FreePress has openly warned against the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, pointing out that the monopoly will most certainly give rise to higher costs for consumers. When corporations of this size merge, he said, the top brass discusses expensive innovations designed to appease shareholders, and prices go up. He added that layoffs are a common occurrence, as well.
Karr stated, "While the executives of these companies and some of the top shareholders will be making a lot of money, it's the consumers who'll probably suffer the most."
Recently, AT&T's eager capitulation to the NSA, in turning over customer personal data through a program called Project Hemisphere, has revealed that the company is selling information to the government, and, astonishingly, turning a profit at the expense of user privacy.
"This is not a new story, you go back to years of AT&T cooperation with the NSA to spy on customers," Karr said. "This merger just means that a company that cares very little for the privacy of its users is going to be even larger," he said.
There are several key issues relating to the merger that federal regulators will closely study. AT&T, according to Karr, doesn't "want a rule that protects the open internet, as they think that they can also profit from prioritizing a certain type of content."
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has disapproved of the merger between AT&T and Time Warner, suggesting that it would place "too much concentration of power in the hands of too few."
