Category Archives: Big Tech

Seeing reality clearly and truthfully is fundamental to our capacity to do anything. By monetizing and commodifying attention, weve sold away our ability to see problems and enact collective solutions. This isnt new. Almost any time we allow the life support systems of our planet or society to be commodified, it drives other breakdowns. When you commodify politics with AI-optimized microtargeted ads, you remove integrity from politics. When you commodify food, you lose touch with the life cycle that makes agriculture sustainable. When you commodify education into digital feeds of content, you lose the interrelatedness of human development, trust, care, and teacherly authority. When you commodify love by turning people into playing cards on Tinder, you sever the complex dance involved in forging new relationships. And when you commodify communication into chunks of posts and comment threads on Facebook, you remove context, nuance, and respect. In all these cases, extractive systems slowly erode the foundations of a healthy society and a healthy planet.

E.O. Wilson, the famed biologist, proposed that humans should run only half the Earth, and that the rest should be left alone. Imagine something similar for the attention economy. We can and should say that we want to protect human attention, even if that sacrifices a portion of the profits of Apple, Google, Facebook, and other large technology corporations.

Ad blockers on digital devices are an interesting example of what could become a structural shift in the digital world. Are ad blockers a human right? If everybody could block ads on Facebook, Google, and websites, the internet would not be able to fund itself, and the advertising economy would lose massive amounts of revenue. Does that outcome negate the right? Is your attention a right? Do you own it? Should we put a price on it? Selling human organs or enslaved people can meet a demand and generate profit, but we say these items do not belong in the marketplace. Like human beings and their organs, should human attention be something money cant buy?

Is your attention a right? Do you own it? Should we put a price on it? Like human beings and their organs, should human attention be something money cant buy?

The covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and climate change and other ecological crises have made more and more people aware of how broken our economic and social systems are. But we are not getting to the roots of these interconnected crises. Were falling for interventions that feel like the right answer but instead are traps that surreptitiously maintain the status quo. Slightly better police practices and body cameras do not prevent police misconduct. Buying a Prius or Tesla isnt enough to really bring down levels of carbon in the atmosphere. Replacing plastic straws with biodegradable ones is not going to save the oceans. Instagrams move to hide the number of likes is not transforming teenagers mental-health problems, when the service is predicated on constant social comparison and systemic hijacking of the human drive for connection. We need much deeper systemic reform. We need to shift institutions to serve the public interest in ways that are commensurate with the nature and scale of the challenges we face.

At the Center for Humane Technology, one thing we did was convince Apple, Google, and Facebook to adoptat least in partthe mission of Time Well Spent even if it went against their economic interests. This was a movement we launched through broad public media-awareness campaigns and advocacy, and it gained credence with technology designers, concerned parents, and students. It called for changing the digital worlds incentives from a race for time spent on screens and apps into a race to the top to help people spend time well. It has led to real change for billions of people. Apple, for example, introduced Screen Time features in May 2018 that now ship with all iPhones, iPads, and other devices. Besides showing all users how much time they spend on their phone, Screen Time offers a dashboard of parental controls and app time limits that show parents how much time their kids are spending online (and what they are doing). Google launched its similar Digital Wellbeing initiative around the same time. It includes further features we had suggested, such as making it easier to unplug before bed and limit notifications. Along the same lines, YouTube introduced Take a break notifications.

These changes show that companies are willing to make sacrifices, even in the realm of billions of dollars. Nonetheless, we have not yet changed the core logic of these corporations. For a company to do something against its economic interest is one thing; doing something against the DNA of its purpose and goals is a different thing altogether.

We need deep, systemic reform that will shift technology corporations to serving the public interest first and foremost. We have to think bigger about how much systemic change might be possible, and how to harness the collective will of the people.

Excerpt from:

Big Techs attention economy can be reformed. Heres how. - MIT Technology Review

The new year also brings new political dynamics to Europe as the coronavirus pandemic and the ... [+] economic consequences make foreign and security policy even more vital.

Just a week into 2021, political tensions in Europe and the blocs power play with China and the United States have already come to the fore.

The new year also brings new political dynamics to Europe as the coronavirus pandemic and the economic consequences make foreign and security policy even more vital.

As the European Commission continues its aim to become a geopolitical player the top challenge will be navigating between the U.S and China.

Europe finalized an investment agreement with China on December 30, which is the first step towards negotiations towards a free-trade deal.

The Comprehensive Agreement on Investments (CAI), which took seven years in the making, will remove barriers to foreign investments in China and allow European companies to compete more equally.

The European Commission said it wouldensure that EU investors achieve better accessto a fast-growing 1.4 billion consumer market, and could compete on a better level playing field.

The EU and incoming Biden administration could agree to a transatlantic pact on how it deals with ... [+] China.

