Category Archives: Big Tech

The shares are coming off their lowest close since May 2020, and are down more than 45 percent from a September peak.

Over its life as a publicly traded company, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. hasrepeatedly demonstratedan ability to rebound after earnings disappointments or various controversies have weighed on the stock. Not this time.

The shares are coming off their lowest close since May 2020, and are down more than 45% from a September peak, a decline thats unmatched among big U.S. tech stocks in recent years. The slump haspushed Meta outof the top 10 of largest global companies by market value, yet also left it trading at its cheapest on record.

The stock has seen a drumbeat of bad news, including Googles announcement this week that it wouldbring a privacy initiativeto Android phones. While the company said the move is ad-friendly, its reminiscent of Apple Inc.s changed privacy policy, which dented digital advertising and was a factor behind Metascatastrophic earnings reportthis month. The results called its growth prospects into doubt and spurred thebiggest selloff in Wall Street historyin terms of value erased.

The management team needs to show investors over the next few quarters a path to growth, said David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors. He added that the stock, which he owns, is in purgatory, and that sentiment couldnt be lower.

Metas growth woes standin stark contrastto other technology behemoths, which reported strong results this season, helping limit declines in their stocks amid a mostly negative start to 2022.

Investors have long been quick to buy big tech on weakness, as they bet that the group will continue to see robust growth. As a result, declines of the magnitude that Meta has seen havent happened in the era of trillion-dollar market caps for the companies.

Apple hasnt had a 40% drawdown since 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. For Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., or Alphabet Inc., the last time they had a peak-to-trough drop of this scale was around the financial crisis.

Meta is the company people love to hate, and Alphabet is an easy alternative if you want exposure to online advertising, said Bill Stone, chief investment officer at the Glenview Trust Co. You dont get tough questions from clients for owning Alphabet, which is doing well and not nearly so hairy as a company.

The weakness in Metas stock has made it attractive in terms of traditional valuation metrics. The stocks forward price-to-earnings ratio is under 14, its lowest on record, and well below its five-year average of 20.9. The forward price-to-sales ratio is about 4.2, also a record low. Meta is trading at its biggest-ever discount to the Nasdaq 100 Index.

In part because of the valuation, Meta continues to have fans on Wall Street. Nearly three-fourths of the analysts who cover the stock recommend buying it, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, while the average analyst price target points to upside of more than 60%.

Glenviews Stone, who owns the stock, is among those betting on a rebound, though he admits a turnaround may be a long-term process.

How cheap it is right now outweighs all the issues facing it, he said in an interview. If it can grow anywhere near where it was growing before, then its a steal. It will be too cheap to resist.

Tech Chart of the Day

Tencent Holdings Ltd. has once again found itself among the worlds 10 largest companies by market value thanks to Meta Platforms Inc.s tumble and a rebound in shares of the Chinese tech giant. Tencent had dropped from the list in mid-September amid Beijings sweeping regulatory crackdown of private enterprises. Its Hong Kong-listed shares have risen about 8% this year as receding regulatory concerns lured back investors, putting its value at about $590 billion.

Top Tech Stories

With assistance fromJeran Wittenstein,Thyagaraju AdinarayanandAbhishek Vishnoi.

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Metas plunge is unmatched among big tech stocks in recent years - Aljazeera.com

Andy Parker has never watched the video of his daughters murder. But anyone with an internet connection can find it, view it and share it.

In the years since Alison Parker, a 24-year-old TV journalist in Roanoke, Virginia, was shot and killed during a live broadcast in 2015, her father has made it his mission to remove the footage from the social media platforms where it continues to resurface even after being taken down.

Volunteers help him flag the content to YouTube and Facebook. He has appealed to the companies directly, testified before the Senate, even filed complaints with federal regulators, alleging the platforms were violating their own terms of service by hosting the videos.

After years of pleading his case as a grief-stricken father, Parker now believes a seat in Congress may be his best recourse. I always wanted to honor her life with action, Parker said in a recent interview by Zoom, a framed photo of his daughter on a shelf behind him. I think that is what has compelled me to do this.

He continued: I had fought this battle as a private citizen as long as I could. The only way to fix it is through congressional action. Thats it.

Parker is seeking the Democratic nomination in Virginias newly redrawn fifth Congressional district, now a thumbprint-shaped expanse stretching from the center of the state to its border with North Carolina.

The district is currently represented by Congressman Bob Good, a staunch conservative who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and has promoted Donald Trumps big lie that widespread fraud cost him the presidency.

In a video announcing his candidacy, Parker said he was running to make the internet safer for kids and for families.

The reel includes images of the Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, while arguing that the economy is tilted against middle-class Americans. In America today, weve got an economy that makes tech billionaires rich enough to go to space, while young people cant afford to go to college, he says in the ad.

Parker is hopeful he can appeal to a wide cross-section of voters with a unifying message and a platform centered on reforming big tech, a cause that has galvanized lawmakers in both parties.

Republicans, they want their kids to be safe online, too, he said. If I could get to Congress, he added, I would champion this cause, not just for me, but for all these people who have been harmed.

Alison Parkers boyfriend, Chris Hurst, also channeled his grief into political activism, winning a seat in the Virginia house of delegates after campaigning as a gun-safety advocate. He served two terms before losing his re-election in a Republican wave last November.

