Quintopoly? Five tech companies now earn 46% of global ad revenues as news media left behind: “Google, Facebook, Alibaba, TikTok owner Bytedance and Amazon generated ad sales of $296bn last year – making up 46% of the market. By contrast, in 2010, the top five companies – Google, Viacom/CBS, News Corp/Fox News, Comcast and Disney – accounted for 17% of the market with $70bn in revenues combined.”
Jonathan Rauch: “If we care about knowledge, freedom, and peace, then we need to stake a strong claim: Anyone can believe anything, but liberal science—open-ended, depersonalized checking by an error-seeking social network—is the only legitimate validator of knowledge, at least in the reality-based community. Other communities, of course, can do all kinds of other things. But they cannot make social decisions about objective reality.” [via Arnold Kling]
Charles Blow echoes how I think of United Voters of India: “Voters must be taught that swarming the polls, overwhelming them, may well be the only real shot at winning: a single movement, an irresistible deluge of votes.”
