Monthly Archives: May 2022

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web:

Tech giants drag down the S&P 500

The handful of companies that powered the S&P 500 to new heights are now dragging the entire index down, said Karen Langley in The Wall Street Journal. "Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, Google, and Facebook swelled to be so big in recent years that they accounted for 25 percent" of the benchmark U.S. stock index, which is weighted by market value. But since the market has turned, those six firms plus Netflix and Nvidia "are responsible for 46 percent of the benchmark's total 2022 losses." Slower-growing "value" stocks in the S&P 500 that are better positioned to handle rising inflation and higher interest rates have done better. Those include Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Merck, and AbbVie.

Late-life health-care costs

The average 65-year-old couple should expect to pay $315,000 on medical costs after retirement, said Maurie Backman in The Motley Fool. A Fidelity analysis finds that the math on health care challenges the assumption "that living costs drop drastically in retirement." It says men will "spend $150,000 on health-care costs throughout retirement," while women, who tend to live longer, should anticipate spending $165,000. That's with health-care coverage from Medicare Parts A, B, and D. Fortunately, "you have options." You can put more money into your 401(k) or IRA to cover health-care costs, or dedicate funds in a health-savings account, which is triple-tax advantaged: "The money you contribute is tax-free; investment gains are tax-free; and withdrawals are tax-free, provided they're used to cover qualified expenses."

A rare private-equity happy ending

A private-equity sale handed a windfall to everybody involved, said Dan Primack in Axios including, for a change, employees. Last week, KKR agreed to sell CHI Overhead Doors, an Illinois-based garage-door maker, to steel maker Nucor for $3 billion. The deal was a massive success for KKR, which bought CHI for $600 million in 2015 and turned it around for one of its "largest returns in recent history." It's also "life-changing" for CHI's 800 employees, who gained shares through a stock-ownership program KKR put in place. With the sale, employees are getting a minimum of $20,000 and up to $800,000, depending on seniority. "The average hourly worker or driver" employed in CHI's factory or distribution centers "will receive $175,000, with some earning more than $400,000."

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.

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Tech giants drag down the S&P 500 - The Week

Having worked in advertising and marketing agencies in her native Lebanon, then for an event publishing company in Montreal, Rachel Stephan launched her own event marketing agency in 2001yet she always wanted to create a tech product that would become her legacy.

Her aha moment came in 2015 after seeing the successful results of the unique word-of-mouth campaigns her company was running.

I thought, How can we scale this? How can we better measure it? she said. One summer, we created our first pilot of the project, and my software engineer said nonchalantly, Lets call it Boule de Neige,' which literally translates to snowball, and that was exactly what our tech did: snowball event attendance. Period.

Landing on Snball, the Swedish spelling of the word for the new product, Stephan quite literally got the word out at the encouragement of her friend and industry colleague, Dahlia El Gazzar.

She encouraged me to SHIP IT, as Seth Godin would say, so I submitted Snball to the IMEX Startup Competition, the Event Technology Awards and the IBTM World Tech Watch Awards, and we were finalists in all of them, she said. The rest just simply 'snballed' from there.

We sat down with Stephan to discover how her word-of-mouth marketing and audience growth strategy excels for events and year-round engagement, challenges and trends she is seeing in event marketing and the most important lessons she has learned along the way as an event tech founder.

Snball is the most comprehensive word-of-mouth marketing tool dedicated to events. I am biased, I know, but I am repeating what clients tell us once we show them Snball. We built it to allow as much flexibility as possible and to run a diverse type of audience-based campaignspre-event to post-event. We know that people need multiple nudges and reminders to act, and Snball is the only platform that activates the audience as advocates not only at registration but with multiple reminder campaigns leading up to the event.

Since it is about empowering the voices of your own people to amplify your events, Snball is the only one able to provide a curation feature to capture speakers soundbites and teasers to promote their sessions.

In addition, with our recent partnership with CLIPr, we now can leverage past event content, amplifying it via Snball to help not only drive attendance growth but also audience growth and engagement.

These are only a few of the use cases that demonstrate how marketers can leverage the power of word of mouth and their communities to run campaigns for membership drives, awards, lead generation, etc.