But it comes as China faces global criticism over its human rights record and as the U.S. is still embroiled in a trade war with China.The outgoing Trump administration has been vocal over its dismay of the EU-China investment pact.

Leaders in both U.S. political parties and across the U.S. government are perplexed and stunned that the EU is moving towards a new investment treaty right on the eve of a new U.S. administration, said Matt Pottinger,U.S. President Donald Trumps deputy national security advisor.

But the incoming Biden administration had a more sober tone in reaction to the pact.

Bidens nominee for national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, tweeted the U.S. would welcome early consultations with our European partners on our common concerns about China's economic practices.

While Trump has been calling for the decoupling of U.S. and China economies, it is unclear if Biden would go that far but he would like to confront and perhaps find a strategy to better contain China, saidSteven Blockmans, director of theCentre for European Policy Studies.

I suppose he (Biden) and leaders of other democracies will in 2021 at least continue to struggle with this difficult question of how to deal with Chinas authoritarian regime, he said.

The political tensions that come out of that will put the EU increasingly on the spot, he added, especially asChinas President Xi has consolidated his power during the COVID-19 crisis.

But tensions will not just arise between the EU, China and the U.S. but also within European member states.The CAI still has to be approved by European leaders and not all are on board.Poland has raised objections to the deal and suggested that consultations with the Biden administration were needed.

But other countries such as Hungary and Germany, which exports more than half their goods to China, mainly cars, are likely to plead for a softer line to safeguard their own commercial interests.

Technology will test Europe's relationship with the U.S. as technology has reshaped lives since the coronavirus pandemic outbreak with huge numbers of people working from home.

In December, the EU unveiled the Digital Services and Digital Markets Act which will focus on competition and make platforms more responsible for the content it hosts, especially the U.S. tech giants.

But it will also provide a boost for European tech start-ups on the single market.

The EU Digital Services Act could put the bloc on a collision with the U.S. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS ... [+] / AFP) (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

If the Biden administration finds its first strategic partner in Europe it will have to contend withsome of the irritants felt by the EU in dealing with big tech, namely the U.S. giants such as Amazon and Google.

A transatlantic tech agenda could be the answer to resolve those issues.

But it would also have to compete with China, which wants tobe an integral part or even dominate world supply chains.

Inequality will also be rising trend in 2021.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit world economies hard and increased borrowing by the public and private sectors.Countries with more office workers and service-driven economies did not suffer as heavily as the more tourist led economies and counties that already had high unemployment rates, such as Spain and Italy.

Europe's Southern and Northern states already locked horns over budgets in 2020.The 'Frugal Four (Sweden, Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands) argued the $750 billion recovery fund was too much and the hard-hit EU members should only receive repayable loans rather than grants.

Tourist-led economies such as Italy and Spain have had their economies devastated by the coronavirus ... [+] pandemic. (Photo by Mauro Ujetto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

But the economic impact will also give rise to political tensions within EU countries, especially in Italy and Spain, which are suffering from a backlog of economic recession.

Aggravated indebtedness, has grown almost everywhere over the past decade, says Blockmans, pointing to Italy where he says when crises have interrupted the private sector ability to borrow, the government has taken up the slack.

This then affects EU policy.

There comes an end to all of this of course to the creditworthiness of the country.

Italy has petered on that edge before so it remains a major headache to the EU to make sure it doesnt default, he said.

The final big concern for Europe will be the issue of the rule of law. Following the attack on the US Capitol by the pro-Trump rioters, the EU may do a U-turn and get tougher on the issue.

Last year, Poland and Hungary vetoed a massive seven-year EU budget and recovery fund over a clause in payments to member states that were conditional on upholding the rule of law.A compromise was reached after the European Council offered Poland and Hungary a way to delay the rule of law mechanism and hedge their positions until 2022.

It gives Poland and Hungary the time to defend their financial interests and curb the relative power of the opposition while strengthening their own influence.

This has already been seen in the Hungarian parliament, where a set of new laws were passed in December including one that effectively bans same-sex couples from adopting children as adoption will be restricted to married couples. Another new law will change electoral rules by making it harder for parties to contest national elections.

An EU compromised budget and recovery fund deal was reached but it gives Poland and Hungary the time ... [+] to defend their financial interests and strengthen their own political influence.

Meanwhile, Germany which has ensured there was also solidarity between member states and compromises could be found, faces a leadership change in 2021.While we do not yet know what a leadership change in Europes economic and political powerhouse will mean, if it does hold weight, "divergences with increasingly authoritarian run member states will indeed increase", said Blockmans.

The foreign policy front will be much more difficult for the EU to cohere around. You see increasingly thatindividual member states feel more and morecomfortable and have taken stronger positions, he said.

Europe is pushing to become a geopolitical power but to do so in 2021 it will be key for it to define its industrial policy, which will include defining its tech, defense, and green economy plans.

