> because AOL corporate email shared namespace with its customers

I wonder where this ranks in the top 5 stupidest things I've ever heard. It's bad enough merging customer databases when two companies merge.

No other major ISP has ever done this that I know of. Likely because it's completely unnecessary. Who made this decision (and why weren't they fired immediately)?

They did, but first they rebranded them as Max, thus destroying the incredible name value of HBO. It was renamed back to HBO as part of the spinout IIRC.

HBO was part of Time Warner.

Because big companies destroying value makes the world worse? They're sucking up capital and not delivering anything to justify it.

If they destroy things that were servicing public good like jobs, the market they are selling into, etc, it becomes the governments job to care. If you are advocating for zero oversight of corporations by government I don’t think you’ve seen the consequences of the last 40 years of the US. Monopolies only serve the owning class at the expense of the people.

Just because they get it wrong doesn’t make it right. You don’t even need to reach back 100 years to sort this.

Do they have the US interests at heart? Or their own? I think the latter, almost certainly. That makes them adversarial from a game theory perspective at the very least.

US politicians are supposed to represent their voters who elected them. A foreign state putting massive resources into a state-supported program to get them to represent the foreign state's interest instead, is obviously a foreign adversary. It doesn't get much more adverserial than that! It's a direct attack on US internal democracy.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

You've just been raised to consider this as "normal". There's nothing normal about it, and if any other new country had started doing this you'd have recognized it for what it is.

Before someone says "all countries do this" - no they don't. Scale matters, impact matters.

They pushed us into an unwinnnable quagmire that is helping to destroy our global leadership position - like Grump himself, their effects are indistinguishable from what an adversary would do.

The next administration absolutely could, but that would require them to care more about about the well-being of the country than they do about themselves and the bribes and favors they could rake in if they don't. That's seems to be the fatal flaw in our system. Congress, the FTC, and the president need to willing to put the interests of the nation above the interests of corporations. Maybe I'll live to see that happen, but a lot of people have died waiting for it (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/The_Boss...) and it gets less likely all the time.

I don't see how. The government approved the merger. Absent breaking the conditions that were attached to the merger, it's a done deal.

Sadly that probably won't happen:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/paramount-merger-settlemen...

When they take dollars for oil, they would rather swap paper currency with real assets (ownership of firms). If US doesn't want that, they should make moves to remove USD as a reserve currency or preferred currency for global trade.

Out of those 3, one is a covert ally of Israel and the other is an overt ally. David and Larry Ellison are avowed Zionists.

Please. Ellison controls it, the gulf states are just investors. They also invested in Twitter, but people call out Elon, and no one has a problem with that.

Most of the gulf states are pretty much controlled by Zionists at this point anyway, or at least heavily aligned with them.

Naturally. Because OP isn't going to let pesky facts interfere with his narrative.

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s well documented and easily evident. You can start by reading The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

Uh Israel's influence in the US is pretty well understood by the average American now. You can put away your propaganda as it doesn't work anymore.

Yeah, it's not great that the head of the corporation is so close with Netanyahu, but there are more immediate problems for the US. These corporations aren't ideological though, they'll just do whatever it takes to get what more of what they want. David Ellison and his daddy have both been more than happy to throw huge piles of money at Democrats and support them when they thought it was convenient. When Republicans are out of power they'll support whoever replaces them. When you have no morals whatsoever what difference is there in supporting a Democrat, or a genocide, or a Republican?

> distressing lack of regard for human rights

The US couped, invaded, and destroyed tens of countries since WW2 until now. Israel is still massacring civilians in Gaza during a ceasefire and continuing their pogrom in the West Bank, killing people and stealing more lands. This is your example of human rights?

israel shares that same lack of care gor human rights. consider the use of rape and possibly bestiality to torture hostages in prisons, the state protection of terrorists, the lack of gay or even interfaith marriage, the genocide in gaza.

israel doesnt at all align with (modern) western values, instead more like the old apartheid south africa, or really, more like nazi germany in terms of supremacism and industrial might put towards surveiling and killing the less-than-human people you allude to as being less-than-human.

the causation of all those failed states is israel. it makes failed states because those are easier to conquer land from, and cant fight against all the abuses of humans.

sure, the US was half supportive of the nazis too, but that wasn't a good thing.

Not sure what your values are, but mine don't include decades of apartheid followed by genocide.

Have you been paying attention to american politics the last 15 years or so? It's become astoundingly clear that Mossad has blackmail material on virtually every major politician and uses it to get its way - including billions of dollars in funding and drawing the US into conflicts that do not benefit us and instead result in the deaths of Americans (and as of Trump's statement yesterday, the threat of bombings on American soil.)

