Category Archives: Big Tech

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, companies across the tech industry rushed out messaging on where they stood. Apple said its health plan had long covered travel costs for out-of-state reproductive health care; Microsoft said it would expand its health coverage to include travel costs for abortion; Google even said it would pay for employees to relocate in light of the ruling, no questions asked.

For the most part, they were quick, makeshift policies aligning these companies with the right to choose and granting benefits that supported that stance. But by and large, their responses werent full-throated repudiations of the Supreme Courts ruling, let alone stands against any state that would seek to ban abortion.

There are plenty of firmer steps these companies could take. For the most part, companies continue to donate to anti-abortion candidates, and Uber, Match, and AT&T have, as recently as last year, funded a Republican group that pushed for Roe to be overturned, as noted by Popular Information. Regulators have called on Google to alter its Search products to avoid recommending anti-abortion clinics but the company has broadly ignored the calls. More urgently, major tech firms across the board have yet to announce new steps or commitments to safeguard the data on our phones, which remain some of the biggest threats to abortion seekers.

This is not a solution, the Alphabet Workers Union, an organization representing hundreds of Google employees and contractors, wrote on Twitter about Googles relocation offer.

Labor organizations more broadly have been willing to take a firmer stand and warn of the effects of this ruling. The Communications Workers of America, which is in the process of organizing many tech retail workers, warned of devastating economic effects for women, and the president of the AFL-CIO, the USs largest union group, said the rule was a devastating blow to working women and families across this country.

Theres now a stark generational divide between workers who want to see their companies getting involved in political matters and those whod like to see their companies staying quiet. Workers under the age of 45 are more than three times as likely to want their companies to take a stand on political issues, according to research from employee analytics firm Perceptyx. And whether companies speak out or fail to in a timely manner, as Disney did with the Dont Say Gay bill in Florida can have a material impact on whether these younger employees want to work somewhere.

There is a rush for talent, and people want to work for companies whose values and mission and policies they believe in, says Dan Bross, a former senior director of business and corporate responsibility at Microsoft.

But taking a stand on social issues has grown more complicated for big tech companies as their footprints have expanded beyond Silicon Valley and into states that continue to pass laws that clash with their progressive values.

In just the past few years, Apple broke ground on an Austin, Texas campus that could eventually hold up to 15,000 people; Amazon started building a second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, where its already hit 5,000 employees; Google opened a cloud computing hub in Raleigh, North Carolina thats expected to hit 1,000 people; and Microsoft leased 50,000 square feet of office space in Miami, Florida.

These are all states where Republicans have or hope to put restrictions on abortion. That can put companies in a difficult spot, stuck between employees who want to see action and politicians hostile to pushback.

If this is something thats in line with your values, you better be out in front of it, Emily Killham, director of research and insights with Perceptyx, says shed tell corporate clients. If its not in line with stated corporate values, its more possible for you to take a pass.

When Disney chose to stay quiet over Floridas Dont Say Gay bill, the company faced internal backlash because theyve been well known for a long time with employees for being very forward facing in terms of the LGBTQ community. But, Killham points out, Disney hasnt made a statement on gun control, and I havent seen their employees say theyre not taking a stance on every progressive issue.

One way companies feel safer taking a stand is when they do so as a group, says Bross, who was a founding co-chair of the Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality, which brings together more than two dozen companies to advance LGBTI rights. Companies who may not want to be as bold or are concerned about having the spotlight shined on them often look for opportunities to engage in coalition work, Bross says.

They also look to the rest of the industry to see what peers are doing. In the case of abortion, tech companies had been starting to add benefits covering legal or out-of-state travel costs since Texas adopted a restrictive abortion law last year. That made it easier for other companies to make the same commitments last week a list compiled by The New York Times shows similar commitments from not just tech firms but also media groups, banks, and retailers like Dicks.

Killham says that these quieter internal actions are often preferred. In states with abortion ban trigger laws, employees desire for private actions nearly doubled. They mostly just wanted a statement, Killham says. They wanted to know where their company stood on the issue. And employees in those states didnt want to see their companies abandon them by pulling out of the region either. If you have a large contingent of employees in Texas, for example, youre not really doing your people any favors by closing the office. Thats not looking out for your employees.

That means that even as big tech companies continue to expand in states that are restricting abortion rights, they may still be able to signal their progressive credentials to employees without setting themselves up for political pushback.

Still, Bross says that how companies speak out and the issues they choose to speak out on has the potential to be shaped by what workers want far more today than in decades past.

The employee voice has never been more important or stronger than it is now, he says.

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Why big tech companies are so quiet on abortion rights - The Verge

A better understanding of the intersection between data privacy and antitrust laws could lead to more effective regulation of tech giants.

That's according to Erika Douglas, assistant law professor at the Temple University Beasley School of Law. Douglas recently spoke on how data privacy and antitrust laws can rein in the power of tech giants during the American Antitrust Institute's 23rd annual policy conference in Washington, D.C.

Douglas said more work is needed to understand the interactions between the two types of laws, particularly before a federal data privacy law wins approval. There has been recent bipartisan momentum for a federal data privacy bill, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, also known as the "three corners" bill.

