Category Archives: Big Tech

The collective has been burned before twice and badly. First, it was with Grubhub, which had been partnering with couriers across the country. McCleary said the food-app company in 2017 canceled all its courier contracts overnight, and took over those services. Postmates, another food-ordering app, similarly made off with local bike couriers clients, McCleary said.

The second they get successful enough to vertically integrate and do it all their own, theyre going to kick you out the door, he said.

McCleary said he's disappointed California voted for Proposition 22. Allowing these companies to keep denying their workers benefits, he said, gives the big app services an unfair advantage against businesses like his that are trying to offer employee status to workers, let alone a shared-ownership co-op model.

Although still small, the collective has grown markedly during the pandemic, as more people rely on delivery service for many of their needs. In addition to food delivery, customers can also hire the service for general courier tasks.

The collective also recently started working with the New Harmony Cafe in San Franciscos Mission District, which is participating in the SF New Deal program to provide food to quarantining seniors.

Ben Angel, the cafe's owner, said it felt right to work with a collective rather than a delivery app that uses gig workers.

Its a groundswell from the community instead, as opposed to, you know, a venture-funded, hyper-growth, Lets extract as much from the people and the companies that are our clients and customers, Angel said. I used to work in tech and there are some great tech companies out there, but there are a lot of places that put profit over everything else.

Gerry Valencia, one of CCC's couriers, started working for the collective right at the beginning of the pandemic, and he said he likes that he is delivering exclusively for local businesses.

Id rather know who Im working for and who Im delivering for, rather than today I am going to this random fast food spot that Im never going to see again and deliver to these people for a faceless app, he said.

Valencias parents are both immigrants. His father works as a gardener, his mom as a maid.

View original post here:

Tired of Big Tech, Co-ops Appeal to Delivery Workers Burned by Gigs - KQED

President Donald Trump has threatened to veto a massive U.S. military spending bill unless it includes a repeal of legal protections for Big Tech social media giants.

Trump wants to get rid of Section 230 which protects Facebook, Twitter and Google from being sued for content posted on their powerful platforms.

The argument is that the social media giants are already acting like publishers by restricting, moderating and sometimes censoring content they do not like.

Most of the restricted content tends to come from conservative and controversial voices. Twitter and Facebook, for example, restricted sharing of the New York Posts coverage of Hunter Bidens foreign business deals while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president.

The Section 230 debate goes beyond the broad legal protections afforded social media and internet giants.

Facebook (which also owns Instagram), Twitter and Google (which also owns YouTube) already hold an incredible amount of power in the marketplace and more importantly the marketplace of free speech and ideas.

Section 230 adds to that power and influence social media companies and their billionaire CEOS have over free speech as well as commerce.

They have increasingly used that influence to promote certain politically progressive viewpoints and silence others, mostly conservatives.

Twitter and Facebook could be poised to ban Trump after projected President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in next month.

If they can do it to Trump, they will do it to small businesses and others who do not toe the line or retweet the wrong Breitbart story or politically incorrect Candace Owens post.

We know 2020 is rough but lets not turn it into 1984. We continue to see many parallels to George Orwells warnings..

We always believe more speech even the uncomfortable and dissenting speech is better than less. The media landscape continues to change and a healthy diversity of voices including ones we may vehemently disagree with are important for our democracy and freedom of expression.

Eliminating the sweeping legal protections will bring social media companies along with Apple more to the table. We also like to see more teeth put into legitimate antitrust cases involving the most powerful companies in the country and world. That extends to e-commerce and other technology giants.

Right now, they have all the cards it seems.

Right now, social media firms also have it both ways. They have been increasingly politically motivated in how they moderate and sometimes censor content, but they cling to legal protections that they operate simply as technology platforms.

Their relations with China are also troublesome. We are also concerned about how cozy a Biden-Harris administration will be with Silicon Valley. They certainly did not hurt his presidential campaign and a number of his top appointments so far have had some links to the technology titans.

President Trump is right, they should not have it both ways. We need to see new systems with more balance and a better focus on protecting free speech. Big Tech has gotten way too big.

Read the rest here:

Trump is right on big tech, social media and Section 230 - The Star Democrat

04 December 2020 | Melanie Mingas

From competition to regulation, the tech giants are rarely out of the headlines, but their days of dominance could be numbered.

According to a panel held during Capacity Asia this week, there is a "seismic shift" on the horizon to 2025 as new players emerge in new sectors and the incumbent tech giants are forced to divest business units.

Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Amazon have rarely been out of the news this year, as the world's dependence on their technology has increased. However, anti-trust and anti-competition hearings are underway in several jurisdictions.

Digital Realty CEO, BillStein, said: "Don't underestimate the fact that the size of these companies could create political pressure regardless of who has won the US election, to be reduced in size. Much like the old AT&T and how it was forced to divest, I think we could see some divestiture action over the near term three or five years as the DoJ goes to work."

Stein was joined on the panel by DanCaruso, MD of Caruso Ventures; KeriGilder, CEO, Colt Technology Services; and BevanSlattery, entrepreneur, chair of FiberSense and founder of Sub.co.

In his outlook, Slattery said the EU would likely play a larger role and that it was likely the companies would be broken up. " It's very difficult for others to catch up," he continued.

Highlighting his point, Slattery said in the cloud market the industry is now at a point where it would be " difficult for people to challenge the large providers in cloud" and that "in some ways the cloud race has already been won, particularly the first leg of it".

However, on the future he said the next big players will emerge from data and AI.

"The next race to be run will be in true, true big data and AI. I think that's where the next group of people are going to come from. If anyone is going to challenge [them] it is going to be AI.

"If anybody is going to [compete] and take the challenge further, it is going to be those who have a massive amount of data and they can put that AI in and hone the AI more and more," Slattery said.

For Caruso, driven by demand in the logistics industry, autonomous vehicles could also force a similar shift.

He said: "One of the technology changes that will be most accelerated by what just happened is autonomous vehicles and it is probably for a different reason to what we have previously thought.

"We need them to drive us around, that's how we thought about it two years ago but now they are part of the logistics process and supply chain in terms of moving goods from central places to where people and businesses are, without having drivers to drive them around.

"The seismic shift is comingWhen it comes to the level of autonomy and moving information around and logistics becoming automated, I think that is what is going to drive 5G and other wireless deployments."

Sharing Colt's strategy for the next phase of infrastructure development, Gilder said an opportunity existed for traditional connectivity providers to collaborate with emerging providers, including OTTs.

"The question I have is how do we build the ecosystem together?

"The reality is we will not be able to do it alone. We weren't able to build the internet alone and we won't be able to build this digital infrastructure lone either. It is going to take some partnering and channel work to get the APIs, to get the on-demand service and these types of truly cutting edge capabilities and at a point where the enterprise truly feels that we, as data centre companies and telecoms providers, are critical infrastructure in that economic environment just like we were during the pandemic."

