Category Archives: Big Tech

In the summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic locked many inside their homes, seniors quickly became some of the most isolated. Older adults found themselves unable to visit with loved ones they relied on. In the past year, several industry behemoths, including Google, Apple, and Amazon, have announced products and services geared toward helping older adults, once the realm of [more niche companies] The draw is clear: Voice assistants, especially, have made access easier for less-tech-savvy consumers.

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In the summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic locked many inside their homes, seniors quickly became some of the most isolated. Especially susceptible to the virus, and still without a vaccine, older adults found themselves unable to visit with loved ones they relied on.

Some tech companies stepped in with an offer to help.

In May of that year, Google announced that it would give away 1,000 of its Nest Hub Max voice assistants to retirement communities in Washington state. The same month as Googles announcement, Amazon announced that it was donating $5million in smart speakers to health care workers, students, and retirement communities.

The donation provided Echo Dot voice assistants for senior homes in Washington state and California to help residents become more independent, while staying informed, engaged and connected with friends, family and caregivers, the company said in a blog post.

And just this week, Amazon announced plans to bring Alexa to even more senior living communities. The program, part of its Alexa Smart Properties initiative, will allow community operators to install Alexa devices and make announcements to residents through them, as well as to streamline activities like check-ins, field requests for maintenance, and administrative tasksenabling associates to save time and increase productivity, according to the companys announcement.

Those arent the only initiatives Big Tech is exploring for seniors. In the past year, several industry behemothsincluding Google, Apple, and Amazonhave announced products and services geared toward helping older adults, once the realm of more niche companies.

For those larger companies, theres an obvious market incentive. Seniors, in general, adopt tech at a low rate, but that rate has been accelerating in recent years. Voice assistants, especially, have made access easier for less-tech-savvy consumers.

Voice technology availability, ease of access, and who has all the moneythat has created interest in this market, said Laurie Orlov, who heads the analyst site Aging and Health Technology Watch and noted the trend in a blog post earlier this month.

The draw for seniors is clear. Devices like voice assistants and wearables are simple to use and can give some peace of mind to family members, who can chat over video calls and even digitally monitor loved ones behavior. Older adults can also more easily connect to emergency services in case of an accident.

But those innovations have also sparked some concerns among privacy and health care advocates, who wonder about the cost and pitfalls of remotely monitoring loved ones. Some of the core worries: Whos listening in on these products? Are seniors giving proper consent to being monitored? And what happens to caregiving in a more automated future?

With panic about older loved ones spreading in the past year, tech companies have been promoting their devices as at least a partial solution, releasing products for monitoring safety and facilitating communication with older adults.

Apple, for example, announced in 2018 that its Apple Watch would use motion detection to learn when a person wearing the watch falls. While it could be helpful to anyone with concerns, it was clearly targeted: The service is turned on by default for anyone over 55 years old.

This year, the company went even further. Included in its latest iPhone operating system, iOS15, are algorithms for determining the steadiness of a persons gait and potential for a fall in the future.

The company also released an update for its AirPods called Conversation Boost, which can be used to help the hard of hearing by increasing the volume of a conversation.

Last month, Amazon announced plans to offer a robot dog called Astro.

Other companies, like Google and Amazon, are hitching their plans for elder care to voice assistants. When Google announced its partnership to send Nest Hub Max devices to senior homes, it went beyond just giving away the hardwarethe company said it also simplified the software to make it easier for seniors to use.

Last year, Amazon announced a service for its Alexa device line called Care Hub. The service lets caregivers remotely see how an Alexa device is being used, or even sends them an alert if the person theyre looking after doesnt use their device by a certain time.

The company expanded on the service earlier this year, launching a monthly $19.99 subscription service called Alexa Together, which includes an emergency response call service that can be triggered if a wearable device detects a fall or by the phrase, Alexa, call for help. And the companies seem far from done with services for the elderly.

Last month, Amazon announced plans to offer a robot dog called Astro. The robot, equipped with a screen, microphone, and camera, is designed to wheel around a persons home and respond to commands.

In its announcement, Amazon said it imagined the robot being placed in the homes of seniors, giving them reminders during the day and reporting back to family members about their well-being through integration with Alexa Together.

In short, companies are following the money, Orlov said. Theres a relatively untapped market in older adults, and one with command of more dollars than younger people.

Money talks.

Laurie Orlov, Aging and Health Technology Watch

Thats why, she said. Money talks.

Smaller tech companies have been carving out niche products directly targeting the elderly for some time. But only relatively recently have bigger players shown an interest in the older market.

In her blog post, Orlov pointed out that just a decade ago, the tech industry seemed unconcerned with seniors needs.

But as the baby boomer population ages, Orlov points out, more of them are looking for ways to stay safe and healthy, while loved ones are searching for ways to watch over them. The pandemic, especially, exposed just how great that need was.

It was a major embarrassment, really, the lack of connectivity of older people during the pandemic and especially during the time they were supposed to register to get a vaccine, Orlov told The Markup.

Clara Berridge, a professor at the University of Washington who researches older adults and technology, said theres another reason why the devices have become so popular. Many people want to stay in their homes as they age, but because of a dire lack of home-care infrastructure in the United States, people are sometimes turning to the only options they can find and affordconsumer tracking devices. Its not necessarily comparable service, Berridge said, but its an affordable option.

People are mostly on their own to figure out elder care.

Clara Berridge, University of Washington

We have a very fragmented long-term care system in this country, if you can even call it a system, she said. So people are mostly on their own to figure out elder care.

Its not just families but also care facilities themselves. Even well before COVID-19, businesses, nonprofits, and retirement communities had been experimenting with providing voice assistants to care home residents.

That trend has since accelerated. I think the turn to institutions is intensified with COVID and concerns around whats going on in facilities, Berridge said.

While devices can provide a sense of connection, some privacy advocates worry about what sorts of data are being collected through those devicesespecially since few consumers, in general, will wade through a complex privacy policy or tinker with settings, and even fewer seniors are likely to doso.

I think youre dealing with a population and situation where people are not necessarily even going to exercise the limited control theyre given over how data is collected, said Hayley Tsukayama, a legislative activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I think youre dealing with a population where people are not necessarily even going to exercise the limited control theyre given over how data is collected.

Hayley Tsukayama, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Concerns about where voice assistant data is traveling arent new, but having someone close, like a relative, monitoring behavior brings its own concerns. Its not always clear, for one, that seniors are consenting to the monitoring.

Amazons Alexa Together service requires an opt-in from both the owner of the Alexa device doing the monitoring and the mobile app it is transmitting data to. But as some observers pointed out last year, it seems simple for someone to opt-in for someone by setting up an account for them and signing up for the service.

Berridge points out that even a caretaker acting with good intentions can, through benevolentcoercion, subtly pressure an older loved one into using a device they might not be comfortable with. A caregiver tends to have quite a bit of power over somebody, she said.

If a loved one is suffering from a condition like dementia, that could change the ethical calculus too, and there may not be a tidy answer to whether that person is consenting to family monitoring, Tsukayama said.