In this Q&A, Douglas discusses why a better understanding of the intersection between these two types of laws is critical, particularly for the success of antitrust cases already being brought against large tech companies like Google and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook.

Why do you think it's important to discuss the intersection of antitrust and data privacy laws?

Erika Douglas: It's a thousand antitrust actions and a thousand different privacy reforms, but until a couple of years ago, there was not very much dialogue between the two of them, particularly in the U.S. There's a bit more of this discussion of how the two work together in the European Union because they have stronger privacy laws and competition laws and it's enforced more often. The U.S. is coming around to these big battles against Google and Facebook. They don't get much attention, but there are allegations in both the Google and the Facebook case that they used their monopoly power to erode privacy. Did they? Is that why privacy was eroded or was privacy eroded for some other reason? There are a lot of questions there.

What might some of the challenges be for antitrust law if a federal data privacy law were enacted?

Douglas: What is interesting here for antitrust is almost all of those statutes, including the three corners bill, are making data privacy more of a right. So are state laws. The flurry of mini General Data Protection Regulations [the European Union privacy law] at the state level are turning privacy into a right. And privacy in the U.S. has been a consumer protection interest, but it hasn't been a right. A right is something different in law, and a right is more difficult for antitrust law to deal with because antitrust law equates everything to quantitative, monetary terms.

But if privacy is a right, I think that's going to be a real challenge for antitrust law, because how do you compare something that's quantifiable in competition to something that is a right or interest? That means we'll have to think a little bit more about exceptions or immunities in between data privacy and antitrust law.

This is going to become an issue if and when the U.S. gets federal omnibus privacy law, which is still a big question mark in people's minds. The three corners bill is definitely progress; it's more bipartisan support than we've seen before.

What other challenges might arise from implementing a federal data privacy law without fully understanding its interaction with antitrust law?

Douglas: When we do get that privacy law, there will be some big questions. You can see in that bill there's a duty of loyalty [acting in the best interest of users] for example that requires data minimization [limiting user data collection]. But antitrust law is really seeking data flow [greater exchange of data between companies] right now. There are all these proposals for legislation in antitrust law that would mandate interoperability. So how do you reconcile at a policy level and then at a legislative level data minimization on one hand, and data flow on the other hand? There are ways to reconcile them, and there are ways to have interoperability that maintains privacy, but the two legislative arcs seem to be going in different directions.

There has to be better understanding here to have effective digital policy. Erika DouglasAssistant law professor, Temple University Beasley School of Law

As policymakers consider data privacy law and antitrust law reform, should they be taking these conflicts into consideration?

Douglas: You can see some consideration of it for example in Klobuchar's bill, the American Choice and Innovation Online Act, that would impose mandatory [data] interoperability. There is an exception for privacy, but privacy isn't defined. If we think competition is more important than privacy, don't include exceptions. If you're going to include exceptions, what does that mean? Because large digital platforms are going to try to fall within the exceptions related to privacy, which are not defined in the legislation. There's a thin consideration of it on the antitrust side. On the privacy side, there's almost no consideration of antitrust law. To be fair, in the three corners bill, there are exceptions for compliance with other federal law that could, without mentioning antitrust law, potentially apply to antitrust law.

Will a better understanding of the intersection of data privacy and antitrust law ultimately lead to better regulation of digital giants?

Douglas: It definitely will lead to more sophisticated and nuanced regulation that has more chance of success. We've talked about the tension between these two areas, but there are many commonalities. The tensions are a [more complex] digital policy question to answer. They're both seeking to encourage consumer choice, and they're both combatting corporate power. But if they're going to do that in a way that is successful and leads to comprehensive, effective digital policy, we need to think about those escape hatches that are appropriate on each side, or how the law might be used in a way that's unexpected because one side argues there's a conflict. You can see this playing out in cases like Epic vs. Apple, where Apple is engaging in anticompetitive conduct according to the Northern District of California, but Apple then proved data privacy considerations were a justification. It's a useful example. If these two areas of law don't think about their interactions with each other, then big cases against big platforms might be unsuccessful for privacy law reasons. There has to be better understanding here to have effective digital policy.

Editor's note: Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Makenzie Holland is a news writer covering big tech and federal regulation. Prior to joining TechTarget, she was a general reporter for theWilmington StarNewsand a crime and education reporter at theWabash Plain Dealer.

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Big tech regulation needs both privacy and antitrust reform - TechTarget

Elon Musk has proclaimed himself to be a free speech absolutist though reports of the way employees of his companies have been treated when exercising their free speech rights to criticise him might indicate that his commitment to free speech has its limits. But as Musks bid to takeover Twitter progresses in fits and starts, the potential for anyone to access and control billions of opinions around the world for the right sum should focus all our minds on the need to protect an almost forgotten rightthe right to freedom of thought.

In 1942 the U.S. Supreme Court wrote Freedom to think is absolute of its own nature, the most tyrannical government is powerless to control the inward workings of the mind. The assumption that getting inside our heads is a practical impossibility may have prevented lawyers and legislators from dwelling too much on putting in place regulation that protects our inner lives. But it has not stopped powerful people trying to access and control our minds for centuries.

