Joe Biden has seen major support from one constituency in particular in the lead-up to the 2020 election: Big Tech.

Some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley have lent their voices and bank accounts to the Democratic candidate, CNBC reports, with almost none of them throwing their financial support behind Donald Trump.

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who is now CEO of workplace management app Asana, has spent $24 million in support of Biden, while former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has spent $6 million.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has donated $5 million, including to the Senate Majority PAC which supports Democratic candidates in close races, while LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has opened up his wallet to the tune of $14 million.

The rank and file have followed suit industrywide. A whopping 98 percent of all contributions from employees at tech companies went to Democrats, the Center for Responsive Politics reports, including donations to campaigns as well as political groups.

The biggest donation to Republicans in the tech sector came from Peter Thiel, who earlier this year donated $2 million to Kris Kobachs doomed Senate effort in Kansas.

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Big Tech has overwhelmingly thrown its support behind Joe Biden - New York Post

As a populist political pendulum swings against Silicon Valley, it has become common to blame technology companies for the ills of democracy in the U.S. and abroadin particular, the diminution and even the demise of the fourth estate, the American news media required for the functioning of free societies.

When the Youngstown, Ohio daily newspaper The Vindicator announced the closure of its print edition in the summer of 2019, the CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade body representing 60 internet publishers, tweeted a public letter to the local Congressman, writing, You can send any thank you notes to Google, @RepTim Ryan.It was Facebook that started the demise of journalism, a former San Francisco Chronicle President, wrote on LinkedIn last October. The New York Times was even more full-frontal, publishing an Op-Ed piece last fall entitled, Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and the Free Press.

Now the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has weighed in. The local news industry is being decimated in the digital age, the committees Democratic minority asserts in a report released last week. It blames the destruction of local journalism on the internets disrupting journalisms historic business model, and a marketplace for online advertising now dominated by programmatic ads.

The syllogism is almost entirely false. I know, because I was there for a big chunk of the history, and covered it, as an editor, media reporter, and advertising columnist at The New York Times, and more recently as a nonprofit advocate of the advertising and media industries. And as virtually every long-time news executive will acknowledge, decades of industry data show that newspapers have not been synonymous with the news for at least a half-century, and have been undergoing structural deterioration for more than three decadeslong before Facebook, Google, or Craigslist were even a technological glimmer in any engineers eye.

Indeed, earlier Congressional and regulatory agency research, as well as scholarly studies have been almost unanimous in concluding that the disappearance of print newspapers derived from misguided Government policies that advanced local market news monopolies, reducing incentives for newspaper proprietors to innovate as their readers and advertisers left for other, more innovative, and better-priced media. And because the death of news argument and the nostalgic narratives underpinning it are so flawed, they offer little guidance to politicians, regulators, civic leaders, and marketing and media professionals who would seek to create a better-informed electorate and reinvigorate the public commonsvital objectives on the eve of an election that is testing the strength of American democracy.

By almost any measure, the American newspaper industry has been undergoing secular decline for at least 60 years, and probably far longer. In 1910, more than one-half of all newspaper cities enjoyed daily competition among as many as five or six newspapers. In the 1920s, more than 500 American localitiesincluding 42.6% of U.S. citieshad two or more newspapers competing with each other; about 100 of them had three or more papers. By 2000 (the year Google began selling advertising, and four years before Facebooks founding) only 1.4 percent of U.S. cities had competing newspapers, according to the Federal Communications Commission, mostly because afternoon newspapers had largely disappeared. Newspaper monopolies, according to the late media critic and scholar Ben Bagdikian, had eliminated competition in 98% percent of multi-newspaper cities. By 2002, only some six American communities had at least two newspapers.

The decline of newspapers was so pronounced (and the call for protection among the largest proprietors so loud) that Congress passed (and President Nixon signed) the Newspaper Preservation Act in 197050 years ago!to provide newspaper owners antitrust exemptions, arguing that such protection was required to advance the overriding principle that as many editorial voices should be preserved in a community as possible, according to 59 members of the House of Representatives, in an open letter supporting the legislation.

The effect was the opposite. A wide body of scholarship has traced the mass disappearance of American newspapers to the industrial combinations that took place after these antitrust exemptions were put in place. The newspaper sector consolidated as family-owned papers were bought by growing chains, reported the Congressional Research Service. Between 1960 and 1980, 57 newspaper owners sold their properties to Gannett Co. By 1977, 170 newspaper groups owned two-thirds of the countrys 1,700 daily papers. In 1920, 92 percent of newspapers were independent. In 2000, 23.4 percent were. Rather than preserving the existence of diverse and antagonistic voices, the Newspaper Preservation Act has merely preserved the status quo, concluded a University of Pennsylvania law review analysis. The NPA has constrained, rather than furthered, First Amendment interests.

I lived through these consolidations, having grown up in a two-newspaper New Jersey household (The New York Times in the morning, the Bergen Record in the evening), served as a paperboy (for The Record), and earned my first serious money calling in my high school football teams scoring plays to a collection of seven local papers that paid me $3.00 each per game. Between 1973, when I got that stringer gig, and 1986, when I started working as an editor and reporter at The Times, all but one of those local papers had merged or disappeared altogether.

Newspapers were consolidating because readers were indeed leaving for a new mediumtelevision. Television surpassed newspapers as consumers major information source in the 1960s. At the dawn of the commercial internet, in 2002, 84 percent of Americans said television was their primary news source, nearly twice as many as relied on newspapers. Daily news consumption trends painted an even starker picture: In 2002, only about 15 percent of Americans said theyd read a newspaper the previous day, half the number who had watched television news the day before, according to the FCC. Newspapers paid circulation, unsurprisingly, followed readers wandering attention. Newspaper daily circulation peaked (at around 63 million) in 1984, and then began a steady decline; by 2008, circulation was about 48 milliona quarter of their readers lost in 28 years. Yet during this entire period, another Government policya 1975 ban on newspaper-television station cross-ownershipprevented newspapers from following their readers and the news into this new electronic medium.

During their three decades of intense consolidation, even as they were losing readers to television, newspaper proprietors exploited their increasing local-market dominance to raise advertising rates, effectively pricing themselves out of business as new, better-priced, and better-targeted competitors emerged in cable television and alternative print vehicles. Between 1965 and 1975, according to the FCC, newspaper advertising rates rose 67 percent, which was below the cumulative rate of inflation. But between 1975 and 1990, rates skyrocketed 253 percent, almost twice the rate of the Consumer Price Index. Media critic Jack Shafer, writing in Politico, put actual, local dollar figures on these aggregate statistics: In its last year of competition with its daily crosstown rival the Washington Star, the Washington Postwas charging $2.85 per line for a one-time display ad. By January 1982, shortly after the Stars closure, that display line cost $3.15. Two years later, it was $3.65. In 1996, at the dawn of the dial-up internet, a Post ad line cost $7.93.

Similar pricing abuse occurred in classified advertising. Where they gained monopoly power, which was most U.S. cities, daily newspapers gouged their classified customers pitilessly, Shafer concluded. They lobbied Congress heavily to block the early migration of classifieds to electronic forms. And the big newspaper chains helped destroy their own business by investing in national online classified advertising verticals, which they ultimately sold.

This extraordinary exploitation of monopoly pricing power was the reason U.S. newspaper advertising revenues peaked in 2005, at almost $50 billion, despite the mass readership defections. The full collapse of daily newspaper advertising may have been accelerated subsequently by the internet, but it was certainly not caused by it. Rather, the fall-off was driven by abusive practices, combined with newspapers unwillingness or inability to invest to remain competitive in the face of a changing advertising environment.

The conditions and trends included the loss of local retail advertising, as local stores consolidated into national chains, moved larger chunks of their budgets into national media, and negotiated rates through national advertising agencies. In the grocery industry, for example, the no. 1 chain in the United States in 1992 was Kroger, with $22 billion in annual sales and 7.7% share of the market. By 2009, the largest grocer in America was Walmart, with $154 billion in grocery sales and a 30% market share. Through this period, Walmart was gradually ending its newspaper advertising in favor of television, and had mostly exited newspapers by 2015.

Department stores, another bedrock newspaper advertiser, underwent similar consolidation, with severe effects on the industry. Already by 1990, publishing executives were describing a domino effect, in which retail empires like the Campeau Corporation, which owns Bloomingdales, Jordan Marsh and other department store chains, are saddled with debt, curtail their ad expenditures and frighten their suppliers into zipping their own purses, I reported in a New York Times advertising column that April. Between 2005 and 2008, Federated Department Stores, owner of the largest department store brand, Macys, and fresh from its acquisition of Mays and its iconic store brands Filenes, Foleys, Hechts, Kaufmanns, May, and Marshall Field, cut its newspaper advertising spending in half, while increasing television advertising spend by nearly 60 percent.

Not once does the new Senate Commerce Committee report mention department stores, supermarkets, auto dealerships, or any of the other advertising categories that, for a century, were the financial backbone of the newspaper industry but which, with consolidation, began a long, slow exit from daily print as other pre-internet media became more competitive.

Indeed, even as the consolidating national retail chains moved more of their spend into national and spot television, the newspaper industry was simply unwilling to compete for national advertising. It wasnt until 1994, with the founding of the Newspaper National Network, a consortium among 25 large newspapers and the Newspaper Advertising Association, that newspapers developed the technology and collaborative will to provide the largest advertisers seamless entre to a national audience. While the NNN attracted $3 billion in national advertising during its 22-year existence, it proved too littlemore than $65 billion is spent annually on national advertising in the U.S. and too late in the face of more attractive television and digital options.