[The biggest challenges include] getting butts in seats and convincing people to get on a plane and take time away from the office and from their families to go to an in-person event. Enter the marketing of persuasion. Attention and retention are also big challenges post-pandemic. People have moved around a lot, and that audience that we marketed to before is not enough to hit the registration numbers we hope for. How can marketers tap into a new audience? How can they attract the right type of audience? How can they find lookalike attendees? As they say, birds of same feather flock together. Snball helps marketers attract similar audiences to their existing ones by tapping into that audiences community and circle of influence.

People connect with people and trust people, not brands. Watch the engagement on your LinkedIn company page versus the same post shared from someone at that same company. According to Neilson, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family over any other type of advertising.

Some of the many challenges facing event marketers are time, resources and limited budgets. Enrolling their participants, speakers, sponsors and exhibitors as brand ambassadors with influence to attract registrants is one way to work smarter not harder. Snball helps amplify their reach, not their budget.

Event marketing-wise, what are the most important necessities for pulling off the most successful virtual, hybrid or in-person event?

Once thing Id say is that post-pandemic, we are all short on attention and can see through marketing speak. One of the positive things that came out of the pandemic is that it brought relationships back to the basic level. Were all human with shared values, and we appreciate authenticity. People became more vocal and shared more about the challenges they have and what they would like to see. So, listening to your community and marketing in the way they speak and exchange with each other will make your content (and event) more relevant and relatable, no matter what type of event you put on.

There are multiple factors that can influence a successful campaign. The most successful campaigns are when the client is open to exploring the value in leveraging all audience segments as well as their unique role in promoting the event. It's when they are not only focusing on attendees or speakers, but sponsors, exhibitors, internal teams, committees, volunteerseveryone has influence. When all your stakeholders are talking about your event, social proof is sky high, so are conversions and reach. In one instance, one exhibitor was responsible for referring 672 registrations.

With Snball, marketers can know exactly who referred who and where on social media they converted from. Knowing this allows them to incentivize their Most Valued Advocates (MVA). People are competitive in nature, and having different prizes for the different audience segments also helps boost engagement.

The untapped strategy is a post event activation, where the marketer can leverage the event content to drive signups to an on-demand library by getting their audience to be the amplifiers of that message. Not only will this help monetize existing content, this activation will also help build attendance for the next event.

There is a shift in mindset and the way we approach events and marketing. We help our clients to think big picture, long-term marketing strategy when it comes to an event. Its shifting from a one-time event to ongoing activations that nurture the relationship between the organization and its audience. Yes, clients come to us with one focus, boosting their registration numbers, which are not where they used to be prior to the pandemic. Our role is to also help them see what they can do during and after the event to keep the momentum going and provide value to their stakeholders. Now more than ever, organizers have a tremendous amount of content that can be used and reused to serve both attendee and audience growth.

During the pandemic, events proved to be the most effective marketing strategy an organization has ever had. They earned their place in the spotlight. Events as a marketing strategy can help organizers with lead generation, building relationships and community.This provides value and audience proximity to their partners in addition to a source of content that can serve as a year-round communication strategy. Now, big trends are emerging in how these events are delivered, from digital, to in-person, to blended experiences for its audience. And of course, one cannot talk about event trends without mentioning the metaverse, which is in itself another dimension to be explored. To sum it all up, I would say community, co-created content and continuous event experiences are the main trends I see emerging at the moment.

Surround yourself with people who would support you in your ups and downs. The road of a founder is bumpy, with both highs and lows occurring in the same day. Stay focused on the bigger picture and never lose sight of your why. There is a famous quote by Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, which really resonates with me: If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, youve launched too late. I am a perfectionist and that sometimes is a curse.Once I get to showcase what Snball is capable of doing, I am often reminded that what we built, and continue to build, already has immense value for marketers. If you are a tech founder reading this, take a moment and tap yourself on the shoulderyou have done amazing things.

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Tech Giants: Snball's Rachel Stephan on the Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing to Fill Seats and Grow Audiences Year-Round - TSNN Trade Show News

And, through a previously little-publicized program, Google is carefully expanding its soft power by building relationships with progressives of color.

Documents seen by Protocol reveal that Google has spent years fostering its Next Gen Learning Community, a network of people of color who are interested in tech policy. Several of the participants have influential perches in politics or culture even as Google flies them to its campuses, seeks to impress upon them its view of issues like Section 230 reform and watches them connect with some of the very same lawmakers who have turned up the heat on Google.