Before he was Alisons dad, Andy Parker was a Texas transplant pursuing an acting career in New York. A career change ultimately brought Parker to southern Virginia, where he settled with his wife and children, Alison and Drew, and became involved in local politics. He was working as a talent recruiter for the banking industry when Alison was killed.

If youve heard of me, Parker says in his campaign video, its probably because of what happened on August 26, 2015.

On that day, Alison Parker, an on-air journalist with WDBJ-TV, was fatally shot by a former co-worker while conducting an on-air interview near Roanoke. Cameraman Adam Ward, 27, was also killed. The interview subject, Vicki Gardner, survived, and the gunman, who recorded the shooting and uploaded it to his social media accounts, killed himself.

Seemingly overnight, Andy Parker became one of the most prominent advocates of gun control in Virginia, a state with a tragic history of mass shootings and home to the NRA headquarters.

For years, Parker lobbied the state legislature to enact gun-safety legislation, sometimes aggressively targeting Republican opponents of those efforts. Activists celebrated a major victory in 2020, when the states then-governor, Ralph Northam, a Democrat, signed into law a suite of new gun restrictions that had become a legislative priority in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a municipal building in Virginia Beach that left 12 people dead.

A day before Parker spoke to the Guardian, two officers were fatally shot at Bridgewater College in Virginia, just a 10-minute drive from the university where his daughter attended journalism school.

Every mass shooting, its just like a gut punch, he said. But this one was particularly tough because these are friends. This was close. We have a pandemic of gun violence along with the Covid pandemic. Its nuts and its got to stop.

More recently, Parker has trained his ire on big tech. But he said he hasnt abandoned his gun-control activism. The issues, he said, go hand in hand.

Supporting gun-control legislation, he said, made him a target of online trolls and conspiracy theorists claiming his daughters killing was faked as part of a plot to seize their firearms. Some of the attacks used edited or doctored footage of her murder.

At one point there were ads running on Alisons murder, he said. How disgusting is that?

He pointed to the revelations provided by the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen as proof that tech companies could do more to police the misinformation and hate that proliferate on their platforms.

They have the ability to do it. They have the algorithms. They have the AI to do it, he said. But they dont because they profit from it. They want people to stay engaged and to stay on the site. Thats how they make money.

Parker said he supports some of the bipartisan proposals to rein in big tech. But he believes more needs to be done to hold them accountable. He has called for reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has largely shielded social media platforms from legal liability for content generated by its users.

For all the great things that Facebook and Google have done, bringing people together, theyre also in the process of tearing this country apart, he said.

He also hopes to demystify the process for users by making platforms and regulators like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) more responsive. If elected, Parker said one of the first things he would do in Congress is push for a hearing with the FTC chair to ask: What are you doing? You know, these companies are violating their own terms of service, and youre saying nothing.

Parker filed complaints with the FTC against YouTube and Facebook. But the process has been opaque and disillusioning, he said.

Parker, who must first win the Democratic nomination, knows he faces an uphill battle in a district rated safely Republican by political prognosticators. Democrats face historical headwinds this cycle, after a crushing defeat in the Virginia governors race last year.

But Parker said battles against the NRA and big tech have steeled him for an underdog campaign. He believes theres enough buyers remorse in the district to make the race competitive.

Days after Good was sworn in, he voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The congressmans embrace of falsehoods and misinformation about the 2020 election and the coronavirus, Parker argued, have contributed to the toxic political environment that had gridlocked Washington.

He is the Marjorie Taylor Green of Virginia and his antics are wearing thin on people, he said.

Goods office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

When Parker announced his candidacy last month, he braced for the onslaught of trolls and online abuse. But so far, he said the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Candidates for congressional office dont have running mates, but I do, Parker said, his voice catching. And she will be with me every step of the way.

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His journalist daughter was killed. Now he wants to fix big tech in Congress - The Guardian

And these investments have paid off. Since the 1980s, the top four firms in each industry have increased their market share by 4% to 5% in most sectors. My research shows that investments in proprietary software caused most of this increase.

This greater industry dominance by top firms is accompanied by a corresponding decline in the risk that they will be disrupted, a prospect that has obsessed corporate managers ever since Clayton Christensens The Innovators Dilemma came out in 1997. At the time Christensen wrote his book, disruption was on the rise. But since about 2000when top firms started their investment spree in proprietary systemsthis trend has declined sharply. In a given industry, the chance that a high-ranking firm (as measured by sales) will drop out of one of the top four spots within four years has fallen from over 20% to around 10%. Here, too, investments by dominant firms in their internal systems largely account for the change. While some new technologies disrupt entire industriesthink of what the internet did to newspapers or DVDsothers are now suppressing the disruption of dominant firms.

How does this happen, and why does it apparently affect so much of the economy? It is because these business systems address a major shortcoming of modern capitalism. Beginning in the late 19th century, innovative firms found that they could often achieve dramatic cost savings by producing at a large scale. The shift dramatically reduced consumer prices, but there was a trade-off: in order for companies to achieve those large volumes, products and services needed to be standardized. Henry Ford famously declared that car buyers could have any color so long as it is black. Retail chains achieved their efficiencies by providing a limited set of products to their thousands of stores. Finance companies offered standard mortgages and loans. As a result, products had limited feature sets; stores had limited selection and were slow to respond to changing demand; and many consumers could not get credit or obtained it only on terms that were costly and not suited for their needs.

