Category Archives: Big Tech

Most companies that signed the letters were midsize tech and consumer brands trying to attract younger customers and workers, says Jen Stark, senior director of corporate strategy at Tara Health Foundation, which engages the private sector on reproductive rights and helped organize the letters. The largest tech companiesAlphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoftstayed mum. Notably silent, Stark says.

Companies were caught flat footed by the threats to abortion rights. Now theyre kind of scrambling.

Anthony Johndrow, corporate adviser

WIRED contacted 16 tech companies with sizable Texas workforces about the law and its impact on workers. Alphabet, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Dropbox, eBay, Indeed, Meta, Oracle, PayPal, Samsung, SpaceX, and Tesla did not respond. Intel and Microsoft declined to comment. HP Enterprise has not taken a position on the law, but the company said, We encourage our team members to make their voices heard through advocacy and at the ballot box. The company said its medical plans cover out-of-state medical care, including abortion.

We're not asking companies to weigh in on when life begins, Stark says. We're simply asking for companies to understand abortion as a workforce issue that impacts worker well-being and the achievement of an individual's full potential, and see its connection to equity issues around gender and race. Tara Health asks companies to stop donating to anti-choice politicians and to review their benefits to mitigate the impact of abortion restrictions on their workforces.

Although the majority of Americans think abortion should be legal, a sizable minority believes the opposite. According to Pew Research, 39 percent of Americans think abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, including 37 percent of women. Thats a large group, including customers, shareholders, and employees who are going to get really, really angry with you for taking a position, says Paul Argenti, a Dartmouth corporate communications professor who wrote an article titled When Should Your Company Speak Up About A Social Issue?

But as the spate of LGBTQ corporate activism demonstrated, companies do sometimes speak up, even when it makes people mad. A 2020 George Washington University study of Fortune 500 companies proposed one reason: pressure from employee resource groups. The researchers found that in highly educated workforces, LGBTQ employees persuaded companies to take stances on their rights, even when it may have been costly to business.

Years ago, companies were reluctant to speak out on LGBTQ issues, says Shelley Alpern, director of corporate engagement for the investment firm Rhia Ventures, which submits shareholder resolutions supporting reproductive rights. Part of what got them to move away from that taboo is that their employees started to speak up through LGBTQ affinity groups, she says. That made a huge difference because I think corporate managers realized this was not an abstract question. This has a real impact on employees.

Employee mobilization around abortion rights has yet to reach this level. Johndrow, the reputation adviser, says his clients have not mentioned workplace organizing around the issue. To my knowledge, and I work with a fair number of big companies, there were no groups like that, he says. Im sure theyre forming now.

They are, says Deena Fidas, managing director of the LGBTQ workplace equality nonprofit Out and Equal. Fidas is trying to apply the lessons of LGBTQ workplace organizing to reproductive health. LGBTQ pressure campaigns were decades in the making, she says, starting at a time when these workers lacked legal protections against employment discrimination. Now, Fidas works with Tara Health and other organizations to convene womens employee resource groups and help them advocate for access to reproductive care. She says employees are starting to raise the issue as one where their employers should weigh in. Change is definitely afoot.

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Why Big Tech Companies Have Been Quiet on Texas Abortion Law - WIRED

Young happy Asian couple playing video games in living room. Cheerful people having fun with computer gaming concept.

Blue Planet Studio

The business of video games is having a moment.

Less than two weeks after Take-Two announced its $12.7 billion for Zynga, and just days after Microsoft announced its record-breaking $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Netflix co-founder and co-chief executive officer Reed Hastings said Thursday that building out video gaming to where Netflix can "amaze our members by having the absolute best in the category" is his goal.

"We have to be differentially great at it," Hastings said during Netflix's earnings conference call. "When mobile gaming is world leading, and we're some of the best producers, like where we are in film today, having two of the top ten, then you should ask what's next. Let's nail the thing and not just be in it for the sake of being in it."

That's a tall task for Netflix, which is building its gaming unit from scratch. Netflix chief operating officer Greg Peters said Thursday the company plans to license "large game" intellectual property that "people will recognize" later this year. Hastings added Netflix will use its "walk, crawl, run" strategy around gaming, where it purposefully grows the business gradually to learn about user habits and use resources efficiently.

Netflix, of course, has used this general strategy before in streaming video. The company licensed well-known movies and TV shows to build out its user base as a cable TV supplement before slowly wading into original content. After years of experimenting on a show-by-show or film-by-film basis, Netflix felt its recommendation algorithm and user data could accurately predict new popular original content. Today, Netflix spends billions of dollars each year on originals.

The Microsoft acquisition and the Netflix commentary is a general acknowledgment that gaming has become an important part of global entertainment, especially with young audiences. Netflix has often pointed out that gaming, such as Fortnite, competes with its core streaming service for eyeballs.

This isn't new, exactly. Microsoft has owned Xbox for decades. But it's obviously never spent nearly $70 billion to acquire anything, let alone a video game company.

Gaming has jumped to the forefront of many people's attention as companies like Meta and Roblox build strategies around a vaguely defined immersive consumer computing strategy called the "metaverse," which will almost certainly involve gaming at some level.

But the acquisition rush likely suggests something far simpler: Gaming has become ubiquitous. Mobile devices and online play, connecting people to play real-time games, has given gaming a wider audience and significance in youth culture. The Entertainment Software Association, the U.S. video game's trade association, claims more people play video games than ever before.

Big tech and media companies have flirted with gaming in the past, with mixed success. Disney and Google are among the large companies who decided to abandon their video game aspirations in recent years. And it's probably far too early to position a company for the metaverse, when it's still entirely unclear what the metaverse encompasses.