At his trial for War Crimes in Nuremberg after the Second World War, Albert Speer, Hitlers former Minister of Armaments, explaining the power of the Nazis propaganda machine said: Through technical devices such as radio and loudspeaker 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man. Today the danger of being terrorized by technocracy threatens every country in the world.

When whole communities are deprived of independent thought, it undermines their individual rights to freedom of thought and opinion. But it is not only a threat to the rights of the people who are manipulated. As the world saw with Nazi Germany, it becomes a threat to all our rights. Tragically, Speers warning is acutely resonant in the 21st-century as technology has been harnessed as an even more efficient tool for manipulation and control of the minds of populations with devastating consequences.

Facebooks role in facilitating genocide in Myanmar, a country where the platform turned into a beast according to UN factfinders was a wake up call to the potential for social media profiling and targeting to twist peoples minds inciting deadly violence. Facebook committed to doing better, but as the events that played out across the worlds screens from the U.S. Capitol on 6 January last year and the ongoing ethnic violence in Ethiopia today show, their approach is hopelessly inadequate.

It is not just because of the enormous challenge of content moderation on a global platform, the business model of social media based on surveillance advertising facilitates the hijacking of user engagement to deadly effect. An investigation by the campaign group Global Witness last year showed that they were able to get inflammatory adverts approved on Facebook to target individuals in Northern Ireland across the sectarian divide at a time of heightened tensions. When propaganda can be automated, curated and targeted to reach billions worldwide for profit, it is an existential threat to humanity and one that none of us can afford to ignore.

It may have been Facebook in the frame for these incidences of violence, but a global platform like Twitter could be an equally powerful tool for manipulation on a massive scale as Donald Trump well knew. Twitter is valuable, not because of what you can say on the platform, but because of the billions of opinions you can control through the curation of individual news feeds.

Increasingly the purpose of technological innovations, whether in the online environment or using big data, artificial intelligence or neuroscience is, precisely, to access and control the inner workings of our minds. That is where the money is. Inferences drawn from huge pools of data about us are used to decide if we are susceptible to gambling or prone to conspiracy theories, if we are anxious or over-confident so that our vulnerabilities can be managed, sold and exploited. Our minds are a valuable commodity in both the commercial and the political spheres.

Technology is being developed not only to predict our political leanings from our faces, but also to identify our individual psychological buttons and to press them in ways that might make it more or less likely that youll get off the couch and go out and vote. The rise of neuropolitics and the use of political behavioural psychography in electoral processes around the world is problematic because it undermines the foundations of democracy, no matter who is paying for it or which way you vote.

The use of these tactics spans ideological divides but we when we are talking about mass mind control, the implications are so profound and devastating that the ends can never justify the means. Politics is always about influence and persuasion, but democracy relies on the votes of individuals who have formed their opinions free from manipulation. At a time when many of us get most, or all of our information online, we need to make sure that our minds cannot be easily hijacked and sold to the highest bidder. The Washington DC Attorney Generals recent move to sue Mark Zuckerberg personally for Facebooks role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal may mark a shift in the right direction. Free flows of information allow us to form our opinions freely, we cannot afford to make one person the global gatekeeper to our minds, no matter how keen they may seem to be on freedom.

Its not just about social media. Technologists have ambitions beyond the screens we stare at and the enthralling devices we have glued to our palms. Elon Musks Neuralink has its sights set on nothing less than direct access to our brains. It claims to be designing the first neural implant that will let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go. Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) wont just control the way we receive information, they will control how our minds meet the world.

When Facebook announced its own project to develop non-invasive BCI in 2017, it promised that it would only read the thoughts you wanted it to. In 2021, it shelved the project. Perhaps it realised direct access to the human mind was just a bridge to far. Reading our minds in real time is only a part of it, in 2019, neuroscientists published an experiment where, by implanting electrodes into the brains of mice they could make the animals see things that were simply not there. If you worry about deepfakes, imagine how much more dangerous they could be if they were not on your screen but actually in your head.

While brain implants for manipulative marketing or mind-reading may not sound too appealing, when dressed up as health tech, these tools suddenly become saleable. Musk has reportedly claimed that Neuralink could help control hormone levels and mood to our advantage. But if your hormone levels can be changed to alter your brain to your advantage, they may also be altered to the advantage of someone else if that was more profitable or politically expedient. And imagine if you had to upgrade your brain as often as your phone to deal with those tricky built-in downgrades depleting your battery and clogging up your memory just that bit faster with every new model.

Whether we are looking at the global management of information flows or the tiny threads of Neuralinks brain-computer-interface pushing through our skulls, we need to wake up to the fundamental threat of systems that allow direct access to our minds en masse.

While freedom of speech can be limited in certain circumstances, the right to freedom of thought is absolute in international human rights law. It means that we have the right to keep our thoughts private, not to be penalized for our thoughts alone, and to keep our inner lives free from manipulation. We can no longer rely on the Supreme Courts outdated assumption that no one can control the inward workings of our mind. Whether or not the claims are overblown, technology is already trading on its potential to do just that.