Next Gen participants who spoke with Protocol portrayed the program as a vital link between people of color, who are underrepresented in tech policy, and said it provides a forum to bring criticisms to the tech giant. But the program also echoes one of Googles most potent and under-discussed Washington tactics: its long history of winning friends in the tech policy community even when its not trying to influence people. Part of that effort is burnishing its image in the eyes of sometime-opponents without demanding they become supporters but also without always addressing their concerns quickly.

The Next Gen program appears to go back to 2016, when it was created by top Google staffer Chanelle Hardy. According to her LinkedIn profile, Hardy had previously held prominent positions at the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission, in congressional offices and with major consumer and civil rights groups. That likely made her a natural fit to oversee policy partnerships for the company when she joined it that year.

In an invitation to an event hosted by the program in 2021, she wrote that the program was designed to inform Next Gens about key topics in tech policy and racial justice. Hardy also laid out Section 230, content moderation, intellectual property policy and the future of work as key focus areas. The invitation and a list of participants was shared exclusively with Protocol by the Tech Transparency Project, an ethics watchdog that has done extensive research into Big Techs influence networks, including Next Gen.

TTPs research reveals that, despite the emphasis by participants on the programs networking opportunities, Google kept close tabs on the growing voice of Next Gen participants in the policy conversation. For instance, one presentation, which was publicized by someone who did branding work for Google, noted extensive meetings with policymakers by Next Gen participants, appearances on panel discussions that focused on tech issues and more.

Members of Congress clearly addressed the group on certain occasions, but Google was adamant that the presentation, which cited more than 350 meetings with congressional offices and policymakers, included incorrect placeholder figures. The company also said the pamphlet detailed outreach that Next Gen participants did as part of their own work rather than at the urging of Google.

We do not ask Next Gen participants to take policy positions, nor do we provide them with advocacy materials, Google spokesperson Jos Castaeda said. We welcome discussion, debate and disagreement and in no way influence their advocacy efforts.

The company did not dispute the presentations assertion that Next Gen members met with Democratic Reps. Karen Bass, Pramila Jayapal, Ted Lieu and Sheila Jackson Lee with an emphasis on the work of creatives of color, promoting diverse voices, and helping communities of color navigate the future of work. According to the presentation, those meetings happened in 2020 ahead of Google CEO Sundar Pichais testimony to a House panel investigating Big Techs competitive practices. Tweets also show Reps. Jimmy Gomez and Tony Crdenas addressed the group in 2019.

Castaeda said Google is proud of the program, which facilitates meetings with experts from civil society and the tech industry to engage on a range of policy topics.

Spokespeople for Bass, Lieu and Jackson Lee did not respond to questions about the meetings. A spokesperson for Jayapal, Siham Zniber, said her office was not aware of these meetings/conversations. Jayapal, the only lawmaker among the four who actually serves on the panel interviewing Pichai, asked pointed questions of him during the marathon session. Lieu and Bass serve on a committee focused on intellectual property.

Meetings of the group, which is free to join, occur about two or four times a year, according to participants. In addition to hot-button tech topics such as Section 230, intellectual property and antitrust, discussions have included mass incarceration, privacy, disinformation, immigration and more.

Before COVID-19, Google footed the bill for travel often to Washington, D.C., but also to other Google campuses. The group has met with company officials, and Next Gen also appears to have made it possible for participants to attend other conferences, summits and receptions in the capital.

Multiple participants said networking was the greatest benefit of Next Gen, emphasizing that participants talk to each other even outside of Googles purview. They also lamented how few other spaces theyd found to work with other people of color who are interested in advancing racial justice through tech.

According to materials obtained by TTP, the program has attracted some top-tier names, not just from government and politics but also from academia, civil rights, advocacy, media, philanthropy, think tanks and the arts. Alencia Johnson a former senior adviser to Joe Bidens presidential campaign who had previously served in top roles for Sen. Elizabeth Warrens White House bid, Planned Parenthood and President Obamas reelection is a participant. So are Alisa Valentin, a special adviser to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, and April Reign, the creator of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign.

Its a great sharing that I think we need more of and we need more of creating routes for people of color to have influence over this sort of policymaking, said participant Chris Lewis, president of tech policy non-profit Public Knowledge, adding that through Next Gen he had been able to speak with entrepreneurs and artists who he wasnt naturally coming into contact with.

