Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is laying the groundwork to rein in Facebook and other Big Tech companies with expanded oversight and potentially a public rebuke on how they collect and sell consumer data.

Meta Platformss Facebook has long been in Chopras sights. He wrote a scathing rebuke of what he called Facebooks illegal data practices in 2019 while serving on the Federal Trade Commission.

At the time, Chopra lamented that the FTCs $5 billion settlement with Facebook for privacy violations was too small given the social media giants status as a repeat offender of regulatory orders. Chopra wanted CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg to be held personally liable and has called for more restrictions on the tech giants ad-driven practices.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Since taking control of the CFPB in October, Chopra has made several moves to bolster the CFPBs authority to designate Facebook or any other Big Tech firm as posing a risk to consumers.

Its clearly one of Director Chopras desires to bring the Big Tech companies within the purview of the CFPBs regulatory oversight, said Jenny Lee, a partner at ArentFox Schiff. Its a new emphasis and there are a half a dozen ways to go after Big Tech.

For the past few months, Chopra has laid out an arsenal of tools against large financial firms that were informed by his analysis of the FTCs Facebook settlement. He has dug into the CFPBs broad authority, found obscure new mechanisms to use and highlighted existing Dodd-Frank Act rules to shine a light on Facebooks consumer practices.

The CFPB declined to comment for this story, and Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

Taking action any Facebook, which had $86 billion in revenue last year, appears to be a priority though it could strain the CFPBs resources and may come at the expense of other enforcement actions.

It looks like hes taking his time to set up the chess pieces on the board, said Richard Horn, co-managing partner at Garris Horn and a former CFPB senior counsel and special advisor. Thats probably why we havent seen a lot of enforcement actions, in terms of quantity, because those investigations take a ton of research and back-and-forth between CFPB attorneys and Big Tech companies in general.

Here are the five main ways the CFPB could use its authority to enforce laws against Facebook and other technology firms.

See the original post:

Five ways the CFPB could rein in Facebook - American Banker

The news: Tech workers around the country are preparing to embrace the labor movement after decades of being left behind.

It is going to be a great change, said David Sullivan, an executive of the union that recently celebrated a first-of-its kind election at an Apple retail store, per Bloomberg.

Why this matters: As Big Tech companies become wealthier and more influential, many of their workers are looking to unions to negotiate more equitable compensation and benefits as well as organize around ethical issues.

Efforts to unionize in the US:

Whats next? 50% of tech workers are interested in joining a union, according to a 2021 Tech Employee Survey conducted by Protocol and Morning Consult.

Big Tech has been responding with a measured mix of compensation raises and union-busting maneuvers to avoid unionization.

The bigger picture: Expect the situation to intensify as momentum from Amazon and Apple employees union wins could inspire a domino effect in other shops.

More here:

Can Big Tech manage the surging wave of unionization? - eMarketer

According to reports, Apple and other Big Tech companies may find themselves facing a series of fines from Russia for failing to store user data within the country.

Currently, tech companies Twitch, Pinterest, Airbnb and UPS have already seen fines. Google may be seeing the most fines over the past year. The issue has seen parallels with similar situations in China.

In a report from Reuters, a Moscow court stated that it has given fines to Twitch, Pinterest, Airbnb and UPS on Tuesday for refusing to store Russian citizens personal data within the country.

Russia has gone toe-to-toe with Big Tech concerning content, censorship and data and local representation in a spat that has devolved into a full scale battle. This issue has been occurring since Russia sent thousands of troops to Ukraine February 24.

Currently, most fines are between the one to two million rouble range. This roughly equates to between $19,000 and $38,000. Fines do escalate for repeat offenses. Google was fined 15 million roubles ($278,552) this month. This is also due to failing to comply with Russia legislation on data storage. The company also saw a 3 million rouble ($55,710) penalty last year. So far, Google has seen fines totaling $340,000.

Apple typically complies with local laws in the countries in which they operate. However, more companies are currently defying Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine. On the other hand, Apple did bend to a similar law in China way back in 2018. Due to local laws in China, Apple moved the iCloud data of Chinese customers to a server operated by GCBD, which is owned by the provincial government.

At the time, Apple did its best to deny that authorities in China were given free-reign over user data. Apple did claim that there were no backdoors within any of its systems. Though, the nature of the Chinese government made it seem unlikely that the new servers were truly free of spying.

Since the illegal invasion of Ukraine, Apple has been cooperating with sanctions against Russia. In March, a loophole did allow some Apple Pay payments to process even though they were not meant to. Cupertino then decided to continue blocking these payments. Tim Cook also stated to employees that the company would be tripling its humanitarian aid donations toward organizations providing aid to Ukraine.

Lastly, Russia has also began heavily censoring the news its citizens receive. Due to this, the move saw a rise in VPN downloads within the country.

Concerning user data, many tech companies are in a pickle. Do they continue to defy governments that are seen as untrustworthy? To what extent can they continue to fight? Right now, it seems like Big Tech is in the middle of a dangerous balancing act. One that may result in some users losing data privacy.

Read more:

Russia Fines Big Tech Companies Over User Data and Apple May Be Next - The Mac Observer

Analysts at Berenberg initiated coverage on software-as-a-services firm Big Technologies with a 'buy' rating and 320.0p target price on Monday, branding the group as "the big disrupter".

Berenberg stated Big Technologies was a disruptive company that entirely generates revenues from its criminal justice product, Buddi Smart Tag, which provides real-time tracking of monitored offenders on rehabilitative programmes.

With the group taking market share from incumbents that operate on legacy technology by winning long-term government contracts, providing high revenue visibility, and its "good

pricing power" and "less price-sensitive" customer base, Berenberg said Big Technologies was "a good asset to own during inflationary cycles".

"The group is expected to grow its top line and EPS by mid-teens percentages, as per our base case, but there is scope for c70% outperformance of our FY 2024 earnings estimate through a combination of more contract wins and highly accretive M&A in the next 12-15 months," said Berenberg.

Berenberg also started coverage on digital content publisher LBG Media with a 'buy' rating and a 180.0p target price, stating that despite its short history as a public company, it believes that LBG has created "a wide competitive moat".

The German bank praised LBG for its global audience of roughly 264.0m social media followers, its ability to reach 64% of the "highly coveted, yet hard-to-reach" 18-34-year-old demographic in the UK, and its "vertical dominance" in key interest areas.

"This makes it the industry-leading youth publisher, in our view. We believe there is no reason for LBG's audience growth or revenue per user to stagnate in FY 2022-24E, as consensus assumes. Coupled with ample firepower for further M&A, we believe LBG could materially outperform our base-case estimates," concluded the analysts.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com

Continue reading here:

Berenberg initiates coverage on Big Tech and LBG Media at 'buy' - ShareCast

The Metaverse Standards Forum, a collection of big tech companies working to establish guidelines for metaverse platforms, has been in the planning stages for some time, but the timing of its launch this week is unfortunate. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency of the metaverse, is down nearly 60% in the last two quarters, along with much of the stock market, as inflation and interest rate hikes pinch consumers. Similarly, employers are pressing workers to move away from thevirtual and remote work dynamics that have gained currency over the last two years.

Ever since Mark Zuckerberg helped popularized the term metaverse last year to describe the intersection of gaming, virtual work, and socializing, assisted by augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and crypto, the space has been under extreme critical scrutiny from skeptics. Some of that negative attention is likely due to Zuckerbergs own somewhat damaged profile as the CEO of Meta. But there are others who point to a number of concerns around the business viability of what some are calling the next phase of the internet.

For business leaders versus broader consumer adoption, I would say its the headset, says Andrew Hawken, the co-founder and CEO of UK-based VR startup Mesmerise. It often presents a very powerful psychological barrier. Its not like learning to use an iPhone or iPadVR technology makes first-time users feel vulnerable and even a bit silly as they navigate the virtual world. So you can imagine why theres some hesitancy from senior executives to put on a headset to lead meetings with their colleagues and clients in the metaverse.