Thinking about thenew transatlantic agenda the EU will have to agree to with the Biden administration in order to face up to the bigger and longer-term challenges, said Blockmans.

Original post:

Power Plays, Inequality And Big Tech: Europe's 2021 Challenges Have Already Started - Forbes

GUANGZHOU, China China's recent moves to regulate large technology giants are part of its broader push to become a technological "superpower," one expert told CNBC.

Like the U.S. and European Union, China is working out how to regulate the technology sector in many areas, from data protection to antitrust. China's technology companies have grown, largely unencumbered by regulation, and become among the biggest in the world.

And there are a number of regulations that have come into effect or are in the works.

In November, China's central bank and regulators released draft rules on so-called microlending, which included provisions such as capital requirements for technology firms offering loans.

China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has also publisheddraft rules looking to stop monopolistic practices by internet platforms. It is one of the most wide-sweeping proposals in China to regulate large tech companies.

Last month, SAMR said it had begun a probe into Alibaba over monopolistic practices.

And in October, China released a draft personal data protection law aiming to regulate how companies process user data.

All of these regulations are part of China's bigger effort to become a major global tech power, according to Kendra Schaefer, a partner at Trivium China, a research firm based in Beijing.

"Underneath all of this stuff I think China understands that if it's going to become a technological superpower ... then it has to lay a solid regulatory foundation," Schaefer told CNBC's "Beyond the Valley" podcast.

"It has to lay that foundation in the way that it regulates company operations, but it also has to lay that foundation in terms of data. In fact, data might be the most important regulations that it has got to lay down."

"All of these things are foundational and it's really just kind of setting a framework, a springboard from which China can develop and move forward faster."

Beijing appears to have taken a harder stance against the country's technology firms recently. In November, regulators forced Ant Group, the finance affiliate of Alibaba, to suspend plans for what would have been the world's biggest initial public offering (IPO), while the company dealt with regulatory changes. Last month, Alibaba and two other firms were slapped with a fine for not making the proper declarations to authorities about past acquisitions.

But this does not mean Beijing is working in opposition to its tech champions, according to Emily de La Bruyere,co-founder of consultancy Horizon Advisory.

"These multinational tech companies are decidedly the force enablers that China uses to extend its information and standards strategy globally. That's not going to change. We're not going to see Beijing turn on its Big Tech the way Washington appears to be," Bruyere told CNBC by email.

"But, Beijing is going to ensure that its Big Tech acts by its rules and regulations, connects to its platforms, and serves its strategies."

It's not just China bringing in sweeping changes on tech regulation. The European Union has been perhaps the most aggressive region in the world on the issue. Its landmark General Data Protection Regulation approved in 2016, sought to bring in rules around how user data was processed.

And in December, the EU introduced the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act which aims to bring stricter controls on the behavior of tech giants in a number of areas.

But the U.S. has yet to take a similar approach with wide-ranging legislation around areas like data.

"We don't have good data regulation in the U.S. yet," Trivium China's Schaefer said. "So we don't have that foundation, those kind of basic fundamental principles, on which we can regulate, not only our domestic companies but foreign incoming companies as well."

"I think that us not having that fundamental data policy is one of the reasons that we are taking this bizarre scattershot approach to trying to control incoming Chinese apps like TikTok, targeting specific Chinese companies because we don't have a universal regulation."

Schaefer was referencing the ongoing saga of Washington trying to get Chinese company ByteDance to sell the U.S. operations of TikTok.

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China's Move to Regulate Its Tech Giants Is Part of Its Bigger Push to Become a Tech Superpower' - NBC Connecticut

A lot has happened on social media in the last few days, but two incidents are particularly significant. First, Facebook and Twitter decided to remove the President of the United States from their platforms. Second, Twitter decided to remove a post from Irans supreme leader for pushing a conspiracy theory about Covid vaccines. Two people who sat at two different extremes. One was the elected leader of the free world. Another was the supreme leader of one of the most autocratic regimes in the world. Both are taking orders from Big Tech.

We finally live in a truly unipolar world. Who won the race for the future? Neither democracy nor dictatorship. The Caesar is Big Tech.

So where do we go now? For this, we must first understand what is happening.

Big Tech is using wokeness to buy out the left

The general right-wing discourse around the world points fingers at Big Tech and accuses them of being in bed with the left. Nothing could be farther from the truth. No sector today is as far from accommodating traditional left-wing concerns as Big Tech. They face minimal regulation, disrupt local economies and global supply chains at will, and operate with a general wild west mentality. First, the gig economy deunionized the entire low skill workforce. It ended the system of employee benefits, health insurance, retirement plans and compensation for workplace-related injuries. In less than a decade, they have wiped out one hundred years of change in working conditions that the left argued for.