The slow introduction of color presses was another factor, driving auto and real estate advertisers out of high-priced newspaper display and classified advertising and into the more innovative free shoppersmany of them owned by newspaper conglomeratesdistributed in supermarkets and street boxes. In 1979, for example, fully 15 years after the introduction of national color television advertising by Pepsi-Cola, only 12% of U.S. newspapers were printing in colorthis despite the fact that color ads drove 43% more sales for advertisers than black-and-white ads.

Perhaps the final nail in the pre-internet newspaper coffin was the rise of free, alternative, print newsweeklies, which lured away from dailies new generations of independent retailers and classified advertisers with their younger demographics and advantaged circulation model. With their free distribution, the alt weeklies also prepared younger users for the free internet news model. As U.S. daily newspaper circulation began declining after its 1984 peak, alternative weeklies became the only segment of the newspaper industry to grow their readership growth that continued until the early 2000s. The Poynter Institute found that nearly a third of the 1,800 newspapers that were thought to have disappeared between 2004 and 2018 became advertising supplements, free distribution shoppers or lifestyle specialty publications.

Since, contrary to the Senate Commerce Committee, the internet is not responsible for the collapse of local journalism, it stands to reason that it is not responsible for the decline in the number of journalists. From 2008 to 2018, the number of newspaper reporters dropped 47 percent, according to the Pew Research Center but total newsroom employment across the five industries Pew researched (newspaper,radio,broadcast television,cable and other information services, Pews best match for digital) grew by about 5,000 positions when newspapers were subtracted from the equation.

Moreover, the Pew data also show that newspaper newsroom employment actually spiked even as newspaper readership declined in the period after Federal Government protections were enacted beginning in 1970, peaking at around 57,000 employees in 1990. One unavoidable conclusion is that newspapers artificially built up their newsrooms during a period of debt-fueled consolidation and monopoly profit-taking, and then brought their newsrooms back in line with their historic employment levels as the industry continued its long-term decline, first in competition with television, thereafter with the internet.

A second unavoidable conclusion is that newspapers are not the news industry and their decline does not equate to the decline of American journalism.

Recent coverage of newspapers falling fortunes has focused on the growth of news deserts a phrase popularized by the University of North Carolinas Hussman School of Journalism and Media to refer to American communities no longer served directly by a newspaper. While UNCs headline numberthe United States has lost almost 1,800 papers since 2004gets most of the attention, the fact is that only 60 of these failed papers were dailies; by UNCs own accounting, 1,250 of the closed newspapers were small weeklies with readerships under 10,000 people, in metro areas still apparently served by other newspapers. While the new U.S. Senate report correctly asserts that Americas local newsrooms are the watchdogs exposing crime, corruption, and keeping elected officials accountable to their constituents, it is fair to assume that most of these closed newspapers were doing little of the sort. Instead, they were tiny, freebie shoppers. (Their aggregate circulation of under 12.5 million compares with 48 million average monthly users reported by the online service Patch for its 1,200 hyperlocal news sites.)

In fact, it is quite likely that the number of newsgatherers has grown during the internets ascendency. Pew remains the benchmark for newsroom employment and other data, but its methodology almost certainly is incomplete. It does not appear to account for technology shifts that have improved productivity at the expense of newsroom headcount in ancillary technical jobs unrelated to newsgathering. For example, digital video cameras take fewer field operators than older videotape and film cameras; spellcheck software has replaced copyeditors in many newsrooms.

It also appears that Pew (and the U.S. Labor Department statistics on which it partly relies) may not be making apples-to-apples comparisons between analog-media newsroom employment (which includes not just police beat reporters and international news editors, but recipe writers and TV listing editors, too) and employment at sole proprietor and small websites engaged in similar, segmented functions such as recipe blogs and TV-criticism podcasts. All told, employment in such digitally native content operations has skyrocketed; consumer services employment growth in the internet, including content-site employment, rose 300% from 2008 to 2016, to 1.6 million jobs, according to The Economic Value of the Advertising-Supported Internet Ecosystem, a study for the IAB by John Deighton, Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.

Some unknown portion of that offsets, and probably more than offsets, the 28,000 net newsroom jobs lost at newspapers during the same period. The former New York Daily News and New York Post gossip columnist William Norwich has captured that evolution and growth perfectly. In those days, he writes of fashion and style coverage in the 1980s, there was Suzy, Liz Smith, Womens Wear Daily, Bill Cunningham, and I to deliver the messages that thousands of influencers are delivering now.

The Senate Commerce Committees Democrats argue that local news needs new laws and regulations to make sure it can compete fairly and provide its true value to local communities and American democracy. But the Committees report is so rife with contradictions that it is hard to track from its analysis to serious policy solutions. It argues repeatedly for regulation to support local journalismbut in the next breath notes that two-thirds of local newspapers have been gobbled up by 25 conglomerates and hedge-fund billionaires, who by definition will receive the lions share of any Congressional windfall. It argues repeatedly (and accurately) that competition in news benefits the publicbut then decries the competition from digital upstarts that has made the advertising and the content more affordable for vast numbers of brands and consumers.

There may be reasons to break up big tech and decentralize information markets, but these wont resurrect newspaper jobs, wont shift consumers back to the mediums that dominated in the 1960s and 1970s, wont redirect advertising revenues, and wont create any more news-gathering jobs than are currently being created in the open internet.

Outside of totalitarian states that forcibly control both the content and supply of news, you cannot legislate attention. Previous attempts to deploy U.S. Government regulation to do so have alwaysadvertently or notfavored large gatekeepers. But those Government-supported communications oligopolies failed because innovation in attention markets is hard to suppress in a free state, and innovators will always find better ways to serve consumers diverse wants and needs. And that is what Medium writers, YouTube influencers, Instagram and Snap storytellers, Substack newsletterists, Gimlet podcasters, Yelp reviewers, Roku video publishers, and the millions of other digital creators are: innovators. How dare the U.S. Senate, or anyone else for that matter, denigrate, if only by implication, their contributions to the common weal?

The most forward-thinking newspaper proprietorsThe New York Times, Dow Jones, Gannett, Advance, Hearsthave long since recognized the trends and are deploying podcasts, digital video, social influence, data visualization, augmented reality, and other advanced technologies to reinforce their consumers trust and renew their attention. So are the innovators behind the new news operationsAxios and Politico and Talking Points Memoin Washington, Scotusblog at the Supreme Court, Recode and The Information in Silicon Valley, Business Insider on Wall Street, Vice in Brooklyn, Bleacher Report in the sports stadiums, Patch in thousands of U.S. communities, Buzzfeed and Huffington Post and The Marshall Project around the worldthat have used digital technologies to revolutionize the way news is gathered and communicated.

These innovators do not reflexively equate news with paper, nor mourn business models that were eroding long before Craig had a list. They are embracing alternative forms of delivery. They are building new business relationships among the thousands of digital-native brands that have risen as conventional brick-and-mortar retail undergoes its own post-industrial reinvention. They are finding new revenue streams in direct-to-consumer content sales, live events, and more.

Their journalism is certainly benefiting consumers and advertisers. The audience research service ComScore reports that Americans digital news consumption remains 30% above pre-pandemic levels. IAB research released just last week shows that 84% of all consumers feel that advertising within the news maintains or increases their trust in the advertised brands.

Improving on these trends will require media literacy education, so consumers can distinguish among well-reported news, advocacy, and fakery. It will require far more investment by digital aggregators and distributors in supply chain management to weed out dangerous material, and in content curation to elevate the valid above the suspect. It will require advertisers deliberately to select the media channels in which their ads run, and not rely solely on automated media plans provided by programmatic intermediaries.

Most of all,supporting real news in an era of digital-first consumptionwill take serious policy analysis, not nostalgic narrativesfor a pastthat already waspastby the time the Internet was born.

Randall Rothenberg is the Executive Chair of the IAB. He served asCEO of the association from 2007 untilSeptember 2020, after spending30 years as a magazine writer and editor, newspaper reporter and columnist, author,Chief Marketing Officer, and management consulting firm executive.

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Big Tech Didn't Kill the News. (And the "News" Isn't Dead.) - IAB

Its among the rarest things on Earth.

An issue that both major US political parties can agree on: Big Tech should be regulated.

Fearful of what sweeping rule changes might bring, over a dozen medium-sized tech companies are looking to form their own lobbying coalition, The Information reports.

Part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, Section 230 has shielded internet companies from liability for what users say or post on their platforms.

Just last week, the Senate grilled the CEOs of Alphabet, Facebook, and Twitter (as well as Jack Dorseys beard) on their recent handling of various political posts being shared across their platforms.

Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg was particularly keen to update Section 230, which would force many companies to devote more resources to speech moderation.

until you realize that Facebook spent more on safety and security ($3.7B) in 2019 than Twitters entire 2019 revenue ($3.5B).

Now Medium Tech firms like Patreon, Nextdoor, Glassdoor, Etsy, Cloudflare, Reddit, Pinterest, Dropbox and, errr, Medium want to have a say in the legislation.

Regardless of how his election cycle shakes out or if Medium Tech catches on as a phrase (you heard it here first) its probably a smart move for them.

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The government is going after Big Tech and Medium Tech is bracing for impact - The Hustle

Rideshare driver Erica Mighetto holds up a a sign supporting a no vote on Proposition 22 in Oakland, California on October 9, 2020.Photo: Josh Edelson (Getty Images)

The results of many electionschiefly the presidential oneare still up in the air. But Tuesday night saw a sure, devastating blow to working people: California passed Proposition 22, meaning drivers with app-based companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash will be considered independent contractors and not employees. Its also a preview of the coming climate fights that could pit people and the planet against Silicon Valley.

Prop 22 spurred widespread opposition from labor organizers and climategroups alike, who rightly said it would spell disaster for both workers rights and the planet. Despite this coalitions valiant efforts, the ballot measure prevailed in part due to massive financial support by the companies who stand to benefit from it. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates, and Instacart shelled out a combined $204 million in support of it, making it the most expensive ballot measure in history.