On June 17, the Nasdaq stock exchange held its first opening bell event in the metaverse, highlighting how seriously Wall Street is taking the new technology. And just days later, on June 20, Zuckerberg offered another look at the next version of the Quest VR headset, just a couple of months after launching Metas first brick-and-mortar store devoted to selling and demonstrating metaverse products.

Meanwhile, this week in New York City, the NFT NYC blockchain conference is being held as billions are being lost (at least for now) by crypto speculators like Michael Saylor, layoffs are hitting Coinbase, the spaces most high-profile exchange, and NFT theft is running rampant.

Currently, things arent looking great for the already vague future of the metaverse as its slow growth and current economic conditions increase the number of doubters questioning its relevance. Still, Citi has projected the metaverse be worth up to $13 trillion by 2030, and new multimillion dollar investments from the likes of accounting firm KPMG ($30 million), crypto exchange Binance ($500 million, with the help of DST Global Partners and Breyer Capital), and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz ($600 million) pour into the space nearly every month.

One of the biggest metaverse companies, Applea longtime AR leader that is rumored to be launching a VR headset in 2023hasnt joined the Metaverse Standards Forum yet, which begins formally meeting in July. But the absence of one big tech brand doesnt seem to be slowing the organizations initiatives, which could eventually influence all companies launching their version of the metaverse.

Slowly, companies are coming to realize that they will need a better way to work than teleconferencing, says Hawken of the metaverse, especially [companies] with global, hybrid teams.

Despite these challenges, the Metaverse Standards Forum is pushing forward with an impressive list ofmembers that includes Adobe, Epic Games, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Wayfair, IKEA, Qualcomm, Sony, Alibaba, Huawei, and Unity. And while the names associated with the effort are largely leaders in the tech industry, the organization is free to join, and will not enforce a strict set of standards forcompanies building metaverse platforms. Given that somewhat loose framework, some may question what the true purpose of the organization is, since there are no real world consequences or tangible rules around the association and its membership.

[Its a] venue for building industry consensus on critical requirements for metaverse standards and exercising real-world interoperability with plugfest projects, says Khronos Group president Neil Trevett, who also serves as the chair of the Metaverse Standards Forum. The Forum is not trying to dictate technologies or business models to the industry, its actually the reverse, the standards organizations in the Forum are seeking industry input on requirements to help steer their standardization activities. And of course, the Forum cannot force any company to use any standardcompanies will choose to use standards that add value to their business.

Excerpt from:

Big tech's group wants to boost trust in the metaverse - Quartz

Business

28 Jun, 2022 05:00 PM4 minutes to read

The Netatmo weather station comprises four separate wireless gauges. Photo / Supplied

OPINION:

Home automation. It's been in the works for decades, after butlers and maids to perform tasks below your station like switching lights on and off became too expensive to hire.

Past home automation efforts were neither here nor there as we didn't have ubiquitous wireless networks over which mobile devices can be prodded to open doors, and to set air conditioners and heat pumps to uncomfortable temperatures so as to entice dinner party guests to leave.

Now we do, and the big tech companies have pretty much stitched up the home automation market. Not Microsoft, which flubbed mobility and with it, a slice of the $100 billion home automation market.

Apple however dipped its oar in with the HomeKit framework that has been around for eight years now.

It remains a minnow compared to the vast amount of products that Google and Amazon's Alexa can connect to. We're talking a few hundred devices compared to tens of thousands.

Why bother with HomeKit then? Privacy and security are two good reasons, ease of use another. Since you're networking your home, you shouldn't overlook those factors. Apple does have a good track record here.

HomeKit itself works pretty well. Mostly, as it does have some quirks and the total bill for devices can be high.

My HomeKit experiment featured some of Legrand's Netatmo devices, namely the nicely designed Smart Home Weather Station, Rain Gauge, and Anemometer.

A Smart Indoor Camera was also included in the package, but it was the environmental metering that I was keen to check out, at a total cost of $565 for the devices.

Setting up the indoors and outdoors weather station units through HomeKit and adding the rain and wind metering accessories was pleasantly trouble free using QR codes.

The physical installation was a little harder for the anemometer which needs to be high up.

At least 1.2 metres above the tallest bit of the roof, in fact, to avoid eddies and turbulence messing with the ultrasonic sensors. As you can tell, I didn't fall off the roof and lived to write this column.

To get the most out of the Netatmo devices, you'll want the Legrand iOS app which gives you pretty charts showing the temperature, rainfall and wind speed over time.

Apple's Home app doesn't give you much of that, and won't work remotely over the Internet without a $159 HomePod, a pricier 4th Gen Apple TV or a spare iPad which is annoying.

You can also join Netatmo's weather map to check the climates at other stations around the world, while sharing what it's like outside where you are. New Zealanders have bought quite a few Netatmo devices according to the map, and I wish there was a way to be more selective about the location information the station shares.

Legrand promises fairly good accuracy for the devices, like 0.5 metres per second for the anemometer, +/- 0.3 C for temperature, and 1mm/hour for the tipping buckets rain gauge.

Overall, home automation is a seductive concept that I suspect will eat into what little spare time and cash that I have, as I try to connect and control more devices.

It is marred by the lack of interoperability between devices and frameworks though.

The good news is that the tech industry has recognised that kind of lock-in as a problem, one that irritates customers and which might even attract regulator attention.

They're trying to fix it with the oddly named Matters open source standard for home automation systems but it has been delayed again until some time this year.

Meanwhile, where there's a need there's a will, and people are taking matters into their own hands so to speak. You'll find thriving communities of developers who've been there, done that, like the HomeBridge.io project that has thousands of HomeKit plug-ins for all sorts of devices.

An open standard for home automation would make life a great deal easier for developers, so here's hoping Matters will happen.

Read more from the original source:

Juha Saarinen: Big Tech has its eye on your house - New Zealand Herald

The market for wearable technology has grown a lot in the last ten years, with fitness and health tracking features being the main USP of most such devices in the market.

Googles 2021 acquisition of Fitbit for over $2 billion was their entry into the wearables market. Since then, the Pixel Watch has also entered the ring, with revolutionary new features.

Aside from the basic features like counting steps taken or calories burned, there are also new technologies being introduced like a sensor that can detect irregularities in the wearers pulse.

This sensor has recently received FDA approval, The Economist reports. Googles Pixel phone cameras can detect heart blood oxygen levels using image processing and their smart home devices can monitor sleep patterns by listening to snoring.

Apple is another strong player in this arena, with their whole arsenal of fitness and health tracking features on the Apple Watch and iPhone.

The rest is here:

Big Tech Dives into Healthcare With Google Parent Alphabet at the Forefront - The Quint

After a banner year for tech, layoffs are here. In fact, as of late June, more than 22,000 workers in the U.S. tech sector have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2022, according to a Crunchbase News tally.

Grow your revenue with all-in-one prospecting solutions powered by the leader in private-company data.

Tech companies as big as Netflix have slashed jobs this year, with some citing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and others pointing to overhiring during periods of rapid growth. Robinhood, Glossier and Better are just a few of the tech companies that have notably trimmed their headcount in 2022.

To keep tabs, weve compiled a list of U.S.-based tech companies that have laid off employees so far this year.

New additions in the past week include Netflix, Ro, and Postscript.

Most recently updated: June 27, 2022

The public markets have been hit hard in 2022, and thats trickled down to the private markets. Inflation concerns, rising interest rates and geopolitical issues have all contributed to a roller coaster stock market.

Startupsespecially the ones who benefited from a pandemic boom thats starting to coolare starting to feel the pressure too. Valuations, particularly at the late stage, have started to dip, and startups say its much more difficult to raise new funding in this environment.