In New York, for instance, a taxi license (known as a medallion) used to go for over a million dollars. Thousands of low skill workers, most of them immigrants and people of color, worked their entire lives to get one. It was supposed to be their nest egg; they borrowed large sums of money against it. Then the ride-sharing companies came in, gobbled up their business and turned these people out on the street.

Restaurants used to be another arena full of small businesses. The food delivery apps came in and took over. They now squeeze margins of restaurant owners and engage in rent-seeking behaviour. If you dont give them what they want, they can kick you off their platform and then you would have no business whatsoever. Food delivery apps are now getting ready to set up dark kitchens. These have no brick and mortar interfaces, meaning they can do away with most rental and labor costs associated with running a restaurant. A local restaurant simply cannot compete with their prices. For local restaurants, for taxi drivers, it is already over.

The same with everyone who works in brick and mortar retail. For everyone in the hotel business too, because Big Tech is helping everyone in a city turn their private home into a hotel. Tourists can pay more on a daily basis, so landlords are turning away city inhabitants who need a place to stay long term. Big Tech comes into a neighborhood, with its highly paid workers in tow. As a result, rents rise across the board and low-income residents can no longer afford to stay. They mop the floors and tend the gardens of Big Tech campus by day and sleep on the sidewalk by night.

So why is the left not speaking out against this? Because Big Tech has learned from the mistakes of robber barons of the past. They have resolved not to fight the left, but to buy it out. For this, they have this thing called wokeness. If you give the left all the things they want in the so-called culture wars, they wont challenge you on issues that matter. Big Tech wants to grab everyones data, which is the big new gold rush. So you get all the media, intelligentsia and academia on your side by deplatforming a president they hate. He had only ten days left in his term, by the way.

You dont want the elites to start talking about how many choices we have in online retail. So you give them a hundred different pronouns to choose from. Right now, Big Tech is involved big time in the trendy new conversation around transgender bathroom choice. Very well. While they were at it, desperate people returned to open defecation on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Wokeness is cheap. Big Tech bought out the entire left for almost nothing at all.

Why Big Tech is different from usual private enterprise

Follow the money and I will show you how. Suppose you set up a business making shirts and selling them. It goes well and you turn a small profit of say twenty thousand dollars. How much is your business worth? Generally speaking, about 1-3 times the yearly profit. If you lose money, your business is worth nothing at all.

These rules do not apply to Big Tech. They lose money in spades, often billions of dollars a year. To value a tech company, they do not even look at profits, if there are any at all. They look at total revenue before expenses. And it is not unusual to value a tech company at 10-15 times total revenue. If you valued your shirt business like a tech company and your total revenue was $120,000 against expenses of $100,000, your business that made just $20,000 in profit could easily be worth $1.2 million!

Why so absurd? Well, Big Tech is not stupid. They understand that their business is different from usual free enterprise. The difference lies in the ability to scale. To double the size of your shirt business, it would take huge amounts of time and capital investment. You cant just double the size of your factory like that. But a tech company? If it does well, it could go from 10 users to 10 million users in a few months. Hence, the valuation.

This is what makes Big Tech censorship so frightening. The ability to scale. Traditional censorship, even under an oppressive regime such as Iran, suffers from an inability to scale. How many dissenters could Iran possibly throw into jail? But with a few tweaks to its algorithm, Big Tech could profile millions of people who have a particular political ideology. It could shut down their accounts instantly. It could share this data with other companies, with banks, phone operators and employers. You would lose your job, your bank account, even your cellphone connection. Literally hundreds of millions of dissenters could be silenced in a single day. And nobody would know of their fate because the news could be filtered out too. This kind of suppression has never been possible in history.

Thats why you can no longer apply the usual way of thinking about regulation and private enterprise to Big Tech. The scale of Big Tech beats anything that could have been imagined when we laid down those principles. It is similar to the second amendment debate they have in the US. The US Constitution gives people the right to bear arms. But which arms? Would it allow a private citizen to own a nuclear bomb? Those who framed the US Constitution in the 1700s could never have visualized such weapons. They were probably just thinking about guns and rather primitive ones at that. Thats why you cant apply the second amendment to todays inter-continental ballistic missiles.

Three scenarios for the future

What happens next? At least three things are possible.

One, we could really be headed for a dictatorship of Big Tech.They would tell you what to think and when. All other thought would be rendered impossible, even subconsciously. In Nineteen Eighty Four, Orwell visualized Big Brothers agents watching everyones faces through the telescreen. Anyone who was guilty of face crime, a flicker of doubt against Big Brother, a lack of enthusiasm towards him, would be vaporized. Therein you see the essential gap in Orwells dystopian vision. Big Brother could never have found enough agents to watch everyone and then keep all those agents vigilant and loyal to him.