When it comes to backing polluting policies, these app-based firms arent the first culprits that come to mind. The usual suspects are oil and gas giants and utilities, who have indeed been hard at work lobbying for other death cultish measures. Many Silicon Valley-backed companies have gone out of their way to tout their supposed green bonafides, like Lyfts pledge to go carbon neutral. But Prop 22 shows that its not just old school fossil fuel companies who are willing to abandon workers or the planet. These shiny new firms will also do what it takes to protect their money at the Earths expense. These companies are formidable opponents. Theyve got billions of dollars at their disposal, and theyre savvy, too.

Prop 22 is expected to put more cars on the road, which is particularly concerning because a recent study found that Uber and Lyft were responsible for about half of San Franciscos increase in congestion between 2010 and 2016. Transportation is also the largest contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Allowing these companies to expand without giving workers the ability to organize is a huge obstacle to the fight for a just and carbon-free transit sector.

G/O Media may get a commission

The climate plans rideshare and gig economy companies have put forward are far from sufficient to meet the scale of the crisis, a crisis that they will have a larger hand in making worse due to Prop 22. The plans do nothing about the apps wasteful business models, which depend on workers driving around aimlessly for miles while waiting to pick up customers. A recent report from Union of Concerned Scientists found that due to this, car trips from ride-hailing services create nearly 70% more climate pollution on average than the trips they displace. Switching to electric vehicles would help, but like fossil fuel firms attempts to offload the responsibility for climate action onto consumers, the apps pledges put the onus on their drivers to make the costly switch.

Climate organizers lost this fight against these gig work apps, but then it wont be the last one to wage. These companies are becoming some of the most powerful in the country, and theyre using that power to lobby for more legislation and ballot measures that protect their interests. Measures similar to Prop 22 are already in the works in other states.

The climate movement will face an uphill battle to defeat these measures, but in some ways, its well-poised to take up the challenge. Thanks to the centrality of labor rights in the Green New Deal and some unions shift toward acceptance of climate policy, the overlap between climate and labor groups interests is clearer than ever.

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Prop 22 Shows Why Big Tech Is the Climate Movement's New Foe - Gizmodo

Tech stocks led the market higher on Wednesday, adding billions to the fortunes of Americas richest ... [+] people.

Even with the presidential election in flux, the U.S. stock marketled by a rally in tech sharesjumped on Wednesday, helping Americas ten richest people add billions of dollars to their fortunes.

Both Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden claimed they would win the race, despite several battleground states still not called, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

Despite the uncertainty, markets surged on Wednesday, with shares of major tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft leading the rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 400 points, or 1.3%, as of market close on Wednesday, while the S&P 500 was up 2.2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite soared 3.9%.

Some experts on Wall Street attributed the strength in tech stocks to the potential for a split Congressas it looks less and less likely that Democrats will be able to win back control of the Senate. Although Democrats retained control of the House, Republicans won key Senate races in Iowa and Montana, according to NBC News.

With tech shares soaring, Americas ten richest peopleincluding Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerbergsubsequently gained a combined $28.2 billion in net worth as markets moved higher.

Leading the way was the worlds richest person, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, whose net worth rose by $10.5 billion, to $190.6 billion. Amazon stock was up 6.3% on Wednesday.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gained $8 billion as Facebook shares rose 8.3%. The worlds fourth richest person, he now has a net worth of $105.5 billion.

Bill Gates, the worlds third-richest person, saw his fortune rise $663 millionpushing his net worth up to $115.9 billion. Gates, who cofounded Microsoft in 1975, has sold or given away much of his stake in the companybut still owns an estimated 1% of shares, which rose nearly 5% on Wednesday.

Another former Microsoft executive, Steve Ballmer, gained $2.8 billion, with his net worth moving up to $73.5 billion amid the market rally. He owns an estimated 3.5% stake in Microsoft.

Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saw their fortunes rise $4 billion and $3.8 billion, respectively, as Googles stock jumped over 6%. Both are major shareholders of Google-parent company Alphabet; Page is worth $77 billion while Brin is worth $74.9 billion.

Among Americas ten richest people, four saw a drop in their fortunes on Wednesday. Tesla CEO Elon Musks net worth fell by about $560 million as shares of his electric vehicle maker were down 0.7%. He owns a 21% stake in the company and is now worth $93.1 billion.

Renowned investor Warren Buffett also saw his fortune drop slightly. His investing conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, saw its stock fall by 0.4%, shaving $215 million off of Buffetts net worth, which now stands at $78 billion.

Larry Ellison, cofounder and chief technology officer of software giant Oracle, lost $391 million, lowering his net worth to $75.1 billion. Ellison owns about 35% of Oracles stock, which was down 0.6% on Wednesday.

Walmart heiress Alice Walton, meanwhile, saw her fortune fall $309 million as Walmarts stock lost 0.6%, giving her a net worth of $66.6 billion.

Excerpt from:

Americas Ten Richest People Are $28 Billion Richer As Election Bolsters Big Tech Prospects - Forbes

(Repeats to add Update 1 tag in headline, no change to text)

Nov 4 (Reuters) - The United States big technology names led gainers on Wall Street on Wednesday, as investors sought the security of this years big stay-at-home corporate success stories in the face of a presidential election set to go down to the wire.

Gains for Joe Biden in vote tallies in the swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan cooled initial selling of renewable energy, marijuana and other companies seen as potential beneficiaries of a sweeping Democrat victory.

Overall, futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 jumped 3.7%, with Dow and S&P 500 futures also trading in positive territory in a volatile session.

Following are major movers as traders and investors in New Yorks main stock indexes digested the results and President Donald Trumps chances of beating Biden to win a second term.

Traditional energy companies, which could enjoy a lighter regulatory and tax environment under a second term for Trump, gained, with the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF up 2.3%.

Stocks of solar energy-based firms such as First Solar , Enphase and JinkoSolar traded between 3% and 4.7% lower.

The Invesco Solar ETF dropped 3%, handing back some of a more than 40% gain from September lows, while the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF, another instrument representing the developing sector which Biden had made a key plank of his agenda, fell 2%.

The fact that Republicans are likely to retain a Senate majority would make it virtually impossible for Biden (if he wins) to enact his major climate reforms, said Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov.

There is virtually no chance of a net zero emissions target passing through a Republican-controlled Senate.

Major cannabis producers had surged after the vice presidential debate, when Bidens partner on the ticket Kamala Harris said marijuana would be decriminalized at the federal level under their administration.

But with exit polls surprising markets, the ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF slipped 1.7%.

Shares of Tilray as well as U.S.-based listings of Canadas Canopy Growth, Cronos and Aurora Cannabis fell between 3% and 6.3%.

Big tech companies, which have benefited from Trumps softer stance on regulation and anti-trust policies as well as a tax cut that targeted U.S. big business, rose between 3% and 5.3%.

The Invesco QQQ ETF and Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund were both up around 3%.

Microsoft, Intel and IBM rose between 0.4% and 2.2%, while FAANG stocks Facebook, Apple , Amazon, Netflix and Google gained around 2.3% each.

With a Trump presidency more likely than expected and a more evenly balanced Senate, any big change like higher capital gains tax or a legislation that regulates the tax more aggressively is less likely, and thats why tech is doing better, said TS Lombards head of strategy, Andrea Cicione.

The iShares US Aerospace & Defense was set for its best day in nearly three months, while the SPDR S&P Aerospace & Defense ETF looked to post its biggest one-day gain since mid-July.

A second-term for the Trump administration is expected to mean continued higher spending on defense.

Contractors Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon rose between 1.4% and 2.7%.

Private prison operators Geo Group and CoreCivic Inc gave up early gains as Biden, who has committed to ending the federal governments use of private prisons, was reinstalled as the favorite to win the election by online betting markets.

Most of Wall Streets big banks slipped.

Now there will be a split Congress and, therefore, a lot more fiscal restraint and those expectations of higher inflation and high yields favoring banks and financials will have to be reassessed, Cicione said.

JP Morgan lost 1.6% while Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo -- listed under JP Morgans basket of stocks that should gain from a Trump victory -- fell more than 1%.

Pfizer, Merck & Co, Biogen, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Bristol Myers and Johnson & Johnson all rose between 1.6% and 3.7%.

Analysts at SVB Leerink said a Trump win with a close Senate race was almost an ideal outcome for biopharma and that an effectively split Senate would likely shield the industry from any sweeping reforms.

Reporting by Susan Mathew, additional reporting by Trisha Roy and Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham and Bernard Orr

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RPT-UPDATE 1-Wall St seeks safety of Big Tech bets as election hangs in the balance - Reuters UK

An emerging concept in the e-commerce and fintech spaces is social commerce. But many exchange traded funds arent adequately levered to this theme. The ARK Web x.0 ETF (NYSEArca: ARKW), however, is fully incorporating the advantages of social commerce.

Social commerce isnt just a new corporate buzz phase or short-term trend. Its backed by some of the biggest names in fintech, online retail, and social media.

During their earnings calls this week, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Facebook commented on an emerging trend: social commerce. In addition, TikTok announced a partnership with Shopify to accelerate its commerce efforts, according to ARK Invest research. Why is social commerce burgeoning now? In our view, three technology/business shifts serve as explanations.

ARKW aims to capture long-term growth with low correlation of relative returns to traditional growth strategies and negative correlation to value strategies. It serves as a tool for diversification due to little overlap with traditional indices. The actively managed strategy combines top-down and bottom-up research in its portfolio management to identify innovative companies and convergence across markets, and this active strategy comes in the low-cost and efficient ETF wrapper.

