No google/youtube? No twitter? No facebook? Is this article from the past? Most people do not get their information from the television and so I doubt these six control most of anything.
I know a lot of people who get the majority of their news either from television, or from media properties that they would see on TV, but via the Internet instead.
But I understood part of the point of the article to not be solely about "news" per se, but about general produced media content. And if that's the case, then the list given makes sense to me (Facebook doesn't make TV shows, at least that I know of.)
Most of the content on any of these is produced by companies on the OP's list.
> PornHub
I mean, it's likely that in general this kind of estimate is ignoring things that are not considered savory so porn is gonna be underrepresented for sure. It's probably not going to move the needle as much as you think though.
> BBC
A lot of BBC's content is produced outside this set of companies, but it's likely that some of it is at least co-produced with companies on the list, usually for the sake of international distribution. This probably counts as some degree of 'control', which doesn't necessarily imply direct ownership.
Outside of the BBC, on the private British networks (and in general wrt any regional media production) this kind of co-production arrangement is really common.
So you may not know any TV watchers outside of your parents (which is also true for me), there are somehow millions and millions of TV news watchers out there.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/wp-content/uploads/si...
It doesn't matter if they're instead binging tv shows on streaming platforms produced by production studios owned by those 6 companies. In fact, it doesn't even matter if they are binging youtube channels or tiktok "influencers", all of which are seemingly independent, but are in fact being funded by new media studios owned by those 6 companies.
Those companies control a lot more than you think. The fact that people are unaware of it is a feature of that control, not a bug.
Better to parrot than to be left behind. The current system rewards parrotting more than it does discretion.
* I get access to 1,100,295 DRM-free books in several formats (including Word, EPUB, computer-narrated audio) via Bookshare.org [~$50/year]
* I get access to 40,000+ professionally narrated books via the National Library Service through the Library of Congress in the US [Free]
* I get access to 80,000+ volunteer narrated books via LearningAlly.org (formerly Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic) [$135/year]
* I get access to hundreds of magazines and newspapers, including breaking news services, via the National Federation for the Blind NewsLine [Free]
* I get reciprocity with other countries' libraries for the print-disabled around the world, which is useful as I am learning new languages. [Usually Free]
This is nice because I also never have a need to go to websites that serve ads to me. Of course it's called uBlock Origin and using ProtonVPN with Anti-tracking + Ad-blocking features plus such as a Pi-Hole...but still...I have it good.
More info on print-related disabilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print_disability
The best way to get access to all of these services is to get your doctor to sign the National Library Service application form: https://www.loc.gov/nls/enrollment-equipment/apply-for-nls-s...
These online media are content aggregators. They help socialize and propagate narratives, but they don’t produce narratives. They certainly amplify the echo chamber effect.
Of those, the six companies mentioned by the grandparent (Comcast, Disney, AT&T, Sony, Fox, Paramount) only own CNBC and Fox. CNN is owned by Warner Bros, WSJ is owned by News Corp (of course, the link to Fox through Murdoch is relevant), and NYT is its own company.
So the only one not covered by the "big 6" of the original article is NYT
Uh... yes they do. Most people in your particular subculture probably don't. I don't. But the majority of "news" consumption in the modern west happens via live television.
>86% get their news from digital devices
>68% get their news from television
The death of TV news is being overstated by the above poster but it's certainly no longer the dominant form of news media. Among the younger age demographics on Hacker News I really can't imagine many people are willing to tolerate the insufferable cable news format with massive and frequent ad breaks.
But I agree, tech monopolies are just as worrying as the media monopolies. I'd imagine the next period of consolidation will be tech + media. With the amount of cash tech companies have lying around and the market cap differential between tech and media, these media conglomerates would be absorbed without a sweat.
Heck, I even check HN for book recommendations.
Does that count in the %?
If yes, it's 98%
HN articles don't write about owners of HN so much.
To push a movie to Disney+ one needs their agreement to take it. YouTube allows anyone to post anything (aside from infringing or illegal).