See the original post:

"Seismic shift" on the horizon for big tech - Capacity Media

The information technology revolution has generated tremendous human progress and prosperity. But in recent years, a sector once seen as enlightened has revealed its dark side. Silicon Valleys techno-utopian dreams have unleashed nightmarish phenomena from surveillance capitalism to the fake news epidemic, prompting calls for better regulation.

In business, more industries are being run on software and delivered as online services, from movies (Netflix) to taxis (Uber) to retail (Amazon), driving incredible new value creation. But these same advances are laying waste to old business models and incumbent players big and small, while putting awesome power in the hands of a few major technology giants.

At first glance, fashion appears relatively insulated from disruption. Algorithms are still no match for human intelligence when it comes to picking clothes people want to wear, and Amazons attempts to gain traction in the luxury market have largely failed.

And yet Amazon long ago surpassed department store Macys as the top US apparel retailer and hundreds of high-end brands have flocked to Alibabas Tmall to reach Chinas luxury-hungry shoppers. Google and Facebook now dominate digital advertising to such a degree that the market has essentially become a duopoly, crippling legacy media players like Cond Nast.

Is big tech a threat to fashion?

Its a question that kept coming up this week at BoF VOICES, as experts, from media analyst Michael Wolf to venture capitalist Roger McNamee to retail guru Doug Stephens, said fashion was indeed at risk from what Stephens called the apex predators of the digital era.

The pandemic has been a powerful catalyst for big tech players, making them stronger and meshing them more deeply into peoples lives. While some see the rapid digitization of consumer behavior as a mere acceleration of existing trends, others see a step change.

I see Covid-19 as a unique wormhole in time, said Stephens. Society as a whole has been pulled out of the industrial era and across the threshold of the digital age.

According to data presented by Wolf, three tech giants account for more than half of global e-commerce spending: Alibaba, Amazon and JD.com. And the rise of social commerce and livestream shopping will only play in their favour as they out-innovate or acquire competitors.

There is no question that platforms like Alibaba and Amazon can enable brands to connect with vast audiences of consumers, said Stephens. But that access comes at a price.

When fashion labels partner with large tech companies they often relinquish control over the customer experience and how their brand appears, while giving up critical data. Amazon which has private-label brands in apparel, jewellery and footwear has even used data from sellers on its marketplace to launch its own competing products.

These guys wont kill you tomorrow, but they will kill you in 5 years, said McNamee, an early investor in Facebook and onetime Mark Zuckerberg mentor who later became disenchanted with the company and, last year, wrote Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe.

These guys wont kill you tomorrow, but they will kill you in 5 years.

Do everything you can to maintain a direct relationship with your customer, he advised. You cannot concede to internet companies the primary access to your audience.

You need to stop adopting each new platform assuming somehow Instagram will save you from Facebook, TikTok will save you from Instagram. Until the [fashion] industry starts to create its own ways of communicating, youre going to have a problem, McNamee continued, asking why Vogue hasnt become the primary consumer destination for digital fashion shows, for example, ceding the space to the likes of Instagram and other social media platforms.

In luxury e-commerce, Richemont chairman Johann Rupert has long advocated for a shared industry platform with the scale to rival the tech giants. Yoox on its own, Net-a-Porter on its own, Richemont on its own and I said to Arnault the other day, Forget it! LVMH on its own. Were not big enough, he said at the Financial Times Business of Luxury Summit in 2015.

In November, Richemont invested $300 million in Farfetch, a move some see as a precursor to a merger with the Swiss conglomerates Yoox Net-a-Porter unit, something Rupert had not ruled out.

And yet central to the deal is an alliance with Alibaba, which has also pumped $300 million into Farfetch. Richemont and Alibaba have invested an additional $250 million each into a new joint venture, Farfetch China, which will see Farfetch open shops on Alibabas luxury platform Tmall Luxury Pavilion, its luxury outlet platform Luxury Soho and its cross-border marketplace Tmall Global, quickly expanding Farfetchs reach in the worlds largest luxury market.

Creating new tech is dead easy and there are many people that will help you to create platforms that give you the primary voice, countered McNamee, though the digital shake-up at luxury sector leader LVMH earlier this week suggested this may be easier said than done.

Some brands have shown its possible to break free from the big tech trap, however. Last year, Nike pulled the plug on a partnership with Amazon, doubling down on a direct-to-consumer strategy built around its own e-commerce channel, theatrical flagships and a suite of apps with content and community features to keep customers (and their data) close.

Here, Nike flexed a key advantage over tech goliaths like Amazon: storytelling. Nike is a cultural brand with stories about human potential that people care about and want to engage with. The same is true of many fashion brands, which ultimately sell cultural meaning.

Even small brands can adopt a version of this tactic, building a following on the strength of their storytelling without becoming overly reliant on big tech platforms to reach audiences, though this may preclude the kind of rapid growth that venture investors like to see.

The fashion industry has a superpower, said McNamee. Youre actually connected to culture. People want to hear what you think.

Ultimately, the ability to generate authentic storytelling experiences that people seek out may be fashions most powerful defense against big tech.

THE NEWS IN BRIEF

FASHION, BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY

A Topshop store. Source: Shutterstock.

British high street in crisis as Arcadia, Debenhams collapse. The Topshop-owner entered administration this week, while Debenhams is facing liquidation after negotiations to sell to JD Sports fell through. The retailers decline threatens thousands of jobs and represents a severe blow to the already ailing UK sector.

Global retail sales expected to drop 16 percent in 2020. The impact of the pandemic will not, however, be felt equally. North America and Western Europe are expected to see sales decrease by 20 percent and 19 percent respectively, and Latin America is anticipating an even steeper annual decline of 22 percent, according to a new report by by Euromonitor.

China to overtake the US as the worlds largest consumer market very soon. This was what Lian Weiliang, deputy chairman of Chinas top economic planning agency, told the China Reform Forum over the weekend. Lian cited the fact that Chinas retail sales surpassed 40 trillion yuan ($6 trillion) for the first time in 2019. According to the US Census Bureau, the countrys retail sales totalled $6.2 trillion in 2019.

Under Armour launches Steph Curry brand in shot at Nikes Jordan. Curry Brand will feature footwear, apparel and accessories, with an unspecified percentage of its revenue to be invested in under-resourced communities, Under Armour said. The brand intends to create at least 20 safe playing spaces, support 125 youth-athletics programmes and train 15,000 coaches by 2025.

Barneys New York to return in 2021 after pandemic delays revival. The first two stores are set to open in the first quarter, more than a year after Barneys declared bankruptcy and began shuttering its locations. One will be inside Saks Fifth Avenues flagship in Manhattan, and the other will be a small standalone shop in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Moncler to stage Genius show in China in pandemic pivot. Chairman and CEO Remo Ruffini called the move a software update to the Italian skiwear brands marketing strategy, designed to harness momentum in the critical Chinese market.