Data confirm the increasing relevance and advantages of ARKWs social commerce exposure.

By 2020, an estimated 2 billion people are expected to be digital shoppers or a 19% jump from 2018 levels, as more people, notably from emerging economies where barely half the population is online, gain access to the internet. Almost one-third of consumers are already shopping online at least weekly and 75% at least once a month.

Obviously, social commerce could not evolve without the cooperation of traditional e-commerce and social media platforms. While initially Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Twitter centered their business models on advertising, recently their focus has broadened to include commerce, notes ARK.

ARKW is focused on and expected to benefit from shifting the bases of technology infrastructure to the cloud, enabling mobile, new and local services, such as companies that rely on or benefit from the increased use of shared technology, infrastructure and services, internet-based products and services, new payment methods, big data, the internet of things, and social distribution and media. Add social commerce to that list.

Most global online platforms and retailers seem to have identified this kind of funnel compression as a primary objective, marking the next leg of growth for social commerce, notes ARK.

For more on disruptive technologies, visit our Disruptive Technology Channel.

The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.

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Tap Into Big Tech's Latest Earnings Project with the ARKW ETF - ETF Trends

The United States' big technology names led gainers on Wall Street on Wednesday, as investors sought the security of this year's big stay-at-home corporate success stories in the face of a presidential election set to go down to the wire.

Gains for Joe Biden in vote tallies in the swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan cooled initial selling of renewable energy, marijuana and other companies seen as potential beneficiaries of a sweeping Democrat victory.

Overall, futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 jumped 3.7%, with Dow and S&P 500 futures also trading in positive territory in a volatile session.

Following are major movers as traders and investors in New York's main stock indexes digested the results and President Donald Trump's chances of beating Biden to win a second term.

ENERGYTraditional energy companies, which could enjoy a lighter regulatory and tax environment under a second term for Trump, gained, with the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF up 2.3%.

Stocks of solar energy-based firms such as First Solar , Enphase and JinkoSolar traded between 3% and 4.7% lower.

"The fact that Republicans are likely to retain a Senate majority would make it virtually impossible for Biden (if he wins) to enact his major climate reforms," said Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov.

"There is virtually no chance of a net zero emissions target passing through a Republican-controlled Senate."

MARIJUANAMajor cannabis producers had surged after the vice presidential debate, when Biden's partner on the ticket Kamala Harris said marijuana would be decriminalized at the federal level under their administration.

But with exit polls surprising markets, the ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF slipped 1.7%.

Shares of Tilray as well as U.S.-based listings of Canada's Canopy Growth, Cronos and Aurora Cannabis fell between 3% and 6.3%.

TECHNOLOGYBig tech companies, which have benefited from Trump's softer stance on regulation and anti-trust policies as well as a tax cut that targeted U.S. big business, rose between 3% and 5.3%.

The Invesco QQQ ETF and Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund were both up around 3%.

Microsoft, Intel and IBM rose between 0.4% and 2.2%, while FAANG stocks Facebook, Apple , Amazon, Netflix and Google gained around 2.3% each.

"With a Trump presidency more likely than expected and a more evenly balanced Senate, any big change like higher capital gains tax or a legislation that regulates the tax more aggressively is less likely, and that's why tech is doing better," said TS Lombard's head of strategy, Andrea Cicione.

DEFENSEThe iShares US Aerospace & Defense was set for its best day in nearly three months, while the SPDR S&P Aerospace & Defense ETF looked to post its biggest one-day gain since mid-July.

A second-term for the Trump administration is expected to mean continued higher spending on defense.

Contractors Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon rose between 1.4% and 2.7%.

PRIVATE PRISON OPERATORSPrivate prison operators Geo Group and CoreCivic Inc gave up early gains as Biden, who has committed to ending the federal government's use of private prisons, was reinstalled as the favorite to win the election by online betting markets.

BANKSMost of Wall Street's big banks slipped.

"Now there will be a split Congress and, therefore, a lot more fiscal restraint and those expectations of higher inflation and high yields favoring banks and financials will have to be reassessed," Cicione said.

JP Morgan lost 1.6% while Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo -- listed under JP Morgan's basket of stocks that should gain from a Trump victory -- fell more than 1%.

PHARMACEUTICALSPfizer, Merck & Co, Biogen, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Bristol Myers and Johnson & Johnson all rose between 1.6% and 3.7%.

Analysts at SVB Leerink said a Trump win with a close Senate race was almost an ideal outcome for biopharma and that an effectively split Senate would likely shield the industry from any sweeping reforms.

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Wall St seeks safety of Big Tech bets as election hangs in the balance - Economic Times

DONALD TRUMP has claimed the US election is being rigged against him by big tech, big money, the media, pollsters and Democrats.

The remarks came as part of an extraordinary address from the White House during which at least seven television networksinterrupted the President to stress that his claims were unsubstantiated.

During his 17-minute speech, Trump accused big media, big money and big tech of coming together to commit historic election interference.

He added that if all legal votes had counted, he would win the election.

Trump went on to accuse Democrats of attempting to steal the election corruptly through mail-in ballots.

He also hit out at the medias role in the rigging.

As everyone now recognizes media polling was election interference in the truest sense of that word, he said.

By powerful special interests, these really phony polls, I have to call them phony polls, state polls, were designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden and diminish Republicans abilities to raise funds.

They were what's called suppression polls, everyone knows that now. And it's never been used to the extent that it's been used on this lastelection."

He also accused Democrats of meddling with the results in states where a winner has yet to be determined.

There are now only a few states yet to be decided in the presidential race. The voting apparatus of those states are run in all cases by Democrats' he said.

Trump also pointed to several lawsuits launched by his campaign against the alleged fraud yet offered no proof.

Two of these lawsuits have already been thrown out with one dismissed due to a lack of evidence.

There's tremendous litigation going on and this is a case where they're trying to steal an election. They're trying to rig an election and we can't let that happen.

Biden sought to rebuke those claims in a tweet saying: No one is going to take our democracy away from us.

Not now, not ever. America has come too far, fought too many battles, and endured too much to let that happen.

The address came as the Presidents lead continued to thin in key swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia.

ABC, CBS and NBC America's three main broadcast networks all cut away from the conference while Trump was still talking to warn viewers he had made a number of false statements".

Fox News and CNN covered the address in full.

Trumps tirade continued on Twitter, with the President making several baseless claims concerning fraud, questioning the results in several close Senate races and urging Supreme Court intervention.

He also attacked social media regulation.

By contrast, Joe Biden has been calling for calm and patience while votes are counted.

Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well, he said during an address from Wilmington's Queen theater.

So I ask everyone to stay calm, all people to stay calm. The process is working. The count is being completed and we'll know very soon.

He also tweeted: No one is going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever. America has come too far, fought too many battles, and endured too much to let that happen.

Keep the faith, folks.

After winning the key swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan, Biden is the narrowfavouriteto win the presidency with several key results expected today.

Victory in Pennsylvania would hand him the presidency even if other states went to Trump. Biden could also win if he holds his leadin Arizona and Nevada.

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Donald Trump claims 'big tech, big money, the media, pollsters and Democrats' rigged election against him - Irish Post

Twitter is censoring conservatives sharing information and opinions about the election, reinforcing the expected big tech bias against dissenting voices. Since it has been established that Big Techs censorship often targets the truth such as the recovered Hunter Biden laptop, whether research backs mask mandates, the efficacy of certain anti-COVID drugs, the Russiagate coup attempt its clampdown on discussion of electoral integrity indicates it is indeed a concern.

The Federalists John Daniel Davidson wrote an article breaking down some of the suspicious activity associated with key states, headlined Yes, Democrats Are Trying To Steal The Election In Michigan, Wisconsin, And Pennsylvania.

Twitter censored The Federalists tweet of this article, prohibiting any shares, likes, or comments. The label on the post claims that the article contained disputed or misleading information related to the election.

Davidsons article, however, simply breaks down some of the significant voting discrepancies that have been raised as multiple battleground states continue to be uncalled and undecided.

Earlier in the day, Twitter censored The Federalist Co-Founder Sean Davis multiple times, preventing people from sharing or interacting with some of his tweets, for simply restating Pennsylvanias supreme court decision declaring that all ballots received after election day, including those without a postmark, will be counted.

Pennsylvanias top court said that all ballots received after election day even those without a postmark must be assumed to have been cast by election day, Davis said in a retweet of National Review Senior Writer David Harsanyi, who stated that PA is allowing post-election day ballots. Its a fact.

The same thing occurred when Davis pointed out a suspicious vote dump in Michigan that clocked 138,339 votes in the middle of the night all for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Other conservative voices were also censored by Twitter such as The Daily Wires Matt Walsh.

Even the president was censored for claiming that the Democrats are attempting to steal the election.

A tweet from Biden claiming that were gonna win this, however, received no attention from the big tech giant.

The media also criticized Trump for announcing that he won even while states were being counted, but the same scrutiny was not applied when Bidens lawyer Bob Bauer prematurely declared a Biden victory.

It is clear from these labels, the limited distribution of these posts, and the hypocrisy demonstrated that big tech and the media dont believe that people can think for themselves. It is also clear that they are heavily invested in preventing the public from discussing or discovering the truth through inquiry and debate, as that often gives people the will to resist political changes imposed through lies.

Instead of admitting that there are still many unknowns in the presidential election, big tech and the media continue to assist Democrats in making a Biden win an inevitability rather than ensuring that all legal ballots are accurately counted so that both sides can trust the election outcome is legitimate.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Big Tech Censorship Is Proof That Media Are Trying To Steal The Election - The Federalist

Breaking a 36-hour silence after prematurely declaring victory on Wednesday, Donald Trump continued spewing unfounded conspiracy theories about election fraud and illegal ballot-counting as he addressed Americans from the White House on Thursday.