But gaming is clearly a major interest two of the world's largest tech companies. That's meaningful, and it probably means there's more large gaming consolidation to come.

WATCH: There's probably more risk than people realize, says Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson

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Netflix and Microsoft show that video gaming has become too big for tech giants to ignore - CNBC

This might sound strange, but Israelis are growing horns more than ever before;unicorn horns, that is (why, what did you think I was talking about?). World, pay attention: more than 35 companies in Israel reached unicorn status over the last year or raised private capital at a valuation of over $1 billion.

Some of the newest Unicorn Club members are only one year old. Only a few years ago, valuations of $1 billion or more were reserved for the most established, large companies. In the era of Covid, with new problems to solve, and the need to adjust to a new normal, many Israeli companies seize the day and made a fortune providing innovative solutions.

More than 35 companies in Israel reached unicorn status over the last year or raised private capital ... [+] at a valuation of over $1 billion.

Even before Corona, the US stock market was at low tide; meanwhile this has turned out to be the longest period of this kind in its history. Consequently, the private money market has been flooded with more and more new entrants. Private investment and venture capital doubled to more than $3 trillion by 2020. Together with hedge funds and real estate investment funds, these sums have already reached $10 trillion. There was so much money in the private market that capital raised soared to a peak of $2 trillion in early 2020.

At that time, dozens of unicorns were born in Israel, which was a fantastic phenomenon, but then Covid hit. After a short while of paralysis, the stock market began to recover, and the private investors were back . Israeli companies stood by, waiting to pick the fruits.

In 2021, Israeli startups raised over $25 billion, (which is 2.5X of last years amounts and about 25X what it was 15 years ago). In recent years, Israel has experienced a major scale-up, with an exponential increase in financing and unicorns. Some attribute this to world-class talents trained in the top R&D units of the IDF as well as its unique intellectual property; Israel is notably a domain expert in the fields of cyber security, AI, computer vision, adtech, semiconductors and sensors, among others. Some credit the formation and density of startups: there are 6000-9000 active startups and around 1000 new companies are formed every year.

Masters of Their Domain

While the newly minted unicorns in Israel are based in diverse industry segments, the strong domains are enterprise software, cyber security, fintech and insurtech.

In the past year, several companies in new business segments reached unicorn status. These segments include semiconductors (Wiliot, Valens, Innoviz, Hailo and Next Silicon); digital healthcare ( K Health, Immunai) and the industrial sector (Augury and Fabric).

Yahal Zilka, serial entrepreneur, cofounder and managing partner at 10D, is a long time veteran of the VC industry. He has led multiple well-performing global funds and has been an early investor in numerous unicorns, including: Waze, DriveNets, Fundbox, Valens ( NYSE: VLN), Appsflyer, and Innoviz (Nasdaq:INVZ). The companies have one thing in common besides their over a billion dollars value: theyre all Israeli. Israeli companies, says Zillka as he attempts to explain the secret sauce of the Israeli unicorns, are by and large focused on deep technology, out of the box unique offerings and the ability to develop solutions that are scalable.

From Tech Focused to Full Scale Solutions

Historically, Israeli entrepreneurs focused on products which provided a component or subsystem. Nevertheless, they were not directly selling to customers. Over the past few years, Zilka says, with greater availability of capital, the focus has shifted to providing a full solution and offering while directly serving the customer. Israeli entrepreneurs, founders and management teams are keen to develop and provide multiple solutions, thus advancing in the the value chain. Therefore valuations are also impacted upward. This is demonstrated by companies such as Waze and Solaredge.

"With greater availability of capital, the focus has shifted to providing a full solution and ... [+] offering while directly serving the customer." Yahal Zilka

Despite the dynamic startup industry, Israeli companies have had to cope with a geographic glass ceiling; they were excluded from the main global markets. Due to this handicap, Zilka suggests, remote skills were adopted and developed and eventually brought to the forefront by the pandemic, which succeeded in flattening the world.' This long-term competitive advantage for the Israeli tech ecosystem was created, eliminating the distance component. These are challenges Israelis have been working to overcome for years. They have had ample time to hone their remote skills in sales, onboarding, implementation, customer success and more.

No Exit

Jewish mothers used to wish their kids would grow up to become doctors or lawyers. In the past 30 years, with the rapidly growing startup nation, this traditional hope was replaced with the desire for a startup exit. In 2022, this shifted once again. In the past, Zilka says, most Israeli startups were acquired by leading technology corporations for hundreds of millions of dollars, mainly due to the obstacle of building large scale companies outside of Israel and the availability and scarcity of growth capital. In the past twenty-four months this has changed dramatically. With this new growth of capital, both entrepreneurs and investors believe they will build very strong companies that will be leaders in their field.

SPAC/PIPE, a new financial vehicle that appeared in 2020 provides new financing opportunities for younger companies that are recognized leaders but only have bookings to show, rather than revenue track records. In addition, there has been a major shift to IPOs as these startups choose to stay independent and build full scale businesses, reaching valuations in the billions, insists Zilka as he lays out the very good reasons companies are no longer in a rush to exit. In 2021 alone, several companies have achieved valuations of over $10 billion; this is a feat that was previously achieved only once every 5-10 years.

Biotech startup Immunai earned its unicorn status with a $215 million Series B investment round. The Israeli company has developed a technological platform that maps the entire immune system for better detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. It was founded in 2018 by Noam Solomon (CEO) and Luis Voloch (CTO); the company has raised $295M in funding to-date.