De Beers plans to clean up diamond supply chain and be carbon neutral by 2030. The move comes as investors put pressure on companies to be environmentally and socially responsible. The initiative is the latest example of a miner setting sustainability goals in an industry blamed for depletion of natural resources, smuggling and child labor in supply lines.

Dries Van Notens Forum and Rewiring Fashion join forces to rebuild the fashion system. The two early-pandemic initiatives set out to solve some of the industrys biggest problems, from rampant discounting to a warped fashion calendar. Working together, they plan on creating a realistic timetable of reforms that aim to allow designers to be more creative, but also run more sustainable businesses.

Fashion makes mixed progress on circularity. Brands missed roughly a third of the goals they set for themselves as part of the Circular Fashion System Commitment that ended this year. Goals focused on design had the highest success rate, but companies struggled to make progress on more concrete changes, like establishing take-back schemes for old clothes or scaling the use of materials recycled from old clothes.

Hodinkee raises $40 million and hires Mr Porters Toby Bateman as CEO. The online destination for high-end new and vintage watch fans is aiming to scale its content-meets-commerce model in a challenging watches market. The funding round was led by TCG, the consumer and digital media focused investment firm co-founded by Peter Chernin.

US bans cotton imports from Chinese producer, citing Xinjiang slave labour. The move against Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which produced 30 percent of Chinas cotton in 2015, is the Trump administrations latest effort to harden the US position against Beijing. China said the move was based on a fabrication.

Nikes anti-racism ad provokes backlash in Japan. The ad features three teenage girls, one of them a biracial Japanese schoolgirl, battling discrimination but ultimately motivated by a shared love of sport. Many have shown support for the campaign, which has drawn over 14 million views on Nike Japans Twitter feed, but some viewers in the country were critical of a global business passing judgement on Japanese social mores.

THE BUSINESS OF BEAUTY

Rendering of Sephora at Kohl's. Kohl's.

Sephora and Kohls team up for long-term retail partnership. Replacing Kohls existing beauty offering online and in-store, Sephora will open outposts in 200 Kohls stores in autumn 2021, with a view to expand to at least 850 locations by 2023. The shop-in-shops will be staffed by Sephora-trained sales advisors and stock an edit of over 100 brands.

Interparfums raises 2020 revenue forecast to over 340 million. The announcement follows an uptick in business in recent months. The company had to postpone some major launches due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to store closures and disrupted supply chains, but has seen a gradual improvement since early July as lockdown restrictions were lifted.

L Catterton invests $150 Million in Function of Beauty. The start-up, known for its customisable shampoo and hair treatment formulas, said it would use the cash to double down on product development, international expansion and manufacturing capabilities. Existing investors CircleUp and GGV also participated in the funding round.

Beauty Bay eyes London public listing. The Manchester-based beauty e-tailer is working with investment bank GCA Altium to explore its exit options, Sky News reported. Following a successful IPO for The Hut Group back in September, a stock market flotation is a likely outcome, but an outright sale could also be a possibility, sources told Sky.

PEOPLE

Designer Natacha Ramsay-Levi walks the runway after the Chloe show during Paris Fashion Week in February 2020. Getty Images.

Chlo's Natacha Ramsay-Levi steps down. The designer is leaving the Richemont-owned fashion house after nearly four years at its helm. A new creative director will be named in due course, Chlo said in a statement Thursday. Ramsay-Levi worked to sharpen Chlo's image with an edgier and ultimately less commercial take on the houses ultra-feminine codes. Her runway collections were broadly well received by critics, but ultimately lacked strong-selling items.

Geoffroy Lefebvre replaces Federico Marchetti as YNAP CEO. Lefebvre, currently Richemonts group digital distribution director, will take the reins from January 4. Marchetti, who first announced he would step down in March, will remain chairman to ensure a successful transition, Yoox Net-a-Porter said in a statement. The moves come as online retailers competition to win customers intensifies.

LVMH reshuffles digital team. Chief digital officer Ian Rogers is stepping down to join cryptocurrency start-up Ledger. To help fill the gap, the luxury giant is creating a new role of chief omnichannel officer, elevating Louis Vuitton vice president Michael David to the position. Meanwhile, Chris de Lapuente will take on responsibility for the companys e-commerce site 24S as the new chairman and CEO of the groups Selective Retailing division.

Michael Bastian joins Brooks Brothers as creative director, Zac Posen exits. After acquiring the American suit maker out of bankruptcy in September for $325 million, joint owners Authentic Brands Group (ABG) and Simon Property Group have named Ken Ohashi as president and designer Michael Bastian as creative director of mens and womens. Posen, who served as creative director of the womens collections since 2014, has exited the business.

Peter Chipchase named chief marketing officer of Stella McCartney. Chipchase joins the luxury brand from Soho House, where he spent seven years as chief communications strategy officer. Chipchase succeeds Caroline Deroche Pasquier, who has left the business. He will report to chief executive Gabriele Maggio, but also work closely with McCartney, as well as the companys product and commercial teams.

MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY

British Vogue, December 2020. Courtesy.

Cond Nast names Natalia Gamero del Castillo managing director of Europe. Following the exit of Wolfgang Blau, Cond Nast president of International and chief operating officer, the publisher promoted the managing director of Cond Nast Spain to oversee European operations (UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain), reporting directly to chief executive Roger Lynch.

The Face names Matthew Whitehouse editor. The former culture editor for i-D has served as The Faces deputy editor since the youth culture-focused magazine relaunched after a 15-year hiatus 18 months ago. He takes over from Stuart Brumfitt who left in October. Whitehouses first issue as editor is set to go on sale next week, and stars singer Jorja Smith.

British Vogue announces publishing team shakeup. Michiel Steur, formerly head of special projects, will take on the role of acting associate publisher of the magazine, effective January 2021. Alexis Williams has been named international fashion advertising director, while Madeleine Churchill has been promoted to creative partnerships director. Steur, Williams and Churchill will all report to publishing director Vanessa Kingori.

Zalandos Cyber Week sales beat last year by more than a third. Zalando added more than one million customers during the sales period with gross merchandise volume growing by 35 percent. Zalando wasnt alone in securing a record number of sales. Amazon said independent businesses selling on its platform crossed $4.8 billion in worldwide sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, an increase of more than 60 percent from a year earlier.

Compiled by Daphne Milner.

BoF Professional is your competitive advantage in a fast-changing fashion industry. Missed some BoF Professional exclusive features? Click here to browse the archive.

View original post here:

Is Big Tech a Threat to Fashion? | This Week in Fashion, BoF Professional | BoF - The Business of Fashion

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clearer than ever that we are at risk of losing control of our economies.

