Interesting point, yeah. Does it need to be a PR company, though? If I bought NVDA I'd also be incentivized to talk about how healthy the company looks.
Personally, I don't think it's (paid) PR per se. Call me cynical but I'm fairly sure TechCrunch has always been mostly lightly laundered press kits. This is, of course, something that is endemic across most trade or trade-adjacent media.
I don't think any company will be able to hold a significant monopoly in the space for the simple law of economics: high margins (especially combined with high absolute volumes) attract competition.
And the wider the margins and volumes the more competitors have incentives in making gigantic investments.
A very incoherent article. Reads like a Submarine[1].
[1]: https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
“News is what someone doesn’t want you to know. The rest is just advertising.” Variously attributed to George Orwell and William Randolph Hearst.
That article is brilliant, can't believe I have never seen it before.
The media (especially in today's environment) works to sell ad views, not make the reader more informed.
Way (way) too many people think that because the media confirms their beliefs, the media is honest.
Interesting point, yeah. Does it need to be a PR company, though? If I bought NVDA I'd also be incentivized to talk about how healthy the company looks.
Personally, I don't think it's (paid) PR per se. Call me cynical but I'm fairly sure TechCrunch has always been mostly lightly laundered press kits. This is, of course, something that is endemic across most trade or trade-adjacent media.
Presskits are now on par with police reports: largely reported ad objective truth even when historical context would properly shade those reports.
News is at high AI risk precisely because it easily adopts whatever POV the subject wants.
I don't think any company will be able to hold a significant monopoly in the space for the simple law of economics: high margins (especially combined with high absolute volumes) attract competition.
And the wider the margins and volumes the more competitors have incentives in making gigantic investments.
Given proper oversight yes.
Otherwise companies can absolutely get a monopoly and cement it. Buy up competition, pressure adversaries, hog resources and so on.