CEO Noam Solomon says that only a year ago, the company had to invest resources to attract the attention of big pharma companies. Now we get requests from C-level executives that already know the company and want to partner, which clearly help us grow faster.

There is something about the direct and straightforward nature of Israelis. Noam Solomon

The pandemic greatly accelerated their unicorn status: Our mission is to fully map and unlock the secrets of the human immune system and develop better medicines. Covid19 had a huge impact on the world and on all of us, and it demonstrated how critically important understanding the human immune system is. Our unique value proposition became more attractive to investors and partners and ignited our growth. He credits much of the companys success to the Israeli culture: There is something about the direct and straightforward nature of Israelis, who feel more comfortable sharing their disagreement without apologizing, that when coupled with a strong team above I mentality, can create a whole much larger than the sum of its parts.

Tipalti, a leading global payables solution, announced it has raised $270 million in series F funding at a valuation of $8.3 billion, bringing total funding raised to date to just over $550 million and placing it among the most valuable private fintech companies in the world. Thousands of global companies, from Amazon Twitch, GoDaddy, Roku, to WordPress.com, and ZipRecruiter etc., use Tipalti to reduce operational workload by 80%.

The recent shift by which Israeli entrepreneurs are no longer seeking an "exit" at a moderate ... [+] valuation is a sign of the mature approach." Chen Amit

CEO Chen Amit admits that the companys unicorn status has impacted employees, hiring, and the ecosystem as well as the customers. Covid played a huge role in the companys growth: With remote work, there is the need to digitize finance processes that were previously manual. He defines the growing unicorn phenomena as part of the industrys maturity. The recent shift by which Israeli entrepreneurs are no longer seeking an "exit" at a moderate valuation is a sign of the mature approach. I believe that considering Israels small population, it was overrepresented in the tech economy, and now it is overrepresented in the unicorn community. Chen goes even further and says that the term unicorn is obsolete. It's no longer such a unique and fantastic being. There are too many unicorns around for this term to be relevant. I wish that there was a different term for $1B companies, and perhaps the real unicorns today are companies valued at $50B or $100B which is really rare for private companies.

Believe You Will Find a Solution to Any Given Problem

Melio, a leading B2B payments platform for small businesses whose mission is to Keep Small Business in Business has raised over $500 million to date, with its latest funding round in September bringing the companys value to $4 billion. Matan Bar, CEO, says that just two years ago, pre-Covid, the company had 30 employees. Today it has almost 500. The strong culture we built made this expansion possible; however, there is also a growing trend by which people are interested in transitioning from large corporations to pre-IPO startups like us. Covid created the ideal opportunity, he admits. We were in the right place at the right time and are now the fastest-growing B2B payments company in the U.S. There are $14 trillion in funds in the U.S. that are transferred in checks between businesses. But during the pandemic, businesses that were used to paying their suppliers in checks suddenly found that they had to transition to digital payments. Also, many small businesses faced more frequent and severe cash flow challenges due to global financial volatility. We grew our team quickly to make sure we provided the right level of support during a time they needed us the most. He credits much of their success to Melios Israeli roots: Creativity is usually sparked when there are obstacles to overcome and Israel has faced many obstacles since it was established.

We were in the right place at the right time and are now the fastest-growing B2B payments company ... [+] in the U.S." Matan Bar

Orca Security, the cloud security innovation leader, is valued at $1.8 Billion. Today, the company provides instant-on security and compliance for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, and many more. CEO Avi Shua says that in 2021 alone, Orca Security achieved more than 800 percent year-over-year growth, expanded rapidly around the globe, gained notable customers across industries, went from dozens to hundreds of employees, and opened a London office as well as a U.S. headquarters in Portland, Oregon. Like many of the other new Israeli unicorns, the company noted a huge increase in demand when Covid struck, and that demand is only growing. I spent a decade in Unit 8200 of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and another decade at Check Point Software as its chief technologist. The most important cyber security defense lesson I learned in the IDF was that security basics are always more important than shiny new security toys because attackers will use the simplest means possible to breach your defenses. Theres a popular Unit 8200 mantra, he shares, that also rings true for entrepreneurs: Believe youll find a solution to any given problem. Never assume that existing approaches are the only possible solutions. So, we invented an entirely new approach to cloud security that doesnt rely on installing and maintaining agents or network scanning tools. Those legacy approaches didnt provide complete coverage back then and they certainly dont work for the cloud.

"Believe youll find a solution to any given problem." Avi Shua

A Unicorn Bubble?

Zilka admits there is clearly a concern with some of the valuations, as they represent 50-300X over next year revenues. Though revenues are strong, expenses are also mushrooming. Nevertheless, the majority of these companies have clear Product Market Fit, strong pull from customers, unique offerings, meaningful revenues, strong growth rates, as well as strong leadership and management teams.

As for the driving force behind the major growth, Zilka credits the Israeli entrepreneurs who have the experience and desire to swing for the fences. Whether its the large pool of second-time entrepreneurs, the graduates of the elite military units taking their knowledge of building large scale complicated software solutions to the private sector or the seasoned technologists who put in the time at leading multinational corporations, the breadth and depth of this talent pool is putting the Israeli ecosystem ahead of the pack.

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More And More Israelis Are Growing Horns: Startup Nation Out, Big Tech Nation In - Forbes

Leading experts share their predictions

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA / ACCESSWIRE / January 24, 2022 / Data management professionals getting the central stage in business, focus on ethics increasing, pressure on Big Tech affecting the landscape of public web data industry - these will be among the most prominent trends in the big data industry in 2022, according to a public data gathering solutions provider, Oxylabs. Their experts predict what to expect in the year ahead.