Weve included both startups and publicly traded companies that are based in the U.S. Weve also included companies based elsewhere that have a sizable team in the United States, such as Klarna, even when its unclear how much of the U.S. workforce has been affected by layoffs.

We sourced the layoffs from media reports, social media posts and layoffs.fyi, a crowdsourced database of tech layoffs.

Our hope is that this database will be as comprehensive as possible, so if weve missed any companies or if your company goes through layoffs, please let us know by filling out this form.

This layoff tracker will be updated at least weekly, if not more frequently.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the Crunchbase Daily.

Read this article:

Tech Layoffs: US Startups And Tech Companies With Job Cuts In 2022 - Crunchbase News

Big Tech companies Google, Amazon, and Microsoft as well as cloud infrastructure platform Oracle are going to battle it out for a multi-billion-dollar government contract and there's a chance they all might win.

The Department of Defense (DoD) said on Friday that it had issued formal solicitations to Microsoft which has just announced plans to build its own metaverse and three other companies regarding the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract.

The news comes after years of legal battles, scrapped programs, and disagreements between tech companies desperate to get their names stamped on the lucrative government program.

In 2017, the Pentagon began to formulate plans for a Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, with the goal to commission a company to build a centralized cloud infrastructure system that could be used to view, manage, and transfer confidential information safely across all security clearance levels, for all employees from the Pentagon to the edge of the battlefield.

The contract ended up being awarded to Microsoft not once, but twice, with the process marred by various lawsuits brought against the Department of Defense and the US government by companies like Amazon, who raised issues with how the contract was awarded.

In July, the Pentagon announced that it was scrapping the $10 billion, decade-long JEDI contract that had previously been awarded to Microsoft, on the grounds it was now obsolete due to long delays.

With the shifting technology environment, it has become clear that the Jedi Cloud contract, which has long been delayed, no longer meets the requirements to fill the DoD's capability gaps. US Department of Defense (DoD).

However, many believe it was then-president Donald Trumps animus towards Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who owns the liberal-leaning paper The Washington Post that played a decisive role in Amazon initially missing out on JEDI and the subsequent decision to scrap it.

The decision left the door open for Microsoft and Amazon to bid for a new contract the JWCC along with other technology companies. However, only Amazon and Microsoft were initially contacted with pre-solicitation bids as they appeared to be the only two companies capable of delivering what the DoD need.

The JWCC is an IDIQ contract which means whoever is awarded it will have to provide an indefinite number of services over a specified time period.

The Pentagon has stiff criteria for what it expects to be developed, including tactical edge devices, pieces of technology used in battle scenarios or crisis environments that can function away from data centers and work for employees at all levels of government.

Whilst the JEDI contract took a winner-takes-all approach and Microsoft and Amazon are still very much favorites in the Pentagons eyes its a possibility that all of the companies in contention may end up with responsibility for at least some part of the project.

The Government anticipates awarding two IDIQ contracts one to Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) and one to Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) but intends to award to all Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) that demonstrate the capability to meet DoDs requirements. the US General Services Administration (GSA).

Google has, since July, instituted the security provisions needed to be in the running for a cloud service, but didnt previously bid for JEDI because it was thought the contract would conflict with its AI principles. IBM is also rumored to be interested in playing some part.

The disconnect between the wealthy executives populating Big Techs boardrooms and the staff that make their companies cogs turn has peppered the news over the past few years.

With workers rights and user safety already bones of contention that have been borne out in the public domain, the development of a war cloud may be the frontier upon which disagreement manifests.

Amazon Web Services, for instance, told CNBC that its commitment to supporting our nations military and ensuring that our warfighters and defense partners have access to the best technology for the best value is stronger than ever, illustrating that the company is staunchly in favor of working closely with the military.

And theres plenty of evidence that employees moral compasses tend to point in a different direction. Just recently, for instance, staff at Amazon as well as Google decried the involvement of their employers in Project Nimbus, a cloud service contract with the Israeli government that staff argue will be used to ramp up surveillance on Palestinian civilians.

What's more, dissent on these issues is often widespread the letter referenced above regarding Project Nimbus, which was published anonymously, claims to have over 300 Amazon and 90 Google employee signatures.

Google employees also protested the companys involvement in a drone program that utilized AI to improve accuracy, and a year later, Microsoft employees expressed their concern after their company was awarded a $480 million contract to develop augmented reality headsets for troops in combat zones.

It remains to be seen how the staff-exec relationships at these companies will fare under the strain of new, ethical quandaries like company involvement with military programs, but one thing's for sure: it'll take a lot more than an appeal to the better nature of Big Tech's profit-chasing chiefs to force them to turn down multi-billion-dollar contracts.

See more here:

Big Tech Is Fighting Over Who Gets to Build a Cloud for the Pentagon - Tech.co

1. Vestager urges European legislators to push through rules to regulate Big Tech  Financial Times
2. Who will enforce Europes crackdown on Big Tech?  POLITICO.eu
3. EU lawmakers agree on rules to target big tech- FT  Reuters
4. Regulating 'big tech': Council agrees on enhancing competition in the digital sphere  EU News
5. EU ministers back bloc's Big Tech clampdown  Tech Xplore
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Continued here:

Vestager urges European legislators to push through rules to regulate Big Tech - Financial Times

Christian HumborgContributor

As COVID-19 spread rapidly across the world in 2020, people everywhere were hungry for reliable information. A global network of volunteers rose to the challenge, consolidating information from scientists, journalists and medical professionals, and making it accessible for everyday people.

Two of them live almost 3,200 kilometers away from one another: Dr. Alaa Najjar is a Wikipedia volunteer and medical doctor who spends breaks during his emergency room shift addressing COVID-19 misinformation on the Arabic version of the site. Sweden-based Dr. Netha Hussain, a clinical neuroscientist and doctor, spent her downtime editing COVID-19 articles in English and Malayalam (a language of southwestern India), later focusing her efforts on improving Wikipedia articles about COVID-19 vaccines.

Thanks to Najjar, Hussain and more than 280,000 volunteers, Wikipedia emerged as one of the most trusted sources for up-to-date, comprehensive knowledge about COVID-19, spanning nearly 7,000 articles in 188 languages. Wikipedias reach and ability to support knowledge-sharing on a global scale from informing the public about a major disease to helping students study for tests is only made possible by laws that enable its collaborative, volunteer-led model to thrive.

As the European Parliament considers new regulations aimed at holding Big Tech platforms accountable for illegal content amplified on their websites and apps through packages like the Digital Services Act (DSA), it must protect citizens ability to collaborate in service of the public interest.

Lawmakers are right to try to stem the spread of content that causes physical or psychological harm, including content that is illegal in many jurisdictions. As they consider a range of provisions for the comprehensive DSA, we welcome some of the proposed elements, including requirements for greater transparency about how platforms content moderation works.

But the current draft also includes prescriptive requirements for how terms of service should be enforced. At first glance, these measures may seem necessary to curb the rising power of social media, prevent the spread of illegal content and ensure the safety of online spaces. But what happens to projects like Wikipedia? Some of the proposed requirements could shift power further away from people to platform providers, stifling digital platforms that operate differently from the large commercial platforms.

Big Tech platforms work in fundamentally different ways than nonprofit, collaborative websites like Wikipedia. All of the articles created by Wikipedia volunteers are available for free, without ads and without tracking our readers browsing habits. The commercial platforms incentive structures maximize profits and time on site, using algorithms that leverage detailed user profiles to target people with content that is most likely to influence them. They deploy more algorithms to moderate content automatically, which results in errors of over- and under-enforcement. For example, computer programs often confuse artwork and satire with illegal content, while failing to understand human nuance and context necessary to enforce platforms actual rules.