Software changes the equation, partly overcoming these limitations. Thats because it reduces the costs of managing complexity. With the right data and the right organization, software allows businesses to tailor products and services to individual needs, offering greater variety or more product features. And this allows them to best rivals, dominating their markets. Walmart stores offer far greater selection than Sears or Kmart stores, and they respond faster to changing customer needs. Sears was long the king of retail; now Walmart is, and Sears is in bankruptcy. Toyota quickly produces new models when it detects new consumer trends; smaller car companies cannot afford the billions of dollars it takes to do that. Similarly, only Boeing and Airbus can manage to build highly complex new jumbo jets. The top four credit card companies have the data and the systems to effectively target offers to individual consumers, gaining maximum profit and market share; they dominate the market.

These software-enabled platforms have allowed top firms to cement their dominance. They have also slowed the growth of rivals, including innovative startups.

A variety of evidence supports the idea that startup growth has slowed down substantially. One sign is how long it takes for venture-backed startups to receive funding: from 2006 to 2020, the median age of a startup in the seed-round funding stage increased from 0.9 years to 2.5 years. The median age of a late-stage startup rose from 6.8 years to 8.1 years in that same period. Among firms that were acquired, the average time from first financing to acquisition tripled, from a little over two years in 2000 to 6.1 years in 2021. The story was similar for firms that went public. But the clearest evidence of a slowdown is what happens when firms become more productive.

Big firms are employing large-scale technologies that make it harder for startups to grow.

The key feature of dynamic economies, what economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction, is that more productive firmsthose with better products or lower costs or better business modelsgrow faster than less productive incumbents, eventually displacing them. But after 2000, on average, firms with a given level of productivity grew only half as fast as firms with that same level of productivity grew in the 1980s and 1990s. In other words, productivity has less effect on growth than it used to. And when productive firms grow more slowly, they are less likely to leapfrog industry leaders and displace themthe hallmark of disruption. Last year, research I conducted with my colleague Erich Denk directly linked the waning impact of productivity improvement to the greater industry dominance of large firms and their investments in software and other intangibles.

Another view, expressed forcefully by congressional investigators in hearings and in a staff report published in 2020, attributes the decline in economic dynamism to a different source: the weakening of government antitrust policy since the 1980s. In this account, large firms have been permitted to acquire their rivals, reducing competition. Acquisitions have made these firms more dominant, especially in Big Tech, leading to a decline both in the emergence of new tech firms and in venture capital funding for early-stage firms. But in fact, the rate at which new tech firms enter the market is down only modestly from the exceptional surge of the dot-com boom, and early-stage venture capital financing is at record levels, with twice as many financings today as in 2006 and four times the amount invested. The problem isnt that large firms are preventing startups from entering markets or getting funding; the problem is that big firms are employing large-scale technologies that make it harder for startups to grow. Moreover, big firms like Walmart and Amazon have grown mainly by adopting superior business models, not by buying rivals. Indeed, the rate of acquisitions by dominant firms has declined since 2000.

Of course, such acquisitions do sometimes affect the startup landscape. Some researchers have identified so-called kill zones, where Big Tech makes acquisitions to shut down competition, and venture capital becomes hard to find. But other researchers find that startups often respond by moving their innovative activity to a different application. Moreover, the prospect of acquisition by a large firm often incentivizes people to found startups. Indeed, despite what happened to Nuance, the number of speech-recognition and natural-language-processing startups entering the market has quadrupled since 2005, and 55% of these startups have received venture capital investments.

The slowdown in the growth of innovative startups is not just a problem for a few thousand firms in the tech sector; the headwinds blowing against companies like Nuance are responsible for problems that affect the health of the entire economy. Researchers at the US Census Bureau have shown that the slower growth of productive firms accounts for much of the slowdown in growth of aggregate productivity, a figure that measures the amount of output the economy produces per person and serves as a rough index of economic well-being. My own work has also shown that it plays a role in growing economic inequality, greater social division, and the declining effectiveness of government.

What will it take to reverse the trend? Stronger antitrust enforcement might help, but the changes in economic dynamism are driven more by new technology than by mergers and acquisitions. A more basic problem is that the most important new technologies are proprietary, accessible only to a small number of huge corporations. In the past, new technologies have spread widely, either through licensing or as firms independently developed alternatives; this enabled greater competition and innovation. Government sometimes helped this process. Bell Labs developed the transistor but was forced by antitrust authorities to license the technology broadly, creating the semiconductor industry. Similarly, IBM created the modern software industry when, in response to antitrust pressure, it began to sell software separately from computer hardware.

Today we are seeing some similar developments even without government action. Amazon, for example, opened up its proprietary IT infrastructure to create the cloud industry, which has strongly improved the prospects of many small startup firms. But antitrust policy can be used to encourage or compel more large firms to open their proprietary platforms. Loosening the restrictions that noncompete agreements and intellectual-property rights place on employee mobility can also encourage a greater diffusion of technology.

Coming up with the right balance of policies will be difficult, and it will take timewe dont want to undercut incentives to innovation. But the starting point is to recognize that in todays economy, technology has taken on a new role. Once a force driving disruption and competition, it is now being used to suppress them.