That gap can now be filled. Algorithms can analyze the expressions of seven billion people at the same time. And algorithms never get sleepy or lazy or disloyal.

The right wing worldwide fears that Big Tech would install a politician from the opposing camp as President or Prime Minister. In truth, that is the least of our problems. The worry is not that someone from a left wing party will become Prime Minister. The real worry is that it would not matter at all who is Prime Minister. Because Big Tech would run everything on a global scale.

Second, Big Tech could sell us all out to China.Big Tech has a big problem too. To start building their power, they need a democratic society to begin with. China would never allow Big Tech to build itself up to a position from where they could challenge government authority. They would send the tech giants into enforced supervision long before that.

But Big Tech also needs China and its huge market. They could solve the problem by making a deal with China. Big Tech (negotiating on behalf of the formerly free world) could form a cartel with the Chinese government. Who is the Indian government to ban Chinese apps? Big Tech would ban the Indian government and make Chinese apps compulsory.

Third, social media could split along ideological lines, like mainstream media.Once upon a time, everyone, whether left or right, lived in the same media space and watched the same news. In the US, Walter Cronkite read out the nightly news on CBS. That was the 60s. In India, even after the monopoly of Doordarshan ended, we still got the same news for a few years. A certain worldview clearly dominated, but because of the universal nature of the news, they had to at least maintain a semblance of neutrality. But then, the left began to pull harder and harder at the drawstrings. The media space turned into an ideological cage.

And then it split wide open. In the US, Fox News burst on the scene, wearing its right wing political affiliation on its sleeve. In post-2014 India, we have seen a similar explosion on cable news. Now, the left gets left wing content on TV and the right gets right wing content on TV. Everyone is openly partisan, whether on this side or the other.

What happened to mainstream media decades ago could be happening to social media now. Social media used to be a shared space for people of both ideologies. But as with mainstream media, the left is now pulling the noose too hard. Will openly right wing social media spring up so that the two sides no longer have to talk to each other? We will see.

I must point out here that the right suffers from a structural disadvantage in this sphere. The internet is global, while the right in each country is local. While we can imagine an international left wing social media network, the right wing in each country might need its own network. Will that happen? Or will the right recognize the problem and start building some kind of international solidarity of their own? Such international right wing solidarity has seen some takers in Europe, probably because the individual countries in Europe are ultimately very similar. Could it work with India and the United States? Only time can tell.

In conclusion, the right should not make the same mistake with Big Tech that the left made with the knowledge economy. The way the left frames issues has remained frozen in the times of the industrial revolution. Asking for things like fixed workdays and fixed work hours in return for fixed compensation makes sense if your work is shoveling coal into a locomotive engine. When the economy became full of knowledge workers, the demands of the left stopped making sense. How would you tell a computer programmer to have ideas only between 9 AM and 5 PM five days a week, with a 1 hour break for lunch? The left began to lose relevance on economic issues, because all their ideas were so outdated.

At the moment, the same could be happening to the right. The right is still stuck in time, framing issues in terms of rights of free enterprise. Those issues dont make sense in a world dominated by Big Tech. It is time for the right to rethink everything it stands for.

The rest is here:

Social Media: Big Tech censorship and the three things that can happen from here - OpIndia

Chewy Shaw, an engineer at Google, attends a video meeting with other workers in the union from his home

On the back of automation and outsourcing, a handful of tech giants and their generously paid tech workers are shaping a twotiered society, hollowing out the middle-class in the US. Pressure groups like worker unions could play an important role in setting the stage for collective bargaining.

Earlier this month, 225-odd workers got together at Alphabet parent conglomerate of Google with about 2.6 lakh full-time employees to form the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU). It tweeted that the body was in the works for over a year now and that it was open to all Alphabet company workers. Every worker deserves a union including tech workers, it said.The union is open to not just full-time Google employees, but also to other categories

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Originally posted here:

View: Google's workers unionising is the silver lining on a dark Big Tech cloud - Economic Times

Last week, a mob of white extremists, egged on by a President who refused to accept the November election results, attempted to overturn the US elections and overthrow the elected government. Trump, in a speech to the mob, said, Youll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. This show of strength cost five people, including a policeman their lives, as mobs ran riot in the capital of the United States of America. Some of the rioters were wearing Camp Auschwitz tee-shirts a reference to the Nazi concentration camp where hundreds of thousands of Jewish people lost their lives.

America and much of the world sat watching the scenes unfold on their devices, with mute horror, as a 2,000-strong mob tried to storm Capitol Hill where duly elected lawmakers, sit and pass laws. American media seemed devastated. American lawmakers wrung their hands at third world scenes in their nation. The shock to their system will take some time to overcome, and there will be much handwringing over this.