Our institutions have increasingly struggled to meet the challenges of economic development before the crisis, and yet throughout the pandemic weve seen surging stock market valuations of tech giants including staggering CEO salaries the inability of anti-trust regulators, particularly in the United States, to effectively regulate markets and the rise of Chinas tech companies.

Tech giants are not just surviving the pandemic; theyre thriving.

Whats known as the superstar economy is one with a few hyper-productive, gigantic and highly profitable companies.

Superstar firms such as Walmart, Amazon or Facebook use new technologies to redefine markets, and benefit from what are known as network effects simply put, the value of a product is enhanced the more people use it. Facebook is an example people are more likely to join Facebook if their friends and loved ones are on it.

Initially, superstar companies bring new ways of delivering value to customers, but as they grow, they become powerful monopolies. Our institutions have struggled with how to deal with these relatively new firms and, for example, have allowed many mergers and acquisitions that eroded competition in their respective markets. Prominent examples include the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp by Facebook.

Superstar firms have also contributed to the shift in wealth distribution from labour to capital. Wealth was once commonly built through labour, rather than via capital that is often inherited or otherwise privileged.

Many superstar firms also have the balance sheets of mid-sized economies and hold more information about us than any country. Take Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg probably knows more about you than your government. However, you have no way of finding out because data ownership is at best a complicated issue, and retaining your data would require you to have next to no online footprint.

That citizens dont have access to data about themselves is problematic. Clearly, the only person who should own your data is you. European data privacy laws are about to become even stricter, but in North America, the erosion began in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that resulted in laws that dramatically eroded our privacy. Those laws have provided firms with the right to use the abundant data they collect.

Google is an example. One of the reasons Google is the gold standard of search engines is that it uses advanced machine learning algorithms. These algorithms use our data to learn what we want to see when were online.

Any successful competitor to Google would need to outperform years of learning advantage. That makes competition at best very challenging.

Primarily, we have seen two attempts to address the sheer might of tech giants and their lack of competitors.

In China, superstar firms have been largely nationalized. The state is increasingly involved in the most powerful companies in the country. Chinese regulators recently quashed the initial public offering of a financial company, Ant Group, in a high-profile example of government involvement.

Read more: Ant Group is holding the biggest IPO of all time here's what it is

In such a regime, the state is set up to have unlimited access to your data, so the principles upon which western democracies were built do not apply.

Second, in the western world, we traditionally address issues of market domination with antitrust regulations. Antitrust laws have started to hit the superstar economy hard in Europe. Google alone had to pay fines of US$9.3 billion in the last three years.

However, antitrust measures have so far not been very effective given theres little room for action its either none at all or breaking up companies, which authorities are often hesitant to do.

Examples of such limited success from the past are Standard Oil and, later, AT&T. Standard Oil served America as a monopoly before it was broken up into 34 smaller companies in 1911. Many of these companies are known today under the names Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP and Marathon. Decades later, AT&T was also broken apart into seven smaller, regional companies.

The west also seems ill-equipped to regulate new markets that have emerged outside the traditional boundaries of an industry, including the highly digitized sectors that were fuelled by the growth of the internet over the past few decades.

Antitrust regulations for tech companies in the post-pandemic era need to change. Restricting networked companies to expand beyond their core business, and preventing mergers and acquisitions that inhibit the self-regulating character of markets, could increase the competitive forces in the market.

For example, Amazon as a platform for connecting buyers and sellers has transformed how we buy things. However, there is an obvious conflict of interest and a threat to competition when Amazon offers their own products on their own platform. Microsoft, as a provider of the most popular operating system for computers in the world, is a threat to competitors by offering its own browser.

There is no harm in restricting superstar firms to their core businesses, but a lot of harm when we dont.

Regulators need to better understand the innovative forces in industries and markets to prevent anti-competitive behaviour rather than looking at traditional measures like market share. More competitive markets would offer better outcomes for consumers.

Better antitrust measures also require applying national data security laws. In practice, this would mean that all online platforms need to fulfil the national regulations in the markets where theyre doing business as opposed to only in their home countries. These ideas are currently being advanced in Europe and will likely be a game-changer for tech giants.

A localized market approach could also reduce the effect of data breaches. Competition would become healthier as well, because superstar firms couldnt impose the rules of the game in the same way anymore.

We must better define the role of superstars in our economies and decide whether its wise to readjust our market principles to accommodate tech giants, or whether we should restrict tech giants to adhere to our market principles.

Capital-rich investors will certainly enjoy reaping the benefits from accommodating the Googles and Amazons of the world but the average customer likely wont.

Read the rest here:

Why we should rein in the big tech giants in 2021 and beyond - The Conversation US

Updated: November 30, 2020 6:47:44 pm

Written by Viswanath Pingali and D Daniel Sokol

Globally, regulators have been expressing concerns about digital platforms across a number of areas. One concern is the size of these platforms, which critics are concerned size means influence in the daily lives of people that may harm consumers. In some cases, the concern is the allegation that platforms provide undue preference to their own products and services on their platforms, a so-called self-preferencing claim. Some proposals would limit other behaviour of Big Tech, such as merger limits or the ability for competitors to access the data of a platform.

In each case, the critics are focussed on the potential negative effects of platforms. What is missing in their criticism is that each factor also has a positive side and it is for regulators to undertake a careful case by case analysis of these issues. An important question from a regulatory standpoint is to what extent is user experience improved or compromised by these platforms. Overall, what is lacking in the debates is a discussion of the value creation aspect of platforms.

Explained | The dominance of big tech

There is a lot more nuance to how platforms operate. Each platform has a different business model and a different way of orchestrating the relationships of users and third party companies on its platform. Ultimately, a balanced approach to understanding platforms is imperative to ensure that there are no unintended consequences of harming innovation and growth.

Having explained the potential negative aspects, let us focus on the positive aspects of platforms. One potential overarching point is techs contribution to growth and innovation. According to a 2019 Progressive Policy Institute report, the top 25 investment heroes invested $226 billion in the United States in 2018, where four of the five so-called GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) companies appeared in the top 10 and all were in the top 25. We do not have equivalent stats for India but, this past year has witnessed massive investments into India, in particular in the technology sector. Such investment really is the bloodline of economic growth.

The global and India mobile app ecosystems continue to grow, offering more choices to consumers. As more choices emerged, consumers have greatly benefited. In AppAnnies recent report titled the Mobile App Evolution, Indias mobile app downloads growth rate is higher than the worldwide average. India has catapulted into second place globally since 2017 (after China).