James Bessen is a lecturer at the Boston University School of Law and the author of the upcoming book The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation, from which this essay is adapted.

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How big technology systems are slowing innovation - MIT Technology Review

Reliance Industries Ltd and Paytm have been on opposing ends of the spectrum with Big Tech companies such as Google, Meta and others on the issue of data localisation in the Data Protection Bill.

Domestic companies favouring data localisation said that the mandate of the Joint Parliamentary Committee regarding the Bill is not strict since it has allowed two years to put the infrastructure in place. This was said in a meeting of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, as reported by Business Standard.

Further, they added that some members were not taking concerns of national security seriously and that they did not agree with it. Giving the example of China, they stated that it has proved to be a good use case with no adverse impacts.

However, the CEO of a leading global tech company responded saying, The issue of national security is something the government has to deal with. It is unfair to ask the private sector to do that.

Agreeing that data localisation will increase the burden of compliance, Paytm has stated that if companies want to run businesses in India, they have to deal with that. It also believes that no evidence shows localisation of data hurts the payments sector.

With Big Tech companies opposing the move, one has said there is real socio-economic value in facilitating cross-border data flows, according to research by bodies like the Indian Council of Research on International Economic Relations and CUTS International.

The Big Tech companies have also pointed out that data flow will support innovation and startups in different sectors while also arguing that the move could lead to socio-economic consequences and have fallouts in bilateral trade agreements, the publication reported.

A senior executive of a global company who was represented in the discussions said: "What constitutes critical personal data where data storage has to be in India has still not been defined. On critical personal data, the definition is so expansive that anything including an uploaded photo can come under it."

Some have stated that if these rules are imposed on SAARC countries, this could cause problems

Earlier, the IAMAI also stated that data localisation should not be a part of the bill and also demanded the removal of criminal penalties, alongside objecting to the inclusion of non-personal data in the Bill. This was in contrast to the recommendations of the expert committee appointed by MeitY for a framework for non-personal data governance.

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Originally posted here:

Big Tech vs Reliance Industries and Paytm on data localisation row - Deccan Herald

With help from Emily Birnbaum

Programming Note: Well be off this Monday for Presidents Day but will be back in your inboxes on Tuesday, Feb. 22.

Editors Note:Morning Tech is a free version of POLITICO Pro Technology's morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the days biggest stories.Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.

Cracks in the R&D monolith: Tensions within the powerful research lobby poised to reap big benefits in new competitiveness legislation are rising ahead of an impending bill conference.

Tech industry allies with Black, Hispanic groups: Some organizations representing people of color and backed by tech money are resisting Capitol Hills antitrust push.

If it quacks like a duck: Privacy-focused search engine and Google nemesis DuckDuckGo formally enters the D.C. lobbying game.

ITS FRIDAY, FEB. 18. Welcome to Morning Tech! What are everyones long weekend plans? It feels like the first time in a while that less work has lined up with less pandemic lets get out there and do stuff!

Do you have scoops? Tips? Thoughts? Dog pics? Send any and all by email to [emailprotected], or via Twitter DM to @BrendanBordelon. Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [emailprotected]. Anything else? Team info below. And dont forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.

RESEARCH LOBBY SPLIT AHEAD OF USICA CONFERENCE: The little-discussed research lobbys academic and industry wings were already at odds over divergent lawmaker plans to overhaul the National Science Foundation. Now, ahead of a conference for the House and Senates competitiveness packages, cracks are emerging among university lobbyists over the expansion of a program meant to fund researchers in rural or overlooked states.

Revamping NSF: Its the primary driver of basic research in the United States, but NSF hasnt historically done much to turn that research into real-world applications. Both the Houses America COMPETES Act (H.R. 4521) and the Senates U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (S. 1260) would create a new applied-technology directorate at the agency but the Senate, driven in part by competition with China, envisions a more fundamental pivot at NSF to drive research into marketable technologies.

Daro Gil, the director of research at chip-designer IBM and a member of NSFs board of directors, said he prefers the Senates bold set of changes to NSF over the Houses more cautious approach. Though IBM is one company that stands to benefit from a powerful technology directorate at NSF, Gil said Wednesday hes confident the agency can expand aggressively into applied sciences without compromising one iota its core mission.

Academia is pushing back. During a Thursday call with several heads of research at universities across the country convened by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, one of the largest research lobbies in Washington Roger Wakimoto, the head of research at the University of California, Los Angeles, said hed prefer an NSF focused more on challenges, scientific questions that wont necessarily lead right away to workable technologies.

Deborah Altenberg, APLUs head of research policy and government affairs, expressed concern that the Senate bill is too rigid in its list of 10 key technology areas, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing and microchips. There needs to be maximum flexibility, she said.

Squabble over research dollars: Theres also a split within academia on the wisdom of the Senate bills plan to set aside 20 percent of NSFs research dollars for states that have historically received little R&D funding, primarily rural states. The Senate bill puts the program on track to expand nearly tenfold, to just under $2 billion per year but doesnt add any extra research dollars to NSFs overall pot.

The provision was spearheaded last year by Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee. The change is likely to funnel more federal research funding into universities in Mississippi and other rural states, but that money will likely come out of the pockets of research institutions in states like Massachusetts, California and Washington.