How do you weigh, as the child of someone, where you think their mind is and their overall ability to understand a situation and protect themselves in a situation, and how they feel about being watched? she said.

Amazon, for its part, says its care app masks some types of data. A remote watcher would only be able to see that a loved one was using Alexa for entertainment, for example, but not see whether a song or podcast was played. But its still really fine-grained data, Tsukayama said.

Whether in homes or care facilities, Berridge said, theres also a risk that people will choose to rely on cheap surveillance devices over human labor. Theres already a woefully insufficient number of care workers in the country, she said, and for some operators, placing an Amazon Echo in every room may look like a savvy solution to understaffing. The conditions are ripe for that, and they have been for a long time, she said.

Tech companies have good reason to care about what seniors think about privacy. An AARP survey published this year found that, for people over 50, privacy was one of the biggest barriers to adopting new technology, with about 34 percent of people surveyed citing it as a concern.

Apple didnt respond to a request for comment. A Google spokesperson referred back to the companys initial announcement of its care facility partnership, which notes the devices were provided in a way that preserves privacy for the residents, as the devices are managed on Nests fleet management system and run in a signed out mode, meaning no audio is stored and all activity is anonymous.

Beatrice Geoffrin, director of Amazon Alexa, said in an emailed statement to The Markup that privacy is foundational to its products, including Astro and Alexa Together.

Astro is built with multiple layers of privacy to provide customers with transparency and control, and we designed Alexa Together to give both the care recipient and caregiver peace of mind, without compromising privacy, the statement said. In order to even use Alexa Together, the care recipient has to first approve the connection with their caregiver, and can also end that connection at any time.

The use of devices for elder care seems likely to expand, even if the pandemic is brought under control. Berridge points out that its an example of disaster surveillanceinstalling surveillance devices during an emergency, only for the tools to stick around well after that emergency subsides.

I dont think that theyre going to go away, and I think its going to enable the scope of what families are doing and what facilities are doing with the tech, Berridge said. More surveillance of the workers and more surveillance of the residents.

Written by: Colin Lecher

Originally published here: https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/10/28/how-big-tech-is-pitching-digital-elder-care-to-families

In the summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic locked many inside their homes, seniors quickly became some of the most isolated. Especially susceptible to the virus, and still without a vaccine, older adults found themselves unable to visit with loved ones they relied on.

Some tech companies stepped in with an offer to help.

In May of that year, Google announced that it would give away 1,000 of its Nest Hub Max voice assistants to retirement communities in Washington state. The same month as Googles announcement, Amazon announced that it was donating $5million in smart speakers to health care workers, students, and retirement communities.

The donation provided Echo Dot voice assistants for senior homes in Washington state and California to help residents become more independent, while staying informed, engaged and connected with friends, family and caregivers, the company said in a blog post.

And just this week, Amazon announced plans to bring Alexa to even more senior living communities. The program, part of its Alexa Smart Properties initiative, will allow community operators to install Alexa devices and make announcements to residents through them, as well as to streamline activities like check-ins, field requests for maintenance, and administrative tasksenabling associates to save time and increase productivity, according to the companys announcement.

Those arent the only initiatives Big Tech is exploring for seniors. In the past year, several industry behemothsincluding Google, Apple, and Amazonhave announced products and services geared toward helping older adults, once the realm of more niche companies.

For those larger companies, theres an obvious market incentive. Seniors, in general, adopt tech at a low rate, but that rate has been accelerating in recent years. Voice assistants, especially, have made access easier for less-tech-savvy consumers.

Voice technology availability, ease of access, and who has all the moneythat has created interest in this market, said Laurie Orlov, who heads the analyst site Aging and Health Technology Watch and noted the trend in a blog post earlier this month.

The draw for seniors is clear. Devices like voice assistants and wearables are simple to use and can give some peace of mind to family members, who can chat over video calls and even digitally monitor loved ones behavior. Older adults can also more easily connect to emergency services in case of an accident.

But those innovations have also sparked some concerns among privacy and health care advocates, who wonder about the cost and pitfalls of remotely monitoring loved ones. Some of the core worries: Whos listening in on these products? Are seniors giving proper consent to being monitored? And what happens to caregiving in a more automated future?

With panic about older loved ones spreading in the past year, tech companies have been promoting their devices as at least a partial solution, releasing products for monitoring safety and facilitating communication with older adults.

Apple, for example, announced in 2018 that its Apple Watch would use motion detection to learn when a person wearing the watch falls. While it could be helpful to anyone with concerns, it was clearly targeted: The service is turned on by default for anyone over 55 years old.

This year, the company went even further. Included in its latest iPhone operating system, iOS15, are algorithms for determining the steadiness of a persons gait and potential for a fall in the future.

The company also released an update for its AirPods called Conversation Boost, which can be used to help the hard of hearing by increasing the volume of a conversation.

Last month, Amazon announced plans to offer a robot dog called Astro.

Other companies, like Google and Amazon, are hitching their plans for elder care to voice assistants. When Google announced its partnership to send Nest Hub Max devices to senior homes, it went beyond just giving away the hardwarethe company said it also simplified the software to make it easier for seniors to use.

Last year, Amazon announced a service for its Alexa device line called Care Hub. The service lets caregivers remotely see how an Alexa device is being used, or even sends them an alert if the person theyre looking after doesnt use their device by a certain time.

The company expanded on the service earlier this year, launching a monthly $19.99 subscription service called Alexa Together, which includes an emergency response call service that can be triggered if a wearable device detects a fall or by the phrase, Alexa, call for help. And the companies seem far from done with services for the elderly.

Last month, Amazon announced plans to offer a robot dog called Astro. The robot, equipped with a screen, microphone, and camera, is designed to wheel around a persons home and respond to commands.

In its announcement, Amazon said it imagined the robot being placed in the homes of seniors, giving them reminders during the day and reporting back to family members about their well-being through integration with Alexa Together.

In short, companies are following the money, Orlov said. Theres a relatively untapped market in older adults, and one with command of more dollars than younger people.

Money talks.

Laurie Orlov, Aging and Health Technology Watch

Thats why, she said. Money talks.

Smaller tech companies have been carving out niche products directly targeting the elderly for some time. But only relatively recently have bigger players shown an interest in the older market.

In her blog post, Orlov pointed out that just a decade ago, the tech industry seemed unconcerned with seniors needs.

But as the baby boomer population ages, Orlov points out, more of them are looking for ways to stay safe and healthy, while loved ones are searching for ways to watch over them. The pandemic, especially, exposed just how great that need was.

It was a major embarrassment, really, the lack of connectivity of older people during the pandemic and especially during the time they were supposed to register to get a vaccine, Orlov told The Markup.

Clara Berridge, a professor at the University of Washington who researches older adults and technology, said theres another reason why the devices have become so popular. Many people want to stay in their homes as they age, but because of a dire lack of home-care infrastructure in the United States, people are sometimes turning to the only options they can find and affordconsumer tracking devices. Its not necessarily comparable service, Berridge said, but its an affordable option.