Platforms have the potential to positively impact physical and mental health. COVID-19 is a real life and recent example where physical distancing and shutdowns have meant citizens and businesses rely on technologies to connect and to continue doing business. It is not the only such example. For example, social networking websites have contributed heavily towards safety efforts and fundraising activities during the Chennai floods last year. In a recent article, one of us discussed the role of open source software and mobile phone operating system (Android) in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. In all these cases, the data and the size of the network ensured faster information dissemination, which is highly essential in the circumstances. Therefore, some of the solutions that are being proposed in order to limit the influence of these platforms need to be understood more carefully.

A Harvard Business Review article last year argued that network effects are not sufficient in creating and sustaining a dominant position; a differentiating edge is almost always essential for the platforms to survive over a period of time. In this context, implications to the users of the platforms of one of the proposed solutions the extreme step of breaking up of platforms in order to discourage self-preferencing behaviour are more complex. In markets where switching costs are low, multi-homing (usage of multiple platforms for same services) platforms invest heavily in innovation and create mechanisms through which user experience improves. This raises an important question: Is the distinction between innovation and self-preferencing behaviour clear enough? If the platforms are broken up, the synergies that exist between the platform and the products it creates could be disrupted. A second solution that is being proposed is that the competitor should have the right to access the data. Prima facie it looks great, but it opens up other issues on data privacy: Who is responsible if the data were to be misused? Finally, there has also been a proposal to limit the acquisition of other companies by these platform companies. Platforms acquire other companies for various reasons including increasing the size and offerings of the network. Acquisitions also help in mitigating innovation related risk. As discussed earlier, increases in the size of networks need not result in negative outcomes, and indeed, can provide greater value to users in terms of improved functionality and integrated platform solutions.

Therefore, in short, a broad question from the regulatory standpoint is to further investigate how user experience is shaping up in the digital world and weighing the potential benefits against the potential concerns for platforms. We think both the platform businesses and the regulators need to come together on a common platform in order to understand these emerging business models and the resulting user experiences.

Pingali is with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and has provided consulting services to leading platform companies. Sokol is a law professor at the University of Florida and has provided legal services to various platform companies.

The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay updated with the latest headlines

For all the latest Opinion News, download Indian Express App.

Visit link:

As Big Tech faces antitrust heat in the US, platform businesses, regulators need to work together - The Indian Express