Big companies have a long history of courting influential outside voices like Lewis, a former FCC staffer and aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy, sometimes through commitments to important causes like diversity, equity and inclusion.

Among many in Washington, Google is seen as having a sophisticated network of ties, in part because the company seems to believe it benefits from supporting academics and activists even when its not demanding any chorus of support in return.

What theyre doing, frankly, is going out and making friends, said Steve Billet, a former lobbyist at AT&T who is now a professor at Notre Dame. He added he had no doubt that the program could help improve Googles standing among the participants and even potentially mute criticism.

Billet said a policy operation shouldnt merely revolve around lobbying spending, campaign contributions and meetings with government officials: It should also account for how companies maintain ties with all sorts of groups.

This is something that smart corporations have always done, he said. They at least put themselves in a place where theyre able to discuss and sit down at the table with organizations that are active in their area, [that] may be adversaries on some issues.

Google, for instance, has been diligent about funding the work of economists and legal academics going back years, even before its latest antitrust woes, according to other reports from TTP. Many of those same scholars insisted that the money didnt influence their subsequent defenses of the company or tech generally, but in the case of the economists, they were not always forthright about their ties, according to the Wall Street Journal. Google also seemed to focus money and attention on those who might be most ideologically disposed to support the companys pushback to competition concerns.

In addition, in 2017, Eric Schmidt, who was then Alphabets executive chairman, pressured the head of a liberal think tank over one units anti-Big Tech statements, according to a New York Times report. Schmidt had also previously funded and served as chairman of the group, and Google funded it. The offending scholar, competition expert Barry Lynn, blamed those financial relationships for his eventual dismissal.

Overall, the company publicly supports an extensive list of organizations in the policy conversation from think tanks on the left and right to trade associations and local chambers of commerce and has a pattern of doing so even when some of them are genuine thorns in the companys side on certain issues.

Public Knowledge and Lewis in some ways epitomize the relationship between Google and those it keeps in the fold. The group has hammered Google extensively over its competitive practices and been a key force behind the push for antitrust legislation that could fundamentally remake the companys business. Google and Public Knowledge are fighting each other tooth and nail on the issue. But because the group often aligns with the company on Section 230 and intellectual property issues, it also seems to demonstrate the companys willingness to make alliances when it can.

Were clear, and Im very clear with our donors, that they have no say in our positions, Lewis said. He added hes clear internally and to Google that he wouldnt even participate in Next Gen if he felt he did not have an independent voice.

Google did seem to want to ensure Next Gen participants made use of their voices, especially in opinion pieces. A tweet from a participant, for instance, showed a Next Gen session that taught op-ed writing, and the Next Gen presentation that described lawmaker meetings also touted that participants were producing op-eds, academic papers, blog posts, media appearances and social media posts on tech policy.

Nor is the company shy about making its positions clear during sessions, participants said, including on issues like Section 230 or competition, which represent some of the companys biggest policy vulnerabilities and in which Google has significant financial stake in the status quo.

Participants who spoke with Protocol insisted they hadnt felt pressure to take up Googles views and said theyd witnessed serious debates and sometimes-pointed criticism of the company itself. Some participants made clear that, far from being a form of corporate indoctrination, Next Gen allows Google to hear directly from outspoken critics, including on topics of participants choosing, whether the companys handling of election integrity or antitrust.

Weve been invited to be open and honest and critical as appropriate, said participant Yosef Getachew, who is the media and democracy program director at Common Cause. He pointed out hes called out the company publicly on election disinformation. Ive directly reached out to Google employees in the past to speak to them directly on the issues that [Common Cause is] working on and push them to do more.

Theres little doubt that the concerns from communities of color about Google have grown over the years. Its faced criticism that its been slow to combat election-related misinformation, especially on YouTube, and such misinformation has sometimes been aimed at Black and Latinx voters in particular. The mining of personal data at the heart of Googles digital ads may also allow ads for opportunities to be targeted in discriminatory ways (some of which Google now forbids). And the companys commitment to diversity and unbiased algorithmic research took a hit in 2020 after it fired prominent AI researcher Timnit Gebru.