The Wikimedia Foundation and affiliates based in specific countries, like Wikimedia Deutschland, support Wikipedia volunteers and their autonomy in making decisions about what information should exist on Wikipedia and what shouldnt. The online encyclopedias open editing model is grounded in the belief that people should decide what information stays on Wikipedia, leveraging established volunteer-developed rules for neutrality and reliable sources.

This model ensures that for any given Wikipedia article on any subject, people who know and care about a topic enforce the rules about what content is allowed on its page. Whats more, our content moderation is transparent and accountable: All conversations between editors on the platform are publicly accessible. It is not a perfect system, but it has largely worked to make Wikipedia a global source of neutral and verified information.

Forcing Wikipedia to operate more like a commercial platform with a top-down power structure, lacking accountability to our readers and editors, would arguably subvert the DSAs actual public interest intentions by leaving our communities out of important decisions about content.

The internet is at an inflection point. Democracy and civic space are under attack in Europe and around the world. Now, more than ever, all of us need to think carefully about how new rules will foster, not hinder, an online environment that allows for new forms of culture, science, participation and knowledge.

Lawmakers can engage with public interest communities such as ours to develop standards and principles that are more inclusive, more enforceable and more effective. But they should not impose rules that are aimed solely at the most powerful commercial internet platforms.

We all deserve a better, safer internet. We call on lawmakers to work with collaborators across sectors, including Wikimedia, to design regulations that empower citizens to improve it, together.

The rest is here:

Digital regulation must empower people to make the internet better - TechCrunch

(Bloomberg) -- When Americans gather around the Thanksgiving table this week, the blistering rally in technology, electric vehicles and crypto-related stocks is likely to be a part of their conversations.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Theres a reason it will dominate the small talk: The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 is now worth almost half as much as the benchmark S&P 500 -- the highest ever -- and the megacap tech stocks alone represent a third of the S&P 500. Nvidia Corp. and Roblox Corp.s sprint stood out in a year when the rest of the big tech names jogged to new highs, defying several calls to sell the sector around last years thanksgiving due to soaring valuations.

Here some of the hottest stocks and themes since last Thanksgiving:

Hot Chips

Chipmaker Nvidia has soared 148% as booming chip demand and a foray into the metaverse made it the best performer on the Nasdaq 100. Applied Materials Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. were other winners, each rising about 80% and outperforming many of the megacap tech stocks.

Surging EV Makers

Tesla Inc. soared to a $1 trillion market value as the electric-carmakers shares doubled in value, driven by a sustained pickup in sales, even as part shortages were crippling the broader auto industry. EV fever was even more evident with Rivian Automotive Inc., which doubled in value in less than two weeks after going public. Lucid Group Inc. was the sectors other hot name.

Metaverse Mania

Robloxs tripling of value from its March listing to Facebooks name change to Meta Platforms Inc. showed the metaverse was the next big thing in tech. The rush to the space was evident with the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF, an exchange traded fund focused on the theme, surpassing $500 million in assets under management on Nov. 17, having doubled in just two weeks.

Story continues

Cryptocurrency Craze

From the digital world to digital money: Bitcoin briefly reclaiming $60,000 and a rally in smaller cryptocurrencies boosted a host of related stocks such as Marathon Digital Holdings Inc., Riot Blockchain Inc. and MicroStrategy Inc. Marathon Digital was among the top winners, with its stock jumping ten-fold.

Dont Forget FAANGs

Retail investors who stuck with big names havent done badly either. The likes of Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc. and Tesla Inc., have alone added a whopping $3.5 trillion in 2021, while the NYSE FANG+ Index is up about 39% since last Thanksgiving.

While those numbers are impressive, some say valuations do seem stretched. Tech stocks havent been this expensive since the Internet bubble of the late 1990s and many investors remain cautious.

Lets all be thankful for the tremendous returns weve seen in tech stocks and numerous other areas of the market this year, but not forget that a slice of humble pie may be what were eating next year if were too certain of our predictions to come, said Matt Carvalho, chief investment officer of Cardinal Point Wealth.

Tech Chart of the Day

Top Tech Stories

Indias Paytm plummeted for a second day after its IPO, marking one of the worst debuts ever by a major technology company

Prosus said analysts have valued its global portfolio of e-commerce assets at about $50 billion, excluding the stake in Tencent

JD.com Inc. and NetEase Inc.s tracking by MSCI via their Hong Kong shares rather than American Depositary Receipts might reinforce a gradual shift in liquidity away from the U.S. for Chinese stocks

Contemporary Amperex, a Tesla battery supplier, hit a fresh record to become Chinas second-largest company listed onshore

Activision Blizzards CEO said hed consider leaving if hes unable to quickly fix culture problems, Dow Jones reported

Ericsson is to buy Vonage Holdings for $5.3 billion as it strives to build market presence in cloud communications services

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

2021 Bloomberg L.P.

See more here:

The Metaverse, Crypto and EVs Are Among 2021s Big Tech Winners - Yahoo Finance

China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has fined tech giants 43 times with Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent told to pay up for failing to declare deals deemed to violate anti-monopoly legislation.

According to SAMR, more rigorous anti-monopoly law enforcement has seen businesses file more paperwork, sometimes about past transactions. SAMR's own probes have spotted acquisitions that weren't reported at the time.

Those efforts turned up 43 transactions, conducted between 2012 and 2021, that violated China's 2008 Anti-Monopoly Law. Each count received a fine of 500,000 ($78,300). The regulatory body said that all were "assessed as having no effect of excluding or restricting competition".

The market regulator posted about the fines on its WeChat account and Weibo page on Saturday.

State-sponsored media Global Times reported that Alibaba and Tencent each racked up more than ten cases.

SAMR explained that by penalising companies for past violations, it would "continuously optimize the fair, transparent and predictable competitive environment, and effectively urge enterprises to enhance their compliance awareness and ability to promote the sustained and healthy development of enterprises and industries".

China's national anti-monopoly bureau was inaugurated on Thursday and guidelines for antitrust compliance of enterprises abroad were issued the same day.

The government in Beijing, and SAMR in particular, has been busy. Earlier this month the organization drafted new rules for internet platforms considered "super large" that hold them to higher standards than smaller, less influential ones in an attempt to stamp out anticompetitive behavior.

In September, the org ordered Alibaba, Tencent and more to stop blocking links to rivals. And it has been known to step in and outright ban mergers it deems imprudent.

Those new initiatives follow many others that appear to give China the power to rein in its big tech companies often in ways that would prevent them from acquiring the kind of power that Western tech companies accumulated. Perhaps ironically, the USA is currently considering legislative restrictions on new acquisitions by its tech giants, on grounds that they use such transactions to curtail competition early. By fining its own tech giants for transactions nearly a decade in the past, China appears to be applying similar logic.

The rest is here:

Beijing issues fines for 43 Big Tech M&A deals all the way back to 2012 - The Register

In todays ExchangeWire news digest: The Irish DPC are slapped with a corruption complaint filed by noyb; Apple and Google could face fines of 2% under new Korea laws; and Niantic receive a hefty USD$300m (224.5m) investment from Coatue.

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has come under fire, having been accused of corruption and even bribery in a complaint filed by the non-profit organisation noyb. The organisation are alleging that the Irish commission have presented them with an ultimatum in the form of a letter: sign an illegal NDA within one working day or be removed from the Facebook procedure. noyb have declared this quid pro quo as procedural blackmail.

Vienna-based noyb filed the complaint to the Austrian Office for the Prosecution of Corruption. Subsequent to the filing, noyb published the letters they received, describing the request as unlawful: only if we shut up, the DPC would 'grant' us our legal right to be heard. The writing also shows the DPC demanding the not-for-profit to take down existing documents relating to the draft decision, once again without a legal basis.

It has been reported that Facebook (now Meta) would significantly benefit from a signed NDA, as new documents could compel EU regulators to find their GDPR bypass illegal. This would result in major implications for the tech giant if regulators were to declare their use of personal data since 2018 unlawful.