There was tension on the APLU call when the rural state funding expansion was discussed. University representatives from states like Kentucky lauded the provision, while Wakimoto of UCLA warned it could cause emerging research institutions in his state to get lost in the shuffle.

BACKED BY TECH MONEY, BLACK & HISPANIC GROUPS JOIN ANTITRUST FIGHT: A slew of groups representing Black and Hispanic-owned businesses are inundating policymakers with arguments contending that antitrust efforts targeting the tech industry will harm communities of color.

But as Emily discovered in her latest for Pros, several of these groups have one thing in common they have financial backing or other ties with many of the largest tech companies.

At least six such groups either receive funding or have close partnerships with Amazon, Google and Facebook parent company Meta. And their messages are being amplified by the tech industry, either directly or through their vast network of lobbyists and trade associations.

Unintended consequences? Industry representatives say their relationships with groups representing people of color stem from a mutual understanding of the adverse consequences the legislative effort to rein in the major tech companies could have on Black and Hispanic people.

Honestly, I dont know that the authors of these bills have fully considered their unintentional impact on communities of color, said Adam Kovacevich, a former Google executive who founded the trade group Chamber of Progress.

Paula Sardinas, a spokesperson for the Seattle-area Washington Build Back Black Alliance, said groups in her coalition make policy decisions that are best for the people. The companies have zero input. (One of the alliances member groups has disclosed receiving at least $200,000 total from Amazon and Facebook).

But some prominent lawmakers, like Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), are unmoved by the tech industry's messaging.

In a last-ditch attempt to preserve their corrosive powers, Big Tech is now circulating arguments that antitrust legislation will harm Black communities, said Jeffries, a co-sponsor of House tech antitrust legislation and former whip of the Congressional Black Caucus. I dont buy it, he added.

DUCK, DUCK, ANTITRUST! Search engine DuckDuckGo, which brands itself as a privacy-minded alternative to Google, registered its first lobbyist last week as the rush to pass antitrust legislation speeds up in both chambers and as midterms approach.

For years, DuckDuckGo has agitated against Google in Washington and in Europe, arguing that the tech giant has manipulated the extensions on its Chrome web browser to crush smaller rivals. Now Kate McInnis, DuckDuckGos newly registered lobbyist, says the company plans to help push the antitrust bills across the finish line.

The strategy: McInnis has been working on policy with DuckDuckGo since 2020. At the time, she told Emily, she thought shed spend all her time on privacy policy. But as the legislative debates have shifted, so has the small search engines government affairs strategy. She finally realized she was spending at least 20 percent of her time speaking to lawmakers and staffers, which meant it was time to formally register.

We see there is an opportunity for Congress to pass bills this session, so we are accordingly ramping up our efforts to see where the bills are going, McInnis said. Shes particularly (perhaps unsurprisingly) focused on boosting the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S. 2992), a bill aimed at preventing the biggest tech companies from harming their rivals.

Small businesses: She said DuckDuckGo is particularly focused on knocking down the big tech companies arguments that the legislation could hurt small businesses. Smaller companies like hers are facing a complex landscape: Lawmakers are more willing than ever to listen to them, but Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple are pushing even more aggressively from the other side. The big companies claim that an attempt to rein them in will also harm the small business ecosystem, since small businesses often use the big platforms products to advertise, make sales and otherwise operate.

Last month, DuckDuckGo and dozens of other small tech companies signed onto a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. McInnis said the small- to medium-sized tech companies supporting the legislation are working in concert to tell offices they back changes in the market.

Its definitely a sign that Big Tech is scared, if theyre coming out with these strong messages that these bills would break services consumers love, McInnis said. We see it as the opposite these bills would allow consumers to do what they like on their devices and operating systems.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) rejoins the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation as an honorary co-chair. ... Erica Sackin is the new communications head at Meta for counterterrorism and dangerous organizations and individuals. ... Morten Skroejer is the new senior director for technology competition policy at The Software & Information Industry Association. ... Chuck Cash is the new vice president of federal sales at space data and analytics and space services provider Spire.

ICYMI: POLITICOs Ben Schreckinger braves the Denver nightclub scene to learn everything there is to know about the Decentralized Autonomous Organization, a blockchain tool that proponents claim will change everything.

The dark side of TikTok: The New York Times reports on the harrowing experience of one family whose daughters TikTok stardom brought violence and death to their home.

I see you, Skynet: The Government Accountability Office releases a report on the Pentagons latest efforts to develop AI capabilities.

BILLIONAIRE HARASSMENT! The Wall Street Journal reports lawyers for electric car company Tesla are accusing the Securities and Exchange Commission of harassing Tesla CEO Elon Musk over a 2018 settlement restricting his social media use.

Not a threat, just a thought: An Amazon union-avoidance official told workers in its largest New York City warehouse that things could get worse should they try to unionize, Vices Motherboard reports.

Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Heidi Vogt ([emailprotected]), Konstantin Kakaes ([emailprotected]), Emily Birnbaum ([emailprotected]), Brendan Bordelon ([emailprotected]), John Hendel ([emailprotected]), Rebecca Kern ([emailprotected]) and Leah Nylen ([emailprotected]). Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [emailprotected]. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.

TTYL!

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'Big Research' splits over R&D packages- POLITICO - Politico

Channel Mechanics Geraldine Powderly discusses some of the biggest trends changing the tech industry, from zero-trust security to the no-code revolution.