Calling out israel is not antisemitic.

"This is not about the cats. This is about the felines shitting in my garden."

What about his co-CEO, an ex-IDF soldier?

The owners openly talk about Israel often and loudly.

Larry Ellison:

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/larry-ellison-vetted-marco-ru...

>Larry Ellison Vetted Marco Rubio for Fealty to Israel

Indeed Israeli media covers this also:

https://forward.com/fast-forward/853703/david-ellison-appoin...

>David Ellison appoints Israeli to lead merged Paramount-Warner studios

The same thing happened with the Tik Tok purchase, the entire point of handing control of the Tik Tok algorithm to Larry Ellison was so that they could clamp down on the discussion about the genocide in Gaza. You can see the results of it in the reports that the world Jewish congress put out directly:

>https://wjc-org-website.s3.amazonaws.com/horizon/assets/YNN3...

>TikTok is the exception, removing 64% of content overall (and 71% of content formally reported to it), compared to 12–15% on every other major platform.

> Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games? This was during the streaming wars IIRC.

Yea, and spending time with your friends and family, meeting new people, sleeping...

From [1]:

> “Think about if you didn’t watch Netflix last night: What did you do? There’s such a broad range of things that you did to relax and unwind, hang out, and connect—and we compete with all of that.”

When I read that interview, I became a lot more cautious of using Netflix and other streaming platforms, knowing their design is adversarial to my values (I want to be deliberate about what I watch, not be manipulated into mindless consumption).

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/40491939/netflix-ceo-reed-hastin...

This is the same argument from when Sirius and XM radio merged. It didn't matter that they were monopolizing satellite radio because the real competition was terrestrial radio and internet radio.

From my perspective YouTube has quietly won the streaming wars. It has a vastly wider variety of content, especially for non-fiction shows. In the cases where there's more direct genre competition, I tend to prefer YouTube overall because, despite its offerings being generally lower budget, they tend to represent a wider variety of "editorial voices". There's a lot of outright slop to wade through, ofc, but there's also a lot of creative risk taking out there to discover.

Meanwhile, yeah, Paramount, Time Warner, Disney, etc. have all become so money-minded and risk-averse that it reminds me of the twilight days of the old Hollywood studio system, where all the major production companies were locked into a heated battle to determine who could be the absolute blandest.

> Regardless of how you look at it, this is yet another confluence of IP franchises merging together, whatever juice is left in them squeezed out and reprocessed over and over over time. Kind of what Oracle is in software I guess?

Cantrill tried to, as diplomatically as possible, warn everyone.

Nobody listened.

> Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games?

Yes. He always told us that we don't need to worry about the other streamers nearly as much as we have to worry about them turning off the TV and playing games or (gasp!) going outside. TikTok/Instagram Reels wasn't a thing yet, but if it were, I'm sure they would have been on the list too.

Reed Hastings may be rich, but he is a fucking moron. By his logic the greatest threat to entertainment is people who parent without screens.

> you don't have to commit to watching 40+ minutes of something

This is funny because I have stopped clicking YouTube links for the simple reason that every video seems to be 45+ minutes. Which I get is based on how monetization works on YouTube.

Like Old Twitter, short-form video is a forcing function with value in forcing posters to get to the point. (I have never seen a YouTube Shorts or whatever link in the wild.)

Are you watching YouTubeTV, or just independent-ish creator YouTube?

I watch probably an hour of YouTube a week and would watch more if I could find anything good.

My favorite TV of the past five years is probably Severance. Is there anything of that caliber on YouTube? One of the best movies I saw last year was on Netflix (Train Dreams). Are there great movies on YouTube?

I’d love to year about some of your favorite stuff on YouTube.

I'm in the opposite camp. I find Youtube exhausting, and it keeps getting worse and worse.

Their ads are terrible. And since I watch via a device like Roku, etc, I have to put up with them. I've actively removed them from my devices. Occasionally, I feel like looking up some video. I install it, and often before I even watch the video I uninstall it because the awful UI reminds me of all the other awful stuff in it.

Curation doesn't exist. I have to work hard to find good content. Harder than any video service out there.

And shorts. Oh. Dear. God.

For some very targeted stuff (home repairs, video game walkthroughs), it's great. For the rest, it just sucks.

Are you seriously making that comparison?

I don't see it as a great idea to divide how content within a country is presented into 50 pieces based on whatever ideology that state's leadership has at that time.

Besides, that does nothing to address this mega-merger.

