Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Tuesday asked a state court to declare that Google is a public utility that cannot manipulate search results to favor its own products and services over others. The Republican filed a 17-page lawsuit that relied heavily on Justice Clarence Thomass recent concurrence endorsing a view of internet companies and Big Tech that has steadily gained steam among conservatives in recent years.

The lawsuit, filed in Delaware County Common Pleas Court, asserts that Googles dominance as an internet search provider is so ubiquitous that the marketplace for competitors is virtually non-existent, rendering it a public utility or common carriersimilar to a gas, electric, or phone companies.

Ohio also has an interest in ensuring that as a common carrier Google Search does not unfairly discriminate against third party websites; that Google carries all responsive search results on an equal basis; and that it provides the public with ready access to organic search results that the Google Search algorithms produce, the lawsuit stated. Ohio also has an interest in ensuring that as a common carrier Google Search does not unfairly discriminate against third party websites; that Google carries all responsive search results on an equal basis; and that it provides the public with ready access to organic search results that the Google Search algorithms produce.

According to Yost, Google structures its search results to specifically disadvantage competitors in facets of its business that are not directly related to internet search results by directing users to Google-owned platforms like YouTube, Google Flights, Google Maps, Google News, Google Shopping, and Google Travel. Yost also alleges that Google presents its own integrated products in enhanced ways that are designed to capture more clicks than its competitors, regardless of where the competitors product would be ranked in an organic search, meaning results that appear strictly based on the relevance of the terms searched.

In bolstering his legal argument, Yost repeatedly cites to Justice Thomass concurrence in Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute, which put an end to a lawsuit challenging then-PresidentDonald Trumpsthen-ability to block critics on his personal Twitter account. The justices unanimously vacated a lower courts decision which held that Trumps blocking of Twitter users violated the First Amendment and ordered the case dismissed as moot. But more significantly, Justice Thomas suggested that powerful internet companies should be stripped of their First Amendment rights because digital platforms that hold themselves out to the public resemble traditional common carriers.

Justice Thomas recently stated, [t]here is a fair argument that some digital platforms are sufficiently akin to common carriers or places of accommodation to be regulated, Yost wrote. Justice Thomas went on to explain, [t]he analogy to common carriers is even clearer for digital platforms that have dominant market share. Google searchat 90% of the market shareis valuable relative to other search engines because more people use it, creating data that Googles algorithm uses to refine and improve search results.

In a statement to Law&Crime, Google, calling Yosts lawsuit meritless, said its search is designed to provide users with the most relevant results.

Ohioans simply dont want the government to run Google like a gas or electric company, the company said. This lawsuit has no basis in fact or law and well defend ourselves against it in court.

Read the full lawsuit below.

[image of Yost via YouTube screengrab, Image of J. Thomas via Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images]

Have a tip we should know? [emailprotected]

Read the original:

Republican AG Repeatedly Cites Justice Clarence Thomas Rebuke of Big Tech in Bid to Have Google Declared a Public Utility - Law & Crime

Rebekah Jones, the former Florida Department of Health web employee who has garnered lots of media attention and whistleblower status for alleging a conspiracy to cover up COVID-19 deaths, has been booted off Twitter, at least temporarily.

Jones told the Miami Herald that the reason she was blocked from Twitter was that she got a bit overenthusiastic sharing a recent Herald story about her alleged whistleblowing and tripped Twitter's rules against spamming.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the chief target of Jones' criticism, strongly opposes deplatforming. He recently signed into law a bill that mandates social media companies explain to users why they've been banned. The new law also requires that platforms like Twitter and Facebook carry messages from candidates for office no matter what those messages say (unless it's obscene). Platforms face massive fines of $250,000 per day for statewide offices if they refuse to comply with the law.

Given his contempt for the ability of private companies to boot users they don't like, you might think DeSantis would express some sort of principled concern about Jones' ban or care whether it was justified, even though new evidence strongly suggests the coverup she alleges didn't actually happen.

You'd be wrong.

After his office discovered Jones had been deplatformed by Twitter, his office released the following statement:

This decision was long overdue. Rebekah Jones is the Typhoid Mary of COVID-19 disinformation and has harmed many hardworking DOOH employees with her defamatory conspiracy theories.

I hope someone will ask Ms. Jones why she thinks she got suspendedwill she allege that Governor DeSantis is somehow behind Twitter's decision? That would be deeply ironic if she tried to spin that falsehood into her conspiracy theory, given the Governor's stance on Big Tech.

The Jones ban is interesting for another reason: The bill DeSantis signed also forbids social media platforms from blocking the sharing of news stories from media outlets. This part of the bill was clearly intended to prevent social media platforms from claiming "disinformation" and stopping users from passing along, for example, a New York Post story about the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020. So it's a bit rich for DeSantis' office to support Twitter deplatforming Jones for "disinformation" after passing a law specifically prohibiting Twitter in other contexts from stopping the spread of what it considers "disinformation."

DeSantis' Press Secretary Christina Pushaw has responded to accusations of hypocrisy by insisting that Twitter isn't violating Jones' "First Amendment" rights (I used scare quotes because nobody has a First Amendment right to post on a private platform like Twitter) because she was blocked not for her speech, but for violating Twitter's "platform manipulation" rules. Pushaw believes Jones did a lot more than just spamming folks.

Whatever his office might claim, DeSantis' critics are absolutely right that his Big Tech deplatforming bill is not about protecting speech, it's about political control of what is and is not allowed on social media platforms. DeSantis can decide what is "misinformation," but Twitter cannot.

Jones believes that she'll be back on the platform soon. Based on the law DeSantis signed, Twitter might have to restore her platform. On Monday afternoon, I tweeted out this joke response:

On Monday evening, Jones announced that she's running for Congress in an attempt to unseat GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz. If she actually follows through and files papers as a candidate, then under DeSantis' law, Twitter will be obligated to host campaign messages from Jones. Because there's no exception in Florida's law for libel or defamation, Jones can then use this mandated platform to smear DeSantis as much as she wants.

Jones apparently even bragged about this in an Instagram post announcing the campaign, pointing out that Twitter will be fined daily under this law if they don't restore her account.

Jordan Kirkland at The Capitolist says Jones is misinterpreting the law because she's not a Florida resident. But Kirkland's wrong here. The part of the law that mandates that candidates be platformed does not require them to be Florida residents. The Constitution requires that Jones must live in Florida in order to represent the state in Congress, but that's it. All she needs to be covered by the antiplatform law is to be certified as a candidate. Read the bill for yourself here.

We knew all along that this bill was a complete mess, full of provisions that were bound to be used to try to force tech companies to serve as hosts for political bullying. If DeSantis ends up being its first victim, he'll have nobody to blame but himself.

As of Tuesday morning, though, it's not clear whether this face off between Jones and Gaetz is going to happen. Jones has posted a follow-up message on Instagram backing off on her announcement that she's going to run:

Pushaw has also emailed Reason some additional comments in response to this post. She writes in part:

Governor DeSantis supports every Floridian's right to free speech. Even conspiracy grifters like Rebekah Jones have First Amendment rights, and their rights must be protected. However, she was not censored for anything she said. Jones wasn't suspended for posting left-wing conspiracy theories, COVID disinformation, or targeted harassment and defamationalthough shedidall that. Jones was suspended for clear cut TOS violations like buying followers and using multiple accounts. (2 of her alt accounts, rebel_geo and taytaygreen5, have also been suspended in the last 24 hours).

She adds, "If you read the Florida legislation, you know there is nothing in it that says Big Tech platforms can't enforce any content moderation policies. On the contrary, the legislation merely requires social media platforms to communicate their policies clearly to their usersand to enforce those policies consistently, without regard to political or ideological leanings."

That's a true description of the part of the law that covers general users. But the law is explicitly different for candidates for office. The law is clear that candidates are exempt from a platform's own moderation policies.

This post has been updated to include a subsequent post from Jones and additional comments from Pushaw.

Follow this link:

Ron DeSantis Is Celebrating Twitter's Ban of Rebekah Jones. His Own Big Tech Law Could Force Them To Replatform Her. - Reason

In 2003, Reason named Clarence Thomas one of the magazine's "35 Heroes of Freedom" because the Supreme Court justice had proven himself "a reliable defender of freedom of speech in such diverse contexts as advertising, broadcasting, and campaign contributions." Alas, Thomas' recent statements in support of greater government control over "digital platforms" such as Twitter and Facebook have somewhat tarnished his First Amendment bona fides.

In April, Thomas joined his fellow justices in ridding the Supreme Court of a lingering legal dispute over the propriety of thenPresident Donald Trump's decision to block various critics on Twitter. With Trump out of the Oval Office, the Court said inBiden v. Knight First Amendment Institute(formerlyTrump v. Knight First Amendment Institute), the case was now moot.

Thomas agreed but did not let the matter rest there. In a solo concurrence, he lamented what he called the "unprecedentedconcentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties." Yes, Trump prevented "several people from interacting with his messages," Thomas wrote. But Twitter "removed him from the entire platform, thus barringallTwitter users from interacting with his messages." For Thomas, the takeaway was as troubling as it was obvious. "As Twitter made clear," he wrote, "the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms."

The justice then delivered what amounted to a regulatory call to arms against those platforms. "Part of the solution" to the "problem" of "private, concentrated control over online content and platforms available to the public," Thomas wrote, may be found in "two legal doctrines" that "limit the right of a private company to exclude."

The first doctrine, he explained, involved "common carriers," such as railroads and telegraphs, which have historically been required "to serve all comers." The second involved "places of public accommodation" or amusement, such as inns, restaurants, and theaters, which have generally been forbidden from denying service to certain categories of people. "The similarities between some digital platforms and common carriers or places of accommodation," Thomas wrote, "may give legislators strong arguments for similarly regulating digital platforms."

But these arguments may not be quite as strong as Thomas thinks. For one thing, today's social media enterprises neither look nor act much like traditional common carriers. Unlike a telegraph company, for instance, Twitter and Facebook not only move information from place to place but curate it and moderate it, resulting in all sorts of varied and even personalized user experiences. What is more, the platforms let users curate and moderate their own unique experiences, leading to a vast array of online associations and communities. All of which qualifies as expressive activity, which is shielded by the First Amendment.

Thomas' public accommodation theory also has its faults. To be sure, state and federal law do prohibit most businesses from refusing service based on a customer's race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or certain other legally protected categories. But it is not illegal (yet) to deny service based on a customer's comments about politics, which is what Thomas is ultimately objecting to here.

Like a number of other modern conservatives, Thomas seems to think that Twitter and other tech companies are effectively censoring right-of-center views. But Twitter is a private entity with First Amendment protections of its own and is thus under no obligation to share its soapbox. Thomas' approach, by contrast, would trespass the Constitution by forcing the company to play host to speech that it does not want to be associated with.

Thomas' arguments came about in a mooted case in which he wrote only for himself. Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss them as a fringe legal stance. The justice has a record of staking out lonely positions that later become entrenched in law. His critics underestimate him at their peril.