Max Schrems, chairperson of noyb.eu, comments, "the DPC acknowledges that it has a legal duty to hear us, but it now engaged in a form of 'procedural coercion'. The right to be heard was made conditional on us signing an agreement to the benefit of the DPC and Facebook. It is nothing but an authority demanding to give up the freedom of speech in exchange for procedural rights."

App store operators, such as Apple and Google, could face fines of up 2% of sales for forcing their own in-app payment methods, under the amended Telecommunications Business Act. The Korean Communications Commission (KCC) drafted the amendments on Wednesday (17 November), in order to protect app developers and provide further clarity when determining illegality of new prohibited acts. App store owners could also see an additional fine of 1% of their revenue for delays in reviewing apps.

Within the document, the KCC describe the forcing of certain payment methods as a serious illegal act which will result in penalty surcharges. The move has come to allow a fairer mobile ecosystem for developers, in an attempt to limit app store operators power within the industry. Obstructions against in-app billing policies were first introduced in August when South Korea made amendments to the Telecommunications Business Act. The challenge caught media attention when Epic filed a lawsuit against them for monopolistic behaviours back in 2020. South Korea were the first country to introduce restrictions on payment policies.

KCC Chairman Han Sang-hyuk commented, considering that this issue is receiving attention both at home and abroad, we will proceed swiftly with follow-up measures so that the law is enacted smoothly in order to create a fair and sound app market ecosystem.

Augmented reality (AR) platform, Niantic, have received a hefty investment of USD$300m (224.5m) from Coatue, valuing the company at USD$9bn (6.7bn). The software development company have announced that they will use the fund to build their vision for the real-world metaverse.

John Hanke, Niantics Founder and CEO, commented in a blog post announcing the news, were building a future where the real world is overlaid with digital creations, entertainment and information, making it more magical, fun and informative. He adds, this will take a significant investment of talent, technology and imagination, and were thrilled that Coatue is on this journey with us.

Niantic recently launched a platform enabling developers to understand and enhance their ideas for AR and the metaverse. The Lightship Platform is the core for the San Francisco-based companys own products, such as Pokmon GO.

In further metaverse-related news, Vietnamese startup VerseHub closes a silent fundraise of USD$1m (748,383) from an angel investor. The metaverse platform will use the funds, raised without going through the formal process, to enhance their ongoing projects. Co-founder and CTO of VerseHub, Canh Ho, explains, the team incubated the project 6 months ago and rejected many investment invitations, for cooperating with other Vietnamese partners in the industry, with the desire to contribute to the development of blockchain technology in our home country.

- DoubleVerify Launches Publisher Solution in Europe

- IAS Study Finds More Media Experts to Invest in Supply Path Optimisation for 2022

- Zeotap Launches on Google Cloud Marketplace

See the original post:

The Irish DPC Slapped With Corruption Allegations; South Korea Place Big Tech Under the Microscope - ExchangeWire

The Biden family offered their services to a huge, Chinese-government-linked energy consortium to expand its business around the world. How do we know? Because of hundreds of emails documenting the deal found on Hunter Bidens laptop, left in a Delaware repair shop in April 2019. In her new book, Laptop from Hell, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine tells the tale:

James Gilliar, a wiry, 56-year-old British ex-SAS officer, got to know Ye Jianming, the 40-year-old chairman of CEFC, when they were both working in the Czech Republic.

CEFC was a Chinese conglomerate, one of the largest energy companies in the world.

Yes task at was to spend $1.5 billion as quickly as possible to ensure the Czech Republic would become Chinas Gateway to the European Union, a priority of President Xi.

To that end, Ye bought everything from a football team and a brewery to an airline, before being named special economic advisor to Czech President Milos Zeman.

Now he was looking for an influential partner to help with acquisitions in other locations around the world that had strategic significance for the Chinese state.

Gilliar had an idea who could help: The Biden family.

Gilliar connected with Hunter Biden through trusted Biden family friend Rob Walker, a former Clinton administration official whose wife, Betsy Massey Walker, had been Jill Bidens assistant when she was Second Lady.

Gilliar emailed Walker in February 2015 to praise Hunters appearance in Beijing at a board meeting of the fledgling investment fund Hunter had founded with John Kerrys son, called BHR.

Hunter was great, Gilliar wrote to Walker. True sheikh of Washington.

He emailed Hunter a few weeks later: It has been made clear to me that CEFC wish to engage in further business relations with our group.

Gilliar knew CEFC was the capitalist arm of President Xis Belt and Road Initiative to spread Chinas influence and debt traps across the world. No Chinese company executed its goals more ardently than CEFC and its young chairman, who was dubbed the Belt and Road billionaire in the press.

Chairman Ye had built his provincial energy company into a Fortune 500 colossus virtually overnight, an achievement described by Chinese news agency Caixin as another great enigma in the miraculous world of Chinese business. He enjoyed the support of President Xi and was former deputy secretary general of the governments propaganda arm, the China Association for International Friendly Contacts.

In a rare interview with Caixin at CEFCs palatial marble headquarters in Shanghais upscale French Concession District, Ye is portrayed as a hermit king sitting on a golden chair in a room that resembles a miniature Great Hall of the People.

Uniformed staff members wearing earpieces glide by. Most of them were young women wearing smart clothes and bright faces.

Yes face was as expressionless as a stone statue. Amidst the gilded surroundings, his canvas shoes had an eye-catching plainness. . . .

In his public activities as a private entrepreneur, Ye Jianming is al- ways walking alongside important foreign political figures. He has been photographed with world leaders such as Israeli President Peres, Turkish President Erdogan, Chadian President Dby, and European Commission President Juncker. He has met with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and the Prime Minister of Bulgaria held a feast to welcome him.

In the winter of 2015, Chairman Ye and CEFC Executive Director Jianjun Zang, a.k.a. Director Zang, flew to Washington, DC. A meeting with Ye was scheduled in Hunters diary for December 7, 2015, in a week that was a swirl of back-to-back Christmas parties hosted by Joe and Jill at the vice presidents residence at the Naval Observatory.

One of his former associates, who spoke on condition of anonymity, believes that Hunter brought Chairman Ye to meet Joe at one of those parties. There is no indication of any such meeting on the laptop, but Hunter had a pattern of introducing business associates to Joe when they came to DC.

After a frustrating experience in another Chinese deal as a minority partner in private equity firm BHR, in which the payday would not come until the end of the funds life, Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden wanted more control of the CEFC partnership and a regular income stream.

Enter Tony Bobulinski. The naval officer turned wealthy institutional investor came highly recommended by Gilliar to build what they planned would be a world-class investment firm, called SinoHawk, named after Hunters late brother Beaus favorite animal, the hawk.

In December 2015, Gilliar tells Bobulinski he needs help structuring a Chinese joint venture for one of the most prominent families in the United States.

The plan is to build an investment firm like Goldman Sachs, he writes in a WhatsApp message, transcripts of which were obtained separate from the laptop.

The family is the Biden family, Gilliar will soon disclose. Joe, who has announced that he will not run for president in 2016, will be actively involved once he leaves office, and the Bidens expect billions of dollars of projects to flow through the company, Gilliar says.

He lets Bobulinski in on the last piece of the puzzle in March 2016: the Bidens Chinese partner is CEFC, which has more money than God, he writes. This is the capital arm of one belt one road.

At about this time, Bobulinski is introduced to Rob Walker, who tells him he is a proxy for Hunter Biden, Jim Biden and the Bidens around the world.

Finally, in February 2017, Gilliar sends Bobulinski a WhatsApp message saying he wants to introduce him to his partner.

Who is your partner? asks Bobulinski.

Hunter Biden, replies Gilliar.

Bobulinski is leery. I understand you want me to . . . help drive things in the US, but Hunter is [already] here.

