World News

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36870104

https://medium.com/@hrnews1/billionaire-ellison-family-who-bought-paramount-is-now-buying-tiktok-and-warner-770676d1108d

In August 2025, David Ellison’s Skydance Media, backed by the vast fortune of his father Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle Corporation), completed its acquisition of Paramount Global. This wasn’t simply a business transaction — it was the beginning of an unprecedented consolidation of American media power. The deal brought CBS, Paramount Pictures, MTV, Nickelodeon, and numerous other properties under the control of one of America’s wealthiest families.

But the Ellisons aren’t stopping there. Reports indicate they’re preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, which would add HBO, CNN, Warner Bros. studios, and DC Entertainment to their portfolio. Perhaps most significantly, Larry Ellison has been named by former President Donald Trump as a key figure in negotiations to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations — potentially giving the family control over the platform that shapes political consciousness for an entire generation of young Americans.

If these acquisitions succeed, the Ellison family would control: traditional broadcast networks, cable news, major film studios, streaming platforms, and one of the world’s most influential social media algorithms. This represents a concentration of narrative power unseen in the modern era. The Billionaire Anxiety: American Decline and the Scramble for Control

To understand why this is happening now, we must examine the psychological and material conditions of America’s billionaire class in 2025. They are watching their world crumble — not in the sense of losing their wealth (though that’s a fear), but in the sense of losing the stable imperial order that generated and protected that wealth.

American global hegemony is weakening. The dollar’s dominance is being challenged. Infrastructure crumbles while China builds.

The social contract that kept the American working class pacified for decades — the promise that hard work leads to prosperity — has been thoroughly exposed as a lie. Millennials and Gen Z are the first generations in American history expected to be poorer than their parents. They cannot afford homes, healthcare, or education. They are drowning in debt for degrees that lead to gig economy jobs.

This creates a legitimacy crisis. When people can no longer believe in the system, they start looking for alternatives. They start asking dangerous questions: Why do we have billionaires while children go hungry? Why do we have empty houses and homeless people? Why are we funding wars abroad while our communities collapse? The Billionaire Response: Control the Narrative

The billionaire class has concluded that the way forward isn’t to address these material conditions — that would require them to give up power and wealth. Instead, the strategy is to control the story being told about those conditions.

This is where “equitable distribution” rhetoric becomes useful. The messaging will be about “giving everyone a voice,” “platform neutrality,” “balanced coverage,” and “algorithmic fairness.” TikTok, in particular, will likely be framed as being “saved” from Chinese control and “protected” for American users. The Paramount-Warner merger will be sold as “creating jobs” and “competing with Netflix.”

But behind this progressive-sounding language lies a darker strategy: use narrative control to manage decline, deflect blame, and prevent class consciousness from forming.

What makes this different from traditional media ownership is the integration of algorithmic control with broadcast media. Previous generations of media moguls — the Hearsts, the Murdochs — controlled what stories were told. The Ellisons will control both the stories and the system that determines who sees them, when, and in what context.

Modern propaganda doesn’t work like Soviet-era information control. It doesn’t censor everything and force everyone to repeat the same slogans. Instead, it:

Floods the zone: Overwhelm people with content so they can’t distinguish signal from noise

Amplifies division: Promote contentious cultural issues that split the working class along identity lines

Manufactures complexity: Make every issue seem so complicated that ordinary people feel unqualified to have opinions

Offers false choices: Present two establishment positions as the full spectrum of acceptable debate

Algorithmic nudging: Subtly guide people toward certain conclusions while maintaining the illusion of choice

When you own TikTok’s algorithm plus CBS News plus CNN, you control the conversation at every level. You decide what “goes viral.” You decide which “experts” get platformed. You decide what questions journalists ask and which stories get follow-up coverage.

The genius of this system is that it can claim neutrality while systematically excluding certain perspectives.

Both “liberal” and “conservative” voices will be present — but both will operate within acceptable parameters. The debate will be about whether billionaires should pay 35% or 40% in taxes, not whether billionaires should exist. It will be about which countries deserve military intervention, not whether the U.S. should have a global military empire. Turning Americans Against Each Other

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of consolidated media control is its ability to redirect legitimate grievances toward false enemies. Americans are angry — they should be angry. The system has failed them. But who gets blamed?