Take campaign finance. InMcConnell v. Federal Election Commission(2003), Thomas wrote alone to fault his colleagues in the majority for largely approving the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which, among other things, banned corporate- and union-funded "electioneering communications" that mentioned a candidate by the name in the run-up to an election. Seven years later, inCitizens United v. Federal ElectionCommission(2010), the Court cited Thomas'McConnellopinion while striking down the same "electioneering communications" ban. He knows a thing or two about playing the legal long game.

Thomas also wields considerable influence in the broader conservative world, where interested parties are no doubt paying close attention to the present case. In other words, get ready for a host of new laws and lawsuits that cite Thomas' words in support of greater regulatory crackdowns on tech companies.

And do not be surprised when federal judges start citing him too. As Jeff Kosseff, author ofThe Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet(Cornell University Press), remarked on Twitter, "I do think that Thomas's statement increases the chances that at least two judges on a randomly chosen circuit court panel will rule in favor of must-carry rules for social media platforms." The legal conflict over government control of social media is just starting to heat up.

Thomas is surely correct about one thing. "We will soon have no choice," he wrote, "but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms." One way or another, Big Tech will eventually collide with government regulators at the Supreme Court.

Read the rest here:

Clarence Thomas Declares War on Big Tech - Reason

The G7 group of nations has proposed a minimum 15 per cent tax rate for multinational entities and the removal of digital services taxes.

The G7s members are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US, with the European Union participating as a guest. The Groups finance ministers and central bank governors met last week to discuss various matters, with their positions revealed in a post-meeting Communiqu with three items of note for the technology industry.

The first was a proposal to set a new globally minimum tax rate of 15 per cent, with that tax levied where revenue is made. The proposal is designed to end the financial contortions that see big tech companies make money from citizens of one nation but shift that revenue and any resulting profits to lower-taxing nations.

The results of these arrangements can be farcical, as shown by last weeks revelation that a Microsoft subsidiary in Ireland made profits of $314.73bn but paid no corporation tax because it is "resident" in Bermuda for tax purposes.

The second decision was abolition of digital services taxes, levies on digital services like video streaming that are notionally delivered from beyond a nations borders even though they are consumed -in-country. Digital services taxes were designed in part to ameliorate the effects of profit-shifting, so with the 15 per cent global tax in place they become less relevant.

The third item of interest was a re-statement of the G7s position that no global stablecoin project should begin operation until it adequately addresses relevant legal, regulatory, and oversight requirements through appropriate design and by adhering to applicable standards. The G7 nations want the Financial Stability Board, an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system, to set rules for digital currencies before any non-state entities have a crack at disrupting money with efforts like Facebook's Libra. The statement also signals the G7 has an eye on China's Digital Yuan, and wants it integrated into a global framework.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) endorsed the G7s stance.

Todays consensus among the G7 Finance Ministers, including on a minimum level of global taxation, is a landmark step toward the global consensus necessary to reform the international tax system, said secretary-general Matthias Cormann.

Thats important because while the G7 represents a big chunk of the global economy, their scheme wont be effective if other nations dont sign up. The G7s leaders will meet on June 11th and be joined by leaders of Australia, India, South Korea, and South Africa, with this new tax plan on the agenda. In July finance ministers of the G20 group will meet, and as theyve been working on similar tax measures its expected theyll consider and probably adopt the G7s proposal, which should mean that by years end most developed economies agree that big tech must be taxed more, in more places.

The G7s proposed 15 per cent tax rate is lower than company tax in many member nations, which has already lead to criticism it wont properly tackle profit-shifting.

Remember, too, that just last week the USA warned it believes that digital services taxes disproportionately affect its tech companies. Abolishing digital services taxes, which developing nations like Indonesia introduced with the explicit intent of broadening their tax base looks like a win for American companies at the expense of other nations.

The G7s proposal looks like a win for the USA, and maybe bad news for nations like Indonesia.

And then theres the fact that big tech companies have consistently defended their tax-shifting actions by stating theyre not illegal. The Register expects that tax havens that facilitated profit-shifting, and big techs lawyers and accountants, are already hard at work on new schemes that get around the G7 proposal.

More here:

G7 nations aim for global 15 per cent tax on big tech and bin digital services taxes - The Register

Bengaluru: Ltd.s relationship with Big Tech companiesincluding Apple Inc., Google, Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc.has never been stronger than it is today, the Indian IT services firms chief executive Thierry Delaporte said on Thursday.

I think we have a lot more engagement with these companies now than we had 10 years ago. They need us, as much as we need them, Delaporte told Phil Fersht, founder of HFS Research, during a chat over a Zoom call.

Delaporte has been at the helm of Wipro for 11 months now. We are different worlds. They are developing products, but they need companies like us, creating an environment for them to continue to scale up and develop applications and solutions on these large platforms and environments, he said.

Countering the wisdom that suggests product and services companies are at loggerheads, he said the benefits that IT services companies have seen from cloud adoption is a great example of how both industries can grow together.

Wipro and its Indian peers are benefiting from the rapid adoption of cloud by their clients, helping them shift their applications to cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. It's very clear, every company needs to move (to the cloud) because if you're not driving your cloud transformation, you will never have the agility that will allow you to adapt to the evolution of technology, Delaporte said.

After taking charge as CEO, Delaporte has simplified the company structure, removed non-performing employees, hired new team members and won large orders from clients such as Germanys Metro AG, resulting in decade-high growth for the company.

He also led the company in its biggest acquisitionof UK-based Capco for $1.45 billion in March--and forecast 8-10% growth in the quarter to June.

The positive commentary from Wipro has also lifted the companys shares to a record high, with its market capitalisation touching over Rs 3 lakh crore on Thursday.

Read the original here:

Wipro CEO Thierry Delaporte: Big Tech needs us, we need them - Economic Times

A top-heavy market may not be a warning sign, after all. Im referring to the outsized share of the U.S. market reflected in a handful of megacap stocks. The combined market valuation of just five stocks Apple Microsoft Amazon.com Alphabet (Google) and Facebook currently represent more than 20% of the total of all companies in the S&P 500 index

Many believe that such a lopsided market isnt healthy. They point out that, prior to the past couple of years, the peak of internet bubble held the record for when the five largest companies commanded the greatest share of the S&P 500s market cap. That was when their share hit 17%, according to data from Morgan Stanley Research.

Any parallel to the top of the internet bubble is certainly alarming. But what is overlooked when drawing this parallel is that the world has changed in fundamental ways over the past two decades. What previously was a danger sign may now be the new normal.

Thats because the markets are evolving along with whats known as a winner take all economy. Im referring to a prediction made in 2005 in the Journal of Economics & Management Strategy by Thomas Noe of Oxford University and Geoffrey Parker of Dartmouth College. The researchers predicted that, because of so-called network effects in an internet-based economy, industries will become increasingly dominated by their largest companies.

Their prediction has been remarkably prescient. As I pointed out in a late April column, the percentage of total corporate profits coming from the 100 biggest earners has skyrocketed over the past three decades. In 1975, the profit share of the top 100 was 48.5%, and in 1995 was 52.8%. But by 2015 it had jumped to 84.2%. (These percentages come from research conducted by Kathleen Kahle of the University of Arizona and Rene Stulz of Ohio State University.)

With the recent earnings season now behind us, I decided to see what the comparable percentage was in 2020. It was higher still, at 91.8% as you can see from the chart below. One third of the S&P 1500 companies lost money. The rest more or less were competing for the crumbs falling off the table from the profit feast of the top 100 companies.

In light of this, the lopsided U.S. market appears to be far less concrning. In fact, given how much the biggest companies are earning relative to the rest of the market, they deserve to have outsized market caps. According to FactSet data, for example, the five largest U.S. stocks as of June 7 represented 21.5% of the total market cap of the S&P 500, and their latest fiscal years net income represents 22.6% of the total net income of all 500 companies in that index.

Relative to earnings, in other words, the top five companies are slightly cheaper than the other 400 companies in the S&P 500. This is far different than the situation that prevailed at the top of the internet bubble, when some of the stocks with the biggest market caps were producing paltry earnings.

Dartmouths Parker said in an interview that its not particularly surprising that profits and market caps are currently correlated. It would be more surprising if they were not, as was the case at the top of the internet bubble. Absent such a disconnect, he said, the concentration of market cap in the largest companies is not a signal of a top-heavy market.

This doesnt mean that the stock market isnt vulnerable to a big decline, Parker added. The point instead is that, if indeed the market does decline, it will be for other reasons than the concentration of market cap among the largest companies.

Mark Hulbert is a regular contributor to MarketWatch. His Hulbert Ratings tracks investment newsletters that pay a flat fee to be audited. He can be reached at mark@hulbertratings.com

More: Dont get too optimistic about a stock market rally theyve been fizzling out

Also read: Never short a dull market? What stock traders need to know about a popular adage

See the original post here:

The S&P 500 now is top-heavy in 5 big tech stocks but that alone won't end this bull market - MSN Money

It is just over a year since the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern as the new coronavirus started ripping through the world. Even as the virus took its grim toll, governments responded by locking down, and the world economy went into reverse, the past year has been one of unparalleled accelerationof the digital kind. Work, school, doctor visits, entertainment, weddings, goodbyes, and so much more real life moved online. The adoption of digital tools advanced by five years in a matter of eight weeksand many believe that is what buffered us all from an even more devastating economic collapse.

This point is particularly relevant as newly releasedInternational Monetary Fund data projects a global economic turnaround of around 5.5 percent growth in 2021. Every country in the G-20 is projected to grow; and the U.S. economy is expected to return to its pre-pandemic size by mid-2021, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Some of this optimism is, no doubt, predicated on an effective vaccine rollout, but much of it hinges on digital ecosystems playing their part.

It is true that digital connectivity helped preserve some semblance of normalcy. Internet usage surged in tandem with increased COVID-19 case rates. Adoption of digitization and automation accelerated across 85 percent of companies surveyed by McKinsey. In March 2020, Netflix had todowngrade its streaming resolutionto make room in the pipes, but internet speeds in most parts of the world have stabilized to pre-pandemic levels, a testament to the remarkable resilience of the technological infrastructure despite the spikes in traffic.

Remote work and schooling have had a mixed record. But in some instances, behavior changes may deliver positive benefits over time; for example, as schools went remote across India, almost 70 percent of respondents to a survey reported getting help from the community in educating children remotely. Such a collective approach to education across school, family, and community is likely to be one of the longer-term dividends of digital schooling even after physical schools reopen.

For ordinary users, all the hours spent online was a mixed bag. The fact that office work was virtual for so many was reflected in Zooms revenues, which by the end of October 2020 were up 367 percent from the previous year. Other sites associated with work and education, like Wikipedia, and with shopping, like Amazon, were the eighth- and 12th-most-visited websites in December 2020, which is good economic news. Of course, both were overtaken in popularity by an adult website, which may put that statistic in context. Meanwhile, meditation and sleep apps, which arguably promote mental health and productivity, surged, dropped, and surged again during 2020.