People are mostly on their own to figure out elder care.

Clara Berridge, University of Washington

We have a very fragmented long-term care system in this country, if you can even call it a system, she said. So people are mostly on their own to figure out elder care.

Its not just families but also care facilities themselves. Even well before COVID-19, businesses, nonprofits, and retirement communities had been experimenting with providing voice assistants to care home residents.

That trend has since accelerated. I think the turn to institutions is intensified with COVID and concerns around whats going on in facilities, Berridge said.

While devices can provide a sense of connection, some privacy advocates worry about what sorts of data are being collected through those devicesespecially since few consumers, in general, will wade through a complex privacy policy or tinker with settings, and even fewer seniors are likely to doso.

I think youre dealing with a population and situation where people are not necessarily even going to exercise the limited control theyre given over how data is collected, said Hayley Tsukayama, a legislative activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I think youre dealing with a population where people are not necessarily even going to exercise the limited control theyre given over how data is collected.

Hayley Tsukayama, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Concerns about where voice assistant data is traveling arent new, but having someone close, like a relative, monitoring behavior brings its own concerns. Its not always clear, for one, that seniors are consenting to the monitoring.

Amazons Alexa Together service requires an opt-in from both the owner of the Alexa device doing the monitoring and the mobile app it is transmitting data to. But as some observers pointed out last year, it seems simple for someone to opt-in for someone by setting up an account for them and signing up for the service.

Berridge points out that even a caretaker acting with good intentions can, through benevolentcoercion, subtly pressure an older loved one into using a device they might not be comfortable with. A caregiver tends to have quite a bit of power over somebody, she said.

If a loved one is suffering from a condition like dementia, that could change the ethical calculus too, and there may not be a tidy answer to whether that person is consenting to family monitoring, Tsukayama said.

How do you weigh, as the child of someone, where you think their mind is and their overall ability to understand a situation and protect themselves in a situation, and how they feel about being watched? she said.

Amazon, for its part, says its care app masks some types of data. A remote watcher would only be able to see that a loved one was using Alexa for entertainment, for example, but not see whether a song or podcast was played. But its still really fine-grained data, Tsukayama said.

Whether in homes or care facilities, Berridge said, theres also a risk that people will choose to rely on cheap surveillance devices over human labor. Theres already a woefully insufficient number of care workers in the country, she said, and for some operators, placing an Amazon Echo in every room may look like a savvy solution to understaffing. The conditions are ripe for that, and they have been for a long time, she said.

Read more from the original source:

Is Big Tech 'Targeting' the Elderly a Point of Concern? - hackernoon.com

To borrow from Ben Franklin, nothing is certain except death, taxes, and that Big Tech is alarminglybig. As Americans increasingly rely on the major tech companies to help us perform our jobs and navigate our personal lives, our trust and opinion of the digital giants continue to trend downward. Recent surveys show a mere 34 percent of the public rates Big Tech favorably.

The reasons arent hard to fathom, given the enormous control a few handful of corporations have over our lives. We are beholden to algorithms we dont understand, mystified as to who has access to our personal and financial information, and lack any faith in their promises to protect our online privacy. And this says nothing of their power to control the news, influence public opinion in their preferred direction, or put their tentacles on the scale in our elections.

Often overlooked in this discussion is the myriad of troublesome ways Big Tech wields power over small businesses that bear the burden of market concentration. For years, entrepreneurs and small business owners seeking access to market places dominated by Big Tech have been forced to strike a devils bargain. By maintaining a tight grip on the channels of online commerce and advertising, Big Tech companies use their clout to gain an overwhelming advantage over competitors while exploiting vendors and further leveraging power in a way that simply would not have been permissible in the pre-digital, brick-and-mortar economy. Fortunately, Washington is now taking action against their monopolistic fiefdoms.

New legislation proposed in the U.S. Senate titled the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992) will prohibit tech platforms such as Amazon and Google from rigging online commerce in their favor, and holding their smaller competitors hostage. This is not legislation aimed at punishing companies for being successful, but to hold them accountable for anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices which would be considered major violations of antitrust in any other context.

Examples of these practices abound across the Big Tech ecosystem.Google enjoys a monopoly on search, advertising, and mobile, making it next to impossible for other companies, especially small businesses, to compete on equal footing. Because of their search market dominance, small businesses and entrepreneurs must rely on Google to engage consumers and grow their businesses. But when Google uses their extraordinary market power to advantage their own products and the products they favor in search results, small businesses have no recourse, short of spending exorbitant sums in hopes theyll ascend to the top of search. These digital manipulations hurt consumers and restrain economic efficiency. It is hard to argue that it is not inherently anti-competitive for Google to control both the ad selling and ad buying platforms, and then sell its inventory through those platforms. Google stifles free and fair competition in the digital ad marketplace and then compounds this mercantilist arrangement by depriving consumers of seeing a wide spectrum of products and information in their search results.

Amazon presents another harrowing picture of market theft and dominance. Interviews with more than 20 former employees of Amazon confirm the company hasused data about independent sellers on the companys platform to develop competing products,in violation of their own stated policies. Because of its size and reach, businesses that make or sell consumer goods have little choice but to work with Amazon as a vendor. Amazon then canextract billions in seller feesevery year, which of course it uses to add more bricks to its impenetrable online fortress.

Amazon also uses information they collect from the sites individual third-party sellersdata those sellers view as proprietary, to develop private label merchandise which are then given preference on their search engine. Amazon may think that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but the small companies getting fleeced by these deceptive practices surely feel differently.

The senate legislation would put a stop to this market bullying by prohibiting disadvantaging rivals, or discriminating among businesses that use their platforms in a manner that would materially harm competition on the platform. It further outlines protections against misleading consumers by giving their own products preference, especially in cases where a competitors product is factually a closer match for a consumer search.

This is all entirely reasonable and closely contoured to the long-held principles of U.S. antitrust. Nobody would ever permit Wal-Mart from covering up the signs of rival stores, or paying advertisers to blacklist competitors, so these same tactics should be similarly proscribed online. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) makes the key point that we cant apply old and outdated marketplace rules to new technologies, stating, As Big Tech has grown and evolved over the years, our laws have not changed to keep up and ensure these companies are competing fairly.

The billionaire Big Tech companies all now have cap valuations of over $1 trillion, enabling them to laugh off fines and enforcement efforts. Too big to fail has now become too big to even give a damn when you sit atop ever-growing mountains of cash. Hopefully this welcome legislation will get their attention and hold them accountable for their continued arrogance, abuse, and market deception.

Read more:

Americans Deserve a Fair Fight Against Big Tech InsideSources - InsideSources

Hello and welcome to Protocol Enterprise! Today: why this years Turing Award winner is worried about the future of government tech efforts, Nvidia takes a closer look at the health care market, and the debut of Pixel Pat.

Intel is still the leader in chips for cloud infrastructure by a large margin, but AMD continues to gain ground in this lucrative market. According to a research note from Jefferies, AMDs chips made up 72% of all new cloud instances in February and overall, it now enjoys 14.8% of the cloud market to Intels 78.6%.