If you count the legal votes, I easily win, the president claimed on Thursday, falsely alleging local elections officials had accepted ballots after Election Day and were padding the stats for his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.

Mr Trump also claimed he had beaten the odds against Mr Biden despite historic election interference from big media, big money, and big tech, stretching the limits of the definition of the term election interference.

The presidents inaccuracies and misrepresentations even extended to his praise of the House GOP for winning back several districts in the congressional elections.

This was the year of the Republican woman. More Republican women were elected to Congress than ever before, Mr Trump said, one of his few factual statements from the press conference.

But he followed that up with another false claim that Republicans did not lose a single House seat. That is not true. They lost two seats in North Carolina and a seat in the Georgia suburbs.

The president, whom election forecasters are predicting is likely to lose the Electoral College to Mr Biden, has been trafficking in a steady stream of misinformation through Twitter as he clung to leads in tallies in the key swing states of Pennsylvania and Georgia on Thursday.

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But the mail-in ballots that have been reported in those states have been trending towards Mr Biden since Wednesday morning, and the Democratic former vice president appears poised to surpass Mr Trump.

No secretary of state in any of the key swing states has backed Mr Trump and his campaign teams claims of voter fraud.

The Trump campaigns baseless claims of a stolen election and rampant voter fraud contrast sharply with the message from Mr Biden, the Democratic nominee who appeared by Thursday on the precipice of victory.

The Democratic former vice president has urged Americans to be calm as state and local election officials across the country continue counting and reporting ballots that were legally cast on or by Election Day on Tuesday.

Democracy is sometimes messy, so sometimes it requires a little patience, Mr Biden told reporters gathered in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware in brief remarks on Thursday. But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of governance that has been the envy of the world.

America and the world were waiting on Thursday on the outcome of five states Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona which will determine the next occupant of the Oval Office.

In America, the vote is sacred. It's how people in this nation express their will, Mr Biden said.

And it is the will of the voters, not anything else, that chooses the president of the United States of America.

The Associated Press has already called Arizona for Mr Biden, placing him at 264 electoral votes, six shy of the threshold required to win the White House. But the margin there has tightened since that projection made early Wednesday morning and several other news outlets have not made the same call.

Even if Mr Trump manages to take the lead in Arizona, he would still need to win Pennsylvania, where he has had a dwindling lead as officials continue tabulating mail-in ballots. If Mr Biden overtakes Mr Trump in Pennsylvania and that race is called, that would give him 273 Electoral College votes, and thus the presidency even if he were to lose in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.

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Trump blames conspiracies as he refuses to accept expected results - The Independent

(CBS Local)Big corporations run our economy and in the past companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon have been defined as helpful and well-intentioned business. However, author and former antitrust enforcer Sally Hubbard has much different thoughts about monopolies in our society.

In her new book Monopolies Suck: 7 Ways Big Corporations Rule Your Life, Hubbard explains why companies like these tech giants make our lives harder every day.

The book for me was kind of cathartic because it is what Ive been working on for my whole career, said Hubbard, in an interview with CBS Locals DJ Sixsmith. I started as an antitrust enforcer back in 2005. There was a lot of stuff that I wanted the average person to understand, the person who is not an economist or antitrust lawyer. It felt great to get it down on paper, so I could really let people know what is going on. One of the big misconceptions is that weve been generally convinced that a lot of these companies are good for us. Big tech companies are under the most fire right now. Tech is not the only area of our company that is monopolized.

While tech companies havent been regulated by lawmakers in the same way as other monopolies of the past, Hubbard believes it is not too late to reign in tech giants like Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook. The author says thats actually the most dangerous line of thinking when it comes to dealing with monopolies and giant corporations in our society.

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People think its too late and that theres nothing we can do. That I think is the most dangerous thing we can give into, said Hubbard. I try to explain in the book that these companies are not just impacting our economic well-being, but they are leading to us paying higher prices and higher taxes. Theyre also really dangerous for our democracy. Were seeing that a lot with the election right now and the power of these companies to influence speech. Their business models, which are highly profitable for them, spread disinformation. For me, its not an option to do nothing. We really are at a crisis point for our democracy and our economy.

Hubbards book is available now wherever books are sold and watch all of DJ Sixsmiths interviews from The Sit-Down serieshere.

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We Are Really At A Crisis Point For Our Democracy, Economy: Sally Hubbard On Big Tech Corporations & Book Monopolies Suck - CBS Chicago

When in doubt, buy Amazon.

Thats the message from Wall Street as tech stocks skyrocket despite the fact no winner has been declared in the US presidential election.

The Nasdaq spiked by a staggering 4% Wednesday, leaving the index thats home to Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft on track for its best day since early April.

The Nasdaq is up almost twice as much as the Dow, which features more economically sensitive companies like Caterpillar and Home Depot. The Russell 2000, which is most exposed to the strength of the US economy, is barely positive at all.

In some ways, its a replay of how tech stocks boomed during the initial phase of the recovery from the pandemic in May, June and July. The rush to buy tech stocks reflects investor sentiment that these companies will thrive even if no major stimulus package comes from a divided Congress and the economic recovery remains fragile.

People are going back to the playbook that works if the economy is more sluggish, said Keith Lerner, chief market strategist at Truist/SunTrust Advisory. When people get defensive about the economy, they buy tech.

Nasdaq futures rose so much overnight as election results trickled in that trading reportedly had to be halted.

Amazon, Google owner Alphabet and Facebook all winners during the pandemic are all up 5% or more in midday trading. By contrast, companies that need a strong economy to do well, such as Ford, Wells Fargo and Boeing are trading flat or losing ground.

Just like animals, investors herd in the face of danger or uncertainty by following the strongest in the pack, Scott Yonker, associate finance professor at Cornell University, wrote in a report Wednesday. For investors, this means pouring money into recent winners.'

The key takeaway is that while the race for the White House remains in play, investors have lost confidence in a blue wave.

The chances of Democratic-control of the US Senate has plunged on prediction platform PredictIt. It now costs about 89 cents to win $1 if Republicans win the Senate, compared with just 46 cents the day before the election.

Thats a crucial shift, because markets had previously expected Democrats would sweep, paving the way for powerful fiscal stimulus that would help non-tech companies.

The only firm conclusion is that the Blue Wave has receded before reaching shore, and that the prospects for a stimulus package remain undiminished, Christopher Smart, chief global strategist at the Barings Investment Institute, wrote in a report Wednesday.

If Democrats controlled both the White House and the Senate, economists expected faster economic growth and a bold fiscal stimulus package worth at least $2 trillion.

That scenario led investors to buy economically sensitive stocks in the weeks ahead of the election.

People rotated into cheap, beaten-up areas in anticipation of stimulus, said Truists Lerner. Now, the market is concerned about the size of the fiscal package.

Fiscal stimulus is still expected if government is divided, but it may not be as large as it would be under a blue wave.

Tech stocks also may benefit from gridlock because it lowers the chances of a sweeping crackdown from Congress. Although antitrust investigations may continue, Republicans and Democrats are unlikely to agree on major new legislation.

The increasing likelihood of a divided Congress, wrote Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy at E*Trade, puts a damper on hopes for increased regulation against this sector.

The surge in tech stocks Wednesday stands in stark contrast to how the sector performed in 2000, when investors grappled with a contested election. But back then, investors already had lost confidence in tech stocks as the dotcom bubble imploded.

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Nasdaq, Big Tech stocks booming but here's why that may not be good for economy - WRAL Tech Wire

President Donald Trump claimed that social media and media outlets contributed to swaying the U.S. Presidential election towards Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden during a Thursday press conference from the White House. Trump also claimed that the Democrats were attempting to execute fraud in an attempt to steal the election from him.

In his address, Trump alleged that polls published by news outlets and social media contained false information, referring to them as "fake." However, no solid evidence has been uncovered to indicate the polls were knowingly rigged.

"The pollsters got it knowingly wrong, knowingly wrong, and everybody knew it at the time," Trump said. "There was no blue wave that they predicted. They thought there was going to be a big blue wave." Trump also referred to the Democratic party as the "party of the big donors, the big media, the big tech, it seems, and the Republicans have become the party of the American worker and that's what's happened. We're also, I believe, the party of inclusion."

Trump said that he obtained victories in battleground states like Florida and Ohio "despite historic election interference from big money, big media and big tech."

"If you count the legal votes, I easily win," Trump said, referring to the presidential election in totality. "If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us."

Newsweek reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.

Trump also claimed that in some areas where ballots were still being counted, Democrats were attempting to "commit fraud."

"This is a case where they're trying to steal an election," Trump said. "They're trying to rig an election and we can't let that happen."

In a Thursday tweet, Trump said that his administration would challenge the legality of some reported battleground state victories for Biden.

"All of the recent Biden claimed States will be legally challenged by us for Voter Fraud and State Election Fraud," Trump tweeted. "Plenty of proof - just check out the Media. WE WILL WIN! America First!"

Twitter flagged Trump's post as being potentially "misleading about an election or other civic process."

Trump has expressed concerns that he could lose his re-election bid as swing states continue to count mail-in and absentee ballots. In Pennsylvania, where 20 electoral votes are at stake, Trump's lead over Biden appeared to be shrinking on Wednesday. Victory in Pennsylvania would give Biden more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

On Wednesday, Trump's re-election campaign filed suit in Pennsylvania and requested a halt to ballot counting. According to the lawsuit, Trump's campaign officials were not granted "meaningful access" to the tabulation process. A Thursday ruling by a Pennsylvania appellate court allowed representatives of Trump's re-election campaign to "observe all aspects of the canvassing process." However, those individuals must remain within 6 feet of election workers and wear face masks to comply with COVID-19 safety protocols.