Though Next Gen participants are not part of any explicit lobbying operation, they admit Google hasnt necessarily been swift to address their concerns, and readily concede that Google is a self-interested company whose Washington work cant possibly be entirely altruistic.

Getachew in particular said the advantage of Next Gen for Google may lie more in getting a word in on policy than in stepping up on diversity and inclusion.

I can imagine them saying, Well, were hosting this convening, this program, that features people of color as their part of doing something, he said. In my opinion, is that enough? Obviously not. Theres a lot more that Google can do to be equitable both from a policy and practical standpoint.

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Tech company layoffs and hiring freezes in 2022 - Protocol

Some state privacy laws use wording written by tech companies and their lobbyists, says a new report today. A formerly Apple-backed lobbying group has previously been cited as pushing for weaker privacy protection based on this wording.

Tech giants are aiming to push through weak privacy legislation in order to fend off more meaningful requirements, with one state senator admitting that the text of a privacy bill he put forward was supplied by a tech lobbyist

Surveys show that both citizens and tech giants alike favour a single federal privacy law along the lines of Europes GDPR. Citizens because it would ensure that everyone benefits from the same rights. Tech giants because its very much easier to comply with one law than 50 different ones.

However, Congress is divided on the issue of how far such legislation should go, with efforts currently stalled. The result is that individual states are passing their own laws, of varying strength.

California led the waywith a strong privacy law along the lines of EuropesGDPR. However, legislation drafted by other states has varied in its effectiveness.

Tech lobbying group State Privacy and Security Coalition (SPSC) whose members included Apple until it dropped out last month is promotingweak wording to multiple states.

TNW reports that one state senator unashamedly put forward legislation suggested by a tech lobbyist.

In late 2019, Utah state senator Kirk Cullimore got a phone call from one of his constituents, a lawyer who represented technology companies in California.

He said, I want to make this easy so consumers can make use of their rights and the compliance is also easy for companies. He actually sent me some suggested language [for a bill] that was not very complex, Cullimore told The Markup. I introduced the bill as that.

Indeed, even when Cullimore proposed some alternative language after push-back, he worked with the SPSC to redraft it.

When Cullimore introduced substitute language to his bill during a Februaryhearing, he did so with the help of Anton van Seventer, a lobbyist for the State Privacy and Security Coalition.

Tech giants have created a variety of neutral-sounding lobbying groups to promote the weak legislation put forward in Utah.

Not just in Utah, but in Virginia and Washington, and Minnesota, tech companies have provided draft language that led to the introduction of industry-friendly privacy bills, according to legislators The Markup interviewed and previous reporting by Protocol.

Big Tech funded nonprofits like TechNet, the State Privacy and Security Coalition, and the Internet Association have traveled from state to state encouraging legislators to mirror those industry-authored bills. TechNet representatives, for example, have testified or supplied written comments on privacy bills in at least 10 states since 2021, more than any other organization, according to our analysis of state legislative records.

And lobbyists have come in droves: We counted 445 lobbyists and lobbying firms that actively represented Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, TechNet, and the State Privacy and Security Coalition in the 31 states we examined, during the time those states legislatures were considering privacy legislation. Many of them registered as lobbyists for the first time in the weeks immediately before or after a privacy bill was introduced

Some have accused Apple of hypocrisy, by simultaneously pushing privacy as a marketing tool while also supporting a group lobbying for very weak privacy legislation.

Updated to reflect that Apple left the SPSC last month.

Photo:Thomas Lefebvre/Unsplash

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State privacy laws are being written by tech companies to minimize protections - 9to5Mac

"Despite having some of the most popular apps in the world, Metas ability to innovate on its products and services and even reach its customers is determined, and in some cases, significantly limited, by the most popular mobile operating systems, such as Apples iOS," the filing reads.

Meta submitted the comment as part of an ongoing study the NTIA is conducting for the U.S. Department of Commerce's White House Competition Council, which the Biden Administration established last year as part of an executive order to study market competition across various sectors of the U.S. economy.

Apple responded to the filing with a statement:

Privacy has always been at the center of what we believe. At Apple, we believe that a users data belongs to them and they should get to decide whether to share their data and with whom. App Tracking Transparency gives users the choice whether or not they want to allow apps to track them by linking their information with data from third parties for the purpose of advertising, or sharing their information with data brokers. These rules apply equally to all developers including Apple and we have received strong support from regulators and privacy advocates for this feature.