Turing Award winner Jack Dongarras new Nobel Prize of computing trophy for his supercomputing work comes with a cool $1 million courtesy of Google. But Dongarra would rather the company and its Big Tech brethren quit drafting talent from his lab system.

In fact, he said he is tired of the government labs acting as a proverbial farm team for Big Tech.

Dongarra is a professor at University of Tennessee and a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, both places where big tech companies have looked for science and tech talent.

In general, its been tough for government agencies and labs to compete for talent against bigger private-sector salaries and benefits like gourmet lunches and kombucha kegs (and dont forget those enticing stock options).

Despite close collaborations, sometimes tensions among private-sector researchers and those from academia and government labs rise to the surface. Case in point: the quantum dustup between the White House and Google.

Ultimately, Dongarra said, government labs and scientific research could falter if things continue this way.

Kate Kaye (email | twitter)

Seeking to triple its employee base, Whisk, a fully remote team, sought diverse talent from a wide variety of regions through Upwork, a work marketplace that connects businesses with independent professionals and agencies around the globe.

Learn more

For most of its early life, tech industry insiders thought of Nvidia largely in terms of its largest business: video game chips. But the company in recent years has sought to defy that impression, expanding its software effort and making big bets on the data center.

One of the lesser-known markets Nvidia has pursued in recent years is medical care, which is a $10 trillion industry, according to Nvidia Health Care Vice President Kimberly Powell. Powell recently spoke with Protocol about the companys efforts for an upcoming interview:

We can make a significant contribution in the area of medical imaging and medical devices. One of the largest workloads in supercomputing, and accelerated computing, is in the area of life sciences. To be able to do simulation of diseases, and chemical compounds interacting and trying to stop the behavior [its] to do drug discovery, essentially in silicon, in a computer.

Our charter is to say how do we take these modern computing approaches of accelerated computing, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, and help the health care industry benefit from it.

Max A. Cherney (email | twitter)

Its been a little over a year since Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, arguably one of the most significant employees in Intels 53-year history, returned to the company. To celebrate the occasion, Intel released a cute 8-bit video game called Pixel Pat, where you assume control of Intels chief geek and try to navigate through a chip fab filled with prizes (chip wafers) and obstacles (these blob-like things that look kinda like the ghosts in Pac-Man).

Along the way, you learn fun facts about Intels history, although somebody forgot to include its legal disputes with AMD and the federal government. Its a little challenging at first, and its habit of having you respawn directly over a huge chasm was kind of annoying, but give it a whirl this weekend.

Whisk isnt alone in unlocking the global marketplace to find the right types of employees to support its business goals. More than three-quarters of U.S. companies have used remote freelancers, according to research from Upwork, and more than a quarter of businesses plan to go fully remote in the next five years.

Learn more

Thanks for reading see you Monday!

Read the original here:

Government tech shouldnt be the minor leagues - Protocol

Billions of people log onto social media platforms every day. As we spend an increasing portion of our lives online, our exposure to hate-based content becomes routine. The Anti-Defamation Leagues 2021 survey of hate and harassment on social media found that 41 percent of Americans experienced online harassment, while 27 percent experience severe harassment, which includes sexual harassment, stalking, physical threats, swatting, doxing, and sustained harassment. We are inundated with conspiracy theories, scams, misinformation, or racist speech that frustrate users or, worse, threaten our safety.

One way technology companies can create safer and more equitable online spaces is to moderate content more consistently and comprehensively. Tech companies have been frequently criticized for inconsistently enforcing their stated policies at the scale of billions of users, causing seismic levels of harm. It is unclear how content moderation teams are trained to recognize and address various forms of hate, such as antisemitism. Their training materials or even operational definitions have not been made public or shared privately with civil society. Additionally, as tech companies increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to remove offensive posts on social media platforms, we have no idea whether the perspective of targets of online hate is used to create these technologies.

For example, evidence from the leaked Facebook documents submitted by whistleblower Frances Haughen to the SEC in 2021 suggest that the haphazard way automated content moderation technologies are developed are overbroad in their understanding of hate and ineffective. The document states that current automated methods are removing less than 5% of all of the hate speech posted to Facebook. Furthermore, studies have shown that algorithms that detect hate speech online can often be racially biased.

It is crucial to find ways for communities that are often the targets of hate to contribute to the creation of technology tools that automate and augment content moderation. To model what this process might look like, the ADL Center for Technology and Society is building the Online Hate Index (OHI), a set of machine learning classifiers that detect hate targeting marginalized groups on online platforms. The first of this set, the OHI antisemitism classifier, draws upon the knowledge of both ADLs antisemitism experts and Jewish community volunteers who may have experienced antisemitism. Together, these groups are the best positioned to understand and operationalize a definition of antisemitism.

To better grasp how machine learning classifiers work, imagine a child taking in information that, through practice, helps them discern and understand their world. Machine learning works similarly. In the case of OHI, our machine learning antisemitism classifier takes in pieces of information (here, text) that have been determined to be antisemitic, or not, by ADL experts and Jewish volunteers.

Through practice, the algorithm learns to recognize antisemitic content and starts to generalize language patterns when given numerous examples of both antisemitism and not antisemitic content. In the same way, a child might take in specific information about a situation (This cup is orange) and start to generalize to their broader experience of the world (This is what the color orange looks like). Over time, the model gets better at predicting the likelihood that a piece of content it has never seen before a tweet, comment, or post is or is not antisemitic.

In August 2021, ADL conducted what we believe to be the first independent, AI-assisted, community-rooted measurement of identity-based hate across Reddit and Twitter. We found that the rate of antisemitic content on Twitter during the week we investigated was 25% higher than on Reddit. The potential reach of the antisemitic content we found on Twitter in that one week alone was 130 million people. If this is the case on some of the most responsible tech platforms, it stands to reason that these issues are much more dire on platforms run by other less forward-thinking tech companies, such as Facebook.

If all platforms were as open to sharing data as Twitter and Reddit, the future might be brighter. Groups like ADL would be able to employ tools like the OHI to audit all social platforms, rooted in the perspective of targeted communities, and ascertain the prevalence of hate against those groups on those platforms. We would then be able to evaluate whether efforts by the tech company were sufficient in decreasing hate on their platforms. We would be able to compare rates between platforms using the same measurements and determine what methods of mitigating hate have been most successful.

Unfortunately, as we described in our data accessibility scorecard, platforms other than Reddit and Twitter are not providing the necessary data to make this a reality. Platforms should provide the necessary data to make this a reality and if they do not, governments should find thoughtful means to require it.

ADL hopes the way that the OHI combines machine learning and human expertise and centers targeted communities in technology development offers a practical path to holding platforms accountable. The potential exists for other civil society organizations to develop similar tools using volunteers to label homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and racism.

We need more technology that detects identity-based hate. If social media platforms are to effectively fight hate, they must allow the people most affected by it to lead the way.