Not according to professional content creators. Every one I have ever talked to openly states that they regularly alter their content to optimize compliance with youtube algorithms. Content is controlled, promoted, diminished, monetized or eliminated by the algorithms which are the embodiment of youtube's policy decisions. If you want to actually make a living on youtube, you will care as much about what youtube thinks of your content as you do your viewers.
They absolutely do control content, by banning content that violates the TOS. And they do make editorial decisions in terms of what content they promote, and what is rewarded by monetization.
And to be clear there isn't anything nefarious about this, nor does it cause these platforms to lose Section 230 protections (despite how often people claim it does).
Some of the most famous channels are owned and managed by Disney (formerly maker studios) and AT&T (through Fullscreen/Warner Bros)
- The news is informed by the content on the platforms
The platforms control the information and they control what people see as the "news".
Because of this some countries even wanted to impose a facebook tax. Like Australia.
FB tried to be purely a platform but society has asked them to "annotate" fake news or propaganda. So FB is now playing an editorial role.
However we got here, it's not a great place to be in. We have massive networks that we cannot escape which are actively firewalling information.
That is /so/ much nonsense. Doesn't matter how you editorialize by controlling what people see including with a trained algorithm optimized for "engagement" that tends to be pretty similar to "outrage." The second you "promote" a wider engagement on any article or topic at the expense of another you aren't pure or anything like it. And we'd be heroically naive if we really were willing to bet our own lives on someone not "tweaking" the algo for their own beliefs along the chain somewhere. I know I would if I saw too many pro-nazi content promoted, for example and that is editorial with nothing at all "pure" about it.
FB has never, ever been a "purely a platform" other than in their own PR releases. Censoring because politicians tell them to do it is a wholly different issue on top of that.
I suppose the unmoderated self-image Facebook (and everyone else) tries to project, beyond being about reducing wage moneys by getting "users" to "generate" "content", is that it looks fresher, more meritocratic, anything could rise to the top, nowadays the obsession with virality is much less than six years ago but everyone buys into the fifteen minutes of fame thing.
There's the production end, which this article covers. Then there's the distribution end, which is where tech companies come in. Both are problematic in different ways.
That content is mediated by Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc.
However, in the case of these six primary content producers, the distributors don't really do any filtering.
So, yes, the premise of the OP is correct. Six companies produce ~all of the media you consume, with a couple of distributor companies that deliver that media to you. If you're concerned about homogeneity of thought in media, you should be looking at the market share of the primary producers.
Maybe you're just saying you want news about X, and you're not sure where to find a source that can tell you about that, and this is where you find "control". What kind of control are you talking about here? Deliberate? Accidental? Algorithmic? Censoring?
Google is the 'camera'.
They can ostensibly focus it anywhere with predictable results.
If I wanted power, I'd rather be Google than the NYT.
It baffles me when people want to override authors on titles. Sure, sometimes it might make sense to do so, but most of the time the author is the person in the best position to present and explain what she has written.
I don't see what context this adds.
If this was the HN title I would not necessarily think about Big Tech.
Then when I began reading the blog post I would quickly see it is about media consolidation and the decline of local news, not about Big Tech intermediary (middleman) control over the delivery of media that some other entity has produced.
This is only Part 1, so there may be more about Big Tech in Parts 2 and 3.
Getting soooo tired of users modifying headlines to promote their agenda.
The HN title should at least be representative of the content.
The George Floyd story, maybe the story of the decade revolved around footage taken with a smartphone camera.
Pandemic with millions of dead, war in Ukraine, huge scale corruption ( Pandora papers), COP26, an attempted coup in a supposedly liberal democracy to name just a few things from this decade, and a racially motivated murder by a policeman in the US is your pick for "the story of the decade" 2 years in? Sorry to burst your bubble but the vast majority of the planet doesn't care that much (beyond initial compassion) about racial problems in the US.
The Floyd story is bigger than a murder though, at least 19 people died in the ensuing protests, over 10 thousand were arrested, and there was a few billion in property damage.