Stop the Walmart-Vizio merger!
Petition to the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice:
We urge you to stop the Walmart acquisition of Vizio.
Walmart is on the verge of a mega $2.3 billion deal with Vizio, the television maker and digital advertising company.1 Here’s why that’s a big, big problem.
Walmart is pulling pages from the Amazon playbook to suck up market control in every industry. Walmart is already a multinational corporate behemoth — dominating retail and e-commerce, increasingly becoming a dominant player in banking and consumer finance, healthcare, food manufacturing, and financial technology.
Worst of all, Walmart operates one of the most comprehensive consumer data harvesting programs in the world, which fuels the surveillance advertising ecosystem.2 By acquiring Vizio, Walmart will grow its advertising ecosystem and troves of customer data to help Walmart build its corporate empire. This deal is bad for consumers, workers, and privacy.
Sign the petition: Tell the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to stop this Walmart-Vizio $2.3 billion deal.
Big corporations are trying to get even bigger and even more powerful — and have even more control over our lives. The more power a corporation has in a given industry or over a set of consumer data, the more it is able to take advantage of the American people.
Acquiring Vizio will enable Walmart to further grow its business lines that rely on extracting, monetizing, and exploiting consumer data.
The financial incentives for Walmart to use its acquisition of Vizio to tighten its grip on other sectors through anticompetitive tactics could be considerable. This deal, like so many other attempted corporate mergers in the last few years, is a serious danger to consumers, small businesses, workers, and our rights. But the FTC and DOJ have been active in challenging these mergers, and they must do it again for this Walmart mega-merger.
Add your name: Urge the FTC and DOJ to stop Walmart’s monopolization of our data.
Sources:
- The Verge, “Walmart to acquire Vizio in $2.3 billion deal,” February 20, 2024.
- Walmart, “Driving Success with Data: A look back at Walmart Luminate's key milestones from the first half of FY24,” August 28, 2023.