Geraldine Powderly is the chief information security officer at Galway-based cloud management company Channel Mechanics.

In this role, she works across a wide variety of domains including security operations, risk management, incident detection and response, identity and access management, product security, continuity planning, cyber intelligence and vulnerability management.

While the cybersecurity industry is full of technical products that help prevent or detect cyberattacks, these products often come with a hefty price tag. A price tag that is not always easily understood or accepted by a company, she told SiliconRepublic.com.

My role within Channel Mechanics is to ensure that we always consider security risk and business risk together. They are two sides of the same coin. When it comes to defining a strategy for our platform and technical investments, I always put emphasis on considering the security risk and the business risk to help drive the best decision-making process.

No-code interfaces are very exciting from both a design and innovation perspective GERALDINE POWDERLY

In my opinion, one of the biggest challenges out there for any IT department is the implementation of a zero-trust strategy. Zero trust means dont trust anyone and only connect to an application, not the entire network. Its the opposite to VPN and firewall where once youre authenticated, you are on a routable network.

Its not a new concept. I have been hearing about if for several years now. Having listened in on numerous talks with vendors describing their zero-trust products, it always left me feeling that the challenge of successful implementation is still underestimated.

Comments about how VPN is so last decade always make me smile, because it reminds me of a quote you would expect to hear at fashion week. Of course its very dependent on the size of a companys footprint.

In todays world, it has become very clear that the traditional company network perimeter is in the past. Nothing has emphasised this more than the pandemic and working from home.

Overnight, the work-from-home requirements put an unforeseen load on VPNs, creating issues with internet access and speed while on VPN. This led to complaints and requests for split tunnels or other unsecure tactics. The impact of this forced users off VPN to browse the internet, thereby removing the protection of web filtering gateways, leaving users unprotected and susceptible to attack.

The challenge I see for companies with large footprints and hybrid deployments is that there is still a big gap between talking about it and implementing it in a successful manner that provides protection without disrupting the functioning of the business.

For smaller companies, the risk is also very real. In a lot of cases there might not even be a corporate VPN or web filtering gateways. The company could be reliant on endpoint protection, with users remotely connecting to environments. In this case, the implementation should be a lot of easier, but the same rules apply Dont break the business!

According to Forbes, everything-as-a-service and the no-code revolution are some of the next big technology trends in 2022. The concept is that it aims to put the skills and tools for tech-led innovation in the hands of as large a proportion of society as possible, regardless of their expertise.

At Channel Mechanics, we have already reaped the rewards of concepts like platform-as-a-service in terms of cloud solutions. As a born-in-the-cloud company, our SaaS offering provides a platform for channel program automation.

Choosing a reputable cloud-hosting solution provides a wonderful level of security, out of the box. Its akin to renting an apartment within a large apartment block offering security guards, CCTV, locked front doors, secure windows and alarms.

However, the security of the apartment is the tenants responsibility. If the tenant fails to secure the entrance or the contents stored within, then the buildings security is quickly negated. This is the same for software that is hosted in the cloud, whereby the tenant still has a responsibility for the security of their product.

At Channel Mechanics we take this responsibility very seriously. We continuously assess risk that may arise due to our environment configurations, and we follow our risk management and vulnerability management strategies to mitigate any risks found.

No-code interfaces are very exciting from both a design and innovation perspective. As CISO and a self-professed security nerd, I will be following this closely as it will definitely provide a challenge when it comes to ensuring these interfaces are secure.

From a 100-foot view, the challenge for any security team is finding all the possible vulnerabilities that could be exploited and secure them. A malicious actor only needs one successful exploit that gives them a foothold into an application or environment. There are specialist companies that you can engage and partner with to support this challenge.

Agile and DevOps provide faster to market software. However, the speed at which software can be deployed and environments can be created can introduce risk when it comes to deploying vulnerable code and environments.

Embedding security early in the software design cycle is the most effective method to help address this challenge. This may seem pretty obvious, but a lot of companies still see security as an afterthought or an added expense, which then relies on detection and containment rather than prevention.

Shifting security activities left by implementing DevSecOps is the most effective method to help address this challenge, and by engaging in the software development life cycle as early as possible.

Implementing security architectural reviews, threat modelling, static and dynamic analysis are all proactive methods of preventing security flaws entering an application.

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The 'no-code revolution' is one of the next big tech trends - Siliconrepublic.com

Enterprise software firm Palantir has proudly trod its own path in the tech industry, embracing an openly nationalist attitude that is in keeping with its roots serving the defense and intelligence communities. In his first appearance on a company earnings call today, CEO Alexander Karp even described Palantir as a company that in every way looks nonstandard, run by people that are very different.

As if to prove the point, he suggested that some observers viewed him as batshit crazy (you certainly dont hear that from a CEO every day) and then cursed several more times on a call that was refreshingly free of the usual corporate blather. But one area where Palantir is taking a conventional tech industry approach is its strategy of investing in companiesincluding some going public via mergers with special purpose acquisition companiesthat also agree to become Palantir customers. In other words, Palantir is essentially buying business for itself, which has become a standard tactic in the cloud industry, in particular for Microsoft and Google.

