FCC Media Mergers and Starlink Surcharges Enclose the Digital Dial
July 20, 2026
The Trump FCC is aggressively dismantling media ownership limits and consumer fee protections to facilitate a wave of right-wing broadcast consolidation and ISP price gouging. This regulatory retreat coincides with the Musk ecosystem's extraction of high-demand surcharges and Grok's unauthorized codebase harvesting, converting essential communication infrastructure into a site of predatory billing and proprietary data capture.
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Brendan Carr Is Illegally Dismantling U.S. Media Consolidation Law
Brendan Carr and the Trump FCC are finalizing plans to illegally eliminate what’s left of the country’s already barely functional media consolidation limits; a specific gift to Trump-friendly right wing broadcasters that are hoping to monopolize what’s left of local U.S. broadcast news so they can m…
- media and technology
- AI governance
- structural power
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AWS Billing Glitch Hits Customers With Billion-Dollar Fees
An error with the cloud computing giant’s billing operation caused some customers’ monthly bills to rise from a few cents to billions of dollars.
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FCC plans to clear the way for more media consolidation
Federal Communications Commission | Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge The Federal Communications Commission will vote next month on whether a single company can own broadcast stations that reach more than 39 percent of US TV households. In a Breitbart op-ed on Wednesday, Republican Chair Brendan Car…
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Trump Media reportedly mulling fee for first access to social media posts
US president has frequently been accused of trading government influence for improper financial gain.
- geopolitics
- structural power
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FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount As The Company Needed Approval For Billion-Dollar Deals
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. The rich and famous who filed into the Kennedy Center’s opera house in December were there to enjoy one of the nation’s most exclusive celebrations of the performing arts: the center’s annual honors gala.…
- media and technology
- AI governance
- structural power
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Musk’s Starlink Socks Customers With $1500 ‘High Demand’ Surcharge
For years I’ve noted that while Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband system can be very useful for people with no other options (warzones, RVs, boats, rural Americans), the network has struggled to maintain performance as it grows into more mainstream markets, resulting in not only widespread sl…
- media and technology
- AI governance
- structural power
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SpaceXAI’s Grok programming tool was uploading its users’ entire codebase to cloud storage
SpaceXAI's Grok Build AI coding tool was spotted uploading users' entire codebases to Google Cloud before it was reported, and the company turned it off. The Register reports that Cereblab published findings on Monday showing how the Grok Build CLI was packaging and uploading entire code repositorie…
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Trump Just Made It Easier For Your ISP To Rip You Off With Bogus Fees
Here’s a short crash course in U.S. telecom policy. Giant and very unpopular companies like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter created regional monopolies that work tirelessly to erode all meaningful competition and oversight, resulting in high prices, spotty service, slower speeds, and abysmal cus…
- media and technology
- AI governance
- structural power