Growing markets for external data

Tomas Montvilas, Chief Commercial Officer at Oxylabs, says that more industries will discover the benefits of using external data in the upcoming year. He lists a few:

"The market of SaaS products that use external data to provide insights for their clients will grow further in 2022. The successful IPOs of such companies like Semrush, Similarweb, Zoominfo and others are driving further investments in the field and we are likely to see more stars emerging," Tomas says.

Another important area he sees for the web scraping industry's growth is cybersecurity. Cyber threats are becoming more advanced and require new measures of defense. This is where web monitoring and scraping technologies come in.

"Constant monitoring of both public web and dark web can help identify malicious sites and programs early. It can also help catch data leaks sooner by finding data sets when they go for sale on the dark web, and recognize the actions of hacker groups. Meanwhile, proxies can serve well in email protection, by providing the ability to scan emails from different IP addresses," he explains.

Data management role in business further increasing

With the recent explosion in digitizing everything, data management and analytics became central roles in business. Data departments have been experiencing exponential growth during the past few years and the growth will continue well into 2022.

Gediminas Rickeviius, Vice President of Global Partnerships at Oxylabs notes that the increasing importance of data departments can be easily illustrated by budgeting trends. According to several recent surveys Oxylabs conducted in the UK's finance and ecommerce industries, most data departments are expecting to increase their budgets (51% ecommerce, 43% financial services).

Story continues

Another trend Gediminas predicts for data departments will be the increasing outsourcing of automated public web data gathering tools. There will be several reasons for this. First of them being obvious - as companies become dependent on external data, manual data gathering processes are simply not sufficient. Another important factor is the current job market landscape.

"With "the great resignation" and lack of human resources being the dominant topics of 2021 it became even harder to find in-house professionals that could dedicate all their time for maintaining and adjusting web scraping infrastructure. Outsourcing this task allows optimizing resources and focusing on data analysis rather than acquisition," says Gediminas.

Pressure for Big Tech could affect web data industry

Recent years were marked with the growing pressure for Big Tech from governments around the world. 2022 will be no different - there will likely be push for new regulations, especially around personal data and its acquisition and aggregation.

According to Denas Grybauskas, Head of Legal at Oxylabs, the data gathering industry should not turn a blind eye on these processes. In light of the government pressure, some big tech companies might already be in the process of restricting access to public web data which could affect many businesses.

"Some companies are preparing for the old as life tactic - pointing fingers. That is what, at least in accordance with the leaked emails, Meta (Facebook) is planning to do in terms of personal data leaks and data scraping companies - to shift the attention from leaks by stating that personal data got out in the wild not due to Facebook's mistakes, but those of scrapers," Denas says.

Moving towards industry self-regulation

When it comes to strategic development of the data gathering industry, ethics and legal implications will remain the hot topic in 2022, pushing the industry to continue raising the standards. Ethical proxy acquisition and strong KYC practices will dominate the conversation, predicts Julius erniauskas, CEO of Oxylabs.

He explains that as with most new technologies, web scraping is developing faster than the regulation that could safeguard it from potential misuse cases. Therefore, the industry itself has to take the lead in developing the self-regulation guidelines and standards for the proper use of technology.

"In 2022, the issue is set to become more mainstream for several reasons. First of all, as the largest industry players are setting the tone, smaller players are likely to follow. Secondly, brands that use proxy services are putting more emphasis on the nature of proxies too, as potential misuse could damage their reputation as well," says Julius.

About Oxylabs

Oxylabs is a leading global provider of premium proxies and data scraping solutions for large-scale web data extraction. The company's mission is clear: To give every business - whether big or small - access to big data. With unmatched hands-on experience in publicly available web data gathering, Oxylabs is in trusted partnerships with dozens of Fortune 500 companies and global businesses, helping them unearth hidden gems of business intelligence data through state-of-the-art products and technological expertise. For more information, please visit: https://oxylabs.io/.

Media Contact:

Vytautas KirjazovasEmail: press@oxylabs.ioWebsite: http://www.oxylabs.io

SOURCE: Oxylabs

View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/685161/The-Future-of-Big-Data-What-to-Expect-in-2022

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The Future of Big Data: What to Expect in 2022? - Yahoo Finance

By Woody White

At this moment in world history, we are the richest, healthiest, smartest and most connected humans that have ever lived. Our drinking water is cleaner than it has ever been. Our GDP is the highest, babies are healthier, lifespans are longer and our food is abundant. (Ex: 150 years ago, a cow produced 1000 pounds of milk in a year. Today, a cow produces 16,000 pounds annually.)

Progress in every measurable category continues to move forward. We have learned that the earth is round, we eradicated slavery in much of the world, achieved womens suffrage, invented railroads, airplanes, discovered quantum physics, electricity, indoor plumbing and how to perform organ transplants. We even sent men to the moon and now here we are at a coffee shop with our ubiquitous smartphones and their portal into a universal store of all human knowledge ever known.

These advances occurred due in large measure to the foundational institutions that had held us together even in those times (like now) when we were tearing each other apart; our commitment to an unwritten social compact; the rule of law; our rights to the free exercise of religion and speech; and the premium we place on due process.

The cornerstone of everything we know about building a successful society has been the idea of fairness and equality. Starting with the Magna Cartas rudimentary acknowledgment of democratic rights, to the Declaration of Independence setting in motion our national democratic experiment, then the loosely applied but practical Articles of Confederation that bound us together until the Constitution and its Bill of Rights enshrined universal civil liberties and led to the official founding of the nation.