Daniel Kelley is the Director of Strategy and Operations for the ADLCenter for Technology and Society

Originally posted here:

To Stop Online Hate, Big Tech Must Let Those Being Targeted Lead the Way - Algemeiner

Major technology companies are becoming faster at fixing security vulnerabilities, incentivized to close gaps for customers.

Vendors took an average of 52 days to fix security vulnerabilities in 2021, down from 80 days three years ago, data from Google's Project Zero show.

Between 2019 and 2021, Apple fixed 87% of its bugs in 90 days; Microsoft fixed 76% in the same period.

"The tech community is getting faster at fixing discovered security issues for a variety of reasons, including advancing DevOps and CI/CD technological advancements, adopting bug bounty programs into the mainstream, embracing open source platforms' security issue tracking, and Project Zero making an impact," said Eylam Milner, director, Argon Technology with Aqua Security.

There is a caveat to this progress. The largest tech companies handle their bug bounty programs differently than smaller or lesser-known companies.

"Companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, Mozilla, and Linux are very different in the way they operate, let alone handle security issues, than most software vendors and open source projects," Milner said.

While the average time to fix a vulnerability has gone down, that could be a bit misleading based on the companies involved. On the other hand, trends like this often have a trickle-down effect that is making a positive impact across the tech industry at large.

"When a large tech company (e.g., Facebook) is forced to fix a security issue in 90 days, this puts the company in a position to innovate with in-house organizational structure, engineering culture, and even new technology solutions," said Milner.

The engineering community at large often mimics big tech innovators, moving forward the way the entire community handles security issue fixing.

While the tech industry is getting better at remediating vulnerabilities in a more timely manner, the need to fix problems is not trickling down to the organizations using the software. If a customer lacks urgency in deploying a patch, a flaw can linger.

Even though members of the security community evangelize the importance of defined security patching processes and procedures as part of an overall security policy, there is still a knowledge gap, according to Matt Carpenter, senior principal security researcher with GRIMM.

"One of the core components of a good security policy is knowing what technologies/assets your organization maintains, and having regular patching intervals, processes and written procedures," Carpenter said.

Although companies realize the value of automated updates and regular automated checks and reports for out-of-date machines, less-security mature companies fall behind.

No matter how good tech companies have become at assessing vulnerabilities, there is always room for improvement. Adding automated application security solutions is key for diving deeper into vulnerability assessment and remediation.

"It's impossible for software consumers and vendors to handle a large amount of security risk in large codebases without an automated process for detection, remediation and prevention," said Milner.

The next step is to teach organizations to partner with trusted security companies in a long-term strategy, which helps reduce both risk and cost in the long term.

"For example, each organization should have a Security Architecture Review or similarly Threat And Risk Assessment (TARA) from a trusted and knowledgeable external security company," said Carpenter.

While informative, for assessments to add the most value, organizations should put together an internal security team with a top executive onboard, such as a CSO, CIO or CTO, to act as a liaison with the external assessment group.

This ensures assessment findings are communicated throughout the company and the necessary remediation steps can happen.

It's important to have clear strategies for both addressing general asset management, according to Daniel Trauner, senior director of security with Axonius.

"Without an asset management strategy, you might not even be aware that there's a patch to apply," Trauner said.

And if patches aren't applied in a timely manner, the quick remediation time of vulnerability remediation by tech companies won't do much good to prevent attacks

More:

Big tech is fixing bugs faster. Will that influence trickle down? - CIO Dive

OPINION:

The last few weeks have not been good for the corporate media or anyone who values the principle of free speech on social media. From Hunter Bidens laptop to the bogus Russian dossier, to COVID-19 vaccines and transgender issues, glaring errors of journalism and stringent thought control have been proven, once again, to always flow in one direction.

The Washington Post became the latest media outlet to belatedly confirm the authenticity of Hunters laptop, nearly a year and a half after his emails and texts surfaced late in the 2020 presidential election. These materials had been derided by most media as Russian disinformation for 17 months.

The Post story followed The New York Times, which two weeks earlier inserted its own confirmation of the laptop into the 24th paragraph of a report about the ongoing federal investigation into Hunters lucrative, habitual selling of access to his powerful father, now-President Joe Biden.

But still unexamined by the media are the emails that link Mr. Biden to Hunters international business schemes.

Even so, the burst of reporting birthed a segment on CNN, previously unthinkable there, in which senior legal analyst Elie Honig intoned that the case building against Hunter represents a very real, very substantial investigation of potentially serious federal crimes, creating a realistic chance this could result in federal charges.

In the wake of this grudging journalism came news from the Federal Election Commission that Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee were fined a total of $113,000 for improperly disclosing how they paid for the infamous Steele Dossier. The fabricated opposition research document was central to the now-discredited Russian collusion hoax that most media and Democrats in Congress used to undermine the first two years of former President Donald Trumps administration.

Silicon Valley also got in on the action, and as a consultant to GETTR, a new free speech platform, I pay close attention to what happens on social media.

Twitter reminded us that it still wields unchecked power to stifle free speech by suspending journalist John Solomons account for linking to his own story about a peer-reviewed COVID-19 vaccine study.

Mr. Solomon reported on research from Swedens Lund University, which has worked closely with the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization, examining how the Pfizer vaccine interacts with liver cells.

Despite the studys appearance in Current Issues in Molecular Biology, a respected medical journal, Twitter ruled that Mr. Solomon had violated its policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.

Apparently, Twitter is now staffed by expert molecular scientists who feel empowered to invalidate complex medical research.

To this point, defenders of the social media oligarchs have claimed that they run private companies, and so can enforce whatever rules they want. But what about when the government is the entity which instigates the censorship?

White House press secretary Jen Psaki has already admitted that the Biden administration flags selected social media posts and certain accounts for Facebook, identifying them as spreaders of COVID-19 misinformation. Its unknown if Mr. Solomons tweet was singled out by the White House, but at the very least, the executive branchs engagement in censorial activity emboldens tech companies and is precisely the sort of overreach the First Amendment is intended to prohibit.

And Twitter has been on a suspension rampage of late, targeting conservative accounts over the alleged misgendering of transgender people.

The satirical website Babylon Bee, commentator Charlie Kirk and Fox News host Tucker Carlson were all locked out of their Twitter accounts for various offenses involving tweets about Rachel Levine, an official in the Biden administration who is transgender.

Rep. Vicky Hartzler, a congresswoman from Missouri who is running for the U.S. Senate in that state, was suspended for tweeting her television ad about University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male who has been dominating womens collegiate swimming.

At the end of this troubling period of overdue reporting and crackdowns on free expression all of which displayed bias against conservatives there was at least the chance for reporters to ask the White House about the revelations contained in the presidents sons computer.

Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield handled the White House press briefing on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, which was good timing since she had dismissed the laptop as Russian misinformation during the closing days of the 2020 presidential race.

Only, not a single reporter asked her about it.

But why would they? Most of them agreed with her back then and dont want to admit their error now.

But is a tiny bit of objectivity really too much to ask?

Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist and the founder and principal of Line Drive Public Affairs, a communication consulting firm.

See the original post:

Media and Big Tech censorship is alive and well - Washington Times

Power Movesis a column where we chart the comings and goings of talent across the region. Got a new hire, gig or promotion? Email us: pittsburgh@technical.ly.

This week, serial founder and entrepreneur Lynsie Campbell announced that she would leave her role as startup czar for the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance after starting six months ago to fully commit to growing her new startup studio, Better Work Ventures (formerly named Hooman).

While Ive met a lot of great people during my time with PRA, Ive found (to no surprise) that I cant just talk about making things better for founders in the region. I have to do something about it, she wrote on Twitter. Im an executor and a builder. I need results.

Outside of building Better Work Ventures, Campbell is also the general partner of seed stage investment firm The Fund Midwest, as well as the founder of past startups LaneSpotter and ShowClix and the author of a book on entrepreneurship, This Better Work. Shes also an active voice on social media detailing her own entrepreneurial journeys as well as pointing out challenges that exist for several founders looking to grow their companies in Pittsburgh.

Carnegie Mellon University announced the list of honorary degree recipients for its 2022 commencement ceremony, which will take place this spring on May 13 to 15. The names encompass leaders in creative, entrepreneurial, public, scholarly and technology-minded pursuits, notably including hometown hero and CMU alumnus Billy Porter, who will receive a doctor of fine arts degree and deliver the commencement address for bachelors degree graduates.

In the realm of technology, honorary degree recipients includes chemistry Nobel Laureate Frances Arnold, who will receive a doctor of science and technology degree, and Portugal Minister for Science, Technology and High Education Manuel Heitor, who will receive the same degree. Both of these recipients will also present keynote addresses to graduate students at commencement.

Additional honorary degree recipients in the realm of tech and include university professor of computer science and robotics and Moza Bint Nasser chair in CMUs School of Computer Science, Raj Reddy, who will receive a doctor of science and technology, as well as US Army Reserve Command Chief of Army Reserve and Commanding General Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, who is a CMU alumna herself and will receive the same doctorate degree as Reddy. And in the realm of business and entrepreneurship, Jim Rohr, the retired executive chairman and former CEO of PNC Financial Services Group, will receive a doctor of business practice.

This years honorary degree recipients and keynote speakers are among todays most accomplished changemakers, artists and innovators, CMU President Farnam Jahaniansaid in a statement.As we prepare to celebrate the achievements of three classes of CMU graduates, showcasing the impact and leadership of these honorees will help to make Commencement 2022 a truly exciting and historic occasion.

Ganeshan Venkateshwaran. (Photo via LinkedIn)

Pittsburgh-headquartered digital transformation IT service provider Mastech Digitalannounced that Ganeshan Venkateshwaran would be appointed as the CEO of Mastech InfoTrellis, a subsidiary of Mastech Digital that leverages enterprise data for business intelligence. A press release noted that Venkateshwarans role will focus on growing the data and analytics services segment of the company by providing new services and expanding its global footprint. Previously, Venkateshwaran worked as an executive at both Trianz and Wipro Technologies.

I am excited to join Mastech, with its rich history as a technology services innovator, dating back to the iGate Corporation years, he said in a statement. Today, the company is squarely in the middle of the digital transformation space, which is ripe with innovative solution opportunities. Im thrilled to have the opportunity to lead Mastech InfoTrellis in its journey to capture the next wave of growth by creating value for our customers and providing our employees with positive career experiences and personal advancement.

The Women in Manufacturing Education Foundation announced 22 new members that had been elected to its board of directors for 2022, with terms beginning on April 1. The North American nonprofit is a part of the Women in Manufacturing Association, and serves as the larger organizations arm for providing educational opportunities to women interested in manufacturing careers.

The foundation named four new first-term members to the board, including representatives from Amazon Web Services, Novelis and PLZ Corp. Among a number of board members listed as continuing their service for the foundation was Michel Conklin, who is the executive director of Pittsburghs BotsIQ, a manufacturing workforce development program for high school students.

On behalf of the entire WiM organization, I am excited to welcome this new group of leaders to the WiMEF Board of Directors, said the foundations president, Allison Grealis, in a statement. I look forward to working with them to continue developing and delivering effective and affordable programming that helps women advance in their industry careers.

Founded in 2015, Pittsburgh startup Knotzland aims to make use of the millions of tons of textiles wasted every year by turning them into bowties and other accessories. And this weekend, founder and CEO Nisha Blackwell shared that one of the companys bowties made its Oscars debut on the neck of Danny Glover.

Ive learned many times over my 30+ years on this planet that, while you can not choose the cards you were dealt at birth, your upbringing, or predetermined socioeconomic opportunities; you can choose to show up, work hard, be consistent, study your craft and the greats that come before you, Blackwell wrote in a post on LinkedIn. The movement may be slower and the road will not be straight, narrow, or easy, but the fruits will be so much sweeter!!

A number of staff members at CMUs College of Engineering will begin a professional development program hosted by the university called CIT Leads. Now in its fifth consecutive year, CIT Leads brings together managers, leaders and other contributors to go through seven experiential learning models in a way that minimizes additional work for participants outside of the classroom. By assessing emotional intelligence and DISC (dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness) profiles of each participant, the program enables staff members to better understand their leadership styles and how that might fit or conflict with others.

This will help them create better work productivity, transform conflict into collaboration, and become more effective people leaders, said Samuel Boyer, founder and leader of CIT Leads, in a press release on the news. The release did not specifically mention the timeline of the program or the names of this years participants.

Originally posted here:

Power Moves: A new focus for Lynsie Campbell and big tech names on CMU's list of honorary degree recipients - Technical.ly

The logo of Google is seen on a building at La Defense business and financial district in Courbevoie near Paris, France, September 1, 2020.

Charles Platiau | Reuters

Clay Montgomery owns a small blacksmith shop called "Arrow M Enterprises" outside of Mingus, Texas, where he manufactures hand-forged metal works and grilling tools. He also sells a spicy barbeque sauce and a meat rub called "Bite My Butt."

In recent years, Montgomery's blacksmith shop has been listed as a member of a Washington, D.C.-based trade group called the "Connected Commerce Council" that claims to lobby on behalf of small businesses. On its website, the council describes itself as a non-profit membership organization with a single goal: "to promote small businesses' access to essential digital technologies and tools."

The group, which campaigns against aggressive regulation of big tech companies, also says it wants to ensure "policymakers understand the essential intersection of technology and small business," according to its website.

But there's just one problem: Montgomery says he's not a member and, in fact, has never heard of the Connected Commerce Council. The blacksmith told CNBC he would never join a tech lobbying group in Washington. "Technology is not exactly my forte," he said.

Montgomery isn't the only small business owner bewildered to find their names listed as a member of the Connected Commerce Council, which also goes by "3C." More than 20 other "members" contacted by CNBC said they similarly had never heard of the council and did not know why they were on their membership list.