Another remarkable outcome of the extended periods of time online was an unprecedented surge in grassroots activity, principally over social media. These digital movements spanned a dizzying array of organizing forces and objectivesfrom a summer of protests to demand racial justice following the killing of George Floyd, to misinformation campaigns that transcended both the pandemic and politics, to masses of amateur investors convincing others to buy stock in underperforming companies. The movements were not just limited to digitally savvy young people on TikTok or Twitch; even illiterate farmers in India organized and sustained protests by learning how to go live and click on like and share buttons on social media. The economic impact of such movements will take some time to sort out, but suffice it to say they recast the idea of productivity in a way that cannot be ignored.

Of course, not everyone had the luxury of leaning on digital technologies as a substitute for the real economy. Although around 60 percent of workers in countries such as Singapore, Switzerland, and Sweden can telecommute, that proportion drops to below 30 percent in Mexico, Thailand, and India. Even within any given country, there are wide variations. In the United States, when it comes to readiness to work from home, it makes a difference if one is in Nebraska or in New York. It also makes a difference if one is Black, Latino, white, or Asian.

And so, a natural question emerges: Did the nations with better digital readiness experience greater economic resilience during the COVID-19 meltdown? The Digital Planet research initiative, which I direct at Tufts Universitys Fletcher School, found that while an advanced state of digital evolution was certainly helpful for most economies, its potential to cushion the economic blow was dependent on several additional factors: the makeup of the economy, the efficacy of public policy, and citizens trust of public officials. We developed a measure for the state of digital evolution for 90 countries and mapped the scores against the percentage fall in GDP growth from the second quarter of 2020 as compared to the same quarter in 2019, adjusted for inflation. We found that digital evolution could explain at least 20 percent of the reduction in the gap between the 2019 and 2020 growth figures. There are several things that can help explain this association.

First, the more digitally evolved economies tended to derive a larger share of their GDP from high-tech and information services sectors, the more significant portions of their workforce could shift from offices to working from home.

Second, digitally evolved economies tend to be better at delivering public services online due to superior infrastructure, a track record of digital transformation for vast parts of the public sector, and accessible, affordable internet. Such capabilities are an asset even in normal timesand particularly so in the context of a lockdown, a public health emergency, and socially distanced activities.

Third, many digitally evolved countries used their advanced status in different ways that contributed to economic resilience. Consider the cases of Ireland and South Korea. The Irish economy, more than that of any other European Union member state, scored high on the integration of digital technology into the economy and the digitization of businesses in general, with 35 percent of businesses selling online, 20 percent using big data, and a strong track record of digital public services. These translated into significant economic continuity even as the country locked down.

In South Korea, digital advancement and one of the highest rates of smartphone penetration anywhere in the world were key to a highly effective COVID-19 response. The public authorities and companies used multiple digital tools, from a government-issued contact tracing app to a smart city database to credit card transactions data, closed-circuit television footage, and smartphone location data to track COVID-19 exposure and transmission. It was even able to publish anonymized patient routes. This gave South Koreans the confidence to maintain economic and social activity with fewer restrictions than was the case in other countries. With recent memories of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreaks, there was a greater public willingness to trade off privacy for more aggressive steps to manage the pandemic. This extensive use of technology in managing the pandemic helped to buffer the negative economic impact.

The positive associations between advanced digital evolution and economic resilience are notable but not universal. Among the exceptions, the United Kingdom presents a striking contrast. It is highly digitally evolved. High-tech and information services contribute significantly to its GDP, and a high percentage of its labor force can work from home. Yet, its economic decline was significant, where quarterly GDP growth dropped nearly 22 percent between the second quarters of 2019 and 2020.

The United Kingdoms unfortunate economic state matches the deadly impact of the virus: Since the start of the pandemic, more people have died there than anywhere else in Europe. Some of this failure can be attributed to a poor government response. Despite being relatively better prepared digitally to lock down, the government did not opt to do so until late March, weeks after other European countries. Moreover, the services sector as a whole makes up around three quarters of the British economy. The economy is disproportionately reliant on in-person activities within the service sector, with around 13 percent of total output based on activities like eating out, going to the movies, transportation, or attending live sporting events, as opposed to 10 percent in the rest of Europe. The slow government response and the makeup of the British economy led to the economic impact being severe despite a high state of digital advancement.

At the other end of the digital evolution spectrum, some less digitally advanced countries found ways to buffer the economic shock. Consider the cases of Indonesia and Vietnamtwo economies scoring relatively low on our digital evolution scorecard. Both avoided the worst economic reversals. The Indonesian government increased government spending by nearly 10 percent. In Vietnam, the government was able to keep the virus under control through aggressive restrictions. Both the government and the citizenry, with recent experience in dealing with infectious diseases, were willing to tolerate preemptive actions such as shutting down borders, closing schools, and investing in a resource-intensive contact-tracing program. It also helped that Vietnam was a primary beneficiary of the manufacturing exodus from China.

There is no question that the crisis was a period of expansion for Big Tech. Microsoft snapped up three cloud computing companies. Amazon hired hundreds of thousands of new workers and added 12 Boeing 767s to its fleet. Apple bought a weather app, a virtual reality company, and a digital assistant and speech recognition software company, among others. Facebook launched work on an undersea fiber network encircling the African continent. It dropped $5.7 billion into Indias Reliance Jio, while Google committed $10 billion to expand across the board in India, even as the country was reeling from one of the worlds most devastating economic reversals. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it was their responsibility and duty to invest and added, Were in a fortunate position to be able to do this.

Indeed, Zuckerberg was speaking without a trace of irony and was in a fortunate position. There is no question that Facebook and Big Tech broadly prospered during this past year. But did Big Techs good tidings raise all ships? There is no question that it helped soften the blow. But the fortunes were not spread uniformly around the world. It all depended on what we did with that time online and where we lived while we were logged in.

Read more from the original source:

Did Big Tech Save the World From an Even Bigger Economic Meltdown? - Foreign Policy

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --American Family Voices, along with a coalition that includes Change the Ref, Fund for Reparations Now and the National African American Reparations Commission, today launched a petitionto demand that Big Tech take steps to address the deluge of extremist rhetoric and hate merchandise on their platforms. It also calls on Congress and the Biden Administration to create and enforce legislation that protects Americans and our democracy, and holds accountable those companies that neglect their responsibilities. This demand, backed by notable activists and celebrities including Rosario Dawson, Mark Ruffalo, Chelsea Handler, Alyssa Milano, Patricia Oliver,Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Don Rojas, Ben Jealous, People For the American Way, and the National African American Reparations Commission(NAARC), comes just weeks after a violent mobwhipped up by conspiracy theories and hate speech hosted on Big Tech platformsattempted to take over the U.S. Capitol building and overthrow a democratic election.

"The Big Tech companies that enable and profit from the spread of disinformationsuch as Amazon, Facebook, YouTube and Twitterbear responsibility for the tragic events of January 6, and they are continuing their tacit support of hatred and lies through inaction while claiming to want to be part of the solution," said Lauren Windsor, Executive Director at American Family Voices. "These companies have shown that they care about their profits more than the common good. Our leaders need to enact and vigorously enforce meaningful regulation to protect our nation, our democracy, and our citizens who have been put at risk."

The coalition pointed to several examples of how Big Tech has facilitated the spread of racist and violent content. The U.S. Capitol was attacked by white supremacists who were empowered and emboldened by lies spread on YouTube, Twitter andFacebook. Many who led the violent assault that left five people dead were clad in Proud Boys garb sold on Amazon. This summer, at the height of racial justice demonstrations, Amazon was selling hats with the slogan "Black Lives Don't Matter" and glorifying mass shooters.

While a majority of Americans oppose these dangerous ideas, Big Tech companies have pursued profit at the expense of common-sense standards for humanity and decency. Unless regulated by Congress, Big Tech will lack any incentive to stop the spread of disinformation, the sale of dangerous products, or the facilitation of communications among violent extremists.

"We readily accept that television advertising must be regulated--it's time for Big Tech to be regulated," said Ben Jealous, President of People For the American Way. "Facebook, Twitter and Amazon should not be allowed to enrich themselves at the expense of our democracy, let alone people's lives."

The petition can be viewed and signed here.

SOURCE American Family Voices

See original here:

Civil Rights Leaders And Celebrities Launch Petition To Hold Big Tech Accountable For Extremist Racist Rhetoric And Hate Merchandise - PRNewswire

Editors note: Investor and entrepreneur David Gardner is founder ofCofounders Capitalin Cary and is a regular contributor to WRAL TechWire.

CARY I received a lot of comments last year on my article, Living Through an Amazon Excommunication. Partly in jest, that article pointed out just how intertwined and dependent my day-to-day life had become on using various Amazon services and technologies. Some jumped to the conclusion that I must believe that big tech companies have too much power and control over us.

This has been a hot topic of late with the controversy over Twitter banning former President Trumps use of the platform. With so much of our news and opinions coming now from the big social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and TikTok, could these big tech companies restrict or limit points of view they dont like? Most of the debate on this topic is a Freedom of Speech argument which does not apply. The Constitution states that Congress will make no laws to limit our freedom of speech. Private companies can do whatever they want. When we agree to use a platform, we agree to that platforms terms of service. If a user violates that agreement then the platform has every legal right to restrict the violating users.

Living through an Amazon excommunication Investor David Gardners trials & tribulations

Now, just because something is legal doesnt mean it is right. Could these companies change their user agreements to restrict certain points of view? The answer is yes they could followed quickly by why would they? The one thing you can count on with big companies in general is that they are coin-operated. Social Media giants got to be giants by appealing to the largest base of customers possible. Put simply, they have not cared so much about what you posted so long as you posted it on their platform. Thats how they make money and keep their investors happy.

Imagine the CEO of a national retail shoe brand trying to explain to his board how from now on he is going to implement policies that alienate a large segment of his customers so that they will have to buy their shoes somewhere else. I doubt that the board and investors would respond well to that strategy or the CEOs continued employment.

So why do social media platforms remove some content and ban some users?

Nearly a third of active Twitter users followed Trumps tweets. For the already financially troubled company, Trump was a godsend. Banning Trump was tantamount to cutting off a third of the companys revenue. If big tech is, as I say, coin-operated, why would Twitter do something so harmful to its income statement?

The answer again is that these companies fear for their profits. They do not want more government regulation that could hold them liable for damages users may incur from posted content on their platforms nor do they want legislation that requires them to implement costly detailed moderation of billions of posts. However big the losses were for Twitter, the management team must have calculated even greater losses if it did not moderate Trumps tweeting. I cant imagine how they must have agonized over choosing between these two horrible business choices.

The major social media platforms have two great fears: the fear of losing users and the fear of government regulation because both of these mean big reduction in profits. These big tech companies have argued repeatedly that they are not responsible for what is posted on their platforms but that argument is getting increasingly more difficult to make.

For example, lets say you own a property along a street with a lot of walking traffic. To monetize that property you let people rent booths to sell items to the public. Lets say that one of your renters starts to sell Clorox-laced lemonade marketing it as a cure for Covid and some of its customers start getting sick or even dying. Suppose you know about this but choose to continue to rent that space anyway because you need the rental income. Are you liable for any of the damages people incur from the lemonade stand? Lets suppose that the local authorities start voicing suspicions and wanting you to appear for questioning. You dont want to lose the revenue from that booth but making a good, albeit painful, business decision, you decide to cancel the lemonade stands lease figuring it is better to lose some revenue now then run the risk of being held liable for potentially millions in personal injury damages or being shut down entirely by the local authorities. Welcome to the Twitter management teams dilemma.