The pre-merger settlement approved by the current supreme court was that Skydance would: (1) Agree to production quota of 30 movies per year, (2) Domestic spending commitments, and (3) Separate cable package negotiations.

Assets: TNT, CBS, CNN, MTV, TCM, Showtime, Adult Swim, DC Studios, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, HBO/HBO Max, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network

Film Rights: Star Trek, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, DC Comics, Tom & Jerry, Harry Potter, Citizen Kane, Transformers, A Quiet Place, Looney Tunes, The Conjuring, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Dora The Explorer, Mission Impossible, The Lord of the Rings, SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dune 3, Minecraft, MonsterVerse

Remember that Citizen Kane is the movie about a media tycoon who buys everything he can and ends up alone in a mansion full of stuff.

An extra sprinkle of race-baiting and you’d have the Obama-era Occupy Wall St special.

Monopoly is the wrong word, but it has a close cousin, “anticompetitive”. For free market people one of the major role of the government is maintaining competition and avoiding collusion, combining to competitors is straightforward collusion.

"Centrist" in a grassroots political perspective means one sees merit in the values generally (purportedly) held by both tribes. "Centrist" for an oligarch just means they place bets on both horses.

Don't think about CNN specifically, but rather about one more cable news network lurching to the right & the diversity of viewpoints being reported being decreased. Ellison's effect on CBS News is clear.

Ah yes, but Larry Ellison is Jewish.

Literally the only difference between him and the rest of the wannabe media barons, but you could fart the word “Israel” with your armpit and get upvotes these days.

The tech companies may not merge until way later, but I can imagine the legacy media conglomerates buying up one another.

I will believe this internet comment. Thanks!

ATT shareholders lost $50B on Time Warner. And ATT lost $15B at least on DirecTV. Comcast is desperately trying to get rid of NBC Universal.

I would bet Ellison loses on this merger too. No one under the age of 60 cares about these legacy media companies to justify tens of billions of dollar valuations. At best, professional media studios are just an add on business for companies like Amazon and Apple and Disney and Sony, with Netflix being the outlier.

The Backrooms and Obsession also aren't your typical Hollywood productions. Heck, they got all the Hollywood producers browning their pants instead.

Its so weird how these layoffs somehow targeted every left wing news organization or show. We just cant be certain how that happened. oh well

Do we really need two Ellisons?

Their debt load is enormous due to how quickly debt costs have risen from M&A talks to issuing the debt.

https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/skydance-credit-rating-down...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-01/paramount... | https://archive.today/SEtX9

And then everything else will follow suit. Not that they haven't already been doing just that.

Everybody just stop subscribing and do something else and pirate the shit out of their content.

I've found season 4 of SNW to be the best Star Trek in the 21st century. Can you share what you enjoyed more in its earlier seasons?

DSC and Picard were long slogs in the spirit of "grit" and "realism." SNW having fun, switching up the mood every episode, and telling stories is a breath of fresh air. Strange New Episodes! The Henson Studio collaboration was amazing. Since Netflix canned Dark Crystal, I've been missing my weird muppets traveling across time and space.

Both LD and SNW managed to get less of that Kurtzman stink compared to Academy, DSC, or the movie which shall never be named. I hope they'll let the franchise mellow until they find new direction. (And a new owner.)

* Lower Decks is the truest Trek to ever Trek, but I know that's asinine so I saved my opinion for the footnote.

* ENT was off to a good start, but the 9/11-ification of TV took it off course.

Hard disagree.

To be fair to art, commercial movie theaters are increasingly comparable to theme parks.

art has been outright hostile to those not born with rich parents that can fund artseeking.

But why Hollywood?

The vibe I get is like when the Meta VR app store product launched, and there was huge promises and optimism about all the amazing apps and experiences, but when you bought it and actually tried, it was a few juiced up flagship things and a bunch of shovelware.

ehhhh i dunno about that. the stuff i've seen from people, and watched looks much better than most crap hollywood puts out anymore

Skydance/Paramount has had plenty of success attracting young audiences via UFC & gaming partnerships, so I'm not sure that's a counterpoint. Re forumulaic/bland that's a personal taste thing and not worth arguing.

The key contributor to Hollywood's waning influence is the generation gap; it's a cultural institution that is supposed to be culturally salient. Take the Mandalorian movie as an example; the biggest studio using the biggest IP to spend $300M on a movie... which lost $100M. That movie was competing at the box office at the same time with Obsession, which was made for $750k by a young Youtuber has made over half a billion worldwide.

As of today Ellison has an extraordinary amount of greenlight authority in an industry whose decision-makers are overwhelmingly a generation older. He can shake things up if he wants to, and I hope he does.