We need freedom of thought to combat climate change, racism and global poverty, and to fall in love, laugh and dream. It is crucial to the cultural, scientific, political and emotional life in our societies. Once we lose it we may never get it back. Musks takeover of Twitter combined with his ambitions for Neuralink make the threat of big tech to our freedom of thought impossible to ignore.

We need serious regulation to check the systems that want get inside our heads and we need it now. Tackling the business models underpinning social media and banning the use of BCIs as consumer products before they become a mass-market reality would be first, but urgent steps. We must learn from history the dangers of letting one man control the minds of millions or billions of people and we must be prepared to say no before it is too late.

Its not about Elon Musk, its about anyone having that kind of access to your mind. Our future should not be built on the best way to monetise the global population and obtain world domination for the few. It must be grounded in what it means to be human, and for that, we must have the freedom to think.

Adapted from Alegres new book Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate our Minds by Susie Alegre, published by Atlantic Books

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We're Dangerously Close to Giving Big Tech Control Of Our Thoughts - TIME

Giving the government final approval on whether, for instance, an algorithm could prejudice against a particular group of people, is potentially a model that could be exported elsewhere. But such power becomes menacing in the hands of an all-surveilling Chinese state accused of genocide.

Angela Zhang, an antitrust specialist and associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, calls the regulatory shifts in China unique, in large part because of the countrys top-down political system and relative lack of checks and balances. And, Fung adds, much of Chinas approach to tech regulation relies on draconian laws such as the real-name policy, which requires that people link government identification to online activities. Such a policy would be unthinkable in a liberal democracy, Webster argues.

Chinas tech regulation goals are often in direct contradiction to what the rest of the world is trying to do. Nothing, or very little about whats being done in China, is reining in the power of the greatest data processor of them all: the Chinese government, says Jamie Susskind, a barrister specializing in data and tech at London law firm 11KBW. Within China, officials have focused their attention on regulating domestic tech companies to the point of submission. The broader techlash has already resulted in Alibaba cofounder and executive chair Jack Ma stepping back from public life and is rumored to be behind the decision of Zhang Yiming, ByteDances founder, to step down as CEO.

The dramatic fall of Ma is typical of Chinas approach to regulation. When we start being starry-eyed about the Chinese model of enforcement, we've lost track of the fact that regulation isn't just supposed to rein in private companies, Susskind says. It's also supposed to limit the power of the state. In China, thats rarely the case. The challenge, Webster adds, is in unpicking the areas in which China and the rest of the world share common goalsand areas in which China is pursuing goals that democracies would find abhorrent.

Take Chinas draft rules on synthetic media as one example. Presented in January, the proposals call for limits to be placed on the spread of deepfake contentan issue that has blighted not just China but the entire world. Under the rules, anything synthetic cannot be promoted through algorithms. Apps that promote deepfake content could face criminal prosecution and fines of up to RMB100,000 ($15,000). However, China has been one of the main developers of deepfake technology, including homegrown app Zao, which became popular in 2019.

But Chinas recent wave of eye-catching moves against big tech is also a sign of officials playing catch-up with the rest of the world. For years, the country has, like many others, let the tech sector run rampant as a key driver of economic growth. And, as a result, the sector was closely tied to the political elite. Alibabas Ma, for example, has been a member of the Chinese Communist Party since the 1980s. Such closeness has allowed certain tech founders to lobby officials for preferential treatment. Chinese regulation used to be very lax, says Zhang. The recent enforcement is mostly restoring some balance between regulation and innovation.

And, in some instances, Chinese policymakers are adapting ideas from the West. The EUs General Data Protection Regulation not only inspired the California Consumer Privacy Act but also similar moves within China, including that countrys Personal Information Protection Law, which limits how much personal data private companies can collect. (The state, of course, can collect all it wants.) The concept of watching what the world is doing, then molding a China-suitable solution, isnt unique to tech, Webster says. This is just how Chinas policy makers work: They actively compare other systems.

Chinese regulators might be cribbing from elsewhere to an extent, but theyre very much forging their own path with how they seek to control the tech sector. And, as more regulation rolls in, it will only further splinter an already splintered internet. But, Webster argues, there may be lessons to learn from what China is tackling, rathan than how its going about it. There are smart people working hard to try to reshape the Chinese digital economy, he says. The job is not that different, even though the political systems are.

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China Is Tightening Its Grip on Big Tech - WIRED

In the days after the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, tech companies rushed to show their support for employees living in states where the procedure is now outlawed. Meta promised to pay expenses for staffers who need to travel out of their home state for an abortion. Alphabet, Googles parent company, told employees they could apply to relocate from states banning abortion.

These companies have not given that same kind of support to their users, amid growing concerns that a digital footprintincluding websites visited, location data from a phone, or private messages on a social platformcould be used to build a criminal case against someone seeking an abortion.

MIT Technology Review asked five major tech companiesAlphabet, Meta, Reddit, TikTok, and Twitterhow their policies banning content promoting illegal activity will apply to posts advocating for abortion access or aiding those who now need to travel out of state for the procedure. Their responses, when provided, were inconsistent. Read the full story.

