Unilateral Tech Monopolies

How much has technology become a necessity in our life? We definitely are affected by and influenced by technology with the improvement and innovation. 

Personally with starting with the big three national commercial television network channels ABC, CBS and NBC. Ratio definitely had started to send out information in society and surprisingly things are reverting back to that type of platform almost with the surge in podcasts. Now with a variety of platforms has huge importance to different generations of people, with kids and TikTok and Snapchat, teens with Youtube Twitter and Instagram, and more adults with places like radio, podcasts, and Facebook. 

The election really has put things into perspective with how different people receive information, with kids making snap judgements on TikTok and young adults trying to influence more through emotion rather than statistics and facts. I never really thought twice about information on the news or websites and took the facts at face value, but bringing in the election it really shows the power of perspective and different ways of persuasion through commercials and ads and news segments. Just look at the political differences between Fox and NBC. 

With more platforms coming and going, it's interesting how all this information of being policed and how information if being presented in society. Studying for college besides the large media monopolies, there even the Sinclair Broadcast Group owning dozens of television stations on Fox, NBC, ABC, and CBS. There has even been legislation with propaganda and information like television and radio.  

The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act (SMMA) was buried in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act for good reason – because it repealed the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act. The Smith-Mundt Act is also known as the U.S. Information and Education Act, which authorized the State Department to engage in propagandizing foreign countries as a form of public diplomacy.

The SMA established that via the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Voice of America (VOA), and Radio Free Europe (RFE), the U.S. State Department and Office of Public Affairs were authorized to disseminate propaganda to foreign publics, but were strictly prohibited from releasing that same propaganda in America for public consumption. Put simply, our government was permitted to lie to people in other countries, but not to us here at home.

-Kathleen McCarthy

This prohibition was lifted in 2012, when the SMMA was signed into law by President Obama, allowing the same propaganda disseminated by our government to foreign publics, to now be released in the U.S. for the very first time. I wonder if there will be more legislation and policies that will be made with the huge influence with apps and such with even foreign companies. The company Twitter even has a website that updates removal requests and give detailed reports about the requests and who and why. Tik Tok over the summer and fall had to sell to companies Walmart and Oracle to be kept in the United States with threats of data collecting and such. It's just crazy how much influence technology now has on our society or now how much Silicon Valley has become so transparent.