With each chapter in history, our commitment to fair and just has deepened its root system in our lives, including in the modern age, as we have retained the Senate filibuster rule to protect us from the fevers of a rabid majority. And our appellate courts still publish dissenting opinions to recognize the value of differing points of view.

But in the span of a few years, everything has changed in how we view what is fair. The methods we use to govern ourselves and communicate our disagreements have led to an erosion of public trust, once unquestioned but now undeniable, in our most revered institutions: each new days fresh outrage and crisis results in someone dying a death by a thousand tweets.

Just short of halfway through this American experiment, we survived a bloody civil war fought over the Constitutions structural inconsistencies. Indeed, it was a worse time than what we are living through. But not by much. The prospect of sewing it all back together today seems as elusive and beyond our grasp as it probably did in the months before the first battle of Bull Run in 1861.

The lines of civil discourse are blurred out of existence. We have our TV stations, Twitter accounts, echo chambers of groups within groups, where we seek one-dimensional validation of our viewpoints, with little chance of acquiescence to a point well-made by someone with whom we might disagree.

Socrates subjected his opponents to a series of cross-examining questions in the public square, with logic and reason providing the framework of conflict resolution.

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas stood on wooden stages for hours, on seven different occasions, in the intemperate Illinois weather, to explain their different visions of America. As in all elections, one won, the other lost. Life went on.

But todays 24-hour social media news cycle rages in a never-ending debate, where there are no winners.

What are we going to do?

Since most of our public policy conversation takes place on the social media stage, if we are to find a way out of our self-made Sargasso Sea, it must be in a mass repudiation of big tech. Not in the sense that large tech must cease to exist, but the way we use it must change. If we fail to find a better way to communicate with each other, the democratic experiment we value will morph into something worse than anything we could imagine.

Each time the thought police censor and delete views on their platforms, they become incrementally less relevant. It may feel good in the short term for these tech giants to hit delete on unapproved posts or to suspend accounts, but over time, reasonable people start to take notice and do not like it when voices are silenced, even when it is one with which they disagree.

Our basic notion of fairness stubbornly persists. Recent jury verdicts and the ascension of the Joe Rogan Podcast are just two examples of how our sense of fairness has overcome our new biases. For the most part, Americans are fair and decent people.

We are not systemically racist. We do not support censorship. We do not pull for cheaters. When we see an unfair application of rules, we do something about it. Or at least, we used to.

If the rules of censorship and cancel-culture were applied consistently, it would be bad enough. But reasonable people know that rules which allow terrorists to tweet, but not former presidents and current members of Congress, something is inherently unfair.

And the people making these disparate judgment calls in real-time are political activists/employees of big tech, recent devotees to The Hunger Games dystopia, sitting in Silicon Valley cubicles manipulating us to achieve what they see as a larger utopic, pre-arranged outcome.

But guess what: as a whole, people are smart, and eventually, we figure out when we are being herded into a pasture, we prefer not to graze. This phenomenon is referred to as a pendulum swing. And while COVID-19 has reconfigured everything we thought we knew about how society functions, the double standards in public health, sports and everyday life that we have endured for the greater good have now brought us full circle. The herd mentality is starting to go the other direction.

And it is because we still value our basic sense of fairness. Somehow, through all of historys upheavals, here we are at the pinnacle of human achievement, invention and progress. It is starting to dawn on us that unless we get a grip on all this unless the sane grownups in the room do something we could go backward for the first time in a while.

It has happened before.

Victor Hugo once wrote that There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

The time has come when we must change our relationship with, and expectations of, large tech. They must adopt the rules of fairness that underpin every other facet of our lives. If we do not insist that they do so, it may be the final straw in the downward spiral we see all around us.

This guest opinion piece by Woody White, of Wilmington, N.C., was made available by The Carolina Journal.

FOR MORE COLUMNS AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, CHECK OUT OUR OPINION SECTION HERE.

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Guest Opinion: Our relationship with big tech must change - The Coastland Times | The Coastland Times - The Coastland Times

In late June, the NCAA announced historic rule changes allowing student-athletes to earn money from their personal brands. The decision opened the door to quid pro quos that only a few years ago would have spurred investigations, suspensions or dismissals.

Immediately following the announcement, Bay Area schools began touting Silicon Valley connections, alumni networks and marketing platforms as tools to help students secure name, image and likeness deals, often abbreviated as NIL. Despite those implicit promises, though, few tech companies have gotten involved in the burgeoning industry, according to players, administrators and experts interviewed by SFGATE.

In the first seven months, a handful of Bay Area students have secured significant NIL partnerships: Stanford women's basketball player Cameron Brink, for instance, does ads for Netflix on her Instagram. One Cal athlete has made more than $10,000, according to school officials. They declined to name that person, though they pointed to quarterback Chase Garbers and freshman womens basketball player Mia Mastrov as examples of Bay Area athletes who are benefiting from the new rules. But Garbers told SFGATE he relied on help from family, not his school, when negotiating exchanges of products and cash for social media posts about coffee, sports drinks, protein shakes and clothes.

Garbers also signed on to endorse one of the only tech companies making NIL deals in the Bay Area so far, cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The company also inked a social media promotion deal with Garbers teammate Josh Drayden and spent $17.5 million to put its name on UC Berkeleys California Memorial Stadium.

At San Jose State, in the thick of Silicon Valley, quarterback Nick Starkel told SFGATE hes made a few thousand dollars signing trading cards, but hasnt seen tech companies descend onto campus to negotiate with college athletes. I have not seen any of it, like zero at all, he said last fall, adding that it hadnt come as a surprise to him.