In summary, big tech does not want to control our free speech in any way. They would have more users and make more money if they could just let all of their users post whatever they want. Nor are these platforms our virtuous guardians of the truth either. They have no secret political agenda or clandestine plot to manipulate the thinking of the masses even though that does make for some cool conspiracy theories. No. They are just struggling management teams trying to navigate ominous waters while keeping their investors happy and holding onto their jobs.

The rest is here:

David Gardner: Are Big Tech companies becoming too powerful? - WRAL Tech Wire

getty

The pandemic has challenged most of us on a personal level, however, business wise, it hasnt been bad for everyone. Big tech leaders Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google, for instance, have all seen their market values increase this past year. Furthermore, all of these companies have found themselves poised to play a significant role in helping the world recover from coronavirus, using their technological prowess to do everything from track coronavirus spread, to manage tests and vaccines, and improve overall distribution workflows. The most important right now, obviously, is vaccine distribution.

Indeed, whether we realize it or not, vaccination distribution is a data-driven process. Globally, we will be using everything from AI to machine learning, the Internet of Things, and blockchain to process huge amounts of data about vaccinations happening in real time. And the data isnt just about shots in arms. Its about cold-chain traceability (proper storage), serial number verification, vehicle routing and geofencing of vaccine delivery, and more. Its a supply chain problem at a massive scale. Luckily, big tech seems to be stepping up in big ways. Which is good for society, and of course, is good for the market perception of these companies. A win-win, in a situation that has been anything but ideal.

Vaccine Management

Who knew vaccine management would be the next big thing in technology? Seeing the challenges facing vaccine distribution, companies like Workday,Salesforce,Microsoft, andServiceNoware pushing vaccine management service offerings into the market. For instance, on the Workday side, the software can track immunization status of employees, as well as get a big picture view of vaccination rates throughout the company by job profile, location, region, etc. Salesforce, for its part, is aiming to assist local, state, and federal governments with tracking inventory, refrigeration states, and other data on its Work.com site. Meanwhile, Microsofts system, developed for government and healthcare workers, aims to help with registration of vaccine providers and patients, phased scheduling, reporting, forecasting, and other types of analytics.

Just like at the beginning of the pandemic when many of these same organizations stepped up and created tracking dashboards, they are stepping again to pivot their services and technologies to serve the greater good.

Vaccine Distribution

Honeywell recently partnered with Atrium Health, Charlotte Motor Speedway and Tepper Sports & Entertainment with a goal of distributing 1 million vaccines by July 4. After being frustrated by the roadblocks and slow rollout in North Carolina, Honeywell CEO stepped up in a major way. He and the team and Honeywell created the necessary infrastructure to improve the efficiency of vaccine distribution in three days.

The public-private partnership will use tech like AI, the Internet of Things, and machine learning to create a virtual playbook that can be replicated at other vaccine sites across the nation. The first pilot was a success, using high-volume assembly line concepts, data entry automation, and analytics, to vaccinate almost 16,000 people in one weekend. They were able to vaccinate one person every four and a half seconds. This coming weekend they hope to be able to vaccinate almost 20,000 more. Now thats some technology (and public-private partnering) that needs to be distributed throughout the country!

Vaccination Credential Initiative

One thing that has been considered by many governments to safely reopen borders for travel would be a vaccine passport or digital proof that youve been inoculated or received a negative COVID test within the last few days. The likes of Oracle, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Commons Project have partnered to create what amounts to exactly that a vaccination passport for those who have been vaccinated against coronavirus. The system will allow those who have been vaccinated against COVID to access their vaccination records quickly and easily. This could then be used to prove protected status when traveling or accessing other public spaces. This is important because in general, vaccinations are not kept on public record. Theyre stored at your doctors office or exist solely on a piece of paper you need to carry with you. An electronic system could be huge for those seeking to prove their vaccine status and the rest of industries who will rely on those vaccines to ensure their services stay safe to the public.

This technology could also have other implications and be used to show other vaccine records for other situations like children entering school. Its just one more way where big tech is stepping up for the common good of the global community.

Mass Vaccination Sites

Big tech companies are big employers. Amazon alone had almost 800,000 employees in 2019. The company also added more than 400,000 jobs amidst the challenging, but digitally exponential year 2020. Why does this matter? These employees are members of our communities. They dont just work in Seattle at headquarters. They work in distribution centers across the country, in offices around the world, and as delivery drivers in your own neighborhood. Amazon knows this and is stepping up its commitment to support its employees receiving the vaccination. With pop-up clinics in Seattle and Florida for now, they are working with the Biden administration to administer at least one million vaccines. When supply becomes more readily available, theyve also pledged to use some of their locations to help vaccinate the public. Theyve also pledged technology services to help too. If there is a company that could help speed up this process, its the company that brought us 2-day shipping (then 1-day, then 1-hour) and changed online shopping and supply chain management forever.

Amazon is not alone in this effort. Google has plans to turn four office locations, parking lots and open spaces into mass vaccination sites for the public in California, Washington and New York. They join other companies like Disney and Starbucks who arent in the big tech realm, but are stepping up to help out in any way they can.

Big Techs Vaccine Efforts: Good for Society and the Brand

All of these efforts make sense on multiple levels. From a society standpoint, its great to see companies take responsibility for the major role that they can play for good. From a brand standpoint, its just smart business. The conscious consumer has been on the rise for the last few years and brands have had to sit up and take note. Many have made pledges to sustainability and have amazing corporate social responsibility goals and now this effort is just one more way that they are actively showing that they care about the world at large and not just the profits that they create. And its a great thing to see.

Continued here:

Big Tech Provides A Shot In The Arm To Vaccine Rollout - Forbes

TALLAHASSEE Gov. Ron DeSantis has put a bulls-eye on tech giants that he contends censor conservatives speech, but the social media apps and platforms hes targeting are blockbusters for the states financial portfolio.

DeSantis, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, and Republican legislative leaders on Tuesday laid out a plan to punish Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google and Twitter for blacklisting users or putting gags on social-media posts.

But the five tech behemoths are huge earners for Floridas investment portfolio, according to the State Board of Administration. The board manages Floridas pension plan as well as investments for more than two dozen other accounts.

Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, which is publicly traded as Alphabet, and Twitter reaped $3.1 billion for the state last year. The states investment in the big five known colloquially as FAAAT was just shy of $8 billion, according to information provided by State Board of Administration manager of external affairs John Kuczwanski.

DeSantis, House Speaker Chris Sprowls and Senate President Wilton Simpson held a news conference to condemn the tech companies, which have also been under scrutiny by Congress.

DeSantis repudiated Twitter for blocking Trump from its site and scolded Amazon for dropping Parler, a social media app used by many conservatives. Both actions occurred after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent attempt to prevent the certification of President Joe Bidens victory in the November election.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, DeSantis expressed concern that the tech firms could disable or suspend a political candidates account in the run-up to an election.

They could potentially de-platform a candidate, suppress a message, and that is something that is okay? I dont think so, he said.

DeSantis, however, isnt proposing that the state shed its investments in the corporate giants.

Im open to it, he said when asked about such a move. But I dont think that would markedly change the behavior of big tech. These are really big companies.

The five companies make up about 7.8 percent of the states global equity portfolio, which totaled around $103 billion at the end of December.

The companies blew past the states 16.35 percent benchmark for global equity investments, Kuczwanski told The News Service of Florida in a phone interview Wednesday.

For example, the annual return on Facebook was more than 81 percent. At 31 percent, the return on Alphabet Inc. was the lowest of the five tech companies.

The states investment gurus dont recommend dropping the tech stock superstars.

We believe divestiture is the least effective way to change corporate business practices and in most cases is counterproductive; and divesting from companies shuts off an important access point to proxy voting and corporate management teams, Kuczwanski said in an email.

As of mid-day Wednesday, Apples market capitalization, or market cap, was $2.3 trillion, Amazons was $1.7 trillion, Alphabets was $1.3 trillion, Facebooks was $760.8 billion and Twitters was $43.7 billion. Market cap refers to the total dollar market value of a companys outstanding shares of stock.

DeSantis said legislation targeting the companies could include such sanctions as a $100,000-a-day fine for each day a candidate is removed from a platform.

The plan also could require technology companies promotion of candidates to be recorded as campaign contributions with the state elections office, he said. Tech companies could also be prohibited from blocking or partially blocking posts by or about political candidates, a practice known as shadow banning.

But critics of the proposal maintain that such policing of tech companies could be problematic.

Berin Szka, a technology law attorney who is president of TechFreedom, called DeSantis plan a reboot of a 1913 Florida law that required newspapers to give political candidates the right to reply to editorials. In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional.

Since 1998, the Court has repeatedly held that websites enjoy the same, complete protection of the First Amendment which makes everything he proposes unconstitutional. Gov. DeSantis poses as a constitutional conservative, but hes made quite clear that he doesnt take the Bill of Rights seriously, Berin said in a prepared statement.

While DeSantis and legislative leaders arent calling for the state to dump its investments in the U.S.-based tech companies, Florida lawmakers in the past have ordered steps to limit investments in certain corporations.

Under state law, the State Board of Administration has a list of scrutinized companies with prohibited business operations in Sudan and Iran. The prohibited operations involve the petroleum or energy sector, oil or mineral extraction, power production or military support activities, according to the agencys website.

The SBA also has a list of scrutinized companies that participate in a boycott of Israel, including actions that limit commercial relations with Israel or Israeli-controlled territories.

Dara Kam, News Service of Florida

Read the original here:

Florida Republicans target Big Tech and its big business in the state - Tampa Bay Times

At Substack, one of an increasing number of independent news and opinion sites, lawyer and civil rights activist Glenn Greenwald looks at a disturbing trend in journalism today. The rise of the journalist as tattletale and censor, rather than investigative reporter:

A new and rapidly growing journalistic beat has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism.

Whereas an investigative reporter succeeds by getting the story right, tattletales can succeed even if they get the story wrong. Censors can succeed even if their concerns are wholly misdirected quite apart from whether censorship is a valid enterprise anyway.

Greenwald (pictured) cites recent instances:

A star New York Times tech reporter, Taylor Lorenz, falsely accused tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen of having used the slur world retarded in an online discussion of Reddit activities. In fact, a woman in the discussion room had used the wordit is a self-description on the part of some Redditors. Without offering any apology for failure to listen carefully, Lorenz lectured the world about insensitivity, then locked her Twitter account. She likely faces no consequences.

Forty-five-year veteran New York Times science reporter Donald McNeill, on a field trip with high school students in Peru, used the n-word while discussing with a student whether it was fair that one of her classmates was punished for using it in a video. Greenwald: McNeil used it not with malice or as a racist insult but to inquire about the facts of the video so he could answer the students question. New York Times management was inclined to issue only a reprimand but dozens of Times journalists insisted on much more serious punishment, so he was fired.

Greenwald cautions that these widely publicized examples are by no means isolated ones:

These examples of journalism being abused to demand censorship of spaces they cannot control are too numerous to comprehensively chronicle. And they are not confined to those three outlets. That far more robust censorship is urgently needed is now a virtual consensus in mainstream corporate journalism: its an animating cause for them.