This is a breaking story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

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Trump Blames 'Big Media, Big Tech' as he Rails Against Election 'Fraud' Without Evidence - Newsweek

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg walks past members of the news media as he enters the office of U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) while meeting with lawmakers to discuss "future internet regulation on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 19, 2019.

Joshua Roberts | Reuters

After a 16-month investigation into competitive practices at the largest U.S. tech companies,Democratic congressional staffers laid out their findings this week in a 449-page report. They concluded that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google enjoy monopoly power that needs to be reined in, whether that means breaking the companies up, blocking future acquisitions or forcing them to open their platforms.

Wall Street shrugged at the news. Three of the four stocks rose the day after the report's release, reflecting investors' long-held view that regulators and politicians are in no position to squelch Big Tech's continuing rise and market share expansion.

Still, lawmakers certainly aren't putting the matter to rest. And with Joe Biden carrying a commanding lead in the polls less than a month before the Nov. 3 election, tech companies face the possibility of Democrats controlling the White House and both branches of Congress in 2021.

Should Democrats win the Senate, it would put Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who are among the loudest voices calling for the break up of Big Tech, in the majority.

Here's what Warren had to sayin early 2019:

"Today's big tech companies have too much power too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They've bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation."

How did this happen? Just a decade or two ago, tech companies were seen as innovators, as young industry disruptors focused on making consumers' lives easier. How did they turn into the dark faces of corporate America, with their every move questioned at the highest levels of government?

There's no single answer. But here are a few key things that happened in recent years to paint a giant bullseye on tech.

Five years ago, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook were among the most valuable companies in the world, worth a combined $2 trillion. Today, that number is above $7 trillion, more than tripling over the last half-decade, while the broader S&P 500 climbed 73% over the same stretch.

The five tech giants are by far the most valuable U.S. companies and now make up over one-fifth of the S&P 500 and a whopping 46% of the Nasdaq 100.

Lawmakers have largely decided to give Microsoft a pass as they probe Big Tech for anti-competitive behavior, despite the software maker's swelling market cap and influence.

What they see in each of the other four is are companies that price out competition, exploit consumers, rip off partners or collect vast amounts of user data. Sometimes, all of the above.

The massive market cap appreciation and consolidation is the result of revenue growth, profitability and investor expectations that nothing's going to challenge the dominance of these companies. Trillion-dollar valuations and immense profit margins also foster a self-perpetuating cycle: The tech giants have such high equity value and big cash hoards, they can easily outbid smaller players.

While history is filled with companies enjoying dominant market positions and outsized market caps, the difference today is that one industry is home to all of them.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

Alex Wong | Getty Images

Amazon has gone from being the everything store to the everything company.

Well past its original e-commerce roots, it's now a major player in cloud infrastructure, media, consumer hardware, grocery, payments and advertising, and has big ambitions in health care and other industries.

Even with annual revenue poised to top $350 billion, Amazon continues to report steady revenue growth and has recently started generating hefty profits, thanks to Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing business.

The extent of that business became clear for the first time in April 2015, when Amazon started reporting its finances and revealed that AWS was earning about about $1 billion a year in profits, even as the entire company was breaking even or losing money. In other words, while everybody thought Amazon was an e-retailer with a nice side business in cloud computing, it had quietly built a gigantic and profitable software business.

Last year, AWS earned more than $9 billion in profit on $35 billion in sales, making it the number-three software company by sales volume, trailing only Microsoft and Oracle.

Then, after helping spur the decline of physical retail for years, Amazon jumped into the brick-and-mortar world, buying upscale grocer Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017. Would Amazon do to groceries what it did to information technology?

Amazon's physical footprint also includes its unmatched network of fulfillment centers and last-mile delivery facilities. It's now America's second largest employer and has continued to aggressively hire amid a broader economic downturn tied to the coronavirus pandemic.

Amazon upset lawmakers in 2017, when it courted proposals for its next headquarters and had cities offering up all sorts subsidies to try and win the deal. It ended up choosing two cities -- New York and Washington, D.C., only to back out of New York at the last minute because of fierce opposition from some locals.

The eccentricity and ambition of CEO Jeff Bezos has contributed to the company's mythos. Bezos spends billions a year on his private space travel company, Blue Origin. He bought the Washington Post in 2013, giving him an influential arm of the national media (although he does not exercise editorial oversight) and turning him into a favorite punching bag for President Donald Trump, as the Post frequently criticized Trump as both candidate and president. In 2017 he became the richest person in the world, and in 2019 publiclyconfronted a tabloid that threatened to publish details of an extra-marital affair.

While investors have cheered Amazon's growth, politicians from both parties have recently decried its unfettered expansion, includingits unruly marketplace and alleged anti-competitive tactics. Calls to break up Amazon peaked this summer when CEO Bezos appeared in front of Congress for the first time to answer questions about its market power and business practices.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law during a hearing on "Online Platforms and Market Power" in the Rayburn House office Building on Capitol Hill, in Washington, July 29, 2020.

Mandel Ngan | Pool via Reuters

In a little more than a decade, Facebook and Google have completely reshaped the world of advertising.

Last year, the companies recorded a combined $232 billion in sales, up almost 10-fold from 2009.

EMarketer said it started using the term duopoly in 2017, but the ad industry saw the trend quite clearly before that. As of 2016, according to eMarketer's own data, the companies controlled a combined 57.9% of the digital U.S. ad market. Based on estimates provided in late 2019, that share has topped 60%.

Meanwhile, advertising dollars for the news industry plummeted from $38 billion in 2008 to $14 billion in 2018, according to the Pew Research Center. The News Media Alliance argued this year in a letter to the Department of Justice that Google had for years used news content to enhance its bottom line, pulling money from the actual content providers.

It's not just the news business that's hurting. TheWorld Advertising Research Center (WARC) predicted earlier this year that global advertisers would spend more on Google and Facebook than on television. The third-largest U.S. digital ad company is now Amazon, which doesn't help Big Tech's defense against regulators.

Business reliance on Facebook was underscored this year when a large roster of major marketers paused spending in support of a campaign called "Stop Hate For Profit," to pressure the company to take steps to stop the spread of hate speech and misinformation on the site. Some of those advertisers said they wanted to stop spending on Facebook permanently, but they ultimately couldn't afford such a drastic move.

Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.

Yasin Ozturk | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

In his first public appearance after Trump's election in 2016, CEO Mark Zuckerberg swiftly dismissed criticisms that his company played much of a role in the outcome.

"Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way I think is a pretty crazy idea,"Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg was quickly proven wrong. Facebookpublished a case studyin April 2017 confirming that outside groups had attempted to use its social network to sway the outcome of the 2016 election. In Feb. 2018, a federal grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and an accompanying FBI report detailed how they used Facebook and Twitter to wage "information warfare" against the U.S. and "sow discord" in the American political system in an effort to help Trump win.

In 2018, reporters at the New York Times and The Observer revealed that consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly accessed the data of 50 million Facebook users (later revised to 87 million) and used it to try and sway potential voters towards Trump.

Around the same time, U.N. investigators determined the companyplayed a determining rolein the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

"It has ... substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public," said Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar.

The hits kept coming, as government agencies began digging deep into Facebook's practices.

In December 2018, the U.K. Parliament published 250 pages of internal Facebook documents, providing insight into the company's strategies against competitors. In one example, Zuckerberg instructed his staff to cut off the ability for users of Twitter's Vine social app to connect it with Facebook as a way to find their friends on the service.

Early the following year, as part of her presidential campaign platform, Sen. Warren proposed the breakup of Facebook, potentially including separating Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes echoed Warren in May 2019, when he called for splitting the company apart.

"The most problematic aspect of Facebook's power is Mark's unilateral control over speech," Hughes wrote. "There is no precedent for his ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people."

The Federal Trade Commission launched an antitrust investigationin June 2019,followed a couple months later by state attorneys generaland theDepartment of Justice. In November, California State Attorney General Xavier Becerra disclosed that his state had also begun a probe into Facebook the prior year.

Consumer data is the currency of the internet. Increasingly, when people look around their house, car or office, they see or hear Google, Facebook and Amazon in every corner.

The 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal may have been the biggest wake-up call, but perhaps the first was when Edward Snowdenleaked details of the National Security Agency's tapping of U.S. phone calls. Consumers who had thought communications networks offered the same privacy as a quiet personal conversation realized that wasn't the case.

In 2018, a local Seattle TV network reported that a family in Portland blamed its AmazonAlexa device for recording a private conversation and then sending it to a random contact. Amazon called the event an "extremely rare occurrence" and said it was triggered because the device interpreted something the family said as "Alexa," and then followed a command that was never given.

Facebook users have for years accused it ofeavesdropping on conversations through its apps. How else could Facebook or Instagram show an ad for a product they were just talking about with a friend in a real-world conversation? But Facebook repeatedly insists it doesn't listen. That suggests its behavioral ad targeting is just frighteningly good.

Privacy has been a particularly resonant issue this year, amid the national conversation around the excessive use of force by police and fears of government surveillance. Ring, the Amazon-owned doorbell company, has faced criticism for partnering with police forces. Amazon and Microsoft both yielded to pressure to announce that their facial recognition software is not being used by police departments.

Consensus has grown in Congress over the need for a national digital privacy law to protect Americans against the exploitation of new technologies. In the meantime, we all keep handing over our data.

The congressional report does not mean that the big tech companies are going to be broken up this year, or any time soon. Instead, the report was intended as a broad recommendation to Congress to reshape the antitrust laws to go beyond their currently narrow scope of protecting consumers on pricing and competition, and instead think about "workers, entrepreneurs, independent businesses, open markets, a fair economy and democratic ideals."