But he does regularly hear from people who have little experience with NIL deals who seem to be looking for a quick buck. I get reached out to probably, you know, every other day by a new marketing agent, by somebody that is just trying to get a piece of the pie, he said.

California Golden Bears guard Mia Mastrov dribbles the ball during a women's college basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the California Golden Bears on February 21, 2021 at Haas Pavilion in Berkeley, CA.

FTX is one of the splashiest figures in the NIL market, giving monthly stipends to Kentuckys entire mens basketball team (in dollars) and paying BYU football players more than $500 each (in cash or crypto) to promote it on social media.

But there are huge disparities among NIL offers. While the average NIL transaction on the brand-building platform INFLCR is $1,306, the median transaction is $51, according to numbers provided to the New York Times in December. More than 200 Division I schools around the country have arranged for student-athletes to use INFLCRs app to connect directly with companies, as well as to post their schools photos and videos to their own social media accounts.

Jim Cavale, INFLCRs CEO and founder, thinks the numbers will go up as students figure out the system. I think that the data will show that student-athletes are going to learn and they're going to become more savvy, he told SFGATE last fall.

But the volume of tiny deals that athletes are accepting and which rights students are granting to third parties has surprised Darren Heitner, a Florida-based sports, entertainment and intellectual property attorney who helped develop the Sunshine States NIL law and has since assisted some students with deals.

I would suspect that we start to see athletes generally become a bit more cognizant of the importance of not simply just granting their rights without true, equitable compensation, Heitner said last fall, while acknowledging that some athletes dont have the luxury to wait for better offers.

Garbers and Mastrov, the two students Cal put forward as success stories, both come from families with a business background. But going forward, administrators hope that in-house programs and resources can help others find their footing in the new landscape.

Within hours of the NCAAs interim policy going into effect July 1, Cal Athletics announced its GOLDEN program, a comprehensive set of resources for student-athletes to build their brands and take advantage of new name, image and likeness legislation. It invoked its proximity to the tech space, saying the program would capitalize on Cal's alumni network and access to industry leaders in Silicon Valley and beyond.

A day earlier, when the NCAA approved the rule changes, Stanford announced the launch of Cardinal Connect, an in-house initiative that aims to leverage Stanford's campus and alumni resources to provide education and support to students. In a statement, Athletic Director Bernard Muir said Stanford was uniquely positioned to deliver NIL value to its students.

"Through our relationships in Silicon Valley, our world-class campus resources and an unparalleled alumni network, Cardinal Connect reflects our approach to NIL, and will provide students with the best education and opportunities to benefit from NIL," he said.

Less than two weeks later, San Jose State got into the mix and announced its partnership with Opendorse, an athlete marketing platform that, like INFLCR, partners with schools across the nation to help student-athletes traverse the NIL space. I think it's one of those things where if you don't have it, then you're kind of getting left behind, because most schools are working on something, Cal safety Elijah Hicks told SFGATE in an interview last fall. Hicks was part of a working group that developed the GOLDEN program.

Despite these school programs, some student-athletes have found it challenging to navigate the NIL world on top of their existing responsibilities. Something that I've struggled with is having school and gymnastics, and then also trying to go through all of the [NIL] opportunities and still reach out for more opportunities, said Mercedez Sanchez, a first-year graduate student gymnast at San Jose State.

Some of Sanchezs friends have gotten managers, she said, but shes chosen to go it alone. Even without professional help, over the summer, she earned four-figure sums working at gymnastics camps in California and Pennsylvania, an opportunity she found herself. Shes also been using the Opendorse app, which has allowed her to quickly find reliable (if unspectacular) deals, like being paid $50 for an Instagram post about GummiShot energy gummies. Opendorse also introduced her to a company that turns shirts and jerseys into quilts; that one will net her $125 and a free quilt.

Sanchez appreciates that Opendorse vets the offers for her, helping her avoid potential scams. Sometimes companies will email her and ask her to set up an account or sign in to her Instagram, she said. I get worried about identity or passwords getting stolen. That's I think my biggest issue with it: Not having somebody else who can check that they're legit.

Opendorse is a really great tool, said Starkel, the San Jose State quarterback. One of the most useful features is a tool that suggests valuations for different kinds of promotion. It tells you how much an Instagram post is worth, how much a Twitter post is worth, Starkel said. But a lot of companies just ignore that, offering a tiny fraction of what the app recommends, he said.

Those who have been following NIL developments closely, like Heitner, see value in colleges proactively providing educational resources about endorsement opportunities. In Florida, for instance, financial literacy and life skills workshops are required for student-athletes. Bay Area schools, too, have placed an emphasis on education, including brand-building and personal finance talks from faculty and alumni and seminars led by tech company representatives.

But not everyone makes use of school-led NIL programs or resources. Though he considers the GOLDEN program a great asset to have at Cal, Garbers by early October hadnt taken advantage of it. Instead, his NIL dealings have been more of a family affair. I didn't hire a marketing agent. Ive kind of been doing all this on my own, asking for advice here and there, he said.

Chase Garbers of the California Golden Bears reacts after the 31-24 overtime loss to the Washington Huskies at Husky Stadium on September 25, 2021 in Seattle, Washington.

To date, about 90 Cal student-athletes about 10% across 22 teams have made a total of more than 150 NIL deals, according to Jay Larson, senior associate athletics director at the school. That could be anywhere from getting some free gear from a startup clothing company to some deals that are in the thousands of dollars, he said.

School officials expect those numbers to climb in 2022. I think a strong percentage [of student-athletes] probably simply have no interest in this space, but if you see 10% after six months without a whole lot of effort, I think its probably safe to say, over time, half the student-athletes at Cal would have an NIL deal, Larson predicts.