InvestorPlace

Back in July, I recommended seven of the best stocks to buy for 2021 and beyond. As a group, theyve done very well over the past three months. For instance,Livongo Healthwas acquired by Teladoc Health (NYSE:TDOC) on Oct. 30 for $11.33 per share in cash and 0.592 times shares in Teladoc.But looking for a bit of a twist on my stock selection process, Ive decided that this list will be based on the first letter of all 12 months. That means my stock pick for January will have a corporate name beginning with J, then an F for February and so forth.All 12 will also have a market capitalization of $2 billion or more and positive free cash flow for the trailing 12 months. By this time next year, Im confident that my picks, on the whole, wont disappoint.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips7 Cheap Stocks Ready for Big Gains in 2021So, without further ado, here are my 12 best stocks for a brand new year:Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ)Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE:FIS)McDonalds (NYSE:MCD)Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE)MercadoLibre (NASDAQ:MELI)Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI)Jeld-Wen Holding (NYSE:JELD)Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)SVB Financial (NASDAQ:SIVB)Otis Worldwide (NYSE:OTIS)NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE)Dollar General (NYSE:DG)Stocks to Buy: Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)Source: Alexander Tolstykh / Shutterstock.comJohnson & Johnson represents the month of January on my list of best stocks to buy for 2021. Right now, its having a sideways kind of year in the markets. Its year-to-date (YTD) total return through Dec. 4 is just 2.6%.Based on a trailing 12-month free cash flow (FCF) of $18.3 billion and a current enterprise value (EV) of over $399 billion, JNJs FCF yield is a reasonable 4.7%. It might not be value territory I consider anything above 8% to be cheap but its pretty darn good.As InvestorPlace colleague Faisal Humayun recently stated, JNJ stock has an excellent product offering.From a business perspective, the company provides diversified exposure to the segments of consumer health, pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The companys pharmaceutical segment growth for Q3 2020 was impressive with most therapeutic areas delivering strong numbers.Not to mention, JNJ is still very much in the Covid-19 vaccine race. That suggests that 2021 could be a breakout year for this Dividend Aristocrat.Fidelity National Information Services (FIS)Source: Maryna Pleshkun/Shutterstock.comNext on my list of best stocks to buy is Fidelity National Information Services, representing the month of February. This payment processor is having an underwhelming year relative to the U.S. markets as a whole. Currently, FIS stock has a YTD total return of just over 7%, about half the markets rate of return in 2020.Based on a trailing 12-month free cash flow of $2.57 billion and an enterprise value of $109.75 billion, though, Fidelity Nationals FCF yield is very decent at 3.8%.You wont find a lot of commentary from InvestorPlace contributors on this stock, despite the fact it does have a part to play in the technology side of the financial services industry.However, on Nov. 19, the Florida-based company announced that it earned the top spot for the sixth consecutive year in a ranking of 100 leading providers of risk and compliance technology.Additionally, while Covid-19 has slowed the rate at which FIS can process transactions, it still has managed to generate organic revenue growth during its third quarter of 1% to about $3.2 billion. The company also increased adjusted net income by 18% to $887 million.7 Growth Stocks Flying Under the RadarSo, this is not a glamorous stock but its services are certainly in demand.McDonalds (MCD)Source: CHALERMPHON SRISANG / Shutterstock.comTo represent March for the coming year, Ive picked the golden arches of MCD stock. Like many of the names on this list, McDonalds has an okay year going, up 7.11% YTD today. Thats better than many of its restaurant peers, but its trailing the U.S. markets as a whole.Thanks to Covid-19 shutdowns, McDonalds trailing 12-month free cash flow isnt nearly as strong as it usually is, now at $4.25 billion. Currently, the industry leader has an FCF yield of 2.7% based on an enterprise value of about $205 billion.Despite operating in one of the hardest-hit industries, McDonalds has continued to look beyond the novel coronavirus, continually finding ways to transform its business without upsetting the core customer.For instance, the company recently gave Beyond Meat (NASDAQ:BYND) the cold shoulder by announcing it would be testing a line of meatless alternatives in 2021, including the McPlant burger. Interestingly despite developing the plant-based burger with Beyond Meats input the fast-food company decided to go its own way.The decision to go on its own was a result of two reasons. First, MCD didnt want to alienate its meat-loving customers. Secondly, its not a fan of letting licensees and other brands into its house. Beyond Meat would have surely taken some shine off of the Golden Arches.McDonalds has had a tough time, but it always bounces back. That makes it one of the best stocks to buy for the upcoming year.Adobe (ADBE)Source: r.classen / Shutterstock.comAdobe, the mastermind behind the PDF and so much more, is my pick for the month of April. Its having an excellent year in the markets right now, with a YTD total return of over 47%. Thats considerably better than both its software peers and the U.S. markets as a whole, making it one of the best stocks to buy right now.Adobes trailing 12-month free cash flow is $4.9 billion, while its enterprise value is nearly $232 billion for an FCF yield of 2.1%. Both its enterprise value and EV-EBITDA multiple have also risen dramatically in the past five years. In 2016, the company had an enterprise value of $48 billion and an EV-EBITDA of 26.1. Presently, the stock has an EV-EBITDA multiple of 48.3.7 Stocks to Sell for DecemberIn early February, I said ADBE stock was all but certain to hit $400 in 2020. It did and then some. Moving forward, I think its all but certain to hit $500 perhaps $600 in 2021.MercadoLibre (MELI)Source: rafapress / Shutterstock.comMercadoLibre is sometimes referred to as the Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) of Latin America, although it more closely resembles Alibaba (NYSE:BABA). For my list of best stocks to buy in 2021, it represents the month of May.Currently, MELI stock is having a fantastic year in the markets with a YTD total return of over 170%. Like Adobe, MercadoLibre is faring far better than both its internet retail peers and U.S. markets as a whole.This companys trailing 12-month free cash flow is $810 million, while its enterprise value is almost $76 billion for an FCF yield of 1.1%. While that might seem low, MercadoLibres free cash flow has never been higher. Likewise, its revenues are on fire and growing like weeds. True to the Amazon comparison, this name will also probably see exponential growth in its free cash flow over the next few years.Ive been a fan of the company since as far back as 2013, when it was trading around $120. At the time, I argued that it had a dominant position in Latin American e-commerce and its stock would benefit from that.As I write this, shares are priced around $1,555 and moving higher in 2021.Johnson Controls (JCI)Source: ShutterstockThere arent a lot of great companies with a J as the first letter in their name. There are even fewer with strong free cash flow. Nonetheless, Johnson Controls represents the month of June on my list of best stocks to buy.Interestingly, while its only generally matching the YTD performance of the U.S. markets as a whole, JCI stock is doing better in 2020 than it has in some time. Over the past five years, its delivered an annualized total return for shareholders of about 9.1%, well below the markets.However, up almost 14% over the past three months, the company appears to be gathering speed heading into 2021.In early November, Johnson Controls also announced its fourth-quarter results, which were excellent despite the challenging business environment. In fiscal 2020, it had sales of $22.3 billion and net income of $1.69 billion, flat to a year earlier.Thats not bad for a company that manufactures, installs and services products designed for offices, industrial properties and other types of commercial real estate all of which were hurt by the pandemic.Johnson Controls trailing 12-month free cash flow is nearly $1.8 billion, while its enterprise value is about $39 billion for an FCF yield of 5.3%.The 7 Best Cheap Stocks to Buy for DecemberI view JCI as a nice stock for risk-averse investors who also like a little dividend income its dividend yield is 2.27% at the moment.Jeld-Wen Holding (JELD)Source: IgorGolovniov / Shutterstock.comBy far the smallest of the 12 names on this list, JELD stock has a market cap of $2.42 billion. This maker of windows and doors represents the month of July on my best stocks to buy list.Back in late January of 2017, Jeld-Wen went public at $23 a share.Now, though if you bought shares in its IPO and are still holding youve made almost no money on your investment. Year-to-date, its got a total return of just 2.7%, well below the booming returns of its building products and equipment industry peer group. Those stocks have mostly benefited from Covid-19.The companys trailing 12-month free cash flow is $250 million, while its enterprise value is $3.8 billion for an FCF yield of 11.3%.However, on Nov. 3, the company reported third-quarter results that were better than analyst expectations. On the top-line, revenue was $1.11 billion, $2 million higher than the consensus estimate. On the bottom line, it had adjusted earnings per share of 52 cents, eight cents higher than analyst expectations. President and CEO Gary Michel said the following:Consumers focus on their homes, coupled with our strategy to deliver profitable market share with key customers, is driving increased demand for products in both residential new construction and repair and remodel channels.As the focus remains on homes in 2021, I expect Jeld-Wen to snap out of its funk and do well.Apple (AAPL)Source: WeDesing / Shutterstock.comFor August, the famous maker of the iPhone is the next pick of this list. However, if there were a month beginning with the letter B, Id recommend Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A, NYSE:BRK.B) because its a much better value play and happens to own almost 965 million shares of AAPL stock.Apples YTD total return is over 66%, which sounds rather ordinary, given its almost 30% annualized total return over the past 15 years. Id take it every day of the week.As for free cash flow and enterprise value, they are almost $73.4 billion and $2.1 trillion, respectively. Thats an FCF yield of 3.5%, an excellent valuation for one of the worlds largest public companies.Put simply, Apple has become so much more than a maker of smartphones.According to AppleInsider.com, Apples new M1-equipped Mac mini has jumped to the number one position in sales in the Japanese market for desktop computers after only two weeks of availability. Further, Apple now has a 27% market share in Japan, up from roughly 13% a year earlier.10 Best Stocks to Buy for Investors Under 30So, I dont think you can go wrong owning Apple over the long haul. Clearly, its one of the best stocks to buy for the coming year.SVB Financial (SIVB)Source: ShutterstockNext, representing the month of September is my favorite U.S. bank. SVB Financial is the holding company that operates Silicon Valley Bank, the Santa Clara-based financial institution that focuses on entrepreneurs and innovators.Right now, its having an awesome year compared to peers in regional banking. While SIVB stock is up nearly 43% YTD, most of its peers are down. Its also leaving the U.S. markets in the dust. That said, I wont bother noting the free cash flow for this name because its not meaningful for banking institutions. Instead, the balance sheet matters most.SIVB reported Q3 2020 results that included earnings per share of $8.47, almost double the $4.42 per share it earned the year prior. The president and CEO of SVB Financial, Greg Becker, noted:We had an exceptional quarter driven by outstanding balance sheet growth, higher core fee income, strong investment banking revenue, solid credit resulting in a reduction of reserves, and outsized equity gains related to client IPO activity [] These results reflect the resilience of our markets and our ability to execute effectively.SIVB was on my 2013 list of the five best stocks to buy for the next 20 years, right up there with Amazon. I think you owe it to yourself to check it out in 2021.Otis Worldwide (OTIS)Source: rafapress/shutterstock.comBack in early April, this elevator company spun off from United Technologies, which merged with Raytheon (NYSE:RTX) to become one of the worlds largest aerospace and defense companies.While it wont have a full 12-month track record until April, this representative for the month of October has risen 43.5% YTD, suggesting 2021 could deliver an excellent performance.In the trailing 12 months, Otis has a free cash flow of $1.47 billion andan enterprise value of about $33 billion. That makes for an FCF yield of 5.2%, so its reasonably priced.Whats more, the companys third-quarter results demonstrate that its holding its own during the pandemic. Top-line organic sales fell 1.2% in Q3 2020 to $3.3 billion while its operating profit grew 7% on an adjusted non-GAAP basis. Also, operating margins increased 120 basis points to 15.4%.In November, Toronto-based portfolio manager Christine Poole made OTIS stock one of her three top picks on BNN Bloombergs Market Call, suggesting that its 17% global elevator market share makes it an excellent long-term investment with an excellent balance between sales and service, at 57% and 43% respectively.7 Value Stocks That May Come Back into Style After the PandemicThat makes it worthy of this best stocks to buy list for 2021. Can you say recurring revenue?NextEra Energy (NEE)Source: madamF / Shutterstock.comRecently, I recommended this Florida-based utility company because of its renewable energy business, NextEra Energy Resources, which generates almost 40% of overall earnings. I maintain that NEE stock is one of the best stocks to buy for 2021, representing the month of November on this list.NEE stock is a thing of beauty if consistent returns are your thing. YTD, its up about 20%. Over the past three-, five- and 10-year periods, it has annualized total returns of 25.1%, 26.8% and 20.5%, respectively. Lets say its crushing its peers over any of those periods.NextEras free cash flow in the trailing 12-months is $2.1 billion, while its enterprise value is $190 billion, for an FCF yield of -3.2%. So, its certainly not cheap.But InvestorPlaces Mark Hake made an interesting observation on Nov. 25 when he suggested that NextEra would buy another utility with its strong share price. As Hake would agree, thats Capital Allocation 101.NextEra made overtures to Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) and Evergy (NYSE:EVRG). Both rejected the offers. However, Im sure something will shake out soon enough. Like Hake said, a bid might come with more cash.What I do know for certain is that NextEra is one of North Americas best-run utilities.Dollar General (DG)Source: Jonathan Weiss / Shutterstock.comRepresenting the final month of the year is Dollar General, the dollar-store discount chain with 17,000 locations in 46 states. Its having another strong year, up almost 37% YTD. Combine that with a 10-year annualized total return of 20.8%, and youve got one heck of a long-term investment.As for trailing 12-month free cash flow, it has $3.1 billion, along with an enterprise value of nearly $64 billion. Right now, its FCF yield is 5.9%.On Nov. 14, the company announced the opening of its 17,000th store in Fountain, Colorado. As a nice gesture to the community, Dollar General donated $17,000 to one of the local schools. In the companys press release heralding the occasion, CEO Todd Vasos said:Since our founding more than 80 years ago, we have remained focused on helping customers save time and money.In my book, helping customers save time and money are the hallmarks of any successful business.Back in November, I also recommended Dollar General as one of three stocks of relative values compared to Nio (NYSE:NIO), the Chinese electric vehicle maker. And while I like Nio long-term, it isnt a name to buy for the short-term at current prices. DG stock is much more down-to-earth.8 Tech Stocks That Could Benefit from a Biden PresidencyAs long as working folk need to save money, Dollar Generals business remains a solid bet. In turn, that makes it one of the best stocks to buy going into the uncertainty of 2021.On the date of publication, Will Ashworth did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.Will Ashworth has written about investments full-time since 2008. Publications where hes appeared include InvestorPlace, The Motley Fool Canada, Investopedia, Kiplinger, and several others in both the U.S. and Canada. He particularly enjoys creating model portfolios that stand the test of time. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.More From InvestorPlaceWhy Everyone Is Investing in 5G All WRONGTop Stock Picker Reveals His Next 1,000% WinnerRadical New Battery Could Dismantle Oil MarketsThe post The 12 Best Stocks to Buy for a Whole New Year of Returns in 2021 appeared first on InvestorPlace.