Indeed. One might also cite the recent, almost incomprehensibly vicious attack on Jordan Peterson, author the bestseller 12 Rules for Life, by Decca Aitkenhead of the Sunday Times of London. She interviewed Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila, who has seen her father through serious health problems over the past two years (her mother is recovering from a battle with cancer). Under the circumstances, the family would hardly seem appropriate subjects for a full-on assault. But thats what happened.

Mikhaila Peterson released the unedited transcript for the world to see how grievous the misrepresentation has been. But not everyone is so lucky and Aitkenhead likely faces few consequences other than the approval of like-minded colleagues.

Then there was the 2019 misrepresentation by George Eaton at New Statesman of British philosopher and writer Roger Scruton (19442020) as a racist as the result of an interview. The misrepresentation led to his being unceremoniously dumped from a government committee.

Author and commentator Douglas Murray, suspecting that Sir Roger would not really have said those things, began a search and eventually came into possession of the tape and transcript. He notes, What the tape showed beyond doubt is that George Eaton misled his readers to try to destroy the reputation of Britains foremost conservative thinker. Readers and listeners can listen to and read the interview themselves and find their favorite examples of Eatons dishonesty. He offers a few favorites of his own. (National Review, April 29, 2019)

Murray comments, To say that this is the sort of thing that has degraded public discourse is to wildly understate things.

Well, yes, but whats behind it? Greenwald offers, regarding the new breed of journalists,

They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers: the military-industrial complex, the CIA and FBI, the clandestine security state, Wall Street, Silicon Valley monopolies, the corrupted and lying corporate media outlets they serve. So settling on this penny-ante, trivial bullshit tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing: all in the most anti-intellectual, adolescent and primitive ways is all they have. Its all they are. Its why they have fully earned the contempt and distrust in which the public holds them.

How did we get here?

Ive been in the news business fifty years. Heres my view: The single biggest factor in all this is that traditional media are no longer a necessary institution.

In the 1970s, one needed a newspaper to find out the weather, the scores, and who had a bicycle for sale. Hit pieces sometimes appeared, of course. But generally speaking, the investigative journalist was, well, investigating, not plotting to take someone down just for the sake of it. There were plenty of bad landlords, corrupt officeholders, shoddy builders, etc., to focus on. It was difficult and sometimes dangerous work.

But we have specialty web sites and consumer groups for all that today. Its all online.

Today, the newspapers (along with generic TV and radio) are echo chambers for opinion for cultural reasons, that usually means progressive opinion. When an institution is no longer needed, its mission usually changes. The people attracted to it change too.

One suspects that Greenwald is right: The sort of people who would launch baseless attacks and refuse to apologize, destroy colleagues careers over misunderstood conversations, and ridicule or misrepresent old or sick men probably could not do an exhausting eight-month, on-the-ground investigation into corruption at the Municipal Housing Board. So, increasingly, they do what they can: Misrepresentation and speech policing.

One outcome of the increasing prevalence in media of the type of people Greenwald describes is a very great decline in the perceived value of freedom of speech and of the media. Twenty years ago, media people understood freedom of speech to mean, I want the right to report, with evidence, that the mayor fixes drunk driving tickets for upper class twits. Today, many in media understand it to mean I want the right to spout hate against visible and sexual minorities. Because that truly is all they do understand it to be. And they want a crackdown. Until then, they will act as police themselves.

Increasingly, the organizations many new journalists work for are owned by companies eyeing the Chinese market. That entails the need to get along with a totalitarian state. Perhaps it is best for them to get used to the mentality first. It is best for the rest of us to view their output with a skeptical eye and seek out smaller, alternative, independent sources of news.

You may also wish to read: Escaping the news filter bubble: Three simple tips. Spoiler: Reduce the amount of information big providers have about YOU. (Russ White)

Continued here:

In Big Tech world: The Journalist as Censor, Hit Man, and Snitch - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

For most people, the details of the "26 words that created the internet" are probably a little fuzzy. Known colloquially as "Section 230," the law is a carve-out to the Communications Decency Act that provides internet companies immunity related to the content published by users on their platforms. It also gives those companies protection from being sued over content moderation decisions they make regarding those platforms.

As important as the law is at making the open internet possible, most people had probably never heard of Section 230 until politicians started talking about reforming or repealing it in the last year or so. Ostensibly, that's not a terrible thing on its face--there's room to make an argument that the law couldn't have foreseen every possible scenario of online content and that some amount of change is warranted.

The latest effort comes in a bill from Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.)called the Safe Tech Act.While Warner and his co-sponsors'intentions may be good, the bill is very bad. And, the thing is, it's not just bad for big tech companies like Facebook or Twitter. It's especially bad for the startup economy.

The law would no longer grant protection if "the provider or user has accepted payment to make the speech available or, in whole or in part, created or funded the creation of the speech.'' While the authors say that's primarily targeted at ads, it won't end there.

YouTubers, for example, get paid for posting content on YouTube through ads and through sponsorships. Under the proposed changes, that would mean that YouTube could be liable for the content posted by every content creator, even if a creator isn't paid directly by YouTube. ButYouTube isn't even the biggest problem.

More concerning is that in the event of a lawsuit, the bill would eliminate what is currently an "immunity," and instead provide for an "affirmative defense." That would require a company to prove it shouldn't be held liable.

Currently, if you were to sue Facebook over a review someone left of your business, the social-media company would ask the judge to dismiss it on the grounds that it is protected by Section 230 and that would be the end of it. That would change now in the event there's any money that has exchangedhands for either the platformor the user. In that case, the platform would have to prove that it should be protectedand that your lawsuit doesn't fit one of the carve-outs provided under the new law.

Even for a company like Facebook, which has more than enough resources to hire lawyers and fight lawsuits, it could quickly become untenable. For small companies, however, it would be devastating.

There are hundreds of small web-hosting companies, for example. The changes proposed would makethese companies liable for the content on every website or blog hosted on their platform. There is simply no way to monitor or moderate every website on the internet.

Or, imagine you're a food blogger with a few thousand readers. You allow your readers to pay for a membership, and in return, they get access to a members forum, or to leave comments on theblog. Suppose one of those members posts a negative comment about a meal they had a restaurant in town, and how no one should ever eat there.

The restaurant owner finds out and is angry enough about it that they want you to take the comment down. If you don't, they threaten to sue youand your web host.

In the past, that threat would have been hollow. If the comment isn't otherwise illegal, Section 230 would provide protection from liability for what a member said. Under this proposal, that immunity is gone since money changed hands.

Finally, it's worth talking about intentions. To that end, I'm willing to give the authors the benefit of the doubt that their intentions are good. It would be great for everyone if there was less online harassment or discrimination.

The problem is that making providers liable for all of the content published on their platforms won't result in less harassment or discrimination. It will simply lead many of them to decide it isn't worth the potential risk. There will just be fewer platforms.

When I reached out to the Warner's office, an aide referred me toaFAQ thatsaysthe new law would have no such effect on startups since they are toosmall to sue,which is a sentiment completely divorced from reality. That's part of the problem, really--while the authors seem to have good intentions, it appears they fail to grasp how the internet actually works.

For that matter, the bill fails to grasp how people actually work. Angry people sue all the time. It doesn't matter if the target is small.

Collecting damagesisn't even often the point. The goal is to force you to take down a review, or a comment, or a statement they don't like. Small businesses don't have the resources or the time to fight lawsuits and can end up bankrupt if they have to defend themselves.

People tend to measure the impact of what they do by their own best intentions, and not by the way it will be used by others who may not share those intentions. If your goal is to do something you consider just, it's easy to dismiss concerns that you might cause something terrible.

Yet, unfortunately, that's exactly what this bill will do.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

More:

This Bill to Reform Section 230 Is Bad News for Big Tech. It's Even Worse for the Little Guy - Inc.

Anyone who tells you the details of the ongoing Potemkin impeachment trial are important is probably trying to distract you from something that actually is, likeour ongoing COVID pandemic.

After months of hearing that life could never return to normal until we get a vaccine, we got a vaccine (two, actually), but life did not return to normal. In fact, life got worse. We were instructed to take the new vaccine as soon as possible and then to put on more masks. Anyone who complained about that was punished. Most people obeyed the orders (not like they had a choice),but the whole thing made them nervous.

Why exactly did the rules change all of a sudden? Was there a good reason for that? When are we finally going to repeal coronalaw? And what about this vaccine? Why are Americans being discouraged from asking simple, straightforward questions about it? How effective are these drugs? Are they safe? What's the miscarriage risk for pregnant women? Is there a study on that? May we see it? And by the way, how much are the drug companies making off this stuff?

These questions are not conspiracy theories, they're the most basic questions in a democracy. Every citizen has a right to know the answer, but instead we got fluff and propaganda. The media rollout for the vaccine came off like a Diet Pepsi commercial at the Super Bowl. Tons of celebrity endorsements, not a lot of science. It was totally disingenuous and naturally it had the opposite of the intended effect.

IS THE COVID-19 VACCINE EFFECTIVE IF YOU DON'T HAVE A REACTION TO IT?

Most Americans already supported vaccines. They didn't need to be browbeaten in order to be convinced. They were grateful their kids no longer get tetanus and polio and chickenpox. They weren't anti-vaccine. And yet from the very first day, the way the authorities handled the coronavirusvaccine did not inspire confidence.

From the moment thevaccine arrived, the most powerful people in America worked to make certain that no one could criticize it. Here's Bill Gates' wife Melinda on CNN back in December:

MELINDA GATES: The Internet and the rise of social media has happened so quickly that really the regulations and the good policymaking hasn't stayed out in front of it. And quite frankly, it needs to catch up.

Quite frankly, she says, we need to censor people's views on the COVIDvaccine. Remember, Melinda Gates is not a scientist. She did not develop this vaccine. She has no background in epidemiology or any relevant discipline. She worked in the marketing department at Microsoft, but she's the wife of a billionaire. That's why she's on television, and it'swhy she's allowed to control what you're allowed to say about the drug she is demanding you inject in your body.

AT LEAST 36 PEOPLE MAY HAVE DEVELOPED RARE BLOOD DISORDER AFTER COVID VACCINATION: REPORT

Is this really science? Not even close. It's oligarchy, and all the billionaires are participating in it. The tech companies announced early they would not allow anyone to criticize this vaccine, andanyone who did would be kicked off their platforms right away. Corporate media then took it upon themselves to enforce this rule.

On Monday, CNN ran a story with this headline: "Facebook vowed to crack down on Covid-19 [sic] vaccine misinformation but misleading posts remain easy to find." That's not a news story. That's an open call for censorship, and it worked. CNN identified a group on Facebook called "COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Stories".The group was exactly what it sounds like: People talking about their experiences with the vaccine. Last week, that group was amongthe top 20 groups on all of Facebook. Tuesday, it couldn't be found, not even if yousearched specifically for its name.

