Shouldn't some kind of anti-trust agency forbid such mergers, or break them up after the fact? At least in an alternate world where anti-trust law was still enforced.
> Shouldn't some kind of anti-trust agency forbid such mergers, or break them up after the fact? At least in an alternate world where anti-trust law was still enforced.
Even without anti-trust, it should be illegal to own or buy a "review site" for something you sell. That kind of thing is very counter to consumer interests and a blatant conflict of interest.
That sort of rule would quickly become very hard to untangle. For example news papers are often the only good source of reliable, in-depth book reviews and for historical reasons the companies that sell books and sell news papers are often owned by the same parent company.
In the Kape case I think it is clearly dishonest, and the same can be said for the online order mattress space among others. Most online direct to consumer spaces (for example gaming and anti-virus) probably has some actor that is dishonestly setting up or buying review sites.
But it is not exactly clear how you would in a legal sense draw the line.
> That sort of rule would quickly become very hard to untangle. For example news papers are often the only good source of reliable, in-depth book reviews and for historical reasons the companies that sell books and sell news papers are often owned by the same parent company....
> But it is not exactly clear how you would in a legal sense draw the line.
You could probably address that problem by permitting common ownership in cases where the company could prove to a court that it's implemented effective and rigorous firewalls, such that the reviews are independent and not affected by the common ownership and do not show evidence or tampering of bias. My understanding is those kinds of firewalls are de rigueur in the newspaper industry.
Sure, but it'd be extremely hard to prove if that bias has penetrated that firewall or if it hasn't. I think the reason it has (mostly) worked for journalistic institutions is that it is a profession that are taught a set of ethics as a part of their education and it has a history of adhering to those ethics.
Proving a non-bias for what is your own actual financial interest seems almost impossible. I'm not saying it can't be done ever, but I would not want to have to argue either side of that.
I said this in a comment below but I think it is relevant here too:
Restricting speech is in general hard, what would be much easier is to require clear and obvious disclosure. Since journalistic ethics already requires that it should only require changes for dishonest actors.
EDIT: To clarify: those firewalls are often in the journalistic institutions currently but it becomes a whole other ballgame when something needs to be proven in court. The suggestion to make them legally mandated is where I think we run into problems.
It'd be interesting to see a source for that although I don't doubt that similar things have happened. I'm just saying that such a rule would not just untangle Kape, but would also unravel most larger media companies.
Depending on how it would be written things like a youtuber reviewing a pixel phone or one TV show talking about a different TV show might be illegal.
Restricting speech is in general hard, what would be much easier is to require clear and obvious disclosure. Since journalistic ethics already requires that it should only require changes for dishonest actors.
I frequently encounter 1-off review sites that are owned by the #1 product on the list. Many are transparent about it, and some even do a good job listing their competitors and describing them in a fair light. I think they are mostly a response to Google's algorithms prioritizing reciently published blog style top-10 lists.
Here is the first result when I google "best free youtube downloader"
I feel like this should fall under advertising laws. Maybe it does and I'm not familiar with the area. Does the review site need to disclose the fact of ownership?
> I feel like this should fall under advertising laws. Maybe it does and I'm not familiar with the area. Does the review site need to disclose the fact of ownership?
Even if they do, they can probably satisfy the requirement with disclosure where no one would actually notice it.
The only kind of disclosure I'd be happy with is if at the top of the page and next to any self-endorsement they would have to show a garish warning banner with a legally mandated design that called out their conflict of interest in blunt terms. It would be easier and better to just ban the practice.
Isn't a cartel a type of threat to competition via monopoly? The wikipedia first-line definition of a cartel is "A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market". The monopoly in that case is by the group.