The rest is here:

Box CEO: Breaking up big tech is not the right solution - Yahoo Tech

Dutch anti-trust authorities have recommended new rules to rein in the advance of Big Tech companies in the payments arena.

A market study conducted by the competition watchdog at the behest of the Dutch Ministry of Finance finds that Big Tech companies are strengthening their positions in the payments market through acquisitions and collaborations.

Martijn Snoep, chairman of the Board of ACM, comments: Big Tech companies can act as a driving force behind competition and, by extension, behind innovation on the Dutch payment market. However, that role does require Big Tech companies to open up their platforms and devices to competing payment services, in the same way that banks do. Only with such a level playing field in place will payment services continue to compete and innovate, and will consumers continue to enjoy freedom of choice. It would be good if the European rules regarding this issue were tightened, before the market is dominated by one or several major competitors.

Snoep points out that Big Tech companies that only facilitate payment services currently do not fall under the European rules for open access to payment systems, the PSD2 Directive. ACM recommends amending this Directive, so that Big Tech companies that only play a facilitating role must also comply with it.

"After all, in that facilitating role, these Big Tech companies are the gateway for payments, and they are able to restrict competition and the options for consumers," states the ACM.

The second amendment would involve changing the current competition rules, so that conditions can be imposed on dominant platforms in advance.

States the report: "By changing these rules, we can force companies with, for example, a dominant position on an online market to open up their platforms to other market participants, thereby ensuring a level playing field."

The European Union is already pondering whether to force Apple to open up its NFC functionality on iOS devices to rival payment providers.

A report produced following a June anti-trust investigation in to the issue concluded: "In parallel with its ongoing and future competition enforcement, the Commission will examine whether it is appropriate to propose legislation aimed at securing a right of access under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions, to technical infrastructures considered necessary to support the provision of payment services."

Read more here:

Dutch competition watchdog calls for tighter EU rules to rein in Big Tech role in payments - Finextra

Announced last week to not insignificant fan-fair was the newly minted Digital Markets Unit [DMU], the freshest incarnation of a power-play by the Competition and Markets Authority. Its remit? To enforce a [yet to be defined] code of conduct that will set new [yet to be defined] limits on techs biggest platforms, as well as attempting to create a more level playing field for smaller rivals. [Thats us, new arrivals like Blix, by the way].

There are no specifics released on what that code is or might be or what enforcement powers they may have. What we do know is marshalling the big boys and girls in this space has thus far proved to be tricky, combative and absent of any genuine collaboration for good.

The units formation and subsequent headline intentions pose a multitude of questions, not least how can constructive, positive change come about?

How can the drive-for-profit be reconciled with a desire for a more expansive, collaborative and ultimately [for the customer] more balanced digital landscape? How can competition be seen not only as a force for good but part of the genuine lifeblood of an industry? And how are new ventures encouraged to navigate the market to bring new solutions to the world?

[Writer draws breath, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the task and the weight of these rhetorical questions.]

As the co-founder of a new martech [a rather smaller, much smaller rival] business called Blix, the inspiration to get into it every day initially comes from a personal view that competition is good; benchmarks are set, gauntlets thrown down, evolution is born of opportunity-spotting and new ways of solving problems that have not yet presented themselves is the big picture yet quotidian thrill of it all.

