Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/11/president-trump-may-be-trouble-for-atttime-warner-merger-and-comcast/

by ohjeez • 10 years ago

158 141 10 years ago

ixtli• 10 years ago

“Comcast's purchase of NBC concentrated far too much power in one massive entity that is trying to tell the voters what to think and what to do,” Trump said. “Deals like this destroy democracy and we'll look at breaking that deal up and other deals like that. That should never, ever have been approved in the first place, they're trying to poison the mind of the American voter."

My prognostication is that when they "look at" stopping it (if they do) they will find what everyone who has worked in the world he's entering found out long ago: it's only possible through strong regulation. Fine, he'll think: I'll just embolden the regulators. This, I think, will be when the people who elected him will start to realize how business is done and that, just like in their private lives, they've bought into yet another CEO's fanciful promises that once again turned out to be self-serving in their entirety.

beedogs• 10 years ago

Either that, or he'll just break his promise and let it go through.

r00fus2• 10 years ago

Bingo. Promises, for Trump, are fulfilled upon announcement, and then forgotten. The examples are legion.

JumpCrisscross• 10 years ago

But Trump's promise to block the merger won't necessarily be fulfilled.

Cop-out in the subtitle followed by thirty paragraphs of navel gazing.

croon• 10 years ago

I'm fairly certain this is a phrase we'll be seeing a lot of.

But Trump's promise to ...... won't necessarily be fulfilled.

giarc• 10 years ago

My wife and I were discussing issues like this tonight. We spoke about the fact that when most politicians make promises, you can point to specific votes or speeches during non campaign times to say "Yes, it seems like he/she is really against this." With Trump though, we have no comparison, he's never served any office before. The only thing we have is campaign promises and they mean so little. So journalists probably have a hard time deciding whether something he said is true or not.

rndgermandude5• 10 years ago

Maybe, and this is a radical thought, journalists (as opposed to pundits) should wait for actual facts to emerge before branding somebody one way or another?

markwaldron• 10 years ago

He's all about removing regulations, and then wants to regulate this?

trynumber9• 10 years ago

Assume he's a populist and it makes sense. Regulations, in general, are unpopular with much of the electorate. But in this case, with the once-dismantled AT&T becoming big again, people may see the merger as hostile to their interests. If reddit is any indication it's fairly unpopular.

pmorici• 10 years ago

People probably feel like regulations only apply to the little guy because the big players just weasel out of them. So reducing regulation in general while blocking a deal like this isn't inconsistent with a populist viewpoint.

bpchaps2• 10 years ago

Could you explain your thoughts on how those two ideas are necessarily inconsistent with each other?

gefh• 10 years ago

Well, one is removing a thing, and the other is adding the same thing. QED _inconsistent_.

slowmotiony• 10 years ago

Did you understand that he will literally never add any regulations? Why on earth would you assume that?

at-fates-hands3• 10 years ago

I stopped reading Ars Technica when they gave Trump an F on technology issues and Clinton an overall B+, including a B- on "privacy and security". I mean, how much more partisan can you get than that? The woman was under investigation for leaking classified emails and using an unprotected email server for fucks sake.

When a media outlet does something like that, I just can't take anything else they report on seriously.

here's the article: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/when-graded-on-te...

feelix2• 10 years ago

Anything not-pro-clinton gets downvoted without explanation on any social media platform I've seen, including HN (which is supposed to be less biased, more objective, and superior to the other networks).

throwaway-hn123• 10 years ago

Oh come on, do you still need to pretend to be a victim? Aren't those days over now?

threeseed2• 10 years ago

Well if you look at the behaviour and intellectual rigour amongst some Trump supporters i.e. http://reddit.com/r/the_donald then it's hard not to see why it would not be a good fit for HN. And many of the conspiracy theories that ended up on Fox News originated there so it's not without basis that this sub is representative of a significant number of Trump supporters.

Personally I have not noticed any particular bias here except for at backing up assertions with some facts.

eruditely• 10 years ago

Hackers news is just white people news, the influential type, which are all hardline progressive and will vote you down for anything non-progressive.

zyx321• 10 years ago

There's a number of factors involved:

* Both parties have worked hard to polarize the population and make this election the most divisive ever.

* In the case of HN, your audience is from a most progressive or libertarian background, who have no love for most of the conservative agenda

* In the case of Facebook and Reddit, the Clinton campaign is paying people to bury any criticism of her. (Correct The Record)

manicdee• 10 years ago

What came of the investigation?

Republican fanatics keep missing the part that comes next, or claiming that the lack of conviction is due to the system being rigged.

And of course no mention of Bush/Cheney and the private email server saga.

at-fates-hands3• 10 years ago

> And of course no mention of Bush/Cheney and the private email server saga.

This actually gave me a good laugh thank you. Invoking Bush close to a decade after he left office while simultaneously giving his own candidate a pass for using an unsecured email server.

The funny thing is all you see and hear on hacker news is stories about companies getting hacked all the SV techies calling them stupid and morons. Then you have their candidate doing the same thing and suddenly its ok??

I never understood that logic.

Natsu• 10 years ago

If they wanted to push that issue, there's a nice long email from Colin Powell to Hillary Clinton detailing exactly how to dodge the Presidential Records Act.

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/30324

Use the "view original PDF" link.

Jtsummers2• 10 years ago

0) That wasn't Ars' analysis, that was their reporting. [0] was the one that did the analysis.

1) The analysis/grading was based on policy positions.

2) You're just wasting your keypresses if you honestly can't tell the difference between reporting someone else's work and their own analysis.

3) The actual report card for those interested [1].

[0] http://www.engine.is

[1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571681753c44d835a440c...

at-fates-hands3• 10 years ago

> The analysis/grading was based on policy positions.

This doesn't sound like policy positions to me:

Candidates were ranked on "privacy and security" based on whether they understood the importance of strong encryption and supported reforming privacy and surveillance laws.

thesimpsons10222• 10 years ago

what would the email server have to do with policy on technology like net neutrality and infrastructure and a lot more? how come trump supporters reasoning for anything doesn't go to past the word 'emails'? It's her versus mister 'cyber'. perhaps he'll appoint baron as head of 'the security aspect of cyber'.

CyberDildonics• 10 years ago

He... promised to do a lot of things.

akerro• 10 years ago

Clinton didn't promise much, she didn't say much at all. She wouldn't have this problem.

anonu• 10 years ago

I haven't followed this deal that closely - but I believe it had significant antitrust headwinds before Trump said anything. Generally, if ATT wants to buy anything thats large - I would be concerned about a decrease in competition.

coldcode• 10 years ago

I don't care about yet another stupid merger, its the net neutrality weakening that should concern everyone. In the end whether AT&Time is your ISP matters little if you only have one choice for ISP and they charge you to access Google special.

Fej• 10 years ago

Remember that the world is not black and white, and that there is always a silver lining.

_Codemonkeyism• 10 years ago

Haha, our.

Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

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