Gaining traction

But, for many of us observing the United States over the last two decades, none of this appeared strange. For the last 20 years using a combination of network channels, affiliates, talk radio, websites, chat groups, and then social media the extremist white movement has been gaining traction and gaining ground in the USA.

There was always white extremism in the USA but social media has helped normalise it and mainstream it. Trump enabled racists and empowered them, by his behaviour and through his utterances on social media that amplified the rantings of a deranged mind. While racism was never eliminated in the USA (as in most nations), it became cool in the Trump era to be obviously bigoted in utterances towards people of colour and claim that this was freedom of expression.

The idea that America was a white first country has been gaining ground, combined with the idea that whites, and the white way of life was under threat. And social media has played a large part in fostering this view. Hate trends. Bigotry trends. The more vile and virulent a statement, it trends. Media organisations have found that ordinary consumers consumed a fair amount of content that was hate-filled, bigoted, and played on their fears of being overrun by various minority interests on social media.

Facebook, YouTube

This is collectively labelled as misinformation but some kinds of misinformation are more deadly than others. When social media platforms could have done something about hate, they were busy harvesting our data to fuel instability in societies, under the cloak of free speech. And there is no organisation more culpable in this than Facebook, followed closely by YouTube.

In June last year, Facebook took down American extremist groups that urged their members to take weapons to protests. YouTube took down right-wing, extremist channels. But, the fact remains they both gained and profited from the presence of these channels for the best part of a decade.

In fact, allowing extreme groups to use big tech platforms to congregate engage, seemed almost like a growth strategy. Facebooks misadventure with Cambridge Analytica that led to both the Trump presidency, and Brexit has never been censured. Facebook has gotten away with a bloodless coup, that has altered the paths of nations and economies.

Our data monopolised

Which brings us to the unchecked power that big tech has on our lives, on our societies, and our nations. A power that is fuelled by their uncontrolled monopoly on our data. Individual units about us that help them tell us how to push our buttons. Historian and author, Yuval Harari in his talk on Why Fascism Is So Attractive And How Your Data Can Power It warns about what is done with our data. He warns about the pitfalls of social media platforms running riot with our data, in an attempt to turn us to the dark side.

In her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, author Shoshana Zuboff, warns us about the perils of the new world we live in, mediated by tech giants who have made their billions on our data. Zuboff writes, Surveillance capitalists know everything about us, whereas their operations are designed to be unknowable to us.

And, it is this asymmetry that needs to be changed. Social media platforms have now become too widespread and used, for them to stay unregulated. They cannot have so much unaccountable power on our lives. These platforms have gotten away for too long with the excuse that they are the technology providers and providers of content.

Too little, too late

However, their cynical manipulation of algorithms to encourage engagement and time spent, leading to greater revenues needs to be stemmed. Their monopoly on our data has to cease. Their manipulation of our societies has to be checked. Facebook and Twitter have banned Trump for life, and begun cleaning up the extremist groups but this is too little, too late and highly unilateral.

The failed coup in the United States is a good time to look at the regulations around big tech, and see how their monopoly control on our data can be broken. How they can be held more accountable for the content that they amplify. And governments across the world need to collaborate on bringing in a common governance framework for social media so that in the pursuit of profit, big tech doesnt leave a burning world behind.

The writer works at the intersection of digital content, technology and audiences. She is a columnist, visiting faculty and filmmaker.

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The relationship between big tech and extremist movements threatens the world, says Harini Calamur - Free Press Journal

January 07, 2021

The online revolution centered in California's Silicon Valley came to the rescue of democracy Wednesday by temporarily locking out President Trump from social media platforms.

When Trump refused to quickly condemn the riot he incited at the Capitol, and later offered only mealy-mouthed calls for calm that reiterated his big lie about the election being stolen, Twitter and Facebook acted on their own.

Twitter locked out the President for 12 hours. Facebook went further, making the ban indefinite, as did Snapchat. That did this to prevent Trump for possibly inciting further violence.

Unlike many, perhaps most countries, media is the United States is almost entirely in private hands. We don't have a public broadcaster like the BBC, an official newspaper like the People's Daily, or a state news agency like ITAR-TASS. It's entirely up to private American owners to decide how to cover the news.

A lot of politicians throughout the world hate independent, privately owned media because they can't control it. This is especially true of the new media types spawned by the creativity of Silicon Valley.

Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and America's world-champion technology companies like Amazon, Google and Apple are increasingly under attack exactly because of such independence.

A number of states have filed antitrust suits, and Trump has been singularly fixated on removing Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. In fact, he vetoed the important annual defense bill because it didn't specifically include repeal of this unrelated law.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the man who infamously raised his fist in support of the mob outside the Capitol before objecting to the certification of Joe Biden's victory, is also fixated on this section.

"For too long, Big Tech companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook have used their power to silence political speech from conservatives without any recourse for users. Section 230 has been stretched and rewritten by courts to give these companies outlandish power over speech without accountability," according to Hawley.