Abby Ohlheiser and Hana Kiros

The U.S. only has 6,000 charging stations for EVs. Heres where they all are.

The United States has around 150,000 fuel stations to refill its fleet of fossil-fuel-burning vehicles. Despite the rapid growth of electric vehicles in America400,000 of them were sold in 2021, up from barely 10,000 in 2012the country has only 6,000 DC fast electric charging stations, the kind that can rapidly juice up a battery-powered car.

A glance at Americas charging map reveals an abundance of charging deserts, particularly outside big cities. This makes sense, as EVs still represent less than 3% of new car sales. But while its illustrative of how American charging infrastructure lags far behind whats needed for the whole country to transition to electric driving, theres still time to catch up. Read the full story.

Andrew Moseman

How green steel made with electricity could clean up a dirty industry

The news: Startup Boston Metal has recently installed a new reactor at its headquarters, a significant step in its bid to make emissions-free steel. Since its founding in 2013, the company has developed a process to make green steel. The new reactor, along with a coming fundraising round, represents the next leap for the company as it tries to scale up.

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The Download: Big Techs post-Roe silence, and the US EV charging landscape - MIT Technology Review

A rout in Big Tech weighed heavily on stocks, with gains in the broader market sputtering as a report showed Americans grew more downbeat about prospects for the economy.

Traders got another reality check Tuesday after a worrisome reading on consumer confidence.

A gauge of expectations which reflects a six-month outlook tumbled to an almost decade low.

The figures come at a time when analysts remain bullish about corporate earnings, with net-margin estimates for S&P 500 companies at a record high.

The bleak economic picture pushed the U.S. equity benchmark lower, following gains that topped 1% earlier in the day.

The index hovered near the key Fibonacci 38.2% retracement level of 3,815. Quarterly rebalancing of portfolios also fueled volatility.

The Nasdaq 100 sank over 3%, dragged down by giants like Amazon.com and Tesla. Treasuries and the dollar rose.

For Goldman Sachs strategists, margin forecasts are too optimistic, putting stocks at risk of more losses when Wall Street analysts downgrade their estimates.

Meantime, HSBCs Max Kettner said equities arent still reflecting the impact of a potential recession, with earnings expectations at risk of being revised lower.

The one thing that we can say with conviction is that high market volatility is likely to persist until theres clear evidence that inflation is declining and the Fed pivots towards a less hawkish stance, taking the off-ramp away from the recession destination, said Jason Draho, head of asset allocation for the Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management.

Federal Reserve officials played down the risk that the U.S. economy will tip into a recession, even as they raise rates, with another 75 basis-point hike on the table next month.

New York Fed President John Williams and San Franciscos Mary Daly both acknowledged they had to cool inflation but insisted that a soft landing was still possible.

A key set of rates that the Fed is focusing on to help judge financial conditions is still some way from levels that might prompt officials to halt their tightening plans.

Inflation-adjusted U.S. rates at the shorter end of the curve are still mired below zero even as real rates on longer-tenor securities this month surged to levels unseen since 2019.

Its tough to see a high probability of any sustained stock rally in the near term, according to Alifia Doriwala, managing director at RockCreek.

She says the market could be in for an even worse third quarter. The S&P 500 has tumbled more than 15% since the end of March.

We could see a lot of turbulence during earnings season if companies start revising earnings downward because they are seeing increased margin pressures, Doriwala told Bloomberg Television.

Elsewhere, oil rose for a third day as global output threats compound already red-hot markets for physical supplies, while the Group of Seven agreed to look into a price cap for Russian crude.

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Big Tech sinks stocks bruised by recession jitters - The Spokesman Review

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Privacy In Focus

The European Commission has reached a provisional politicalagreement on two legislative proposals that will upend currentrules governing digital services, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). The Commissionreached a political agreement on the DMA on March 25, 2022 and anagreement on the DSA on April 23, 2022. There still are severalsteps needed before the new laws will take effect. Currently, thelaws are expected to take effect in early 2024.

The DMA and DSA together will fundamentally change how digitalplatforms operate and engage with consumers and third-partyoperators in the EU. A high-level overview of key provisions ofeach Act is provided below.

The DMA places limits on the market power of the largest digitalplatforms in an effort to level the playing field for smallerplayers. Under the new regulation, the largest digital platformsthat act as a "gateway" to digital services will besubject to a host of regulatory obligations.

Scope

The Act applies to a company that meets the followingcriteria:

Regulatory Obligations

The DMA requires that covered entities take steps to ensure thedigital market is open and fair to smaller businesses andconsumers. Among other requirements:

Gatekeepers must allow consumers to:

Gatekeepers must allow other businesses to:

Additionally, gatekeepers are prohibited from:

Penalties for noncompliance are stiff, with the maximum penaltybeing set at 20% of a gatekeeper's total worldwide turnover inthe preceding financial year. Other enforcement options includemarket investigations that result in behavioral or structuralremedies.

