascism, a corporate-governmental merger that benefits a handful of oligarchs at the expense of everyone else. You might point out that regular old capitalism already let Silicon Valley run amuck, and you’d be right. Our government has long been captured by oligarchy, and Congress and the President have long acted in accordance with the interests of the ruling class. But two crucial things happened in the last several years. One, a progressive wave finally started rising up, and while it didn’t seize power, it made inroads and influenced power. Lina Khan, Biden’s FTC commissioner, actually went after Big Tech. She launched suits against Amazon and Meta and Google and more, and that couldn’t be tolerated. It was finally receiving regulatory pushback that cemented Silicon Valley’s rightward swing. They were moved by the huge monetary incentives of a regime that would stop holding them accountable, and would even actively partner with them, not vague ideas about “wokeness.”"
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"Undocumented people have become the new American underclass: good enough to pick our crops, bus our tables, and build our buildings—not good enough for us to protect their life or liberty, let alone their pursuit of happiness.
There are many reasons for this. Some are legal. A lot of it is anger.
I understand where some of the anger comes from. Take the construction industry. A generation of working-class kids grew up watching their dads provide for their families by working construction. They were hard jobs, but they were good ones. You could buy a house, send your kid to college, maybe even buy a boat for the weekends. Now, those jobs pay a fraction of what they used to. And those kids are now adults, voting adults, and they see those jobs occupied by men from Central and South America, many of whom are undocumented.
What would it look like to confront undocumented immigration not as a left-right issue, but as a conflict between billionaires and working people?
Maybe we focus less on the tension between undocumented people and the native-born workers that they seem to displace. Maybe we focus more on the billionaire developers who pretended that the people they hired were “independent contractors,” turning what used to be middle-class jobs into subsistence work, while also making it easier to hire and exploit undocumented laborers.
Maybe we ask ourselves: Who gets rich from that? Is it the guy working in 100-degree heat with no water? Or is it the guy downing a steak while toasting his new development? Maybe we try to become skeptical of the idea that the least powerful people are the most responsible for our problems. Maybe we punch up instead of punching the neighbor."
https://newrepublic.com/article/201171/alvaro-bedoya-ftc-became-populist
#USA #Populism #ClassWarfare #Inequality #FTC #Monopolies #Oligopolies
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In the specific case of Portugal, broadband (both fixed and mobile) is becoming very cheap: 7€ a month for a 500 Mbps connection and 8€ a month for 5G access with 100 GB of data included. Although it could even be cheaper if there were other options for users with less demanding needs...
"By Frontier's own calculations, it could have made an extra $10 billion by investing in fiber rollouts, but it chose not to make that money, because the stock analysts at institutional investment funds would punish any telco that committed to capital expenditures with long-term payouts. Since Frontier's execs were mostly paid in stock, they decided not to risk a drop in their personal net worth, and so they left ten billion on the table and millions of customers stuck on 19th century copper-line infrastructure – technology that dated back to Samuel Morse and the telegraph.
Frontier was especially interested in customers who had no alternatives – no cable or fixed wireless companies that could offer competition for Frontier's own terrible service. These customers were booked as an "asset" and their connections were earmarked for substandard maintenance and slow upgrades. The old Lily Tomlin gag goes, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company." But Frontier really cared about the customers who had no alternative – they cared about royally fucking those customers.
Ladies and gentlemen, behold the marvel that is the efficient free market!
Municipal fiber is a godsend. It's fast, cheap and reliable, and it is an engine for economic development. Of course, the Trump administration is running away from municipal fiber – indeed, from all fiber – as fast as it can, because every fiber installation competes with Elon Musk's satellite based internet service, Skylink:"
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/03/we-dont-care-we-dont-have-to/#were-the-phone-company
#USA #Fiber #Broadband #MunicipalFiber #Starlink #Oligopolies #BigTelco
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"The 10 largest US stocks by market cap are Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Broadcom, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. Together they account for (all figures from S&P Capital IQ):
- 40 per cent of the value of the S&P 500.