Why are they so fixated on this law? Because it gives ordinary Americans an easy way to make their thoughts and and concerns public. It turns every person with a computer or smartphone into an independent publisher. This really, really threatens politicians.

In authoritarian countries like China, the solution is simple: monitor everything and everyone though a "social credit system." But in the United States, the First Amendment and Section 230 prevent this.

The section states very simply that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." It means that when you write a restaurant review, post a video, or tweet that Trump is a Facist, the online platform isn't responsible and can't be sued.

Now Trump, Hawley and other politicians, businesses aggrieved by bad reviews, and celebrities seeking to remove unflattering photos aren't going to go though a lot of effort to try to sue you. They'd rather sue the deep pockets: Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Google, Amazon and so on. Section 230 prevents that.

If there was no Section 230, your restaurant review would be subject to editing and your video would be taken down to avoid a lawsuit. And Trump's tweets from Wednesday telling his "very special" mob "I know your pain" would still be public to avoid any accusation of unfairness.

Social media companies came through for democracy on Wednesday by exercising their independence in the great tradition of American media independence. If we take away their speech protections, it's as bad as inviting the mob back into the Capitol.

Chris Jennewein is editor & publisher of Times of San Diego.

Times of San Diego is an independent online news site covering the San Diego metropolitan area. Our journalists report on politics, crime, business, sports, education, arts, the military and everyday life in San Diego. No subscription is required, and you can sign up for a free daily newsletter with a summary of the latest news.

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Opinion: Amid The Capital Chaos, Big Tech Sought To Protect Democracy - Patch.com

It is also a terrible risk to allow the speech of elected politicians to be switched off at the whim of unregulated Big Tech, informed by their anonymous Policy Committees, unaccountable to society at large. In a sophisticated democracy, it should be a matter of concern that Jack Dorsey can intercede between voters and their leaders. For while the majority of us can agree that Trump has behaved appallingly this week, what happens next week? What happens when the people and causes we champion are deleted? If Mark Zuckerberg felt that a Priti Patel speech on immigration was a violation? Or that we may no longer hear from Bibi Netanyahu or Jeremy Corbyn? The issue is not whether you like what they say, it is whether you should be entitled to hear it in the first place.

Vijaya Gadde, Twitters Policy Lead, admitted to Joe Rogan that her decisions are based on trial and error. They are a mass of moral contradictions: a doctor banned for offending vegans but mouthpieces of the Chinese state remaining. There is no real accountability here, no guarantee of consistency or fairness that would follow from Twitter accepting it is a publisher. If inciting violence is the threshold test, it is impossible to see how the Ayatollah Khamenei remains on Twitter where he defends Holocaust denial and calls for the State of Israel to be eradicated. The same point applies to Antifa and Extinction Rebellion and others.

Twitter is not a state broadcaster and is not obliged to broadcast anything. But what it should do is different from what it must. It should step back from censoring public figures, allowing sunlight to be the best disinfectant, especially in a democracy with speech restraints subject to the rule of law. To be a meaningful public space, social media should recognise that its power comes from enabling the public to interact with its leaders, not be hidden from them.

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It is not the job of Big Tech to decide whether we are allowed to hear from the likes of Donald Trump - Telegraph.co.uk

The world watched helplessly as the United States Capitol building was stormed and breached on Wednesday. Though the actual breach of the building lasted for a few hours, the shockwave continues to rip through the hearts of Americans everywhere. It was an event that will no doubt ring in our ears for generations to come.

The SOFREP team watched closely as the peaceful demonstration soured and scores of people ripped through the doors of the U.S. Capitol, spilling into the House, the Senate, and several offices throughout the building. Later that evening, as Congress worked to certify the results of the Electoral College vote, news spread that several people had died in the melee. At the time of writing, five Americans have died as a result of Wednesdays events including a 14-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force.

Our hearts go out to the loved ones of those who perished.

As the dust began to settle, we took to our keyboards, grasping at reasons, searching for answers. Meanwhile, the media pivoted and began using words like sedition, extremism, and even treason. Protesters were quickly relabelled rioters, then insurrectionists, and finally, domestic terrorists.

Then came the aftershock. The Trump administration began to fragment as calls for impeachment rang out. Insiders either ducked for political cover or did their best to condemn the violent action while keeping the ship afloat. The president was then unceremoniously removed from Twitter, and blocked by several big tech companies. Meanwhile, a source inside the Pentagon confirmed to SOFREP that several classified computers with access to the governments secret internal network, SIPRNet, had been stolen during the breach. Suspects have not been identified nor have the machines been recovered.

At the time of writing, the president is hunkered down in the White House while leading political leaders demand his removal from office saying that he is unfit, unhinged, and out of control.