The DSA's regulatory framework imposes rules governing howplatforms moderate content, advertise, and use algorithmicprocesses. This Act aims to increase the transparency andaccountability of online platforms by encouraging innovation andcompetition opportunities for smaller platforms and a strongprotection framework for consumers who interact with onlinecontent.

Scope

The DSA applies to a variety of online intermediaries andplatforms, including internet providers, social media platforms,app stores, and content-sharing platforms. The obligations of theDSA depend on the size of the business and factor in the number ofusers and nature of the services provided. The most stringentobligations apply to "very large" platforms (VLP).Smaller entities, while largely exempt from the more complexcompliance requirements, are encouraged to follow them as a bestpractice.

Regulatory Obligations

The DSA requires transparency and accountability to create adigital space that is safe for all users. The Act requires, amongother obligations, that covered entities:

The Commission will share responsibility for enforcing the DMAwith Member State regulators. The Commission will enforce theobligations against VLP. Other entities will be subject to thesupervision of Member State regulators, with the support of a newindependent advisory group, the European Board for DigitalServices. The Commission will charge platforms annual supervisoryfees to be established based on the costs incurred by theCommission to exercise its supervisory tasks, capped at 0.05% ofannual worldwide net income.

Ania Trichet, a Wiley 2022 Summer Associate, contributed tothis article.

The content of this article is intended to provide a generalguide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be soughtabout your specific circumstances.

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During the month of June, many organizations show their support for Pride Month by displaying rainbow symbols on their logos, uniforms, and social media pages. And while these gestures do indeed help to promote some level of awareness and solidarity, theyre also not particularly impactful in the world outside our screens. So in an effort to showcase and celebrate the companies that went above and beyond to support Pride in more substantial ways, we surveyed the tech landscape in search of companies that did more than just fly the rainbow flag for a few weeks. Here are a few that caught our eye:

In addition to banning anti-LGBTQ apps and participating in other efforts to support the community, Apple released two Pride Month Apple Watch Pride bands this year, providing a clear and wearable way for its customers to show support for the LGBTQ+ community in the real world.

Apple also came out with Pride Threads and Nike Pride Threads watch faces, which are available for download for Apple Watch users with Apple Watch Series 4 or later (your watch will need watchOS 8.6 and your iPhone will need to be running 15.5 or later).

DraftKings is an online sports betting, fantasy sports, and online casino platform. The brand joined with Out in Tech, which is an organization that aims to unite the LGBTQ+ tech community and helps create opportunities for the community in the tech field.

Together, the two created a free-to-play Pride Month pool, and for every entry, DraftKings donated $1 to Out in Tech. DraftKings also showed support for other diversity initiatives like American Veterans for Equal Rights, pledging $25,000 to the organization.

GitLab, a software platform that helps to automate and streamline the software development cycle, was founded in 2011. Over its decade-long journey, the company has seen a demand for change by society, and the brand seems to be rising to the occasion.

The company includes diversity and inclusion as one of its main core values. The GitLab Pride Issue Board also holds events like a transgender day of visibility and a coming out day, which is designed to connect employees at GitLab that are part of the LGBTQ+ community, or are allies, with professional and personal opportunities to meet others, speak at events, and share their lived experiences to improve and strengthen our community, the company website reports.

Skillsoft is a company that provides cloud-based corporate learning tools and content. The brand has a virtual book club that features monthly book selections. For Pride Month 2022, the company selected an array of books that discuss different LGBTQ+ civil rights topics. For instance, one of the books on the list is The Book of Pride, which talks about the story of the gay rights movement over the last 60 years.

Skillsoft has adopted other initiatives too. For instance, in 2021, Skillsoft promoted the #YouAreIncluded pronoun inclusion initiative. After 10 months, this initiative resulted in a 38% increase in the adoption of pronoun use in employee e-mail signatures.

As a brand that included sexual orientation in its discrimination policies in 1989 and began offering benefits to same-sex partnerships in 1993, Microsoft has been ahead of the curve in many ways. This year, the brand released an Xbox Pride Controller and other pride apps and gear, which helped its customers show support for their LGBTQ+ friends, family, and community. Microsoft also puts its money into the cause, donating $170,000 to LGBTQ+ non-profits, and thats on top of the $8 million the company donated along with its employees since last year.

The companys Microsoft Unlocked a platform that includes stories, content, and events features a Pride edition as its inaugural edition. On top of that, Microsofts Global LGBTQ+ Employee and Allies at Microsoft Employee Resource Group (GLEAM) has been expanding its efforts and spreading awareness for additional gender and sexual identities.

This year, Google.org committed $4 million (as well as additional assistance) to LGBTQ+ businesses affected by COVID-19, and also built on some of the Pride initiatives it has launched in years past.

In 2019, the search engine giant commemorated the historic 1969 Stonewall riots with the interactive Stonewall Forever Monument. This year, Google and Google.org have been able to provide almost $1 million to Pride Live, an LGBTQ+ activism and awareness group thats working to secure the lease to the Stonewall Inn and renovate it to create the Stonewall National Monument and Visitor Center.