Meta's filing focuses on three areas: web browsing, as it relates to Apple's restrictions on what web apps can do versus native iOS software; gaming and the restrictions Apple imposes on developers who try to bundle HTML5 and cloud-based games within existing apps (like the Facebook app); and Apple's App Tracking Transparency initiative, the privacy feature the company rolled out last year that Meta has said will cost it about $10 billion in advertising revenue this year.

"Taken together, Apples restrictions on third-party web browsers, its restrictions on third-party gaming apps, and its ATT framework severely limit developers ability to create and consumers ability to enjoy cross-platform apps that could lower barriers to switching from Apple to Android and other devices," the filing goes on to say. "Apples self-serving tactics prevent consumers from realizing the innovation and benefits of a dynamic and otherwise well-functioning mobile app ecosystem."

Meta's feud with Apple over app store restrictions is not a new one by any means, but it has intensified in the last few years as Meta has increased its investments in the gaming sector. The social networking giant tried in 2020 to publish a dedicated Facebook Gaming app on Apple's App Store that would feature livestreaming, similar to Amazon's Twitch, alongside mobile games that could be played instantly with no download required, either using HTML5 technology or via streaming from the cloud.

Apple rejected the app repeatedly due to a series of cloud gaming restrictions the iPhone maker was forced to update for clarity. Still, many of the restrictions remained following the update, resulting in a high-profile back-and-forth between the two companies that has only grown more bitter as Apple has targeted Meta with iOS privacy changes and Tim Cook has taken public shots at Mark Zuckerberg and his company's business model.

Meta ultimately removed the gaming components from the Facebook Gaming app to publish it on the App Store. It later resorted to asking users to try a web version that skirts Apple's restrictions; Apple says web apps for cloud gaming and similar features are allowed on the iPhone, but it has strict rules around including those same features inside apps unless the app is dedicated to something else. (That's why, for instance, you can play HTML5 mini-games inside the main Facebook app because by Apple's logic, it is primarily a social networking platform and not a gaming one.)

Meta cites switching costs and ecosystem lock-in as reasons why it cannot simply rely on to Google's Android, which has fewer restrictions regarding what apps can and cannot do with regards to gaming. Restrictions that Apple imposes on cross-platform gaming, web-based, and ad-supported apps prevent them from lowering barriers to switching and lock consumers into iOS devices," the filing says. Apples policies restricting cloud games and HTML5-based games have prevented Meta from introducing features that would enable developers to distribute and monetize, and users of iOS devices to enjoy, a variety of games. These limitations have curbed Facebook Gamings growth and prevented it from emerging as a robust competitor to Apple in game discovery and distribution.

Meta's filing does not mention Epic Games, the Fortnite creator that sued Apple and Google in 2020 over many of these same restrictions. The comment does however make many of the same arguments as Epic did in those cases. Epic's suit against Apple is currently tied up in appeals, and the similar Google suit has yet to get a court date.

"Apples restrictions serve to maintain the App Store as the primary place for users to discover and access games on iOS devices," the filing concludes. "They also have the effect of maintaining high barriers to switching to an Android device, because users game data will often be stored in native iOS game apps and cannot be easily transferred outside of the Apple ecosystem, whereas Instant Games and cloud gaming services would allow for a seamless transition between iOS and Android devices."

Update 5/26, 2:08PM ET: Added statement from Apple.

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Microsoft is the latest tech giant to slow hiring - Protocol

Though leftists frequently claim that it isnt happening, conservatives are acutely aware of the frequency and scope of Big Tech censorship.

People who dare to post something online that goes against leftist dogma routinely find themselves booted from the internet, victims ofthe intolerant gaggle of digital censors.

It doesnt always happen immediately. Last month, for example, YouTube suddenly removed a video of an interview featuringHeritage Foundationelections expert Hans von Spakovsky that had been posted over a year ago.

The interview, recorded at CPAC 2021 for The Jacob Kersey Program podcast, covered various election integrity issues and how to restore trust in the voting system by passing commonsense election security measures.