Effectively, "COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Stories" no longer exists. CNN shut them down, erased them. Searchfor the word "vaccine" on Facebook now and you will find a lot of materialthatprecisely matches the storyline approved by Melinda Gates and her fellow non-scientist billionaires. The line is clear, you've heard it a million times: The COVIDvaccine is morally good, period. Don't dare say anything else. So if your neighbor drops dead after getting the shot, keep it to yourself. Facts like that are not allowed on Facebook nor on Twitter.

"I posted that there were multiple reports of adverse reactions [to the vaccine]," wrote one Twitter user, "and that the vaccines were still not fully trialed on pregnant women and kids. Twitter banned me until I deleted it for false information."

PHYSICIAN SLAMS YOUTUBE OVER 'EXTREMELY MISGUIDED' DECISION TO PULL SENATE TESTIMONY ABOUT POTENTIAL COVID TREATMENT

Is it false information? That's irrelevant.

According to another user, "Twitter suspended me for saying that vaccines have known side effects".Of course vaccineshave side effects. Physicians who develop vaccines concede that. But at the moment, you are not allowed to say it.

Facebook has long led the way in this kind of censorship. Last year, the company prohibited users from buying any advertisement that might discourage people from taking the vaccine or that might portray the new vaccines as "unsafe or ineffective." In the months since, tens of millions of Americans have been vaccinated and most of them seem fine.

On the other hand, scientists are now conceding on the record that the vaccine may trigger a fatal blood disorder in a small number of people. The New York Times recently wrote about it, and it's one of the stories you should save asa period piece for when the current darkness finally lifts and we can think and speak clearly again.

Two of the people theTimes interviewed wouldn't even give their names. One said she'd been badly injured by the drug, but she feared she'd be punished if she criticized the vaccine in public. In the picturethe New York Times ran, the woman covered her face like she was a fugitive.

Science can't live in an environment like this. Without relentless skepticism, science dies. That's what science is, relentless skepticism. And when it leaves, inevitably it's replaced by witchcraft and superstition. Are we there yet? You decide.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The liberal website Vox recently ran a piece complaining that Facebook users were still being allowed to "make fun of Covid-19 [sic] vaccination", because mockery is always the gravest threat to false religions, anddemanded that Facebook remove the offending content immediately.Damn those smirking Americans. Make them stop laughing.

In a way, it is amusing. Even with total blanket censorship, it is pretty hard to crush the average person's sense of humor. But you've got to wonder: If they can force you to stop laughing about vaccines,what can't they make you do?

This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the Feb. 9, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight".

Read more here:

Tucker Carlson: Have questions about the COVID vaccine? 'Shut up and take it,' says Big Tech - Fox News

Changes are underway on iOS, and not everybody is happy about it.

Apple's iOS 14 contains privacy updates affecting apps that rely on user data to make money. While the changes first began rolling out in iOS 14, they're becoming mandatory in upcoming versions.

The new requirements, called App Tracking Transparency, mandates that apps ask for permission to track user behavior. iPhone users can accept or deny this permission on an app-by-app basis, or rescind it entirely in their settings. It also requires apps in the App Store to disclose what sort of data the apps "link" to you and collect about you; Apple calls these disclosures "nutrition labels."

The move is part of Apple's campaign to position itself as a privacy-oriented company, which has rustled the feathers of other companies trying to claim that title for themselves.

Apple's nutrition labels in iOS 14 are a a boon for privacy, but a thorn in the side of advertisers.

Most notably, Facebook has been engaging in a PR war with Apple about the change. Facebook *also* likes to say it really cares about privacy, but Apple's labels show just how much data Facebook accrues on its users. The change threatens Facebook's advertising product because it could limit the company's ability to collect the mountains of data it uses to target ads.

While Facebook has been vocally opposed to the change, it's far from the only company affected. Over the past few weeks, Apple's big tech buddies have been releasing their yearly financial reports, which include executives' opinions on what the next year holds for their money-making prospects. Executives weighed in on what the privacy updates mean for their bottom line, with responses ranging from righteous outrage to a big fat "meh." Here's what the companies had to say.

Mark Zuckerberg delivered some publicity punches related to Apple's business, claiming the nutrition labels and permissions were about cementing Apple's market dominance in messaging, while also hurting small businesses that "will no longer be able to reach their customers with targeted ads."

However, Facebook CFO David Wehner got down to what iOS 14 actually means for Facebook.

"We're going to have to be providing a prompt asking people for permission to use third-party data to deliver personalized ads," Wehner said. "We do expect there to be high opt out rates related to that, and that's factored into our outlook."

Snap execs said they expected the change to negatively impact the company's ads business, presenting a "risk of interruption to demand" by advertisers. However, CEO Evan Spiegel was pretty much down with it anyway.

"When it comes to some of the policy changes that Apple is making, you know, we really think of them as high integrity folks and we're happy to see them making the right decision for their customers," Spiegel said.

Twitter claimed that everything would be pretty much gravy with its ad business in the coming year. That's despite the "modest impact" the iOS changes could have.

"Assuming the global pandemic continues to improve and that we see modest impact from the rollout of changes associated with iOS 14, we expect total revenue to grow faster than expenses in 2021," Twitter's shareholder letter read.

Google was mum on how Apple's iOS changes would affect its tracking and advertising abilities. In response to a question about "some of the changing industry dynamics around privacy" (*cough* Apple) and what investors could expect "about the potential impact on ad revenues broadly as a result of privacy changes," execs spoke more generally, and pivoted to focusing on Google's recent move to replace third party cookies with its own product.

"We know that expectations are really changing for how data is used online. And people are demanding greater privacy," Philipp Schindler, Google SVP and Chief Budget Officer, said. "We remain very committed to our collaboration with the ads community on privacy-preserving open standard mechanisms that can, what we call, sustain a healthy and ad-supported web."

However, Google notably did not mention that it, too, is considering changes similar to (but reportedly less extreme than) Apple's. Nor did it bring up the fact that it has conspicuously not updated its iOS apps, an update that some speculate Google is delaying since it requires Google apps like Gmail or YouTube to lay bare how much data they collect.

Here is the original post:

What Apple's Big Tech Frenemies Think Of Its iOS 14 Privacy Updates - Mashable India

Over the last 10 years, technology stocks have been the undisputed winner.

Whether it's Apple, Amazon, Microsoft or any of the mega-cap tech names, investors likely have a bad case of buyer's remorse holding just about anything else. For context, the tech-heavy Russell 1000 Growth index outperformed the Russell 1000 Value index by about 7% per year on average over the last 10 years. This is a 2-standard deviation spread, last seen during the late 1990's.

But, while higher this week, Big Tech has shown signs of weakness in recent months. In my opinion, tech's reign of relative dominance has come to an end ... at least for now.

Any good thesis for an underperforming asset always starts with it being overvalued.

It's not that FAANG and other large tech companies aren't great businesses.On the contrary, they are fabulous businesses by most measures. In fact, a number of these stocks remain our largest single stock exposures. They just happen to also be our largest underweights relative to the benchmark.

The problem is that current prices necessitate a level of future growth that will be very difficult to realize.At almost 24% of the S&P 500, the concentration of the largest five stocks is now well known and is a significant contributor to the elevated valuation of the broad market.The S&P 500 is generally inflated from a valuation perspective at 22.5 times earnings over the next 12 months the 94th percentile of all observations dating back to 1985.Removing just 7 stocks, FAANG plus Microsoft and Tesla, drops the forward P/E to 20x. Historically expensive, but meaningfully less so, especially considering that the earnings of many of the remaining companies have yet to recover.

Despite the unique advantages created by the pandemic, tech's relative advantage from an earnings growth perspective peaked in 2020 as well failing to exceed the previous high-water mark set in 2010.

Low interest rates have been a key enabler of above-average valuations, but tech is most dependent on rates staying low.Low interest rates increase the value of companies with long-dated future cash flows many tech companies via a simple present value calculation.The technology sector is, therefore, most vulnerable to accelerating economic growth and rising interest rates.

Similarly, a recovery in inflation is another risk to tech's dominance. Although unemployment is still elevated and economic slack remains, fiscal stimulus, both past and future, will quickly close the gap at a time when fundamentals are naturally improving amid the vaccine rollout.This should accelerate a recovery in demand, creating upward pressure on prices.Even during the extreme momentum of the technology bubble, the tech sector could not sustain its relative outperformance amid higher rates and inflation.

Finally, the tech sector appears vulnerable from two policy perspectives: tax increases and regulation.

Taken in combination, the time seems right for tech to relinquish its reign at the top.

Jeffrey D. Mills is the chief investment officer at Bryn Mawr Trust. He has more than 15 years of experience in investment analysis and specializes in providing investment advice to high net-worth individuals as well as institutional clients, including endowments and foundations.

Disclaimer

Read the original post:

Big Tech's road to underperformance and why its dominance is waning - CNBC

In an ironic turn of events, social media companies had to shut the account of Donald Trump an authoritarian president whose rise to power and grotesque attacks on democracythey had themselves enabled. Indeed, despite the lauded actions of social media companies that have blocked Trump after the capital riot, social media has been one of the main motors of the damaging effects of fake news and increased division worldwide. Here is why we should refuse this fatalistic view and break the power of big tech.

In the confusion of early 2021, at a time when the world was still gripped by the worst pandemic in a century and the US Capitol was under the assault of a pro-Trump mob set on overturning the results of the election, big tech corporations made an unprecedented move. Social media companies such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter suspended the social media accounts of a sitting US president.

The existential threat that the Capital riot and its fraudulent accusations of a stolen election presented to the democratic process required exceptional measures. Trumps authoritarian impulses should have been suppressed even long before. We do not dispute that. The question however is whether the power to decide on and execute these exceptional measures lies solely in the hands of the CEOs of several private companies.

The sovereign to borrow the expression coined last century by political scientist Carl Schmitt is the one who decides on the state of exception. Given that the exceptional decision to suspend Trumps Twitter and Facebook account was not taken by the judiciary or legislative power, but by private companies, does that make them de facto sovereign entities?

In another remarkable though less commented decision, only a few days apart from the Capitol assault, Twitter refused to automatically transfer Trumps followers to Biden, as they did four years before when Trump took over Obamas account. Biden was forced to start anew with zero followers, with no explanation from Twitter.

Was this a display of sovereign power? If big tech wields this kind of leverage over both an outgoing and an incoming US president, one can only imagine what they are capable of doing when dealing with less powerful sovereign states around the world. Or with defenseless citizens. For one thing, the events of early 2021 have laid bare these huge power differentials.

Unraveling the unity of sovereign power achieved by modern nation states is sending us back to a modern form of technological feudalism. While all eyes are on the US elections, democracy around the world is under threat because of the exploitative, recklessly profit-driven, and non-transparent functioning of big tech companies.

Over a decade of mass social media usage, powered by algorithms that are exclusively aimed at maximising sales, even if that means manipulating our fears and reinforcing our pre-existing biases, has also incredibly polarised public debate and created fertile ground for the spread of unverified claims and ludicrous conspiracy theories.

Big tech companies have made themselves indispensable in many aspects of life. In many countries, Facebook is equivalent to the internet, as Facebook Zero allows access to Facebook without mobile charges.