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Beyond rainbows: 5 tech companies that did more for Pride in 2022 - Digital Trends

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

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

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

Efforts to unionize in the US:

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

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

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

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

The dummied-up flyer bore the hallmarks of a real WANTED poster. A grainy photo of a woman outside an election office in the suburbs of Atlanta stamped with the word WANTED. An image of a sheriffs badge and the phone number for the Gwinnett County Sheriffs Office. The implication was clear: The woman was being sought by the local sheriff for voter fraud.

The flyer was fake, and though the sheriffs office eventually called it out, the false poster went viral, amassing tens of thousands of shares, views and threatening comments on Facebook, Twitter and TikTok and raising fears that harm could come to the unidentified woman.

Stolen-election activists and supporters of former President Donald Trump have embraced a new tactic in their ongoing campaign to unearth supposed proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential race: chasing down a fictional breed of fraudster known as a ballot mule and using social media to do it.

Inspired by a conservative documentary film that has won praise from Trump and his allies and debunking from critics including former Attorney General William Barr self-styled citizen sleuths are posting and sharing photos of unnamed individuals and accusing them of election crimes. They are calling on their followers to help identify these ballot mules, who are accused of having violated laws against dropping off multiple absentee ballots during the 2020 election. A state lawmaker in Arizona has even encouraged people to act as vigilantes and catch future mules.

Promoting such false information violates the policies of Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. Facebooks Community Standards says its policy is to remove content that incites harassment or violence or impersonates government officials. Twitter and TikTok have similar rules and guidelines for what can and cant appear on their platforms.

ProPublica identified at least a dozen additional posts on Twitter, Facebook and TikTok that accuse unnamed individuals of being ballot mules and engaging in allegedly illegal activity. Some of these posts echo the WANTED-style language seen in the Gwinnett County meme, while others include similar calls to action to identify the individuals.

None of the posts reviewed by ProPublica include evidence that any of the people depicted in the posters engaged in illegal activity. Yet the social media companies have reacted slowly or not at all to such posts, some of which clearly violate their policies, experts say.

Disinformation researchers from the nonpartisan clean-government nonprofit Common Cause alerted Facebook and Twitter that the platforms were allowing users to post such incendiary claims in May. Not only did the claims lack evidence that crimes had been committed, but experts worry that poll workers, volunteers and regular voters could face unwarranted harassment or physical harm if they are wrongfully accused of illegal election activity.

So far, there is no sign that any of the people depicted have been identified or suffered any threats.

Emma Steiner, a disinformation analyst with Common Cause who sent warnings to the social-media companies, says the lack of action suggests that tech companies relaxed their efforts to police election-related threats ahead of the 2022 midterms.

This is the new playbook, and Im worried that platforms are not prepared to deal with this tactic that encourages dangerous behavior, Steiner said.

Spokespeople for Facebook, TikTok and Twitter said they would remove posts flagged by ProPublica for violating their respective community standards policies.

Thirty-one states allow a third party to collect and return an absentee or mail-in ballot on behalf of another voter. These laws help voters who are disabled or infirm, live in spread-out rural areas or reside on tribal lands with limited access to polling places or ballot drop boxes. In states with a history of absentee voting, both Democratic and Republican operatives have engaged in organized ballot-collection drives.

Critics, labeling the practice ballot harvesting, have sought to restrict its use, warning about the potential for fraud. However, incidents of proven fraud related to ballot collection are extremely rare. A database maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation identifies just 238 cases of fraudulent use of absentee ballots since 1988. One high-profile case of fraud involving absentee ballots occurred in a 2018 North Carolina congressional race. A Republican operative engaged in a ballot-tampering scheme involving hundreds of ballots. The state election board later threw out the election result and ordered a redo. It was likely the first federal election overturned due to fraud, according to historians and election-law experts.

The phrases ballot mules and ballot trafficking with their intentional echoes of the language of drugs and cartels started to gain traction online in 2021, according to Mike Caulfield, a misinformation researcher at the University of Washingtons Center for an Informed Public. An analysis by Caulfield and his colleagues found that prominent Republicans including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel invoked ballot trafficking last spring.

But it wasnt until conservative provocateur Dinesh DSouza and a discredited conservative group called True the Vote last fall began to tease findings that would later appear in DSouzas movie 2000 Mules that uses of ballot trafficking and ballot mules shot up, according to Caulfields research.

The 2000 Mules film claims that a network of thousands of people illegally stuffed ballot boxes in swing states to steal the presidency for Joe Biden. It draws heavily on the work of True the Vote, which purported to use surveillance footage and geolocation data to make its claims of illegal ballot activity.

Numerous fact-checks of the film have cast serious doubt over its central premise. In a deposition with the Jan. 6 select committee, Barr said he found the conclusions of 2000 Mules far from convincing. My opinion then and my opinion now, he said, is that the election was not stolen by fraud, and I havent seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the 2000 Mules movie.

True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht said her group had never spoken with Barr and disputed the notion that True the Vote had not proven its claims about voter fraud. I do think that when 80%+ of America is concerned about election integrity, something must be done to address the situation, she said. It is the failure of leaders across all branches of government, who have allowed lawlessness to be the new law, that we find ourselves where we do. DSouza did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite its flimsy conclusions, 2000 Mules found an enthusiastic audience in Trump and his supporters. In early May, Trump screened the film at his Mar-a-Lago private club. The film has since earned nearly $1.5 million at the box office, according to Box Office Mojo. In a recent 12-page letter responding to the public hearings organized by the Jan. 6 select committee, Trump cited 2000 Mules nearly 20 times.

