Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/14/att-timewarner.html
…
6 Likes
Wow! This is just like a game of Monopoly being played out in real life. When do we all get mad and flip the game-board over?
12 Likes
It’s worth noting that it’s not uncommon for DOJ to appeal mergers even after they’re consummated and get a court order unwinding them.
3 Likes
And two more mergers were immediately announced after the decision.
3 Likes
Well duh! It’s the Trump era! Monopolies are a requirement before you’re allowed to build real estate on properties you own!
4 Likes
we can’t ever fix this now but a tiny partial workaround is to force municipal fiber to every home in the USA as if we were actually a modern country preparing for the future and internet is like water or electricity
then you kill the giants with 1000 cuts of micro-content providers, producers will be able to go to direct funding from netflix, amazon, etc. who do not care who your ISP is
it is a bit “fun” to watch msnbc go into convulsions trying to cover this though, since trump didn’t want the merger some newsreaders cover it as a good thing, but then they remember they are supposed to pretend they are progressive and not for mega-monopolies, but then they remember they work for a mega-monopoly, then they remember it’s a competing mega-monopoly
4 Likes
Trump is against the merger for stupid reasons, of course, so it’s okay to ignore him this time.
3 Likes
i just assumed he was against it because his palm wasn’t being greased enough.
4 Likes
Perhaps, but he’s also mad at CNN, which is included in the merger. He wanted Time-Warner to sell the network before the merger could proceed. That’s the stupid reason.
5 Likes
What happens if we all just stop watching their crap?
4 Likes
I thought you just needed 4 little houses before you could build a hotel…
3 Likes
Houses and hotels can only be bought when all of the spaces in the monopoly are owned by the same player.
2 Likes
8 Likes
It will all be more convenient when we can have everything on one bill. And I mean everything, from cell phone bill to cans of soup.
I wonder if AT&T will get into health care soon. I’m look forward to more super-ultra-mega-mergers.
3 Likes
“The department had six days to seek an injunction after a federal judge approved AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner on Tuesday. That decision is expected to prompt a series of other mergers, especially in the media industry.”
I wonder what a Federal Judge costs these days?
1 Like
The one thing I am reminded of is how a different company bought up Time Warner to be a juggernaut. How did that work out for AOL in the end, by the way? 
2 Likes
Time for a rebranding of USA? UCA, United Corporations of America.
1 Like
I’m guessing somewhere between “more than I’ll make in my life” and “less than seems understandable as motivation for compromising an economy.”
1 Like
What I don’t get is why this was classified as a vertical move. There is this fiction at play whereby we are all supposed to pretend that AT&T and Time Warner are not direct competitors. We have to pretend that the AT&T Audience network which produces original content does not exist and doesn’t have 26 million subscribers.
I’d favour something more on the nose; like the Cabal, the Conglomerate, or the Mob.