Gilliar: Money there, intent there . . . skill sets missing . . . We need to create the best deal platform in history, and they havent got a clue. Bobulinski doesnt like the fact Hunter was kicked out of US Navy for cocaine use.

But hes super smart, says Gilliar. Just a lot of under achievers around them using their name. Has a few demons but u are used to those, right?

Bobulinski asks: Is he the decision maker or the Chinese?

Gilliar: New platform. Best discuss face to face but Im the driver.

Later, Bobulinski asks: Ok who is putting up the $10MM [million]?

Gilliar: Joint vehicle half us and then equally split money is already in. Discuss more face to face.

Three weeks after his father left office, in 2017, Hunter flew to Miami with Gilliar and Walker to meet Chairman Ye, who was there for the Miami International Boat Show.

They booked into the $700 a night beachfront Nobu Hotel on Monday, Feb. 13, 2017, and scheduled lunch with the Chinese for Thursday in a private room set for 10 at the Bourbon Steak restaurant in the ritzy JW Marriott Turnberry Resort & Spa, where Ye was staying with his entourage.

But Hunter flew home the day before the lunch. He already had met with Ye, over a private dinner on the Tuesday night, at which the CEFC chairman made him an offer too good to refuse: $10 million a year, for a minimum of three years, for introductions alone, as Hunter would later assert in an imperious email to CEFC executives.

Ye sealed the new alliance with a rich gift a 3.16 carat diamond worth $80,000. Photographs of the stunning stone appear on Hunters laptop along with a grading report that lists it as a round brilliant of Grade F with prime VS2 clarity and excellent cut.

The gift could not have come at a better time. Hunter was in the middle of an ugly divorce from Kathleen, and his office manager, Joan Peugh, had just sent him the latest in a series of overdue bills, a tax collection notice from the District of Columbia for $47,226.78.

Hunter would tell the New Yorkers Adam Entous that he had flown to Miami to meet Chairman Ye purely for charitable purposes, hoping to secure a donation to World Food Program USA, the nonprofit on whose board he served and which he had used before as a cover for his foreign business activities.

Hunter said it was just chance that the altruistic encounter turned to business opportunities and claimed to be surprised when Ye gave him the diamond. He didnt mention the happy coincidence that his business partners Gilliar and Walker were with him in Miami to clinch a business deal with CEFC.

But the diamond was just an appetizer.

Nine days after Hunters meeting in Miami with Ye, $3 million is wired into an account for Rob Walkers company, Robinson Walker LLC, from State Energy HK Limited, a Shanghai-based company linked to CEFC, according to the Chuck Grassley-Ron Johnson inquiry.

On March 1, another $3 million is wired to Robinson Walker by the same company. Both transactions are flagged by the Department of Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement network in a suspicious activity report, filed with the Senate committees as Confidential Document 16.

Using the document as a source, the Grassley-Johnson report of Nov. 18, 2020, says: At the time of the transfers, State Energy HK Limited was affiliated with CEFC China Energy, which was under the leadership of Ye Jianming. In the past, State Energy HK Limited transferred funds to at least one company associated with Hunter Bidens business associate, Gongwen Dong . . .

These transactions are a direct link between Walker and the communist Chinese government and, because of his close association with Hunter Biden, yet another tie between Hunter Bidens financial arrange- ments and the communist Chinese government.

The Senate report concludes it is unclear what the true purpose is behind these transactions [$6 million from CEFC] and who the ultimate beneficiary is.

We know from the laptop that Hunter received regular payments from Robinson Walker. One document lists $56,603.74 from Robinson Walker as income for Rosemont Seneca Advisors, between June and December 2017.

Rob Walker paid at least $511,000 to Hunters firm Owasco in 2017, according to an email from Hunters tax accountant, Bill Morgan.

Walker tells Bobulinski his role in CEFC is being a surrogate for H [Hunter] or Jim when gauging opportunities, i.e. digging around in Texas on high speed rail with some of my republican friends . . . or hitting new countries and contacts abroad where things are lukewarm, but not hot enough for H to close or too odd for H to be present . . .

On March 5, 2017, Page Six breaks the news that Hunter and his brothers widow Hallie are an item.

When Hunter doesnt show up for a scheduled meeting three days later in New York, Gilliar tells Bobulinski it doesnt matter: In brand hes imperative but right now hes not essential for adding input to business.

It is at this point that Gilliar explains to Bobulinski that the Chinese involved in CEFC are intelligence so they understand the value added of the Biden name.

Bobulinski remains troubled by Hunters scandals, and Gilliar, who is in Australia with Director Zang looking for acquisitions, is worried he might pull out. So, he arranges for him to meet Hunter the following month at the Chateau Marmont, in Bobulinskis hometown of L.A.

They meet by the hotel pool in April and speak for two hours while Hunter chain-smokes. Bobulinski finds him respectful and polite. Hunter boasts that he has his fathers ear and can bypass his advisers.

Hunter tells Bobulinski how the joint venture vehicle should be structured and expresses caution about US laws, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits businesses paying bribes to foreign officials. He appears to conflate that law with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a 1938 antispying law that requires anyone acting as a lobbyist for a foreign power to register with the US government as a foreign agent.

No matter what, it will need to be a US company at some level in order for us to make bids on federal and state funded projects, Hunter writes later.

Also, we dont want to have to register as foreign agents under the FCPA which is much more expansive than people who should know choose not to know.

Regardless we should have a . . . company called CEFC America, and ownership should be 50 me 50 them. We then cut up our 50 [percent] in a separate entity between the 4 of us.

Hunter seems focused, but Bobulinski is puzzled about Uncle Jims frequent meddling in CEFC business.

For instance, in April 2017, Jim pulls strings at New Yorks elite Horace Mann School to get Director Zangs daughter Rouqi fast-tracked for entry, although she ends up enrolling in another school.

Jim also writes a letter on behalf of CEFC to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo requesting a meeting. We intend to discuss potential projects and investments in New York. He lists the other attendees as Hunter, Chairman Ye, Director Zang, and an unnamed Member of the Royal Family of Luxembourg.

What is the deal w Jim Biden as he wasnt part of the discussion but now seems a focal point? Bobulinski asks Gilliar. What role does Jim see himself playing?

Consultant is what hes offered as [far as] I know, Gilliar replies. He [Hunter] brought in Jim simply to leverage getting more equity for himself and family in the final hour, that is evident.

In another WhatsApp message, Gilliar tells Bobulinski: With H [Hunters] demons, could be good to have a backup, he [Jim] strengthens our USP [unique selling point] to Chinese as it looks like a truly family business, and I like the dude.

With the deal progressing, Hunter tells Bobulinski its time for the next step.

I want Dad to meet you, he says.

Excerpted with permission from Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide (Post Hill Press), out Tuesday.

To order Miranda Devines new book, click here.

Link:

'More money than God:' Chinese titan lavished Hunter Biden with 3-carat gem, offer of $30 million - New York Post

WASHINGTON (AP) Before last years presidential election, Facebook ads targeting Latino voters described Joe Biden as a communist. During his inauguration, another conspiracy theory spread online and on Spanish-language radio warning that a brooch worn by Lady Gaga signaled Biden was working with shadowy, leftist figures abroad.

And in the final stretch of Virginias election for governor, stories written in Spanish accused Biden of ordering the arrest of a man during a school board meeting.

None of that was true. But such misinformation represents a growing threat to Democrats, who are anxious about their standing with Latino voters after surprise losses last year in places like South Florida and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

Heading into a midterm election in which control of Congress is at stake, lawmakers, researchers and activists are preparing for another onslaught of falsehoods targeted at Spanish-speaking voters. And they say social media platforms that often host those mistruths arent prepared.

For a lot of people, theres a lot of concern that 2022 will be another big wave, said Guy Mentel, executive director of Global Americans, a think tank that provides analysis of key issues throughout the Americas.

This months elections may be a preview of whats to come.

After Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy won New Jerseys close governors race, Spanish-language videos falsely claimed the vote was rigged, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud a fact the Republican candidate acknowledged, calling the results legal and fair.

In Virginia, where Republican Glenn Youngkin campaigned successfully on promises to defend parental rights in classrooms, false headlines around a controversial school board meeting emerged.

Biden orden arrestar a padre de una joven violada por un trans, read one of several misleading articles, translating to Biden ordered the arrest of a father whose daughter was raped by a trans.

The mistruth was spun from an altercation during a chaotic school board meeting months earlier in Loudoun County that resulted in the arrest of a father whose daughter was sexually assaulted in a bathroom by another student. The father claimed the suspect was gender fluid, which sparked outcry over the schools policy allowing transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity.

In reality, the White House wasnt involved with the meeting. The man was arrested by the local sheriffs department. Its also unclear how the suspect identifies.

Loudoun County was already the epicenter of a heated political debate over how the history of racism is taught in schools another issue that became fodder for misinformation and political attacks on Spanish-language websites this summer, said Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino, a nonprofit that mobilizes Hispanics to become politically engaged.

It has everything to do with trust in institutions. Trust in government, said Kumar, whose group works to combat the misinformation. Eroding that trust will transfer not just to voting in the midterms, but just overall disengagement from your government.

Stretched truths accusing some Democrats of being socialists or communists could also dominate the online narrative, said Diego Groisman, a research analyst at New York Universitys Cybersecurity for Democracy project.

During the 2020 election, Groisman flagged Facebook ads targeting Latino voters in Texas and Florida that described Biden as a communist. The ads in Florida where a majority of the countrys Venezuelan population is concentrated compared Biden to that countrys socialist President Nicols Maduro.

There were clearly specific Spanish-speaking communities that were being targeted, said Laura Edelson, the lead researcher for NYUs program.

Evelyn Prez-Verda, a Florida Democratic strategist who watches Spanish misinformation patterns, says many online narratives intentionally stoke fear in the Spanish-speaking communities.

One conspiracy theory mentioned on talk radio grew out of Lady Gagas golden bird brooch at Bidens inauguration. Some spreading the claim noted a similar brooch once worn by Claudia Lpez Hernandez, the first openly gay mayor of Bogota, Colombia, signaled the new president was working with foreign leftists.

Theyre not going to stop. Theyre going to double down on it, Prez-Verda said of the misinformation.

Critics argue that social media companies like Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, have placed outsize attention on removing or fact-checking misinformation in English over other languages like Spanish.

Facebooks own documents, leaked by ex-Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen earlier this year, echo those concerns. Haugen said the company spends 87% of its misinformation budget on U.S. content a figure that Meta spokesperson Kevin McAllister said is out of context.

An internal Facebook memo, written in March, revealed the companys ability to detect anti-vaccine rhetoric and misinformation was basically non-existent in non-English comments.

Last year, for example, Instagram and Facebook banned #plandemic, a hashtag associated with a video full of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Yet users were spreading misinformation on the platforms using #plandemia, the Spanish version of the hashtag, until just last month.

An analysis last year by Avaaz, a left-leaning advocacy group that tracks online misinformation, also found Facebook failed to flag 70% of Spanish-language misinformation surrounding COVID-19 compared to just 29% of such information in English.

McAllister said the company removes false Spanish-language claims about voter fraud, COVID-19 and vaccines. Four news outlets, including The Associated Press, also fact-check Spanish-language falsehoods circulating around U.S. content on Instagram and Facebook.

Meanwhile, researchers at the nonpartisan Global Disinformation Index estimated that Google will make $12 million this year off ads on websites that peddled COVID-19 disinformation in Spanish. Google has stopped serving ads on a majority of the pages shared in the report, company spokesperson Michael Aciman said in an email.

Spanish-language misinformation campaigns are absolutely exploding on social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc., New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the partys top progressive voices, tweeted after the Nov. 2 election.

That explosion is fueled in part by a U.S.-Latin America feedback loop that allows falsehoods to fester.

Misinformation that starts on U.S. websites is sometimes translated by social media pages in Latin American countries like Colombia and Venezuela. The inaccuracies are shared back through YouTube videos or messaging apps with Spanish speakers in expatriate communities like those in Miami and Houston.

Those falsehoods are more likely to reach U.S. Latinos because they tend to spend more time on sites such as YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram, according to an October Nielsen report.

We see YouTube accounts or radio stations churning out mis- or disinformation regarding a whole range of things that they pick up from fringe U.S. outlets, Mentel said.

Some are working to fill the void of reliable information in those communities.

The Oakland, California, news service El Timpano delivers a text message of local news in Spanish to roughly 2,000 subscribers every week. Subscribers can text back with questions that staffers work to answer, said Madeleine Blair, who launched El Timpano.

The news service has fielded more than 1,500 questions over the past year, including ones about hoax COVID-19 cures.

We really ramped up because it was clear that the communities we were serving were most in need of basic public health information, Blair said, and that information wasnt reaching them.

Others have urged the government to take on a watchdog role. Federal Trade Commission commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democrat, said the regulator may look at disparities in how Big Tech monitors English-language disinformation compared to other languages.

The first thing I think we need to do is investigate, Slaughter said during a November panel with lawmakers.

___

Associated Press writers Marcos Martnez Chacn in Monterrey, Mexico, Abril Mulato in Mexico City and Marcy Gordon in Washington contributed to this report.

View post:

Inside the 'big wave' of misinformation targeted at Latinos - Associated Press

Tide turns against big tech but it's going to be a long, long haulGet Access Code.

Enter your email address and Crikey will send a Verification Code

Enter the Verification Code sent to

to confirm your account.The Verification Code will expire in 1 hour.

Dismantling or reassembling the tech giants' hold on the way we live now will be a truly massive undertaking.

The genius of Mark Zuckerberg's recent announcement of Meta, the alleged new Facebook, was that it managed to be both disappointing and sinister at the same time. Backed by a series of lame effects, the Zuck announced a virtual world that sounded as gimmicky and unsatisfying as Second Life had been, but authored by an organisation which had the power to enforce it everywhere.

The utterly uninspiring vision of Meta, like all such tech, draws on the utopian impulses which lurk in culture, in art, and in the very structure of human imagining and projection: that we can project worlds that are radically other to everyday life and yet are still recognisable and meaningful and able to be controlled and commodified.

The disappointment that has been widely expressed at this concept is due to what might be called the accumulated insufficiency of dreams.

Get 20% off Crikey + FREE book

Guy Rundle

Correspondent-at-large

Guy Rundle is correspondent-at-large for Crikey. He's a former editor of Arena Magazine and contributes to a variety of publications in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Insert

" + _localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_title + "

" + _localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_text + "

Read the original:

Tide turns against big tech but it's going to be a long, long haul - Crikey

Friday 26 November 2021 2:32 pm

The head of Britains antitrust watchdog said he plans to pick his battles with tech companies carefully relying on EU counterparts to take the lead where necessary.

Andrea Coscelli, chief executive officer of the UKs Competition and Markets Authority, told Bloomberg he might let other agencies lead the way on tech regulation because some merger probes are better suited to certain courts and jurisdictions than others.

You cannot expect when there is a problem, every single agency to go after it, because we all have to make choices, Coscelli said.

Theres quite a lot of good stuff on tech thats happening in Brussels that will have a direct positive benefit for UK consumers, he added, noting that the EUs case on Amazons marketplace should have wider benefits despite the CMA not pursuing a similar case.

It comes after the EUs General Court fined Google 2bn in an anti-trust case hours after the UKs supreme court voted down a privacy case which would have seen 4.4m Brits receive payouts totalling 3bn.