>>>Combating Big Techs Totalitarianism: A Road Map

On the show,Mr. von Spakovsky cited severalexamples of where voter fraud had thrown election results in question, prompting judges to throw out the results and order new elections. These were largely local elections. At no point did Mr. von Spakovsky imply that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Still, YouTube removed the video, claiming it violated the platforms rules surrounding misinformation andthe 2020 presidential election. Why this suddenly became an issue more than a year after the video was uploaded is anyones guess.

Ultimately, there was a happy ending. After The Daily Signal reported the story, YouTube quietly put the video back up, without acknowledging why it took it down in the first place.

That wasnt the first time YouTube censored someone for discussing the 2020 election, even if they arent claiming the election was stolen.

On March 14, I did an interview on election integrity with The Vic Porcelli Show. A week later, the hosts informed me that YouTube had banned Newstalk STL, the radio station airing the show, from the platform.

The hosts had asked me about a Rasmussen Reports poll that found over 50% of voters believe cheating impacted the 2020 presidential election. Again, neither the hosts nor I claimed that the election was stolen. Rather, our conversation focused on Americans perceptions of elections, and how it was essential for the sake of our democracy to pass legislation making it easier to vote, but harder to cheat.

For this, the unelected tech arbiters at YouTube judged Newstalk STL too dangerous to be heard. The station was summarily banned.

Thankfully, state and federallawmakers are starting to fight back against Big Tech censorship that suppresses Americans First Amendment rights online.

On May 24, 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill making it easier for private citizens to sue tech giants over online censorship, as well as fining social media companies who deplatform candidates for office during campaign season.

The legislation requires platforms to be open and transparent in how they moderate content and gives users a way to fight for their rights if Big Tech decides to cancel them.

This is a great first step. Moreover, allowing this type of legislation to develop at the state level will let people see what works and what doesnt as the fight against online censorship intensifies.

>>>Dont Be Tricked Into Allowing Big Tech to Weaponize Misinformation

But there is a need for action at the federal level.

Section 230, an archaic law passed when the internet was born, is often used as a shield for Big Tech companies to hide behind.

Republican Reps. Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington and Jim Jordan of Ohio are drafting legislation that would removeSection 230 protections forcompanies like YouTube while protecting smaller platforms and allowing for competition.

Any long-term solution to Big Tech censorship will require a fusion of state and local government cooperation. Big Tech censorship represents an existential threat to the future of free speech in America and must be fought at all costs.

If the First Amendment is dead online, it will soon die offline too.

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Want To Fight Big Tech Censorship? Here's Where To Start - Heritage.org

The entrance to Google's U.K. offices in London.

Olly Curtis | Future Publishing | via Getty Images

The U.K.'s competition regulator has opened a fresh investigation into Google, taking aim at the company's role in the advertising technology market.

It's the second major antitrust probe to target Google's ad practices in the U.K. The Competition and Markets Authority launched a separate investigation with the European Union into Google and Facebook parent company Meta earlier this year over concerns that a 2018 pact between the two companies known as "Jedi Blue" restricted competition in digital advertising.

The CMA said Thursday it was assessing whether Google's role in the ad tech industry may be distorting competition. The internet giant is a dominant player in the online ad market.

Google acts as both a demand-side platform, which offers publishers' ad inventory to marketers, and an ad exchange, which lets advertisers compete for advertising space on publishers' websites, the CMA said. It also runs ad servers which manage publishers' inventory.

Regulators are concerned Google may have illegally favored its own ad exchange services to the detriment of rivals. The CMA is also worried Google limited the compatibility of its ad exchange with third-party ad servers to make it harder for competing ad servers to compete.

"Weakening competition in this area could reduce the ad revenues of publishers, who may be forced to compromise the quality of their content to cut costs or put their content behind paywalls," Andrea Coscelli, the CMA's chief executive, said in a statement.

"It may also be raising costs for advertisers which are passed on through higher prices for advertised goods and services."

It comes after an earlier competition probe from both the U.K. and EU into "Jedi Blue." The deal allegedly involved Google and Meta rigging auctions for online ads and illegally fixing prices.

The CMA wants more powers to scrutinize anti-competitive behavior from tech giants under a new regulatory body called the Digital Markets Unit. The new regulator, proposed in 2020, would have the power to impose fines of up to 10% of tech companies' global annual revenues for breaching new digital rules. However, the government has yet to give the watchdog powers to impose these fines.

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Google hit by second UK antitrust probe into online ad dominance - CNBC