- 56 per cent of the S&P increase in value since the market bottomed on April 8.
- 31 per cent of the growth in revenues for the index over the past 12 months.
- 55 per cent of the growth in net income for the index over the past 12 months (despite falling net income over that period at Apple, Tesla and Berkshire).
- 69 per cent of the growth in capital expenditure for the index over the past 12 months.It’s not just that these 10 companies are making all the market gains. They are also producing a whopping portion of the growth in corporate America."
https://www.ft.com/content/2a984f31-5c91-4301-91a6-8a62f3adc714
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"JASON KELLEY: Kara, you started by talking about this concentration of power, which is obvious to anyone who's been paying attention, and at the same time, you know, we did use to have tech leaders who, I think, they had less power. It was less concentrated, but also people were more focused, I think, on solving real problems.
You know, you talk a lot about Steve Jobs. There was a goal of improving people's lives with technology, that that didn't necessarily it, it helped the bottom line, but the focus wasn't just on quarterly profits. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about what you think it would look like if we returned to that in some way. Is that gone?
KARA SWISHER: I don't think we were there. I think they were always focused on quarterly profits. I think that was a canard. I wrote about it, that they would pretend that they were here to help. You know, it's sort of like the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man. It's a cookbook. I always thought it was a cookbook for these people.
And they were always formulated in terms of making money and maximizing value for their shareholders, which was usually themselves. I wasn't stupid. I understood what they were doing, especially when these stocks went to the moon, especially the early internet days and their first boom. And they became instant, instant-airs, I think they were called that, which was instant millionaires and, and then now beyond that.
And so I was always aware of the money, even if they pretended they weren't, they were absolutely aware And so I don't have a romantic version of this at the beginning, um, except among a small group of people, you know, who, who, who were seeing it, like the Whole Earth Catalog and things like that, which we're looking at it as a way to bring everybody together or to spread knowledge throughout the world, which I also believed in too."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/podcast-episode-smashing-tech-oligarchy
#BigTech #SiliconValley #TechJournalism #Media #News #Monopolies #Oligopolies
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"In recent years, we have also seen a rapid expansion of hyperscale data centres, with significant energy, water, and climate consequences. In part, this is to power generative AI technologies whose benefits remain dubious, but it also ensures the cloud businesses of those companies continue to grow at a rapid pace.
The government should not be subjecting itself to the corporate pressures to increase the amount of computation it requires and the number of AI tools it uses beyond what is necessary, all to serve the bottom lines of cloud companies. Developing its own infrastructure means the Canadian government can build what it needs and ensure it does appropriate assessment of new technologies to see if they will actually help the public service and benefit Canadians more broadly.
Over time, that infrastructure could serve as the foundation of a new set of digital services and platforms developed to serve the public good over private profit — without the need for extensive data collection to serve ad-targeting systems or the pressures to serve up extreme and misleading content to keep people engaged on exploitative platforms.
Handing the digital sphere to US companies that don’t have our interests at heart was always a mistake. The time when they claimed to “do no evil,” as Google’s motto once led us to believe, is long gone."
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/why-canada-needs-to-build-a-public
#Canada #DigitalSovereignty #DataCenters #PublicCloud #USA #BigTech #Oligopolies #PoliticalEconomy
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The airfare from Toronto to Vancouver can often cost around the same as a ticket to Mexico or Europe, enough to nudge many would-be domestic tourists toward international travel. That was among the responses 1,500 people shared with the Competition Bureau during a yearlong study of Canada’s airline market, the results of which were released on Thursday.
#Canada #oligopolies #plutocracy #RiggedMarkets #corruption #competition
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/world/canada/canada-airline-travel-fares.html -
"The American Economic Liberties Project today released new research showing that at least 326 U.S. pharmacies have closed since Dec. 19, 2024, when Congress abandoned bipartisan, bicameral PBM reforms as part of a stopgap spending bill. The new data comes ahead of a vote in Congress tomorrow on a continuing resolution to fund the government, where the policymakers could include much-needed structural PBM reform.