Genuine entrepreneurialism is in part about navigation, setting a course and being nimble enough to sidestep. When it comes to units and authorities; they tend to er on the side of punishment as opposed to incentive and collaboration; another fine, another court hearing somewhat blunt tools that big business can factor into their damage limitation budgets. [In principle, of course, there are no such things as damage limitation budgets or are there?]

Sure, wrong-doing and illegal behaviours need to be punished, but the outcome must be a positive shift; fines only act as a binary solution and potentially miss a whole opportunity-space worthy of some exploration.

We need a new lens through which to look at the big and the small, a fresher perspective to a state of play I call counter-complementary-ism big businesses thrive off new innovations either from within or outside their own spheres. There is undoubtedly room for all, for the competitive benefits and positive disruption of all.

The post-industrial nature of digital tech is more than anything fluidity; the nature of customer user models, applications, re-application, upgrades, integrations; never before have market dynamics been driven by collaboration and complementary tech. Sure, initially counter or competitive even but over time together is often better.

The initial mission statements of big tech never set out to be anti-competition. There was, and in part still is, a purity in their original missions. While I appreciate this is the hopeful optimist in me talking, could it be that we, big and small players alike, might all have a collective role in working towards the ultimate end of big tech working harder and better? To support the very lifeblood of the future, where new and emerging tech can often be identified by their purer missions or north stars?

These purer articulations and manifestations from smaller rivals, entrepreneurs and innovators they add layers, they weave in, they complement, contradict, inspire change and only over time dilute and lose their own purity, and so the cycle evolves. The ebb and flow of digital innovation.

For context, Google was fined around $9bn by the EU alone across 2017 and 2019, whereas the entire digital tech investment in the UK in 2019 is reported at 10.1bn, and that was a 44% year-on-year increase.

Were at a point in time where legislative power and fines must also evolve with one eye on cultural shifts, identifying new models for the entire tech ecosystem, rewarding positive change, an appreciation of whats really happening with smaller lifeblood businesses and a desire for a genuinely open debate around positive solutions that address the balance of power for good, as a force for good. For all.

Put that in your code.

Craig Wills, chief strategy officer of adtech Blix and co-founder of brand growth agency Big Blue.

// Featured in this article

BLIX

Opt-in. First-Party. Post Cookie. For sincere CRM in a post-GDPR world. Turning all Out of Home and Press Advertising into (the right kind of) direct response. The future of marketing: with permission...

Continue reading here:

Big tech, small tech: surely we're all in it together? - The Drum

German lessons

The Commission in its impact assessments takes into account already existing EU laws, such as the NetzDG, noted the Commissions spokesman Manoury, referring to the Network Enforcement Act, which was passed by the German parliament back in 2017.

According to the website of the German Ministry of Justice and and Consumer Protection, the law aims to fight hate crime and criminally punish fake news and other unlawful content on social networks more effectively. This includes insults, malicious gossip, defamation, public incitement to crime, incitement to hatred, disseminating portrayals of violence and threatening the commission of a felony.

In practice, all social media platforms (with more than 2 million users) that are accessible in Germany are obliged to take down or block access to manifestly unlawful content within 24 hours of receiving a complaint. They also have to offer their users an accessible procedure for reporting criminally punishable content and take immediate notice of any content that might violate German criminal law.

But German lawmakers didnt stop there. In June this year, the Budestag decided to tighten further the laws against hate speech online by requiring social networks to report to the BKA (Federal Police) and transmit some user data, such as IP addresses or port numbers, directly to the authorities.

Moreover, new rules will oblige operators of social networks to submit biannual reports on their handling of complaints about criminally punishable content. These reports must contain information, for example, on the volume of complaints and the decision-making practices of the network, as well as about the teams responsible for processing reported content. They must be made available to everybody on the internet.

Social media platforms could be liable for fines of up to 50 million euros if they fail on their reporting duties, according to a statement from the Justice Ministry.

According to the German daily Stuttgarter Zeitung, so far nine social media platforms have offered transparency reports: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Tiktok, Soundcloud, Change.org and Google+. The number of complaints varies greatly. In the second half of 2019, 4,274 unsatisfied users reported to Facebook. There were 843,527 complaints on Twitter and 277,478 on YouTube. Facebook felt compelled to take action in almost a quarter of the cases. 87 per cent of these posts were deleted within 24 hours, a total of 488. Twitter took care of 16 per cent of the complaints, 86 per cent of which were removed from the network within a day, according to the German newspaper.

However, the new obligations have their critics. Some express concern that legal content will end up being deleted by overzealous platforms eager to avoid paying hefty fines, the so-called problem of over-blocking. In 2017, when the law was first passed by the German parliament, even journalism unions in Germany protested against it, fearing a new form of censorship.

Reacting to the criticisms, German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht recently called for the introduction of a counter-presentation procedure, which would give authors of deleted content the right to ask social networks for a reassessment of their decision before any fines would be imposed.

There is also criticism that some of the proposed rules might even be in conflict with the German constitution. This particularly concerns the law intended to combat far-right extremism and hate crime, which was passed in the summer and is intended to force operators of social networks to report criminal content such as the threat of dangerous bodily harm or defamation of public figures (mayors or municipal councillors) to the Federal Criminal Police Office. It is because of those concerns that the president has not yet signed the law.

The German experience clearly shows that certain measures to combat the spread of hate speech and other form of illegal content online are relatively easy to implement, while others, like direct reporting to the police, might take much longer to build a consensus around.

That being said, even when it comes to the seemingly more trivial measures, the European Commissions mission is an infinitely more challenging one. First of all, it needs to make all member states agree on what even constitutes a hate crime on the internet. Then it has to create a set of rules that would be applicable across all member states.

According to a source in the European Commission familiar with the legislation, the first task is the easier one. There is actually a very broad agreement across the EU on the question of illegal content. Basically, what is illegal offline is also illegal online it is just a question of how you monitor it and what measures to take to make sure that the rules are followed also online, the source, who wished to remain anonymous, told BIRN.

Whatever the rules that the Commission ends up proposing in early December, the speed of the final implementation of those measures will largely depend on the legal form of the rules.

Generally speaking, if the rules assume the form of EU regulations, the final implementation might take a very long time, as regulations need unilateral agreement by all member states. If EU legislators decide to go with directives, which leave a lot of space for individual member states to translate into their own respective national laws and dont require unilateral agreement, things could go much faster.

According to the source from the Commission, half a year is an absolute minimum to expect the legislative process to take.

If you have an extremely well-drafted piece of legislation that everyone agrees on, it can take half a year. Ive never heard about anything going faster than this. It is already clear that this will not be very straightforward, the source said.

Originally posted here:

EU Set to Take on Big Tech with New Digital Services Act | Reporting Democracy - Balkan Insight