It would be unimaginable to run a political campaign, let alone public office, without massive social media use. They are now making themselves equally indispensable in the control of the abuses that derive from it, wielding an unprecedented power of censorship.

There is some irony in big tech having to shut down an authoritarian president whose rise to power and attacks on democracy they had themselves enabled. Socialmedia platforms are trying to portray themselves as the cure for the illness of modern democracy they are largely responsible for, but we should absolutely refuse a narrative that sees the quasi-sovereign power of big tech as unavoidable.

While their actions do make them de facto sovereign entities, it is not the content, but the size of the companies, that is the main problem.

In the end, we the Technological Sovereignty DSC do not believe that a legal solution (either through an intra- or supra-national approaches) is feasible, as a whole new court system would need to be established for the flood of cases, whenever a post is taken down.

A viable alternative thus has to be decentralisation of power, no monopolies or oligopolies of a few very powerful companies, so information and its flow is not controlled by the few.

Various platforms already exist, and are run and used by digital sovereignty conscious people (and not driven by shareholder profits), but the majority of people have yet to question the monopolies of big tech.

DiEM25 made Technological Sovereignty one of its pillars and you can read all about it here.

Additionally, start using alternatives to the options of big tech, some existing alternatives are:

Peertube as an alternative to Youtube

Mastodon as an alternative to Facebook

Matrix as an alternative to WhatsApp

Mattermost as an alternative to Slack

Photo byTracy Le BlancfromPexels.

Do you want to be informed of DiEM25's actions? Sign up here

The rest is here:

Breaking the sovereign power of big tech - DiEM25

Open up any social media app on your phone and you'll see it: links to COVID-19 information from trustworthy sources. Here, a Twitter screen reads, "No, 5G isn't causing coronavirus." Michele Abercrombie/NPR hide caption

Open up any social media app on your phone and you'll see it: links to COVID-19 information from trustworthy sources. Here, a Twitter screen reads, "No, 5G isn't causing coronavirus."

Open up any social media app on your phone and you'll likely see links to COVID-19 information from trustworthy sources.

Pinned to the top of Instagram's search function, the handles of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization are prominently featured. Click and you'll find posts and stories how to keep safe during the pandemic.

In the home section of the YouTube app, there's a playlist of videos that promote vaccination and counteract vaccination misinformation from WHO, the Journal of the American Medical Association and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

And on the Twitter app, you might spot a warning under posts with fake or misleading COVID-19 information. A tweet from a user falsely proclaiming that 5G causes coronavirus, for example, has a big blue exclamation mark with a message from Twitter: "Get the facts about COVID-19." It links to a story debunking the claim from a U.K. media outlet called iNews.

About Goats and Soda

Goats and Soda is NPR's global health and development blog. We tell stories of life in our changing world, focusing on low- and middle-income countries. And we keep in mind that we're all neighbors in this global village. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Learn more about our team and coverage.

In the noisy news landscape, these are just some of the features launched by the tech industry to bring down COVID-19 misinformation and deliver facts to the public.

This effort didn't happen spontaneously. The World Health Organization sparked the efforts in Feb. 2020 in the early days of the coronavirus crisis. The U.N. agency teamed up with over 40 tech companies to help disseminate facts, minimize the spread of false information and remove misleading posts.

But there's one big question that's tough to answer: Is it working?

Have any of these efforts actually changed people's behavior in the pandemic or encouraged them to turn to more credible sources?

Health messaging experts and misinformation specialists interviewed for this story praise WHO's efforts to reach billions of people through these tech industry partnerships. But they say the actions taken by the companies have not been enough and may even be problematic.

Vish Viswanath, a professor of health communication in the department of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been closely monitoring the global health content spread by the tech industry since the pandemic started.

"The WHO deserves credit for recognizing that the sheer flood of misinformation the infodemic is a problem and for trying to do something about it," he says. "But the tech sector has not been particularly helpful in stemming the tide of misinformation."

Researchers say there are limits to some of the anti-misinformation tactics used by social media companies.

Flagging or pulling down a problematic social media post often comes too late to undo the harm, says Nasir Memon, professor of computer science and engineering at New York University. His research includes cybersecurity and human behavior.

"It only comes after the post has gone viral. A company might do a fact check and put a warning label," he says. "But by then the ones who consumed that information already have been influenced in some way."

For example, in October, President Donald Trump claimed in a Twitter post that he had COVID-19 immunity after he was sick. According to the CDC: "There is no firm evidence that the antibodies that develop in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection are protective." The post was taken off Twitter after being flagged by fact-checkers but not before it had been shared with millions of his followers.

And there are no guarantees that people are going to take the time to click on a link to credible sources to "learn more," as the labels suggest, says Viswanath.

These "learn more" and "for more information" COVID-19 labels can be found on almost every tech platform yes, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, but also Tinder, the dating app (every few swipes there are reminders to wash hands and observe physical distancing, with links to WHO messages) and Uber, the ridesharing app (a section on its website with rider safety information directs people to WHO for pandemic guidance).

"If I'm sitting in some community somewhere, busy with my life, worried about my job, worried about whether the kids are going to school or not, the last thing I want to do is go to a World Health Organization or CDC website," Viswanath adds.

WHO is aware these measures aren't perfect. Melinda Frost, with WHO's risk communication team, concedes that simply removing posts can create new problems. She shares a December study from the disinformation analytics company Graphika. It found that the crackdown on anti-vaccine videos on YouTube has led their proponents to repost the videos on other video-hosting sites like BitChute, favored by the far-right.

YouTube removes videos if they violate its COVID-19 policy. Videos that claim the COVID-19 vaccine kills people or will be used as a means of population reduction, for example, are not allowed. But other platforms may have less stringent policies.

"We may expect a proliferation of alternative platforms as fact checking and content removal measures are strengthened on social media," Frost says.

Researchers say it's hard to know whether any of these efforts have actually changed people's behavior in the pandemic or encouraged them to turn to more credible sources.

Claire Wardle, U.S. director of First Draft, a nonprofit organization that researches misinformation, says "we have almost no empirical evidence about the impact of these interventions on the platforms. We can't just assume that things that seem to make sense [such as taking a post down or directing people to a trustworthy source] would actually have the consequences we would expect."

Andy Pattison, who leads WHO's digital partnerships in Geneva, says the organization is now trying to assess impact.

WHO is working with Google, for example, on a questionnaire for users to see whether the company's efforts have resulted in behavior change and/or increased knowledge regarding COVID-19. Since the early days of the crisis, Google has ensured that users searching for "COVID" or related terms on its search engine see official news outlets and local health agencies in its top results, says Pattison.

In the absence of current data, past research can shed some light on social media misinformation.

For example, an April 2020 study from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering found that warning labels messages such as "multiple fact-checking journalists dispute the credibility of this news" can reduce people's intention to share false information. The likelihood, however, varied depending on the participant's political orientation and gender.

Memon, the lead author of the report, says the findings are relevant to social media policing in the pandemic. "Fact checking [on social media platforms] is going to become an important aspect of what we do as a society to help counter the spread of misinformation," he says.

Both Memon and Viswanath say with tens of millions of posts being shared on social media a day, companies need to scale up efforts to take down false information.

"They have the power. They have the reach. They should be more aggressive and active than they have been," says Viswanath.

Memon suggests that companies could deploy stronger mechanisms to verify users' identities. That could help prevent people from creating troll accounts to anonymously spread falsehoods and rumors, he says. And Viswanath suggests that tech companies hire teams of experts ethicists, researchers, scientists, doctors for advice on how to handle false information.

As for WHO, it's learned a key lesson during the pandemic. "Information alone is not going to shift behavior," says Frost, who has been working on WHO campaigns to debunk unjustified medical claims on social media.

So over the past few months, the organization has been gathering a group of sociologists, behavioral psychologists and neuroscientists to study how information circulates, how it can be managed and how it can change people's minds.

"A lot of what we know about behavior change really requires something closer to the individual making sure the information we have is relevant to individuals and makes sense in their lives," she says.

Read more:

To Fight COVID-19 Misinformation, WHO Is Partnering With Big Tech : Goats and Soda - NPR

When the global financial crisis slowly subsided in the spring of 2010, tech giants Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (GAFA) were collectively valued at just under 450 billion euros by market cap. These companies were drivers of innovation that pointed the way forward, enterprises at the center of a flourishing technological ecosystem with a creative and technology-driven vision.

Over the past decade, the transformation of society's relationship to these companies is unprecedented. We use the products of the GAFA companies to manage almost our entire professional and private lives. And during the coronavirus crisis, the value of the tech giants have increased even more. The GAFA companies, taken together, currently have a market capitalization of 6 trillion euros, which is about five times as much as the entire German DAX index.

The dominance of the GAFA companies has become so great that individual governments have no choice but to submit themselves to them.

Google and Apple dictated the interface for the Corona app, not the other way around. When Australia wanted to introduce a new law on fair remuneration for its publishing houses, Google unashamedly threatened to switch off its search engine in the country.

It seems that many German and European politicians have given in to the superior power of the GAFA companies. Complicated regulatory issues are not very attractive election campaign topics, after all. This powerlessness is also reflected in the practically nonexistent media debate.

It is my steadfast conviction that how we handle the US tech monopolies will dictate Europe's future. Never before in the history of our continent have so few companies possessed so much power never before were they able to exert such a profound influence on our lives.

And even if it seems almost unimaginable the technological revolution is not yet over. Quite the opposite is true. We are still in the early phases. If we want, we can still make the rules that will shape our future. But the room for the maneuvering needed to do this is shrinking, and time is running out. If we want to know what to do next, then it is vital that we gain an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms by which the tech monopolies operate.

In the 20th century, a company's wealth came from its factories, machines, and its qualified employees. In Germany and the EU, our entire education and economic systems are designed based on this formula. The problem is that the digital world functions completely differently.

In the digital world customer behavior is evaluated in real time. This allows digital services to be continuously improved and aligned precisely to customer needs and desires. The more data is collected, the better the algorithms work and the more relevant the offers presented to customers become.

Over the past decade, the GAFA companies have built a huge competitive advantage because they control the operating systems, the search engines, the browsers, and the cloud infrastructure. They also own the shopping marketplaces, the communication platforms, the networked household appliances, and the app stores.

To return to our picture of the 20th century, the tech monopolies not only have factories and machines, they also increasingly own the entire infrastructure of the value-creation chain, including all the businesses and all of the communication channels to the customer. With every new customer, this value-creation chain becomes more efficient and more profitable. Competition in the GAFA infrastructure is only allowed for as long as the competitor compensates the monopolist or helps the monopolist towards even more expansive growth.

The capital that the GAFA companies suck out of the system using this mechanism is fed straight back into undermining the competition or accessing new areas of business. The vendors on Amazon's marketplace are just as dependent on the goodwill of the platform as media companies are on Google or Facebook. This goodwill can only be acquired by consistently providing access to all content and data, thus continuing to feed the monopoly and making it more efficient.

The enormous profitability of these infrastructure services allows the GAFA companies to invest in new fields of business on a very long-term basis. To do this, the monopolists are willing to accept high losses for many years in order to weaken the competition and build up market shares. Due to the enormous market capitalization of the GAFA companies, it is necessary for them to continue to occupy large and lucrative markets to keep the expansive system going and to increase their stock market price.