“Despite later admitting that he does not know what a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) is, Elon Musk successfully tanked PBM reforms with nearly unanimous House support late last year,” said Emma Freer, Senior Policy Analyst for Healthcare at the Economic Liberties Project. “As predicted, without Congressional intervention, the Big Three PBMs have continued to abuse their market power, squeezing at least 326 pharmacies – 237 of them independent – out of business in fewer than 10 weeks and stranding their most vulnerable patients in pharmacy deserts without access to lifesaving care. Given these high stakes, it is critical that Congress stand up to these healthcare monopolist middlemen and pass structural PBM reforms that will save their constituents’ time, money, and lives.”
#USA Musk #DOGE #PBMs #BigPharma #Healthcare #Oligopolies #Competition #Antitrust
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"This is just #pricefixing, with an app. The fact that they don't sit around a table and openly discuss pricing doesn't keep this from being price-fixing.
What's more, they admit it. A director at McCain said that "higher ups" forbade anyone in the company from competing on price…they'd "never seen margins this high in the history of the potato industry." Lamb Weston's CEO attributed a 111% increase in net income to "pricing actions.""https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loading
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"These companies have been hiking prices for years, but really started to turn the screws during the post-covid inflationary period. One of Schwenk's sources is Josh Saltzman, owner of the DC sports bar Ivy and Coney. Ten years ago, Saltzman charged $3 for fries; now it's $6 – and Saltzman's margins have declined. Saltzman has a limited number of suppliers, and they all get their potatoes from Big Potato, and they bundle those potato orders with their other supplies, making it effectively impossible for Saltzman to buy his potatoes from anyone else.
Big Potato controls 97% of the frozen potato market, and any sector that large and concentrated is going to be pretty cozy. The execs at these companies all meet at industry associations, lobbying bodies, and as they job-hop between companies in the cartel. But they don't have to rely on personal connections to rig the price of potatoes: they do it through a third-party data-broker called Potatotrac. Each cartel member sends all their commercially sensitive data – supply costs, pricing, sales figures – to Potatotrac, and then Potatotrac uses that data to give "advice" to the cartel members about "optimal pricing."
This is just price-fixing, with an app. The fact that they don't sit around a table and openly discuss pricing doesn't keep this from being price-fixing. What's more, they admit it. A director at McCain said that "higher ups" forbade anyone in the company from competing on price. A Lamb Weston exec described the arrangement as everyone "behaving themselves," chortling that they'd "never seen margins this high in the history of the potato industry." Lamb Weston's CEO attributed a 111% increase in net income to "pricing actions.""
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loading
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"The Federal Trade Commission today published a second interim staff report on the prescription drug middleman industry, which focuses on pharmacy benefit managers’ (PBMs) influence over specialty generic drugs, including significant price markups by PBMs for cancer, HIV, and a variety of other critical drugs.
Staff’s latest report found that the ‘Big 3 PBMs’—Caremark Rx, LLC (CVS), Express Scripts, Inc. (ESI), and OptumRx, Inc. (OptumRx)—marked up numerous specialty generic drugs dispensed at their affiliated pharmacies by thousands of percent, and many others by hundreds of percent. Such significant markups allowed the Big 3 PBMs and their affiliated specialty pharmacies to generate more than $7.3 billion in revenue from dispensing drugs in excess of the drugs’ estimated acquisition costs from 2017-2022. The Big 3 PBMs netted such significant revenues all while patient, employer, and other health care plan sponsor payments for drugs steadily increased annually, according to the staff report.
“The FTC staff’s second interim report finds that the three major pharmacy benefit managers hiked costs for a wide range of lifesaving drugs, including medications to treat heart disease and cancer,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC should keep using its tools to investigate practices that may inflate drug costs, squeeze independent pharmacies, and deprive Americans of affordable, accessible healthcare—and should act swiftly to stop any illegal conduct.”"
#USA #FTC #Healthcare #BigPharma #BPMs #PrescriptionDrugs #Oligopolies #Antitrust