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and various other federal and state governments are investigating confronting the big technology companies one at a time on a wide variety of issues, from labor practices to privacy to fair competition. But those cases can take years to complete, as Microsoft's experience in the 1990s and 2000s shows, and the companies can absorb huge fines without lasting damage -- Facebook's stock actually rose in July 2019 after the FTC fined it $5 billion over privacy lapses.

Nonetheless, the fact that Congress is not afraid to issue a 449-page damning indictment of Big Tech in an election year shows how much attitudes in D.C. have changed. The clock is ticking.

WATCH: Antitrust expert breaks down Big Tech concerns

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How Big Tech became such a big target on Capitol Hill - CNBC

My girlfriend, Emily, is always telling me I have to read this or watch that. I usually resist. I have my own obsessions to indulge, like quantum mechanics. Whats annoying is that her recommendations, when I grudgingly comply with them, often turn out to be sound.

This happened with two of Emilys recent picks. One is The Social Dilemma, a documentary on Netflix. It sounded boringanother expose of the perils of social media. Ho hum, old news. But the film gripped me. Its an in-depth look at how big tech companies, by amassing more and more data on us, are getting better and better at manipulating us, with devastating results.

The film has several strands. One envisions, with actors, how social media hurt an American family. A teenage girl, stung by a casual online remark about her ears, sinks into depression, while her older brother tumbles into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. The film also depicts evil AI algorithms, played by three versions of a single creepy actor, ensuring that the teenage boy remains addicted to his smartphone.

These dramatizations were a little hokey. The most compelling, and disturbing, component of the documentary consists of interviews with tech insiders worried about what they have wrought. Actually, worried is too bland a word. These veterans of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies are freaking out. Some think digital technologies, unregulated, might destroy civilization.

Google, et. al. equip legions of brilliant engineers with vast databases and powerful AI programs to make their products as addictive as possiblethat is, to maximize the time we spend staring at a screen. The designers of these devices find them irresistible, too. Tim Kendall, former head of monetization for Facebook, recalls that after spending all day trying to boost his firms profits, he went home to his wife and kids and could not stay off his phone. Knowing what was going on behind the curtain, I still wasnt able to control my usage.

The more time we spend on our screens, the more the companies learn about us, the more money they make from advertisingcommercial and politicaltailored to our fears and desires. And once they deduce what news and (mis)information we like, or might like, online sites feed us more of it, confirming our biases. If you begin a search on, say, climate change, Google may suggest different results depending on what it knows about you and others where you live, according to a former Google designer.

This data-driven pandering not only keeps us glued to our devices. It has also contributed to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories and to social schisms in the U.S. and elsewhere. We end up living in parallel universes with radically different views of global warming, race, gender, immigration, crime, abortion and COVID-19.

Some techies believed, initially, that they were creating a better world. Our entire motivation was Can we spread positivity and love in the world?, says Justin Rosenstein, who helped design Facebooks like button. The possibility that teens would be getting depressed when they dont have enough likes, or it could be leading to political polarization, was nowhere on our radar.

Yes, digital technologies yield vast benefits. During the pandemic I keep in touch with friends and family via e-mail and Zoom, and I teach my classes online. I can do research for this articlerewatching Social Dilemma and looking up reviews on my laptopright here in my apartment. When I tire of brooding over the downside of tech, I can binge on Community and Arrested Development.

Our digital era is a blend of utopia and dystopia, says Tristan Harris, who left Google to cofound The Center for Humane Technology (a phrase that sounds increasingly oxymoronic). I can hit a button on my phone and a car shows up in 30 seconds and I can go exactly where I need to go. That is magic. But Harris fears techs ill effects are outweighing its benefits. If we dont agree on truth, he says, or even that there is such a thing as truth, were toast.

One pundit insists that newspapers, radio and television didnt destroy civilization, and neither will smart phones. Another retorts that smart phones are far more addictive than previous information technologies. When many of us wake up in the morning, he notes, the only question is whether we check our phones before we pee or while we pee. And modern methods of surveillance and persuasion make those employed in the predigital era look laughably crude.

Toward the end of the film, Social Dilemma identifies capitalism as the ultimate cause of the ills wrought by big tech. Rosenstein, the Facebook designer, notes that capitalism promotes short-term thinking based on this religion of profit at all costs. This approach, which views nature as something to be mined, literally and metaphorically, for monetary gain, has given us climate change and other environmental threats.

The successful big-tech firms have figured out how to mine our attention. Were more profitable to a corporation, Rosenstein says, if were staring at a screen, staring at an ad, then if were spending our time living our life in a rich way. Rosenstein and others say the government must regulate tech firms to limit the harm they do; the companies cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.

Shoshana Zuboff, a psychologist at Harvard Business School, contends that companies should not be free to gather and sell information on customers without their consent. These markets undermine democracy and they undermine freedom, and they should be outlawed, she says. This is not a radical proposal. There are other markets that we outlaw. We outlaw markets in human organs. We outlaw markets in human slaves.

These calls for reform bring me to Emilys other recommendation, an infamous 50-year-old essay, The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, by economist Milton Friedman. The New York Times, which printed the essay in 1970, just republished it along with commentary from scholars and businessfolk.

The essay had a huge impact on economics as well as business and politics. As the Times puts it, Friedmans libertarian economics influenced presidents and inspired greed is good. Friedmans manifesto is crediting with catalyzing the swerve of the U.S. and other western democracies toward free-wheeling capitalism, which governments encouraged with lower taxes.

Friedman rebuked calls for corporations to seek social goals, such as eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. Those who express support for these goals, Friedman asserted, are preaching pure and unadulterated socialism and undermining the basis of a free society. Note Friedmans equation of freedom with corporate freedom.

It is governments job, Friedman argued, to impose rules on businesses that promote general welfare, but such restrictions should be minimal. By freely pursuing profits in competition with each other, with minimal government interference, businesses produce goods, services and jobs that benefit all of society. So Friedman and his many free-market acolytes have claimed.

We are now reaping the consequences of Friedmans vision in the form of industries that pursue profits regardless of the social costs. These include big pharma, which foists drugs on us that often make us sicker; big oil, which has thwarted efforts to counteract global warming; and now big tech, which represents the apotheosis of Friedmans ideology.

Economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz comments in the Times that the fallacies of Friedmans ideology are more obvious than ever. Stiglitz asks: Should Mark Zuckerberg let Facebook users spread wanton disinformation if it increases his bottom line? Friedman would say yes. Economic theory, common sense and historical experience suggest otherwise.

Friedmans rhetorical style reminds me of Marx. Both men exude supreme confidence in their judgments, the kind of confidence that inspires zealotry in devotees. Marx predicted that capitalism, by elevating profit above all other values, would inevitably bring about its own destruction. Friedman said capitalism would give us unbounded freedom and prosperity. Right now, Marx is looking more prescient.

Near the end of Social Dilemma, an interviewer asks tech-visionary-turned-critic Jaron Lanier to peer into our future. If we go down the current status quo, Lanier replies, for lets say another 20 years, we probably destroy our civilization through willful ignorance. We probably fail to meet the challenge of climate change. We probably degrade the worlds democracies, so they fall into some bizarre autocratic dysfunction. We probably ruin the global economy. We probablyhe shrugsdont survive. Asked what he fears most, Kendall, the former Facebook executive, replies, In the shortest time horizon? Civil war.

Give capitalism its due. As I acknowledge in a recent book, capitalism has boosted longevity and prosperity over the last two centuries. But our fanatical commitment to Friedman-style capitalism has burdened us with acute inequality, dysfunctional health care, surging climate change and vicious political polarization. Meanwhile we keep robotically swiping our smart phones as things fall apart.

I try to resist alarmism, as a general rule, but alarmism feels like realism lately.

Oh, and Emily, thanks a lot for those recommendations.

Further Reading:

Revolt against the Rich

The Coronavirus and Right-Wing Postmodernism

Does Optimism on Climate Change Make You Pro-Trump?

Did Thomas Kuhn Help Elect Donald Trump?

See also A Pretty Good Utopia (profile of economist Deirdre McCloskey in my free online bookMind-Body Problems)

See the original post here:

Big Tech, Out-of-Control Capitalism and the End of Civilization - Scientific American

The major tech platforms push back against the House antitrust report, Google Assistant gets a guest mode and we interview a freshly minted Nobel laureate. This is your Daily Crunch for October 7, 2020.

The big story: Big tech responds to antitrust report

The House Judiciary Committee released its tech antitrust report late yesterday, concluding that the big tech platforms should face additional regulation. Recommendations include creating new separations to prevent dominant platforms from operating in adjacent lines of business, new requirements for interoperability and data portability and increased restrictions on mergers and acquisitions.

For now, these are just recommendations and they werent endorsed by the committees Republican minority. But they have prompted forceful responses from four of the companies targeted by the report: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.

Amazon, for example, dismissed the committees views as fringe notions and regulatory spitballing, while Apple said it vehemently disagrees with the reports conclusions.

The tech giants

Google Assistant gets an incognito-like guest mode With Guest mode on, Google Assistant wont offer personalized responses and your interactions wont be saved to your account.

Slack introduces new features to ease messaging between business partners One new feature: Slack Connect DMs, allowing users inside an organization to collaborate with anyone outside their company simply by sending an invite.

Instagrams Threads app now lets you message everyone, like its Direct app once did These changes are rolling out shortly after a major update to Instagrams messaging platform.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Envisics nabs $50M for its in-car holographic display tech at a $250M+ valuation The startup brings together computer vision, machine learning, big data analytics and navigation to build hardware that integrates into vehicles to project holographic, head-up displays.

Shogun raises $35M to help brands take on Amazon with faster and better sites of their own Shogun lets companies build sites that sit on top of e-commerce back-ends like Shopify, Big Commerce or Magento.