The rest is here:

The Flaws in Palantir's Big Tech-Like Growth Tactic - The Information

Photo: IANS

Amid the heated debate on how Big Tech is pocketing most of the earnings by creators on their platforms, homegrown creator-tech startup called HYPD is helping creators turn 'creator-preneurs' and launch their own business in under 30 seconds.

A digital home for creators, HYPD is Asia's first creator-owned marketplace that enables content creators to launch their own multi-brand stores/businesses.

According to Ashwarya Garg and Akshay Bhatnagar, Co-founders of HYPD, for Big Tech platforms, creator monetisation is a "pseudo priority".

Creators have the domain knowledge, they have the distribution and all they need is a destination of their own and a no-code tech platform to start monetising.

"HYPD does exactly that. It provides a business-in-a-box solution, for any creator to start earning their first dollar on the internet," Bhatnagar added.

Creators can sell products from multiple brands and, in future, can launch their own courses, take appointments, sell tickets and everything else they feel is monetisable.

"The best part, all profits are directly owned and kept by creators. No dependence on countless apps, No platform fee, no middle-men cuts, no gas fee on payment processing, and no hassle of operations and technology. Launch your business where your fans exist!" the co-founders explained.

New Delhi-based HYPD recently raised $1.5 million in seed round and the capital will be utilised to activate one million content-creators.

In the past three months, creators have powered GMV of over 50 lakh from their respective stores, directly earning a sizable amount of profit, currently pegged at Rs 12 lakh.

India had over 700 million internet users in 2020, which is expected to cross the billion mark by 2024.

While a large percentage of these users are "consumers of content", a good percentage of these users are "creators of content".

"With Covid-led change, the urge to consume and create content has accelerated its demand by a decade, and now this is a full-blown industry that needs its tools, processes, accelerators, and community to help them make a strong sustainable living out of this," Garg told IANS.

A fintech creator on the platform could create and sell courses on finances and lifestyle creator could make sure his/her fans get to buy what he/she recommends, through a marketplace owned and run by him/her, and get to keep the high affiliate earnings.

HYPD helps creators to build that under 30-seconds, making them earn up to 20 per cent of every sale.

"Possibilities are endless. HYPD is a creator-tech tool, to help you achieve all of those possibilities," said Bhatnagar.

The platform has a creators/influencers network such as Bhuvan Bam, Tanmay Bhatt Bhuvan Bam, Ranveer Allahbadia and more. The first cohort of VCs has top-notch names in the industry like Better capital, Sauce VC, Joyance Partners and Lets Venture, and several angel investors.

HYPD said it has already empowered more than 500 creators to launch their stores via its platform. - IANS

Read more here:

India's HYPD making 'creator-preneurs' as Big Tech eats into their profits - The Weekend Leader

Asharq Al-Awsat, London, February 7

In 2015, reports surfaced about the potential penetration of Chinese entities into the computer systems of a number of major American technology companies, and the subsequent theft of intellectual property from those devices. In response, former President Barack Obama wanted to impose sanctions on China. However, he was dissuaded from doing so by leaders of affected companies, who claimed that any action against Beijing would prove far more costly than the cost of the theft itself. This is because they relied heavily on the Chinese market and Chinese factories. All of this prompted Obama to change his mind and rely, instead, on a joint statement with the Chinese president, in which the two leaders pledged to combat cybercrimes and cybertheft. Im bringing up this story intentionally, at a time when a new Cold War is emerging between two camps: one trying to protect the role of the nation-state on the grounds that it is a fundamental component of the global system; and a second, consisting oftechnology companies trying to undermine the current international order and replace it with a system in which the nation-state surrenders its power to multinational corporations that transcend borders. A case in point is the decision to block former US President Donald Trump from platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These platforms decided that Trumps opinions, despite being supported by over 70 million Americans, didnt align with their values as companies. The system that these companies are creating isnt one based on the principle of democracy. Rather, it is the tyranny of the minority: a system ruled by a handful of unrelated individuals who run these companies. The intensity of this conflict has only grown stronger in recent months. With the increasing dependence of governments on the services provided by these large companies, the equation has become unbalanced. Instead of these companies relying on the states support and care for them, the tides have turned and the governments are those who now depend on Big Tech to survive. In 2020, Amazon announced that it would ban police use of facial recognition software for a year, effectively halting law enforcements ability to identify criminals through online systems. Recently, the European Union escalated this confrontation by amending laws pertaining to the protection of personal information, in a way that prevents tech companies from monetizingdata belonging to European Union citizens, even when that data is collected outside the countries of the union. While the European Union is escalating the confrontation and trying to tame these companies, the matter is different in America, because most of these companies are either American or Chinese companies. These companies take advantage of public support in order to influence the policies of the American administration, either directly or indirectly. As for the Middle East, we do not have such companies and we are not as strong and organized as the European Union, which negotiates with them and confronts them as a common threat under unified policies. The COVID-19 pandemic helped in restoring the prestige and importance of the nation-state, which proved to be the most effective mechanism to control and organize societies. And while tech companies initially lagged behind, they quickly picked up the slack and introduced ways in which individuals could continue maintaining their normal lives under this new reality. This came into play with things like remote communication technologies, health passports, surveillance and tracking, among other things. Personally, I believe that Arab countries that care about maintaining and strengthening the role of the nation-state should use their armies and research institutions to establish technology companies that provide them with their needs, instead of entrusting it to the private sector. The reliance on technology companies has become far greater than their ability to control them and reconcile their business interests with those of the state. Bassam Al-Binmohamed (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)

Continue reading here:

In Whose Interest: The Nation-State or Big Tech? - The Media Line

One of Web3s benefits, according to boosters such as Jack Dorsey, is that its censorship-resistant. Because it is decentralized, this argument goes, it is impossible to censor anyone. But it isnt true that cryptocurrency is decentralized. Right now, Web3 has a choke point: Big Tech.