Despite Bay Area universities highlighting their Silicon Valley connections, its difficult to draw a definitive line between tech-related NIL deals for student-athletes and local schools proximity to the Big Tech capital. Garbers believes that being at Cal gave him a leg up with FTX, though as evidenced by deals struck from Kentucky to Utah the cryptocurrency exchange has made plenty of deals at schools far away from Silicon Valley.

I don't think [tech companies] play much of a role right now, quite honestly, said Tim Derdenger, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellons Tepper School of Business who researches technology and sports markets. While he has heard of instances where representatives from Facebook and Twitter have gone to schools to help student-athletes build social media savvy, he thinks their involvement essentially starts and ends there.

Jeff Konya, athletic director at San Jose State, points out that the NIL landscape is still in the nascent stages. This is really new to most of corporate America, he told SFGATE last fall. What I can tell you is that Silicon Valley has an incredible interest in our student athletes.

Aside from its partnership with Opendorse, San Jose State is setting up a multi-media content solution for its student-athletes through an in-house television show and radio network called The Charge, Konya recently added in an email. The 24/7 station would allow student-athletes to market themselves as they build their brands. I see the role of the administration as providing our student-athletes the infrastructure so they can capitalize [on] NIL, Konya wrote.

Stanford, too, has been promoting relationship-building rather than cash, according to Carter Henderson, associate athletics director at Stanford. He argued that the schools alumni and Silicon Valley connections offer lots of value, including town halls with tech execs being held just for student-athletes. Meta, for instance, recently conducted NIL-related educational seminars with Stanford student-athletes. As for the commercial side, if I was a student-athlete thinking about NIL, I think this would be a really interesting kind of playground.

Whatever the current landscape, experts see huge growth ahead for the industry. Derdenger foresees close to a billion dollars in NIL deals in the next five years. But six months in, Derdenger a former student-athlete himself still thinks of the space as a kind of Wild West. We're all trying to figure this out and schools are trying to figure it out, he said.

Still, he sees NIL as transformative for student-athletes and the college sports landscape. While so-called revenue-generating sports like football and basketball have gotten lots of attention, athletes in sports that dont draw lucrative TV contracts, from golf and gymnastics to swimming, are benefiting, too.

And in an industry where, for decades, virtually everyone involved profited except for the labor on the field or in the gym, student-athletes finally have an opportunity (albeit an uneven one) for a payday while theyre enrolled.

You had the pie of profits, of money that was being spent on college athletics, from all different areas, and student-athletes outside of [their education], they were getting zero, Derdenger said. At least now they're able to get a small slice.

Patrick Riley is a Santa Cruz-based freelance reporter. He has covered a range of topics and beats in Florida and California.

Originally posted here:

Bay Area college athletes, promised Silicon Valley deals, are selling their brands for quilts and coffee - SF Gate

Microsoft's surprise $68 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard is adding a fresh twist to the heated debate over which tech companies have monopolies that need to be reined in.

The big picture: The deal could force a question the company has happily ducked for a decade: whether its size and power make it just as deserving of regulatory scrutiny as its Big Tech rivals.

Why it matters: Regulators have finite resources and will have to prioritize which companies and deals they want to contest.

Flashback: Microsoft, of course, spent years fighting a Justice Department antitrust suit two decades ago but in the most recent wave, regulators have largely focused on Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Between the lines: Microsoft will argue that, in the mobile age, Apple and Google hold a dominant market position with their tight control over mobile app stores.

The key question is how the regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and other agencies, who will ultimately decide whether the deal can go forward, choose to define the markets it affects.

Of note: On Tuesday the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission announced the start of a process that will ultimately result in rewritten merger guidelines, which could translate as more hurdles for large deals.

Be smart: A good antitrust case, or a decision to block a deal, isn't determined by people's feelings or a company's size. It's about whether a company has, or with acquisitions could gain, undue control over a relevant market.

Microsoft is counting on the fact that even with the deal, it will have less than 15% of video game industry revenue, trailing both Tencent and Sony. But regulators may choose not to look at the broad "gaming" market as a whole, and instead distinguish between mobile, console, PC and cloud gaming.

Between the lines: Microsoft hasn't entirely escaped the latest tech antitrust surge, with some critics raising concerns about its move to integrate Teams into Office and Windows.

What they're saying: Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), whose office has been pushing tighter regulation of other Big Tech companies, says conversations with Microsoft were "encouraging," while noting the deal still faces agency review.

Public Citizen is calling for regulators to quash the deal.

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Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal complicates Big Tech regulation - Axios

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan joined CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin and Kara Swisher, host of The New York Times' "Sway" podcast, for her first on-camera interview on Wednesday.

The exclusive interview, part of CNBC's "Capital Exchange," comes as the FTC grapples with a historic merger surge for which the agency has said it needs more resources to tackle. Meanwhile, Khan has laid out a sweeping vision for reforming the agency, including expanding the ways it thinks about both competition policy and consumer protection.

Khan, who prior to the FTC studied concentration in digital markets as an academic and as a staffer for the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, discussed the importance of choosing cases that could deter future deals or behavior that may substantially lessen competition. She also welcomed action from Congress to beef up the agency's budget and staff so it's able to take on more cases, though she said the agency is pushing ahead against better-resourced firms flexing their power against enforcers.

Khan's agency is now responsible for an antitrust suit against Facebook, originally filed under her predecessor, and reported investigations into Amazon.

Both of those companies have called for her recusal in antitrust matters involving their businesses due to her past work. Khan has not publicly stepped back from either and a judge in the Facebook case recently wrote that her recusal in that case was unnecessary because she would not be acting as the adjudicator.