DoorDash introduces a new corporate product, DoorDash for Work DoorDash says it conducted a survey of 1,000 working Americans last month and found that 90% of them said they miss at least one food-related benefit from the office.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Transportation VCs suggest frayed US-China ties will impact mobility markets During TechCrunchs annual Mobility event, we interviewed three investors who spend much of their time focused on shifts in the transportation industry.

Unqorks $207M Series C underscores growing enterprise demand for no-code apps The no-code/low-code world could be enjoying an even sharper tailwind than anticipated.

Media roundup: Google to cut big checks for news publishers, Substack continues to draw top creators, more I do my best to highlight the latest trends, platform shifts and noteworthy funding rounds.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna shares her perspective on COVID-19 and CRISPR CRISPR co-discoverer Jennifer Doudna was named a Nobel laureate in Chemistry today, so it seemed like the perfect time to post video of our interview at Disrupt.

Tech-publisher coalition backs new push for browser-level privacy controls A coalition of privacy-forward tech companies, publishers and advocacy groups has taken the wraps off of an initiative to develop a new standard that gives internet users a simple way to put digital guardrails around their data.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunchs roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If youd like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Daily Crunch: Big tech responds to antitrust report - TechCrunch

One of the biggest news publishing companies in the world has slowly backed away from its harsh public criticism of Big Tech platforms, as companies like Google and Facebook have begun to open up their wallets to news companies.

Why it matters: News Corp. has for years been the driving force behind much of the regulatory scrutiny of Big Tech and its impact on the publishing industry. Now it's becoming a beneficiary of the massive pockets of several of the largest tech companies.

Driving the news: News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson put out a statement lauding Google's new efforts to pay publishers around the world more than $1 billion to license and curate their content last week.

Catch up quick: In early 2018, News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch released a newsy statement calling on Google and Facebook to pay trusted publishers a carriage fee for their content similar to the model adopted between cable companies and TV networks.

State of play: News Corp. now has several partnerships with Big Tech firms, including significant paid licensing partnerships with Facebook and Apple News, as well as working partnerships with Amazon, Spotify, Snapchat and Twitter.

Between the lines: In 2019, News Corp. launched its own news aggregation service called Knewz. Sources familiar with the effort say it was never intended to be a market threat to Big Tech platforms, but rather putting into reality something the company wanted to invest in as a matter of principal.

Behind the scenes, the media giant has commented or consulted on numerous investigations into Big Tech's dominance, and is continuing to press for regulatory reform.

The big picture: There was a time several years ago that media companies, with proper investment and scale, could demand big ad dollars via traffic from platforms like Google and Facebook. Today, media companies with value and investment can pull something even more sustainable from those platforms: licensing fees.

Read the rest here:

News Corp. changes its tune on Big Tech - Axios

Steve Ballmer at the GeekWire Summit 2019 (GeekWire Photo / Dan DeLong)

Twenty years after Microsoft waged its own antitrust battle with the U.S. government, former CEO Steve Ballmer is betting that Congress wont break up Big Tech this time around.

In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday (below), Ballmer was reacting to a U.S. House antitrust subcommittee report released this week that found challenges presented by the dominance and business practices of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.

Ill bet money that they will not be broken up, Ballmer told CNBC.

The450-page report from the subcommittees Democratic leaders concludes a 16-month investigation into the four companies as the operators of major online markets. It finds that the market power of the tech giants has diminished consumer choice, eroded innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. economy, weakened the vibrancy of the free and diverse press, and undermined Americans privacy.

Ballmer said he doesnt think the notionof breaking up the companies answers most of the questions or complaints that are being raised against the companies. And he thinks Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple would do well to engage with regulators now rather than take unilateral action that they hope satisfies those calling the shots.

If Im in these guys shoes, I say, Come on, lets get down there and lets regulate me and lets get it over with so I know what I can do,' Ballmer told CNBC.

Ballmer is currently the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA franchise and founder of the Bellevue, Wash.-based nonpartisan, not-for-profit civic data initiative USAFacts.

Ballmer also discussed USAFacts launch of a $10 million ad campaign, to air during the nationally televised presidential debates, aimed at illustrating the power of data and facts. The campaign, calledChange the Story,features snapshots of a diverse set of Americans and the numbers which relate back to their lives.

More:

20 years after Microsofts antitrust fight, Steve Ballmer betting that Big Tech wont be broken up - GeekWire

Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday censored posts by President Donald Trump that the social media platforms said violated their rules against misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. In his posts, Trump compared COVID-19 to the seasonal flu, downplayed the deadly nature of the pandemic and said, we are learning to live with COVID.

The morning after he returned to the White House from Walter Reed Hospitalstill infectious and heavily medicatedand posed in Hitlerian fashion for a photo op on the Truman Balcony, Trump took to social media to bolster his homicidal herd immunity policy and dangerously demonstrate by example how the great leader is facing down the virus.

Facebook removed his post entirely but not before it was shared approximately 26,000 times, according to data published by the social media metrics company CrowdTangle. A Facebook spokesperson told CNBC, We remove incorrect information about the severity of Covid-19, and have now removed this post.

The action by Facebook is unusual in that the worlds largest social media platform has been reluctant to remove posts by the president in the past. In August, Facebook deleted a video of Donald Trump falsely asserting that children were almost immune from COVID-19 during an interview with Fox News, the first time the platform ever removed one of his social media posts.

In the case of Twitter, the tweet remains up but is covered by a warning that says, This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the publics interest for the Tweet to remain accessible, along with a link to learn more about the companys coronavirus information policy. Trumps post cannot be retweeted or shared.

The full Tweet reads, Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!

That Trumps comparison of the seasonal flu to the coronavirus is completely false is easily confirmed by information readily accessible on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The site contains data for every year of the seasonal flu going back to 2010-2011 and shows that the death rate among those who get sick from the flu ranges between 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent. The death rate, through July, of those who have contracted COVID-19 is 2 percent, showing that coronavirus is between 6.7 and 20 times more deadly than the flu.

Additionally, as pointed out by the Washington Post, many people who have been infected with the virus have lingering symptoms for months, including difficulty breathing, inability to exert themselves physically, recurring pain. The virus can cause long-term damage to organs other than the lungs, damage that is not common to the seasonal flu.

In response to the censorship measures by Facebook and Twitter, the President tweeted REPEAL SECTION 230!!! Section 230 contains the provisions within the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that shield online services such as social media platforms from being legally responsible for the content posted by users of their systems.

When Twitter began labeling the presidents tweets in late May, he issued an executive order making the US government the arbiter of political speech online. The order called upon the Federal Communications Commission to revise the scope of Section 230 and also empowered the Federal Trade Commission to evaluate the content moderation polices of the tech giants and determine whether or not their actions violate free speech rights.

With Attorney General William Barr standing next to him, President Trump said on that day, Were here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers, before he signed the order. By empowering the federal regulatory agencies in his executive order, Trump was sending a message to big tech that attempts to censor his social media postsalong with those of his far-right and fascist allies and supporterswould result in the removal of Section 230 protections and open up the online service providers to fines and lawsuits.

Since then, the Department of Justice (DoJ) and AG Barr late last month drafted proposed legislation modifying the language of Section 230 to address concerns about online censorship by requiring greater transparency and accountability when platforms remove lawful speech. In a letter dated September 23, Barr jumbled together claims that big tech is hiding behind the shield of Section 230 to censor lawful speech with the allegation that online service providers are invoking the laws protections to escape liability even when they knew their services were being used for criminal activity.

Simultaneous with the DoJ-drafted legislation, Republican Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee introduced a bill in the Senate that calls for nearly identical modifications to Section 230 rules for online services. At the top of their list is the unsubstantiated charge that right-wing political views are being singled out by the tech monopolies for persistent online censorship.

Sunday, October 11, 7pm US EDT

The sickness in the White House

An online meeting with Socialist Equality Party candidates in the 2020 US elections, Joseph Kishore and Norissa Santa Cruz.

In moving the bill, Senator Wicker said, For too long, social media platforms have hidden behind Section 230 protections to censor content that deviates from their beliefs. These practices should not receive special protections in our society where freedom of speech is at the core of our nations values. Our legislation would restore power to consumers by promoting full and fair discourse online.

On October 1, the Senate Commerce Committee, which includes 14 Republicans and 12 Democrats, voted unanimously to subpoena the top executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google to appear at a hearing on Section 230 on October 28. After initial opposition to the subpoenas from Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, the Republicans agreed to add the topics of privacy and misinformation to be discussed along with censorship issues.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee released a 449-page report on Tuesday on the results of its antitrust investigation into Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook which condemns big techs monopoly power and calls for the companies to be broken up and restructured.

The coming together of the White House and Democrats and Republicans in Congress over a raft of regulations and attempt to assert government control over the Silicon Valley tech giants raises to a new level contradictions embedded within the capitalist system, not least of which is that these firms are the most valued properties on Wall Street worth trillions of dollars and a primary source of the massive fortunes being made by the financial oligarchy that controls both parties and the entire US political establishment.

Behind the frenzied efforts to reign in the powerful technologies of these firms is a growing awareness that the utilization of these systems by billions of people amid expanding class struggle internationally presents the ruling elite with a problem of revolutionary proportions.

While the ruling establishment is roiled by intense conflicts in the run-up to the November 3 electionswith Trump asserting that he intends to stay in office regardless of the outcome the Democrats and Republicans are unified in their drive to clamp down on information technologies. Their central aim is to prevent the working class from using these technologies to organize their struggles, including across national boundaries, and above all to stop the program of revolutionary socialism represented by the World Socialist Web Site from reaching the working class and youth.

Originally posted here:

Trump intensifies conflict with big tech over Section 230 protections following censorship moves by Facebook and Twitter - WSWS