The council, which pitches itself as a grassroots movement representing small business owners, is actually a well-financed advocacy group funded by tech heavy hitters Google and Amazon. The two tech companies are listed as "partners" on the organization's website. They are also currently the council's sole financial support, 3C spokesman Chris Grimm confirmed to CNBC.

Lobbying watchdog group the Campaign for Accountability called 3C an "Astroturf" lobbying organization, thanks to the tech giants' financial support. That's a bit of Washington slang for a group that claims to represent grassroots entities, but in reality serves as an advocate for big industry. It's a tactic used in Washington to push for specific legislative or regulatory goals using the sympathetic face of mom and pop organizations. The Campaign for Accountability described 3C in a 2019 report as an "Astroturf-style front group for the nation's largest technology companies."

"Big Tech knows that voters and their representatives aren't hugely sympathetic toward the complaints of trillion-dollar corporations, so they've decided to paint small businesses as the real victims of antitrust legislation," said Michelle Kuppersmith, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability.

To be sure, the group does have some active small business members, several of whom told CNBC they value 3C's offerings and agree with its issue advocacy in Washington.

Small business owners like Michelle Thom, owner of and a stylist at "A Wild Hair by Michelle" salon in St. Clair, Minnesota, are considerably more sympathetic to members of Congress than wealthy technology executives. The Connected Commerce Council listed her company on its website as a member, but Thom told CNBC she had never heard of the group and her business should not be on its roster.

The owner of Bud's Barbershop in Wylie, Texas, who declined to give his name, was similarly listed as a member even though he said he has never heard of the group.

Christine Little, whose company, 1058 Auto and Towing in Swansea, South Carolina, was also listed as a member, said she didn't know anything about the council either. "I'm pretty sure I'd probably remember" joining the group, she told CNBC. "We just tow."

And it's not just small firms that told CNBC they aren't sure why they were listed on the 3C website. Until this week, the council also had a page on its website listing its "partners" companies that the website suggested support the council's efforts. That page featured the logos of three tech giants: Amazon, Google and payment processor Square, which recently changed its name to Block.

But Block, which was created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, told CNBC it was not actually a partner of the Connected Commerce Council, despite the listing on 3C's website. The Connected Commerce Council pulled Square's logo from its website on Monday after CNBC contacted Block, which said it asked 3C to remove its name.

Grimm said 3C removed Square's logo Monday after CNBC's inquiry because Square is "no longer an active partner of the Connected Commerce Council."

In a statement to CNBC, Connected Commerce Council Executive Director Rob Retzlaff said all of the group's members "affirmatively sign up at events, online, or through a personal connection and thousands have opened emails, responded to surveys, attended meetings and events, and communicated with legislators."

Retzlaff said, "I sincerely hope you do not (a) mischaracterize our efforts or the views of small businesses by suggesting we are an astroturf organization that puts words in people's mouths, or (b) use outdated membership information to distract readers from legitimate concerns of small businesses and their engagement with policymakers."

In February, the group also quietly removed a list of thousands of grassroots members from its website. Grimm, the council's spokesman, said it pulled the list because it fell behind in updating its member list. He said the group has more than 16,000 current members but did not provide a current list of them.

The Connected Commerce Council does not charge fees to its members or bill them for services, Grimm said. It is not clear whether the group has any sources of revenue beyond donations from the large technology companies. Documents filed with the IRS show the group received more than $1.6 million in revenue in 2018. That year, it spent more than $100,000 on a strategic communications firm in Washington.

Spokespeople for Google and Amazon both confirmed that the companies are affiliated with the Connected Commerce Council. They declined to say how much the companies donate, but they did not deny donating.

Facebook was also listed as a partner of 3C as recently as 2020, according to The Washington Post, but has since discontinued its involvement, according to a person familiar with the decision who requested anonymity to speak more candidly. A spokesman for Facebook's parent company, Meta, declined to comment or answer questions about how much money the company has previously given to 3C.

The Connected Commerce Council has been active in shaping the debate around antitrust regulation in Washington. It's worked with an outside lobbying firm, called the Majority Group, for several years to advocate on small business and technology issues on Capitol Hill. In 2021, the group spent $400,000 on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2018, the Connected Commerce Council offered public comment to the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust issues, arguing that large technology platforms such as Amazon and others provide benefits to small businesses.

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda sent a statement when asked about the company's involvement in 3C. He said many small businesses are concerned "that Congress's controversial bills could harm the digital tools that they have relied on to adapt, recover and reach new customers throughout the pandemic. We encourage concerned businesses and the organizations that represent them to ask Congress to consider the unintended consequences of these bills for small businesses across the country."

The Connected Commerce Council, which has just 304 followers on Facebook, has been an active advertiser on the platform since its page was created in 2018. Since then, it's spent more than $600,000 on advertising in that time, including more than $9,000 in the last week, according to the company's advertising library, which discloses the sponsors and advertisements in such campaigns.

The ads sponsored by the Connected Commerce Council often support the same positions as the large tech companies that bankroll the group. The tech giants have also been advocating against several bills on Capitol Hill that would impose antitrust rules on the tech firms or make it easier to break them up altogether. One bill, for example, would block companies, including Amazon and Google, from pushing their own products in online marketplaces at the expense of their own competitors.

"Don't let Congress give away America's technological edge. Send a letter," reads one ad sponsored by the Connected Commerce Council in March that's been viewed more than 125,000 times, according to Facebook. A message in the same ad reads, "Harmful legislation in Congress will weaken America's economy and threaten our small businesses."

Another ad running in March refers directly to Amazon, which is one of the companies that finances the Connected Commerce Council. "Amazon Marketplace is at risk," the ad says. "Take this survey and stand up to Congress." The advertisement, which Facebook says has been viewed more than 8,000 times, also asks: "Are you a small business seller? We're counting on your experience to help fight harmful legislation in Congress."

An online survey run on Facebook by the council tells Amazon Marketplace users, "As you may be aware, some elected officials think Amazon is too big, and that is dangerous because we know Amazon helps our members and millions of small businesses sell more products and make more money!"

The council runs like a well-oiled advocacy group. By 2019, 3C's lobbyists had met with 50 members of Congress, filed seven official comments at regulatory agencies and sent two representatives to testify before Congress, according the Campaign for Accountability's 2019 report. The council also "published a raft of materials painting a rosy picture of the tech giants, complete with quotes from small business owners heaping praise on them," the report said.

"For the Connected Commerce Council to succeed, it needs to convince legislators that it's truly advocating on behalf of the more than 10,000 small businesses it claims to represent," said Kuppersmith, executive director of the watchdog group. "However, when you start to peel back the curtain on the organization just a bit, it's clear that this image of enthusiastic antitrust opposition is fueled by Big Tech cash."

The group pointed to plenty of small business owners who are legitimate members. Former 3C board member Mimi Striplin founded the Tiny Tassel in Charleston, South Carolina, which sells jewelry and accessories.