Cryptocurrency has relied on points of centralization since the days of Mt. Gox. (That hack wouldnt have mattered nearly as much if Mt. Gox hadnt been processing 80 percent of all transaction volume in Bitcoin at times). As the ecosystem has expanded, so have the points of centralization, such as AWS and Google Cloud.

One problem with cryptocurrency is that the technology is fairly user-hostile, at least to normal users of the internet. And so centralized services have sprung up for the non-technical, such as Coinbase, OpenSea, Metamask, VeVe, and Rarible. Meanwhile, mainstream payment apps Venmo, PayPay, and so on have added cryptocurrency capabilities. This is likely how the general public will get involved with crypto, assuming they do so at all. These services may also be used by people who do understand cryptocurrency since even the savvy may appreciate user-friendly interfaces and protection from scams.

To get to these apps, users will go through the Google and Apple app stores. So if those centralized ways of accessing cryptocurrency want to stay in Apples and Googles app stores, well, functionally, Apple and Google will be setting the terms of content moderation for Web3.

For the purposes of this piece, I am going to focus on Apple because I didnt sit through the Epic Games v. Apple antitrust trial for nothing. (Epic Games v. Google has not yet taken place; when it does, I imagine well get much more clarity about the Google store.) Apples public relations team did not respond to requests for comment.

As Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote on February 4th, For any app to be listed in the Apple and Google App Stores, it needs to play by the rules of those two companies. That means that whatever Apple and Google decide as their content policy, Coinbase will follow, Armstrong says. Our approach is to be free speech supporters, but not free speech martyrs. (Emphasis his.) So if a critical partner such as Apple or Google objects to something and requires its removal, Coinbase will remove it. Coinbases head of policy communications, Ian Plunkett, declined to comment for this story.

This position has been signaled before. In June 2020, a few employees walked out of work because they wanted an immediate response from Armstrong to the Black Lives Matter protests. Armstrong ultimately did post his support for BLM to Twitter, though those tweets have since been deleted. The following September, Armstrong made a blog post limiting political discussions at work.

In his September 2020 post, Armstrong describes the move as mission focused. After the departures, he noted in an email that [w]e have just made a decision to not engage in broader activism as a company outside of our mission. (How Coinbases attempts at a PAC fit with this framework of ideas is unclear to me.) He offered severance to anyone who objected, which wound up being about 5 percent of its employees. Clearly included in the companys values were the notions that broader societal issues and political causes were minimally important.

This is fairly consistent with ceding moderation decisions to Apple if you squint. Free speech maximalism is, after all, a political cause and thus on Coinbases minimally important list. One reason that Coinbase has stuck around as long as it has while competitors have toppled is pragmatism.

We have some sense of how Apple will moderate Web3 because we already know how it moderates in its little walled garden:

The blockchain has an inherent moderation problem: its immutable. So if someone encodes a text string that contains a URL for a website that, for instance, contains child porn, the text string is there forever. Extracting that data requires effort and technical ability, and the linked-to website itself might go down, but the text string remains. Its also possible to harass people on the blockchain in messages that cant be altered or deleted, though some level of technical ability is required for this also.

So Apples mores are perhaps less of a problem for pure cryptocurrency and more of a problem for NFTs, an area Coinbase is planning to get into this year. Nudity in an NFT? Thats a problem for anyone who displays the NFT and also wants to appear in the Apple App Store. I mean, we already know that the fine folks of Apple are terrified of naked bananas. God forbid they see an actual human titty.

Whats more, Apple can say what currencies its willing to support transactions in, and thats trouble for companies that want to take payments in, for instance, Ethereum.

Fortunately for crypto enthusiasts, Apple has a pretty good incentive to let crypto apps some, at least stay in its App Store. One reason you cant buy a Kindle e-book through the iPhone app is that Apple takes a 30 percent cut of any digital goods sold in apps that appear in its store. This means that anyone trying to buy an NFT inarguably a digital good through an iOS app is likely going to pay a premium since app designers can simply pass the charge along to users rather than sacrificing their own cut. (Amazon has chosen not to take this path, which is why you still cant buy a Kindle e-book on the iPhone app).

The flip side here is that Apple can turn the faucet off at any time. Display an NFT titty? You might be out. Try to bilk Apple out of its cut? Youre definitely out.

Coinbases content moderation capitulation here is understandable: Apple, Google, and even Amazon are going to run the show if youre trying to make Web3 a mass-market technology. Collectively, this group owns the stores where your app appears, the cloud servers you use for your service, the operating systems, and the devices. Say whatever you like about the distributed future of Web3, but for the time being, centralized Big Tech is going to continue calling the shots.

Continue reading here:

Why Coinbase admitted Apple calls the shots - The Verge