A viral image circulates with a blunt claim: Trump’s billionaire allies will soon own CNN, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, X, Facebook, TikTok, and control the AI and algorithms feeding you content. It ends with a command: “Pay attention.”
The claim is slightly wrong in the details. The reality is far worse.
They do not need to own every outlet. They already own the machine. The consolidation is not a future threat. It is the operating system of the present.
Start with the owners.
Rupert Murdoch does not need to buy CNN. He built an empire that includes Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and a global media apparatus that shapes political reality for millions. His retirement changed nothing. The machine he built continues. Peter Thiel, the PayPal Mafia billionaire and early Facebook investor, sits on Meta’s board while funding an ecosystem of right-wing politicians and thinkers. He does not need to own Facebook. He helps steer it.
Elon Musk owns X outright. He paid forty-four billion dollars to control the digital town square. He reinstates banned accounts, alters algorithms to boost his views, and turns the platform into a broadcast system for his politics. He does not need to buy a newspaper. He owns the press.
The Mercers, Robert and Rebekah, fund Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica’s precursors, and a network of think tanks. They do not need a byline. They fund the infrastructure that creates the narrative.
Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook and Instagram. Sheryl Sandberg built the advertising model that monetizes your attention. They do not need to be allies of any politician. They are allies to the engagement metrics that reward outrage, because outrage sells.
This is not a conspiracy. It is a portfolio. These are not ideologues in a smoke filled room. They are capitalists optimizing a market. The market is you. Your attention is the commodity. Your outrage is the product.
Now, understand the mechanism.
Fox News is not a news network. It is a feedback loop. It tells a specific audience what it wants to hear, confirms its biases, and monetizes its fear. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is not journalism. It is a lobbying firm disguised as a newspaper. The New York Post is not a tabloid. It is a weapon.
But these are the old models. The real power is in the feed.
Facebook’s algorithm does not seek truth. It seeks engagement. It is programmed to show you content that will keep you scrolling. Conflict, fear, and tribal loyalty are the most reliable drivers of engagement. The algorithm is agnostic to facts. It is allergic to nuance. It feeds you a version of reality designed to keep you angry and watching.
Twitter is the same. Musk did not buy it to foster free speech. He bought it to control the narrative. He promotes his friends and attacks his critics. He changes the rules to benefit his side. The platform is not a public square. It is a broadcast tower with a single owner.
TikTok’s algorithm is arguably more powerful, because it is more opaque. It learns what you want and gives it to you before you know you want it. It does not care about politics. It cares about attention. It will feed you any content that holds your eyes, regardless of the consequence. The Chinese government does not need to plant propaganda. It only needs to ensure the algorithm that shapes the minds of American teenagers is ultimately answerable to Beijing.
This brings us to the final phase: the AI.
The promise of artificial intelligence is not sentient machines. It is predictive control. The companies that own your feed, Meta, Google, X, TikTok, also own the vast datasets of your life. Every click, every pause, every like, every share. They use this data to train models that predict your behavior.
The next step is not to show you news you agree with. It is to shape a reality you will not question. An AI can generate personalized narratives, micro-targeted disinformation, and synthetic media so convincing it bypasses your critical mind. It does not need to own CNN if it can generate a perfect video of a CNN anchor saying whatever it wants you to believe. It does not need to debate you. It needs only to confirm you.
This is the endgame of the attention monopoly. It is not about controlling the message. It is about controlling the perception. It is about building a world where the truth is irrelevant because a personalized, algorithmically-generated reality is more compelling, more engaging, and more profitable.
They are not building a propaganda ministry. They are building a trillion-dollar perception engine. And you are not the audience. You are the fuel.
When you understand this, the old debates about media bias become irrelevant. The question is not whether Fox is fair or CNN is honest. The question is who owns the machinery of your perception. The question is who profits from your rage.
The call to action is not to change the channel. It is to recognize that you are the product being sold. The only leverage you have left is your attention. You must starve the machine.
Stop believing the feed. Stop rewarding the outrage. Stop mistaking engagement for discourse.
They own the news. They own the platforms. They are building the AI. Your only defense is to refuse to live in the reality they are designing for you. Pay attention. Then turn it off.
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The thought occurs to me that this is how the Vanguard also operates, which is the reason we get day-after-day of the same housing article (and ultimately the same comments). And yes, I’m apparently gullible enough to be one of the “products” as you say.
You can also see this phenomenon on the Vanguard’s Facebook page (as well as on other social media such as NextDoor).
But perhaps the local champion of this is Beth. David can’t even hold her beer, so to speak.
“But perhaps the local champion of this is Beth. David can’t even hold her beer, so to speak.”
Yes, Beth is probably the most well known and famous Davisite and that totally riles her haters.