The favorite argument put forward by the GAFA companies to divert attention away from their position of power is that the products are free for the consumers and that they greatly improve the lives of all of us.

That is a sneaky argument that might seem plausible at first glance. However, it is a deliberate trick. The products sold via the platforms must finance the high profits of the GAFA companies which means that the users are paying indirectly.

What is even worse: they are forced to hand over their personal data. The tech giants have no reservations whatsoever when it comes to analyzing their customers down to the smallest detail. They know that we can no longer live without their products, and that is why antitrust fines or occasional political objections are a small price for them to pay on the way to increasing their market dominance.

Our dependency on the GAFA companies' infrastructure makes things extremely difficult for our government authorities because they want to help the citizens, not cause them problems.

A life without iPhones, Google Maps, WhatsApp, or Amazon is hard to imagine and not exactly something we are striving for. The bundling together of the different services such as the integration of maps into Google's search engine, or the linkup between the app stores and the smartphone operating systems makes it even more difficult to break up the monopolies.

Not that GAFA doesn't deserve our respect for having understood this connection years ago and for placing it at the heart of their strategy to defend what they do and exculpate them from any wrongdoing. None of us can imagine a world without their dominance anymore. And therein lies the problem, as well as the political and regulatory challenge.

The large tech corporations spend billions on image campaigns and employ an army of lobbyists in Berlin, Brussels and Washington, DC. There is hardly a single association, NGO, or start-up hub in the political sphere that they do not support in some way or other. Politicians and entrepreneurs who point out alternatives are with only few exceptions reeled in again by the lobbyists and opinion-makers, attacked in the media or have their businesses damaged.

There are two possible exit scenarios for the end of the tech monopolies. If we continue without strict regulation of GAFA, the polarization within society will grow. The economic opportunities of smaller businesses will shrink more and more because of the growing profits of the monopolies, and the GAFA companies will be able to take over whole new fields of business.

An ever-growing concentration of economic power will lead in the medium term to an erosion of the market economy. This will soon cause social unrest, distribution struggles, and an increasing destabilization of our liberal democracy, which will be unable to gain control of the economic inequality.

There have been clear signs of this development for many years, but our debate so far remains focused on the symptoms instead of asking about the causes. This is regrettable, because the facts are there for anyone to see. You only have to look at where record turnovers are being made in the midst of a great European recession, where profits are increasing permanently, and market shares are being gained.

And in my opinion, this dark scenario can only end in a state run by autocratic populists. We only have to look at protectionist China to see where this might lead. The GAFA companies have nothing to say there anymore, and the Chinese have constructed their own tech ecosystem. The Chinese population pays a very high price for this in the form of an illiberal dictatorship in which politicians decide who is allowed to have economic success.

The second, optimistic exit scenario is a return to European sovereignty and our social market economy. Ludwig Erhard, who as Minister of Economic Affairs led Germany's remarkable post-war economic recovery (the Wirtschaftswunder, or 'economic miracle'), and later became Chancellor, already postulated that a market economy can only work if it works for everyone. What Erhard was referring to here was protection against interference in the state, but also protection against monopolists and cartels.

Ludwig's legacy is being kept alive today by the likes of EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who campaigns like almost no other politician in Europe for regulation of the GAFA companies. However, in contrast to the eagerness for reform in the early years of the Federal Republic, the EU is slower as well as unclear in its vision and in its willingness to shape the future. And that is precisely the weakness that the US corporations have been exploiting for many years.

In my mind, there can be no doubt that splitting up the GAFA companies is unavoidable in the long term if we want the liberal democracies of the Western world to survive. This is not only in the hands of the EU, but is ultimately a decision of the US government. Which is why this topic must be given utmost priority in German and European foreign policy.

The US is rightly demanding that we take our security interests increasingly into our own hands. But the ability to act in a self-determined manner also requires a functioning market economy, which is why we must immediately prompt the US to modernize its antitrust legislation and, after sharp debate in the Senate, to also become active in the campaign to split up the GAFA companies.

In the meantime, Vestager and the EU recently embarked on the pragmatic path towards intelligent regulations by announcing the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA defines what gatekeeper platforms are and submits them to much stricter competitive restraints. For example, giving their own products preferential treatment in the marketplaces, as currently practiced by Amazon and Google, is to be prohibited and carries a heavy fine.

In my eyes, this is still not enough to cope with the problem of GAFA market power. We must define, isolate, and regulate the critical infrastructure of the GAFA companies. This applies, in particular, to the evaluation of personal data, and to the allocation of their enormous profits. Whether Google's search engine, Facebook's WhatsApp, or the Amazon Cloud: data and profits from this critical infrastructure must not be used to expand into other markets.

Just as we would not allow an electricity generation company to make unlimited profits to enter into direct competition with Miele, Siemens, and Bosch, we must subject our digital infrastructure to the same regulatory checks and controls. The data and the algorithms of the monopolists must be available to all of us so that those participating in the market can engage in fair competition on the platforms to the benefit of the customers.

For a long time, I was skeptical about whether Europe can succeed in managing this enormous task. But, in the meantime, I see reason for optimism. When Facebook recently wanted to force WhatsApp users to share all their data so that their advertising could more easily reach users via Facebook and Instagram, the update resulted in a huge surge towards alternative messaging services like Signal and Telegram.

Both of these have been at the top of the app stores for weeks now and differ from WhatsApp in that they request much less data. A turning point has been heralded in, and people are ready for a future that is different from the one imagined by the GAFA companies. The political decision-makers in Brussels and Berlin should follow this lead. The social market economy is one of our greatest achievements and is the foundation of our democracy.

And we should fight for it, especially in the digital age, undaunted by the size and power of its opponents.

This article originally appeared in WELT.

Continue reading here:

The regulation of tech monopolies will decide the fate of Western democracies - Business Insider - Business Insider

Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP (3), Getty Images

Censorship online by Big Tech is a bad idea, in large part because its a distraction from the problem of how social media companies promote, spread and amplify harmful information, according to author Peter Pomerantsev.

Its ridiculous to think that you can regulate the billions of things people say every day, or that we should, or that its even feasible. So I dont think thats the way forward, Pomerantsev said in an interview on The Long Game, a Yahoo News podcast. Therell be a way to get out of the whole tricky thing of taking one comment down or leaving it up.

The way out, he said, is through forcing the tech companies to be transparent about how they are manipulating the spread of information, and holding them accountable to prevent public harms.

Pomerantsev is a Russian-born journalist now based in London whose parents were hounded by the KGB secret police in Soviet Russia. His book This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality argues that phrases like freedom of expression have been hacked by authoritarian leaders and governments like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines.

Authoritarians use freedom of speech as an excuse to spread massive amounts of disinformation at the click of a button, while employing online mobs and troll farms to drown out and intimidate critical voices and obscure truth. This constitutes a sort of censorship through noise, Pomerantsev and two others wrote in a recent article for the London School of Economics Institute of Global Affairs, where he is a visiting senior fellow.

But countering autocrats doesnt have to mean removing the posts of ordinary people or taking them off their preferred social media platforms, he said, which has become a growing concern among many Republicans.

We thought that for a long time, the federal government is infuriating, Tucker Carlson said on Fox News Wednesday. The bigger threat to your family turned out to be huge publicly held corporations, particularly the tech monopolies.

Story continues

In fact, focus on censorship and cancel culture actually distracts from solving the problem of disinformation and all the chaos and confusion and real-world harm it brings with it in a way that preserves free speech, Pomerantsev said.

A lot of the virality is amplified artificially. Thats kind of how a lot of these platforms were designed, he said. That kind of artificial amplification I think really has to end.

Fake amplification everything from gaming algorithms and search engine optimization through to amplification through coordinated inauthentic activity I think that probably has to end if the internet is going to be a just reflection of society and not this kind of weird funhouse mirror that distorts everything, Pomerantsev said.

One of the first steps toward reducing disinformation is algorithm transparency: revealing how the social media and Big Tech companies engineer which information rises to the top and is seen by large numbers of people. Google, Facebook and TikTok have all taken some recent steps in this direction, Axios reported this week, but it was voluntary and most experts think this issue needs to be overseen by government regulators.

When Trumps people would say, Google pushes conservative views right down, liberal news up, we dont know because Google has not shown anyone its formulas that shape search results, Pomerantsev said. Thats ridiculous.

Carlson addressed the same root cause on his show. Twitter refuses to release data on who it bans, he said.

Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., sent letters to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in late January urging the companies to address the fundamental design features of their social networks that facilitate the spread of extreme, radicalizing content to their users. The letters were co-signed by 38 other House Democrats.

The lawmakers drew a straight line between the focus of social media companies on maximizing user engagement and the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by Trump supporters who believed the former presidents lies about the 2020 election.

The rioters who attacked the Capitol earlier this month were radicalized in part in digital echo chambers that these platforms designed, built, and maintained, and that the platforms are partially responsible for undermining our shared sense of objective reality, for intensifying fringe political beliefs, for facilitating connections between extremists, leading some of them to commit real-world, physical violence, Malinowski and Eshoo wrote.

The lawmakers cited a Wall Street Journal investigation from last May that revealed Facebook knew in 2018 that its algorithms sometimes radicalized its users, but did not take action to reduce this because it would reduce profits. Our algorithms exploit the human brains attraction to divisiveness, a presentation created internally said, noting that the company was serving more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.

Malinowski and Eshoo have proposed a change to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act a law targeted for reform by conservatives as well that would hold tech companies accountable for content they proactively promote for business reasons, if doing so leads to specific offline harms.

Malinowski said in a hearing this week that this is a solution that Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree on. We can believe that the biggest problem is on the right, on the far right or on the far left it doesnt matter. We can debate that. Whichever of those things you believe you should be for this, because the mechanism works the same way. It pushes people on the left further left. It pushes people on the right further right, until they reach an extreme.

Pomerantsev pointed to the United Kingdoms approach, which says in his words that companies have to think about the harms they cause, and those harms could be around public health or some forms of personal abuse.

And the question is what are the companies doing almost like in a health and safety kind of regime to mitigate that? So are their algorithms making it too easy for people to bully others or to harass them? Pomerantsev said. Are the way their systems are designed making it too easy to spread this information thats dangerous to peoples health?

The British have said there needs to be a regulator thats making a judgment about whether theyre doing enough around those issues, and are working to set up a system in which Ofcom, its communications regulator, could issue fines if the companies are found at fault.

The tech companies have lobbied the British government against giving Ofcom punitive regulatory powers.

But as Pomerantsev wrote in his book and expounded on in his interview with Yahoo News, the Big Tech companies have acquired so much information about their users which is most people that there is a real question about whether they are infringing upon freedom of thought.

To some degree our private thoughts, creative impulses, and senses of self are shaped by information forces greater than ourselves, he wrote in This Is Not Propaganda.

Are they actually invading your freedom of thought? Are they actually crossing the line of you, and then using it against you? he said. What is that line of our unconscious that deserves to be protected?

____

Read more from Yahoo News:

Link:

To avoid online censorship, government must force Big Tech to be more transparent, expert says - Yahoo News