Khan said she was pleased by the judge's decision on her recusal in that matter. She also stressed the importance of looking ahead to the next set of technologies that could help firms amass power, while trying cases focused on past behavior.

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CNBC exclusive: Watch live as FTC Chair Lina Khan sits down with Andrew Ross Sorkin and Kara Swisher to discuss her plans to take on Big Tech - CNBC

A group of three Democrat lawmakers introduced a bill which, if passed, would upend the business models of Big Tech giants such as Meta and Google.

The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act was introduced Tuesday by Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jan Schakowsky along with Sen. Cory Booker.

The act bans "advertising facilitators" from targeting ads or allowing ads to be targeted at people. The bill makes an exception for advertising being targeted based on location. It also allows ads to be placed next to specific pieces of internet content.

The bill would give the Federal Trade Commission powers to enforce against any entity found to be breaking it, and would also allow individual citizens to bring civil action against any entity they believe to be breaking the act.

"The 'surveillance advertising' business model is premised on the unseemly collection and hoarding of personal data to enable ad targeting," Eshoo said in a statement posted on her website.

"This pernicious practice allows online platforms to chase user engagement at great cost to our society, and it fuels disinformation, discrimination, voter suppression, privacy abuses, and so many other harms. The surveillance advertising business model is broken," Eshoo added.

Meta and Google did not immediately respond when contacted by Insider about the bill, which could significantly disrupt their ads businesses, if passed.

Google announced in March 2021 it would stop tracking specific users as they browse the web. Meta announced in November 2021 that as of January 19, it will restrict the targeting of ads around sensitive characteristics includinghealth, sexual orientation, religion, and politics.

Excerpt from:

Democrats introduce bill to ban targeted advertising by Big Tech firms - Business Insider

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Fines for violations of the European Union's landmark privacy law have soared nearly sevenfold in the past year, according to new research.

EU data protection authorities have handed out a total of $1.25 billion in fines over breaches of the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation since Jan. 28, 2021, law firm DLA Piper said in a report published Tuesday. That's up from about $180 million a year earlier.

Notifications of data breaches from firms to regulators climbed more modestly, by 8% to 356 a day on average.

GDPR has been in force since 2018. The sweeping changes to EU's data rules are aimed at giving consumers in Europe more control over their information.

Companies are required to demonstrate a clear legal basis to collect and process users' personal data. And firms must notify authorities about any data breach within 72 hours of first becoming aware of it.

Failure to comply can result in potentially hefty fines namely, up to 4% of a company's annual global revenues or 20 million euros ($22.8 million), whichever is the bigger amount.

"GDPR has certainly been effective in making everyone sit up and listen to data protection law and data protection enforcement," Ross McKean, chair of DLA Piper's U.K. data protection and security group, told CNBC.

"Prior to GDPR, if you got hit with a fine and you were one of the bigger processors, it was a rounding error, it would barely pay for the Christmas party. Now, you've got fines that are close to a billion euros."

Last year saw EU regulators impose record fines under GDPR, with Big Tech taking the brunt of the penalties.

Luxembourg's privacy watchdog fined Amazon 746 million euros ($850 million) while authorities in Ireland slapped Meta's WhatsApp with a 225 million euro penalty. Both firms are in the process of appealing the respective fines.

It often "takes a while" for regulators to impose large fines once they are introduced in new legislation, McKean said. "That's because investigations take a while. And the law is still full of lots of open legal questions."

Among those open questions is the issue of cross-border data transfers between the EU and the U.S.

In 2020, the European Court of Justice made a seismic ruling invalidating the use of the Privacy Shield framework, a legal framework for moving data across the Atlantic. The ruling was dubbed "Schrems II," after Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems, who originally launched the case.

While the Privacy Shield was invalidated, the ECJ maintained the validity of standard contractual clauses, another mechanism for ensuring EU-U.S. data flows are legally sound. However, firms are still scrambling to figure out the implications of the ruling.

The main contention of the ruling is that the U.S. data protection regime is not equivalent with that of the EU.

McKean says a major "headache" for organizations going forward is legal uncertainty surrounding EU-U.S. data transfers.

Standard contractual clauses (SCCs), by far the most popular method for legally processing such transfers, are on "life support," McKean said, as officials in the EU and U.S. hash out plans for a new data pact to replace Privacy Shield.

Facebook parent company Meta has been caught up in an intense dispute with the Irish Data Protection Commission over the matter. The DPC has ordered Meta to stop using SCCs to send user information from Europe to the U.S., as it investigates the company's data transfer practices.

Meta secured a temporary freeze on the order, but it was dismissed by Ireland's High Court, which allowed the watchdog to proceed with its inquiry.

In a notable case recently, Austria's data protection watchdog said the use of Google Analytics violates GDPR as it potentially exposes users' data to U.S. intelligence agencies. The decision targets a website publisher using Google's web analytics service, rather than Google itself.

Like Meta and other large U.S. tech companies, Google relies on SCCs to process EU-U.S. data transfers. At the time, Google said firms using Google Analytics "control what data is collected with these tools, and how it is used," and that the company provides a "range of safeguards, controls and resources for compliance."

"Every organization with some limited exceptions has an international supply chain and international data transfers," McKean said, adding the Schrems II ruling has had a "profound" impact on businesses of all shapes and sizes.

In addition to increased legal uncertainty, McKean says he expects to see further appeals of GDPR fines emerge in 2022.

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Fines for breaches of EU privacy law spike sevenfold to $1.2 billion, as Big Tech bears the brunt - CNBC