Take 1 or 2 big steps back here.

Conservatives have unlocked a massive weapon to control huge swaths of media and data transmission, including cable companies who still control a lot of internet infrastructure. Worrying about ABC is immaterial when compared to the fact that foundational telecommunications systems are under their control and they just learned they can wield that power with impunity to change what they see carried over those systems.

Or, hey, you know what, fine, you’re right - Disney bad, cancel Hulu for 2 months and I’m sure it’ll all work itself out.

Y’all! This isn’t ABC - this is conservative Sinclair and Nexstar Media Group!

@Immarsano@lemmynsfw.com nailed this one by reading the article.

Nexstar Media Group forced ABC’s hand on this by saying they would run non-ABC programming on all their local TV stations they own. They’re in the process of getting FCC approval for a $6 billion deal that would give them ownership of 265 local TV stations in 44 states.

Meanwhile, Sinclair Media, which also owns tons of local TV stations, isn’t letting Kimmel’s rerun on Friday be broadcast anyway, instead showing a CK tribute show. So they were likely also going to do the same to ABC and just hadn’t said anything publicly because they don’t need deal approved right now.

This is the media version of Red-Stating, where state legislatures were slowly turned by the GOP which gave them the power to Gerrymander Dem-held House districts away and turn them red in 2021. How do you stop a global juggernaut liberal media company? You marginalize them by buying up all the local affiliates and stations that still make up a large part of their market. You buy up everything that sits in between the viewer and the media itself. Once the media company withers, you shove in your own programming as gaps open up.

Hold up - it goes a layer deeper and is actually fairly similar to what happened to Colbert.

ABC had their hand forced because of a pending merger between Nexstar Media Group and Tenga, which once the FCC approves it, would place Nexstar in ownership of 80% of local TV channels in the US. Nexstar is based in Texas, so it’s not exactly ABC-Disney friendly.

So they threatened to censor Kimmel themselves on local TV stations unless ABC did it for them. They had on the ground infrastructure power to do this.

And yes, we’re 100% there. The key point is to understand that while everyone sees ABC as the Big Bad here, it’s the infrastructure companies that have leverage and no one knows their names or how much they actually own.

Edit: Just saw this - Sinclair’s local ABC affiliates are replacing Kimmel reruns will air their own CK tribute show, just on their own whatever, fuck ABC’s programming.

This is actually the key point. This isn’t just ABC making this decision, this is the Texas-based Nexstar Media Group leveraging their infrastructure ownership to force ABC’s hand.

This company is doing what Sinclair does, buying up local television channels in order to push their agenda.

Oh…oh hey look at that…what a funny coincidence! It looks like Nexstar is looking to do a $6 Billion acquisition that would ONLY be possible if this administration loosens FCC regulations about media ownership. This company would own 80% of local TV channels in the US, up from a previous limit of 39%.

For sure, never ever connect it to the internet.

Samsung equipment is pretty good, and to some degree the larger companies subsidize the cost of the TV with the assumption that you’ll connect it and give them data to sell. So while a large monitor might be more expensive, there’s a reason why. Unless your friend actually gets over the air TV stations, consider a large monitor, then Samsung and LG.

Oh wow, that’s actually a big deal. You should be proud of that!

And seriously, they go from Net Neutrality filing to racing at full speed to a bot garden cesspool. Ugh.

There’s a robust reddit advertising ecosystem that exists. While much of that starts with standard “buy an ad that doesn’t scream that its an ad” stuff, things like doing an AMA or engaging with users or trying to co-opt user content are all in the mix.

Mods who can approve posts from advertising accounts, block or remove criticism, and even block posts from competitors can gatekeep messaging could, if they were dickbags, stand to make a decent amount of money for it if all the communications comes from sidechannels. /r/hailcorportate always sot of found the line between astroturf advertising and genuine brand worship by idiots, and it’s intentionally messy so it’s hard to tell what’s what.

Even buying and selling of old accounts is a thing. Buying and selling of upvotes from bot accounts, etc. The whole platform is manipulated unless it’s a small niche sub.

See? And now you can wear that “former” as a badge of honor.

So he was just a mostly private person with no overt extreme ideology. Not a long-time crazy, not a fervent [insert name of group here] or suffering from delusions or TDS or just hard boiled in hate.

None of that. And while it’s not accurate, this is almost as if one theory I saw, that this was an action done as a shitpost of sorts and this guy probably didn’t think things through, is closer to the truth than anything else.

The mods under discussion are the ones that mod more than FIVE large communities. if those people haven’t figured out a way to make that a paying gig, then they’re doing it wrong.

We all presume that being the mod of several large reddit communities doesn’t include the possibility of sidehustle financial benefits.

Yet, humans are innovators of corruption! And I can only assume that any multi-mega-subreddit moderator has worked out something to make what is obviously a full time job worth their time.

If those are the only two you know about, have I got news for you:

https://www.wired.com/story/phone-data-us-soldiers-spies-nuclear-germany/

https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ads-to-find-targets-and-vladimir-putin/

https://www.wired.com/story/pentagon-data-purchases-wyden-letter/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government-buys-our-cell-phone-location-data

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/federal-agencies-are-secretly-buying-consumer-data

Hey, if the Etsy Witches did CK, no reason why HH can’t be worried about this, too.

Also, for real this will carry a significant sentence to a witch camp if convicted.

Hey y’all - it’s time to learn how to protect your online privacy. This is a perfect example of why “but I have nothing to hide” only enables a surveillance police state.

https://lemmy.ml/c/privacy

https://lemmy.world/c/privacy

Third party doctrine. They can buy it without a warrant and buy up all of it at once and do whatever they want with the data. None of it covered by the 4th Amendment.

To use warrant access and get it for free, they need a judge and have to go individual-by-individual citing specific names.

Same reason why the government just buys advertising data now to find out what people are doing online, rather than going the full legal route.

Also, we’re deporting people now for bouncing a check? We might as well just empty Mississippi out into the Gulf of Mexico now.

Yeah, I thought these people shunned the mainstream media so much that they only got the rEal fUlL tRuThY TROOTH from Dear Leader on Truth Social and Fox News.

It’s called TRUTH Social. It means he can’t lie! Right?

Typical Newsweek, I’ve seen several people who have worked in Nepal say that corruption was spiraling out of control and people have been livid about it for months. The protests were already ramping up, which is why social media platforms were cut off, so videos about the corruption and investigations and means to plan protests were cut off. The “they didn’t register in time” excuse is for the government to save face internationally.

That figure is assumed from people who connect a start TV to the internet. Once the TV is online, it’s collecting data non-stop, even when it’s “off” and regardless of what services used. Samsung doesn’t offer streaming services, so their value is derived easily from tracking what you’re watching even when it’s not streaming services, like live TV, cable, etc. to sell it themselves, regardless of what other apps are installed. Since they’re all typically Android-based apps, the typical other permissions apply, like Amazon Prime being able to see what you have installed as well. But as the TV maker can take screenshots or see info about what you watch over an HDMI port, that’s of huge value to them over years of time.

lol, as if he’ll leave on someone else’s schedule. The constitution to him is “really, more like guidelines.”