"They're a great resource as a small business to get access to digital tools," she says of the group. 3C "keeps me informed about new bills being passed." Striplin said new antitrust laws could negatively impact the affordability of the digital tools she depends on, such as social media and software to make her products more visible on Google.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg speaks during an event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland January 23, 2019.

Reuters

Striplin's small shop caught the attention of Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Meta. In 2020, Sandberg designated the Tiny Tassel's earrings as one of her personal picks for Facebook's #BuyBlack Friday gift guide, which encouraged users to support Black-owned businesses. Striplin said the selection of her products by Sandberg was not connected to her membership in 3C.

Current board member Salil Gandhi operates a social media and digital marketing company called SBO Buzz in Chicago. He said the group provided a valuable platform for small business leaders during the Covid pandemic, including offering a regular Zoom happy hour for 15 to 30 small business owners to check in on each other.

"We would get together and have a cocktail and talk about problems we were having, PPP issues, or other problems we were having as small business owners," Gandhi said. "I'm still friends with a lot of the people I met through there."

Gandhi said he doesn't mind that the small business advocacy group is largely funded by big tech companies because small businesses already depend on Google and other firms for free tools to run their operations, including Gmail accounts. "When I look at issues, I look at them from my perspective," he said. "It's not like anybody's ever telling me what to say or what's going on."

Council member Alfred Mai, who founded ASM Games with his wife in 2017, said he relies on Amazon to sell his products and agrees with the group's push against antitrust initiatives in Washington. The company sells card games for social gatherings, including games called "These Cards will Get You Drunk" and "Do You Really Know Your Family?" He says Amazon has been crucial to the success of his business.

"These antitrust, quote unquote, 'break up Big Tech' bills can critically affect my business," Mai said. "This really isn't just about Big Tech it's also about small business."

He said he worries about unintended consequences of congressional action and the possibility that Amazon might be forced to shut down its third-party marketplace site, where he sells his card games.

"I'm not sitting here being brainwashed by an Amazon lobbyist telling me 'this is what you should believe,'" Mai said. "I truly believe it."

CNBC's Bria Cousins and Paige Tortorelli contributed to this report.

Originally posted here:

How Google and Amazon bankrolled a 'grassroots' activist group of small business owners to lobby against Big Tech oversight - CNBC

The Justice Department endorsed House and Senate bills Monday that would keep the biggest digital platforms like Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon from giving preferential treatment to their own products.

Why it matters: Support from the Biden Administration's DOJ gives the bipartisan bills a boost, and shows that the department thinks they can be enforced and help boost tech competition in the U.S.

The big picture: "The fact that the DOJs regulatory goals are consistent with the Hill show the seriousness of the DOJs antitrust concerns in the technology sector," Jeffrey Jacobovitz, senior counsel at law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP and former Federal Trade Commission attorney, told Axios.

Driving the news: The Senate Judiciary Committee approved its bill, the American Competition and Innovation Act, in January. A companion bill awaits full House approval.

Yes, but: The bills still have to pass the full Senate and House, and face a packed congressional agenda along with bitter partisanship.

What they're saying: "The Department views the rise of dominant platforms as presenting a threat to open markets and competition, with risks for consumers, business, innovation, resiliency, global competitiveness, and our democracy," the letter, signed by acting assistant attorney general Peter Hyun, reads.

The other side: Tech companies and their defenders have called the bills discriminatory and argued that they would hurt privacy and security, along with taking away services consumers enjoy.

Meanwhile: Last week, Europe pushed ahead with a proposal, the Digital Markets Act, that would ban many of the Big Tech behaviors outlined in the U.S. bills.

Visit link:

DOJ backs bills that could kneecap Big Tech - Axios

Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)

If youre reading Gizmodo, odds are youre aware Big Techs gotten itself into trouble before. But between brutal antitrust battles, a lengthening laundry list of lawsuits, and persistent privacy problems, even the most dogged observer can find it difficult to remember the contours of a specific scandal or pinpoint when, exactly, we started thinking about that specific problem with that social network. To that end, the newly formed Tech Oversight Project has devised a one-stop Wiki filled with enough Big Tech badness to clog up a Congressional hearing.

At its launch, the Big Tech Wiki features around 90 separate links to pages on a diverse assortment of topics and issues. Viewers, for example, can find entries explaining Metas lobbying efforts against antitrust legislation listed alongside a breakdown of Googles fraught relationship with the U.S. military. The Wiki also features pages dedicated to Big Tech Lying to Congress and Big Tech as The New Big Tobacco. Many of the titles sound like the Google searches of a worked-up tech critic.

Sacha Haworth, The Oversight Projects Executive Director, spoke exclusively with Gizmodo over the phone to explain the groups reasons for creating the Wiki.

The goal is to provide an encyclopedic reference for those who are trying to learn a bit more about the context and history of Big Tech. We also wanted to remind folks of their [Big Techs] behavior as monopoly powers, Haworth said.

Those spheres of influence include famous jockeying among social media companies and emerging tech but also includes lesser-known areas like fintech and the automotive industry, Haworth said. The organization hopes the Wiki will serve as a useful starting point of information for journalists, staffers working on legislation or general consumers looking to learn more about general Big Tech malfeasance.

In addition to the pages for broader topics and arguments, the Wiki features dozens of handy entries on tech terms, products, and legislative efforts. The creators included the names of lesser-known Big Tech lobbying groups like American Edge, which the Oversight Project describes as a dark-money astroturf group formed by Facebook in 2020 designed to combat potential federal regulations. The Wiki also features a listing calling out the group NetChoice for consistently speaking out against lawsuits potentially threatening Google, one of its clients. Those lesser-known players in Silicon Valleys orbit are poised to take on a more important role in the years to come now that the Internet Association, once the Big Techs primary unified lobbying arm, is officially dead.

The Tech Oversight Project launched earlier this year with the aim of using campaign-style initiatives to hold Big Tech accountable. So far, those efforts have included several reports detailing tech giants hypocrisy on issues like support for an open internet and others that criticized Alphabet, Apple, and Meta for reluctance to work with the U.S. military in developing next-generation artificial intelligence.

The group receives funding from eBay founder Pierre Omidyars left-of-center Omidyar Network and the Economic Security Project. Supporting new antitrust legislation making its way through the U.S. House and Senate sits at the top of the Oversight Projects list of policy goals, an agenda that shines through in the Wiki, with its repeated entries highlighting techs anti-competitive practices.

The Wiki also highlights four featured pages for anyone uninterested in clicking through the entire collection. Those featured pages, which can be interpreted as the Oversight Projects primary areas of interest include Google is a Monopoly, Facebook is a Monopoly, Big Tech and National Security, and Big Tech spreading Anti-Vax.

Haworth said the Wiki, though lengthy, is still far from exhaustive and that the organization plans to continue updating the Wiki with more entries and new information moving forward.

We tried to present this information in a straightforward manner so anyone learning about this for the first or hundredth time could use it as a resource, Haworth said. No matter what your issue with Big Tech is, theres something for everyone here.

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Watchdog Group Publishes Encyclopedia of All the Nasty Things Big Tech Has Done - Gizmodo