As the films dubious claims have spread online, stolen-election activists are creating and sharing online content purporting to reveal more mules and accusing those individuals of illegal behavior without actual evidence of wrongdoing.

The most striking example is the meme that depicts an older white woman leaving a ballot drop box in Georgias suburban Gwinnett County. The word WANTED appears above her head as does the image of a sheriffs badge labeled Gwinnett County and the sheriff offices phone number.

Ballot mule, the meme says. If you can ID her, call Gwinnett Co. sheriffs office.

A spokeswoman for the Gwinnett County Sheriffs Office says the meme is fake. The sheriffs office hasnt received calls purporting to identify the woman. The spokeswoman said that the office was investigating who created the meme.

ProPublica was unable to identify the woman in the WANTED meme. A spokesman for the Gwinnett County elections office confirmed that the name tag worn by the woman in the meme matched those worn by county election workers in 2020. He also verified that the drop box in the video was located outside of the countys election headquarters.

The origins of the womans photo in the WANTED meme appear to point back to a Georgia businessman and self-described election-fraud investigator named David Cross.

For months Cross has posted short clips of surveillance footage showing people depositing ballots at drop boxes in Gwinnett County. Cross sometimes narrates these videos and makes unverified accusations of illegal ballot harvesting. In a clip that Cross posted online on May 3, an older white woman the same woman in the WANTED meme deposits multiple ballots into the drop box outside the headquarters for Gwinnett Countys elections office. In his narration, Cross accuses the woman of depositing as many as 35 ballots, though its not at all clear from the video exactly how many ballots the woman deposited. Totally illegal, he says in the video. (Cross did not respond to requests for comment.)

Georgia law prohibits many third parties from submitting a ballot thats not their own. However, the law makes exceptions for caregivers for the elderly and the disabled, immediate family members, members of the same household, in-laws, nieces, nephews, grandchildren and more.

Cross, the Georgia activist, has filed complaints with the State Election Board and secretary of states office alleging illegal ballot deliveries and citing his surveillance footage clips. Last month, the State Election Board dismissed three complaints alleging ballot harvesting after an investigation by the secretary of states office found that the alleged mules were voters dropping off ballots for themselves and family members.

A spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told ProPublica that the office has a pending investigation into the woman in the WANTED meme. The spokesman, Walter Jones, stressed that no one should assume that an individual shown in a video delivering multiple ballots is automatically guilty of a crime, nor would the ballots in question be invalidated even if someone had violated the states ballot-collection law.

The video published by Cross of the woman at the Gwinnett County drop box spread rapidly online. Twitter users accused the woman of being one of the 2000 mules and urged their followers to MAKE HER FAMOUS! in other words, reveal her identity and share it widely.

One Twitter user shared the womans image with the WANTED text and the fake Gwinnett County sheriffs badge. Once we find out who paid these people the whole story will become clear, the account wrote. That tweet amassed more than 9,000 retweets and more than 14,000 likes before Twitter removed it.

The WANTED post spread across Twitter, Facebook and TikTok. A Facebook group called Celebrities for Trump shared it. We need more if [sic] these, the post said, referring to the WANTED sign. Keep your eyes open. Report them all it is a crime.

Several days after the WANTED flyer surfaced and reached a large audience, the Gwinnett County sheriff stated that the post was false. Yet despite the post impersonating a law-enforcement agency, social-media companies have been slow to remove it.

While Twitter removed dozens of posts with the WANTED sign, ProPublica was able to find instances of it still on the platform.

Disinformation researchers tell ProPublica that they also identified posts accusing people of being ballot mules in other states with laws that restrict third parties from submitting peoples ballots. Mule right here in PA, one TikTok post read. Make this Upper Dublin resident famous #2000Mules #2000MulesDocumentary #2000MulesTheMovie.

In Arizona, a Republican state senator named Kelly Townsend has encouraged people to camp out at ballot drop boxes and write down license plate numbers of people deemed to be suspicious. I have been so pleased to hear of all you vigilantes that want to camp out at these drop boxes, Townsend recently said. So, do it. Do it.

Even if 2000 Mules were accurate which experts stress it almost certainly is not the ballot-trafficking theory put forward by the film would not change the result of any election. Rick Hasen, a professor and election-law expert at the University of California, Irvine, says he believes the rigged-election message in 2000 Mules is just the latest attempt to more broadly lay the groundwork for challenging and overturning the outcome of a future election.

If you believe the last election was stolen, youre going to be more likely to take steps to steal the next one back, Hasen said. Its pretty obvious that whats going on here is using false claims of fraud as a potential pretext to engage in election subversion in 2024 or another future election. Thats very dangerous for American democracy.

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'Big Lie' Vigilantism Is on the Rise. Big Tech Is Failing to Respond. - Minnesota Reformer