Europes campaign to regulate big tech is spearheaded by MargretheVestager, the EUs competition policy lead, with the Commissions efforts casting a shadow over Britains approach to regulation. Vestager is in the process of taking on Amazon Marketplace over concerns the site gives its own products preferential treatment over other retailers.

Meanwhile, the UKs CMA today announced plans to go after Google over proposals to remove third party cookies from peoples browsers. The competition authority wants to ensure that Google does not restrict external companies from accessing user data in a way that harms competition in digital advertising markets.

In pursuit of a more joined up approach to tech regulation Coscelli will next week meet with the worlds top antitrust enforcers in London in order to discuss digital markets regulation. G-7 regulators are expected to discuss a cross-border framework for enforcing competition rules.

Read more: EU agree common position to curb US tech giants

Go here to read the rest:

UK antitrust chief relies on EU in global drive to regulate big tech - City A.M.

We have seen several cryptocurrencies linked to the increasingly interesting Metaverse space make huge gains in recent weeks. Projects such as The Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), and Enjin Coin (ENJ) have witnessed an upside driven by investor interest in the concept of a Metaverse.

Crypto and blockchain projects could be among those to benefit massively from the idea, but according to DBS senior investment strategist Daryl Ho, investors could do well to look at two key sectors likely to play a big role as the initiative takes shape.

In aninterview with CNBCs Squawk Box, Ho said that companies and platforms that are already deep in the digitisation space could have the front seat when it comes to defining the Metaverse and thus benefitting the most.

If you dont already realize it, we are already moving somewhat towards a digital world, so the Metaverse is simply the next step, the next frontier, Ho explained.

Recently, Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), took a giant step in announcing plans for developing the Metaverse, and major companies around the world are looking to follow suit as the reality of a virtual world grows.

Its with this perspective that the investment strategist says two particular sectors could take the lead and be highly profitable to investors.

He believes the computer gaming industry has the upper hand here, given the sector is already immersed in the virtual world. Notably, it's in the Metaverse would see people live, work and collaborate and gaming platforms have represented this in many ways in their gaming projects.

I think these are the companies [investors] should look out for, he said, adding that the sector is likely to be the one that shape[s] the metaverse as we know it.

Ho also believes that big technology companies have all it takes to maintain a leading role in the Metaverse and will be big beneficiaries.

Apart from Meta, other Big Tech companies towatch out for are Google, Apple, Microsoft and game company Valve.

Read the original post:

DBS Bank strategits sees Big Tech as big beneficiaries of the Metaverse - CoinJournal

Among the worlds richest and most powerful companies, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple have made AI core parts of their business. Advances over the last decade, particularly in an AI technique called deep learning, have allowed them to monitor users behavior; recommend news, information, and products to them; and most of all, target them with ads. Last year Googles advertising apparatus generated over $140 billion in revenue. Facebooks generated $84 billion.

The companies have invested heavily in the technology that has brought them such vast wealth. Googles parent company, Alphabet, acquired the London-based AI lab DeepMind for $600 million in 2014 and spends hundreds of millions a year to support its research. Microsoft signed a $1 billion deal with OpenAI in 2019 for commercialization rights to its algorithms.

At the same time, tech giants have become large investors in university-based AI research, heavily influencing its scientific priorities. Over the years, more and more ambitious scientists have transitioned to working for tech giants full time or adopted a dual affiliation. From 2018 to 2019, 58% of the most cited papers at the top two AI conferences had at least one author affiliated with a tech giant, compared with only 11% a decade earlier, according to a study by researchers in the Radical AI Network, a group that seeks to challenge power dynamics in AI.

The problem is that the corporate agenda for AI has focused on techniques with commercial potential, largely ignoring research that could help address challenges like economic inequality and climate change. In fact, it has made these challenges worse. The drive to automate tasks has cost jobs and led to the rise of tedious labor like data cleaning and content moderation. The push to create ever larger models has caused AIs energy consumption to explode. Deep learning has also created a culture in which our data is constantly scraped, often without consent, to train products like facial recognition systems. And recommendation algorithms have exacerbated political polarization, while large language models have failed to clean up misinformation.

Its this situation that Gebru and a growing movement of like-minded scholars want to change. Over the last five years, theyve sought to shift the fields priorities away from simply enriching tech companies, by expanding who gets to participate in developing the technology. Their goal is not only to mitigate the harms caused by existing systems but to create a new, more equitable and democratic AI.

In December 2015, Gebru sat down to pen an open letter. Halfway through her PhD at Stanford, shed attended the Neural Information Processing Systems conference, the largest annual AI research gathering. Of the more than 3,700 researchers there, Gebru counted only a handful who were Black.

Once a small meeting about a niche academic subject, NeurIPS (as its now known) was quickly becoming the biggest annual AI job bonanza. The worlds wealthiest companies were coming to show off demos, throw extravagant parties, and write hefty checks for the rarest people in Silicon Valley: skillful AI researchers.

That year Elon Musk arrived to announce the nonprofit venture OpenAI. He, Y Combinators then president Sam Altman, and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel had put up $1 billion to solve what they believed to be an existential problem: the prospect that a superintelligence could one day take over the world. Their solution: build an even better superintelligence. Of the 14 advisors or technical team members he anointed, 11 were white men.

RICARDO SANTOS | COURTESY PHOTO

While Musk was being lionized, Gebru was dealing with humiliation and harassment. At a conference party, a group of drunk guys in Google Research T-shirts circled her and subjected her to unwanted hugs, a kiss on the cheek, and a photo.

Gebru typed out a scathing critique of what she had observed: the spectacle, the cult-like worship of AI celebrities, and most of all, the overwhelming homogeneity. This boys club culture, she wrote, had already pushed talented women out of the field. It was also leading the entire community toward a dangerously narrow conception of artificial intelligence and its impact on the world.

Google had already deployed a computer-vision algorithm that classified Black people as gorillas, she noted. And the increasing sophistication of unmanned drones was putting the US military on a path toward lethal autonomous weapons. But there was no mention of these issues in Musks grand plan to stop AI from taking over the world in some theoretical future scenario. We dont have to project into the future to see AIs potential adverse effects, Gebru wrote. It is already happening.

Gebru never published her reflection. But she realized that something needed to change. On January 28, 2016, she sent an email with the subject line Hello from Timnit to five other Black AI researchers. Ive always been sad by the lack of color in AI, she wrote. But now I have seen 5 of you 🙂 and thought that it would be cool if we started a black in AI group or at least know of each other.

The email prompted a discussion. What was it about being Black that informed their research? For Gebru, her work was very much a product of her identity; for others, it was not. But after meeting they agreed: If AI was going to play a bigger role in society, they needed more Black researchers. Otherwise, the field would produce weaker scienceand its adverse consequences could get far worse.

As Black in AI was just beginning to coalesce, AI was hitting its commercial stride. That year, 2016, tech giants spent an estimated $20 to $30 billion on developing the technology, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.

Heated by corporate investment, the field warped. Thousands more researchers began studying AI, but they mostly wanted to work on deep-learning algorithms, such as the ones behind large language models. As a young PhD student who wants to get a job at a tech company, you realize that tech companies are all about deep learning, says Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer science professor who now serves at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. So you shift all your research to deep learning. Then the next PhD student coming in looks around and says, Everyones doing deep learning. I should probably do it too.

But deep learning isnt the only technique in the field. Before its boom, there was a different AI approach known as symbolic reasoning. Whereas deep learning uses massive amounts of data to teach algorithms about meaningful relationships in information, symbolic reasoning focuses on explicitly encoding knowledge and logic based on human expertise.

Some researchers now believe those techniques should be combined. The hybrid approach would make AI more efficient in its use of data and energy, and give it the knowledge and reasoning abilities of an expert as well as the capacity to update itself with new information. But companies have little incentive to explore alternative approaches when the surest way to maximize their profits is to build ever bigger models.

Continued here:

Inside the fight to reclaim AI from Big Techs control - MIT Technology Review