Be sure to listen to our special Editors Round Table discussion about the Capitol breach on SOFREP Radio.

Read Next: Blood Spilled In the 'Shining City on a Hill'

But while American democracy dangled perilously, the USS Nimitz and its Carrier Strike Group commenced their stare down with Iran after initially having been ordered to return stateside for replenishment. The order reversal came after several Iranian threats and its hostile seizure of a Korean oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. Days later, Iran undertook a weapons test that showcased a new form of kamikaze drone.

Elsewhere, Israel launched a fresh salvo into Syria targeting several locations used to train and equip Iranian-backed militia forces including Hezbollah. Insurgents in Niger killed more than 100 civilians in two deadly attacks. French and Malian forces came under scrutiny when several outlets alleged that a joint airstrike killed scores of civilians on their way to a wedding. And U.S. forces in Somalia unleashed a series of strikes on al-Shabaab extremists, including one that targeted al-Shabaab leaders who were facilitating finance, weapons, fighters, and explosives.

As always, we tracked several stories from across the military this week: The body of an Army drill sergeant was discovered in her bullet-ridden vehicle on the side of a Texas highway. The legal team for Navy SEAL Tony DeDolph announced this week that he will plead guilty to the killing of Army Green Beret Logan Melgar. After seven decades, a 98-year-old WWII veteran received his promotion and medals for his service in the Pacific. Acting SecDef Chris Miller announced his appointees to the commission that will be responsible for renaming military bases bearing the names of Confederate generals. And the remains of 40 unidentified U.S. servicemembers were returned to Hawaii from the Philippines.

Whats in store for next week? None of us knows. But, as always, well be here to bring you the stories you wont find anywhere else with insights and analysis from people who have actually been there.

In the meantime,

Stay frosty

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This Week on SOFREP: Chaos in the Capitol, Big Tech Bullying and a Stare Down with Iran - SOFREP

The first big tech event of the year, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2021 is here. However, unlike the previous editions, this year we're going to see CES go virtual as a result of the ongoing Coronivirus-led pandemic.

As such, thousands, if not millions, will tune into the tech show starting today -- instead of thronging to Las Vegas every other year. Yet, despite the strange nature of the event in 2021, we expect not much to change. The major brands including Samsung, Sony, LG, Microsoft, and Intel are still scheduled to feature at the event this year in a similar capacity to how we've grown accustomed to seeing them every year.

As is the case with big tech events, a lot of key announcements have already been made ahead of the actual start of the event today. For the uninitiated, CES 2021 is being held between January 11-14 in 2020. However, the official days of the show were preceded by a number of pre-show events where companies such as Sony, Samsung and LG revealed details about the products they are putting up on display during CES 2021.

As we mentioned earlier, CES 2021 is all set to start today and will run till January 14. During the next few days, the tech show will see companies virtually host their fans during pre-decided slots.'

While a complete list of the events and briefings can be found at CES 2021's official website, there are a few important events we will list here. For users in India, the major attractions today include LG's event at 6:30pm IST followed by Samsung's event an hour later.

Tomorrow, the proceedings kick off early with Sony starting the show at 3:30am IST. After this, AMD, Nidia, Intel and Asus will all host their events starting at 9:30pm at an interval of one hour each. On January 13, the notable events will be Sony which starts at 12:15am IST and Microsoft and Asus. The former will begin at 7:30pm while the latter is sc heduled for 10:30pm IST. On Thursday, MSI is scheduled to host an event at 12:30am IST.

While CES 2021 promises to be a much simpler, and digital-only affair as opposed to the full-blown extravaganza in Las Vegas every year, we don't expect it to be less impressive when it comes to showcasing futuristic technologies.

The biggest announcements at the event will come from the television segment. Ahead of the event, LG has already unveiled the world's first Eyesafe-certified TV display at CES' preview event. The display is scheduled to be showcased at the tech event and is said to be in line with EyeSafe standards for low emissions of blue light without actually compromising on the colour performance.

Samsung is set to announce its Neo QLED and MicroLED TV models at its virtual event. The company claims that the TVs will offer better TV-viewing experiences with "improved contrast and better backlighting". Samsung also says that its new TVs will offer next-generation accessibility via features such as Sign Language Zoom and Multi-Output Audio.

Of the TVs to be showcased at the event, the Neo QLED will be the most interesting. It uses a combination of Quantum Mini LED and Quantum Matrix technology to improve the luminance of the TV to 12-bit with 4,096 steps.

Apart from this, Sony and LG are also scheduled to unveil 4K and 8K TVs which will bring with themselves futuristic technologies. Companies such as Asus, Microsoft and Intel are also scheduled to make big-ticket announcements at their events during CES 2021.

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CES 2021 starts today: Here's a guide to the first big tech event of the year; from schedule to what you can expect - India Today