Category Archives: Big Tech

In this weekly segment, ExchangeWire sums up key industry updates in media, marketing, and commerce from around the globe. In this edition: Amazonestablishes a new Local Ads team in a blow to rival Meta; tech companies campaign against a 'self-referencing law' that could hinder their marketpower; Twitter agrees to Musk's demands fordata following the billionaire's threats to abandon their deal; and Metafaces legal action for Instagram's role in causing a preteen's eating disorder.

Ecommerce behemoth Amazon has quietly begun hiring for its Local Ads team, a newly established crew focused on sourcing ads from city-specific ad companies.

According to Business Insider, job postings from Amazon refer to the Local Ads team as a rare opportunity to join a start-up business within the Amazon Ads team, and will help create a brand new business and revenue stream for Amazon Advertising. These workers will be tasked with bringing smaller, localised advertisers over to Amazon, a move that is likely to shake some of the giants larger competitors, namely Google and Meta.

As Amazon has historically worked with larger brands who can afford to pay a hefty premium for a slot on the site, smaller companies have typically flocked to platforms such as Metas Facebook and Instagram for advertising space. Meta has even benefited from its involvement with smaller advertisers, using the dependence small businesses have on its platforms to one-up competitors and stave off regulators. By Amazon announcing that it is turning its focus towards smaller companies, the ecommerce giant is not only venturing into a new avenue for its USD$31bn (24.7bn) ad business, but striking a major blow to some of its largest rivals.

Tech giants including Amazon and Alphabet are leading an intense campaign to prevent Congress from passing a new law to restrain their market power.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which US senators approved in January of this year, would prevent large tech firms from using their market dominance to give their own products an advantage against competitors. Should the bill be passed by Congress, it is likely to open the door to a surge of new legislation that would reshape the US tech industry and rein in the power of large tech companies.

This is one of the most significant campaigns that we have run in recent years, said Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association.That is because there has never been such a serious proposal to undermine US competitiveness and put US users at risk.

The bill specifically targets Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, and Meta, and has received support from senators for both the Democratic and Republican parties, in addition to the Biden administration. The bill would prevent Google from listing its own products at the top of search results, in addition to banning Amazon from prioritising its online store over third-party alternatives.

The momentum behind the bill has raised alarm amongst tech giants, who are now rushing to preserve their market power. The Financial Times (FT) reportsthat executives from Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple have all personally spoken to members of Congress in an effort to block the bill. Google is also reported to have suggested a number of amendments to the proposed legislation, while Amazon has called on senators in Washington to oppose the bill on the basis that it could result in significant job losses.

Twitter has agreed to hand over data concerning fake accounts on the platform to Elon Musk after the billionaire threatened to rescind his offer to buy the company.

The microblogging site will give the Tesla-boss access to data comprising over five million daily tweets, a real-time record of tweets, the devices they were tweeted from, and details of the accounts that tweet, according to the Washington Post.

Twitters relinquishment of this data follows Musks threats to walk away from his USD$44bn (34bn) deal to buy out the social media site on Monday (6th June) unless the tech giant provides accurate data on fake accounts on the site. The entrepreneur has been publicly sceptical of the companys claim that bots account for fewer than 5% of its user base, which totals to 229 million globally.

In a letter addressed to Twitters chief legal officer, Musk stated he was entitled to conduct his own measurement of fake accounts, to enable him to prepare for transitioning Twitter's business to his ownership, and accused the company of intentionally "thwarting" his attempts to do so.

Twitter has maintained that it has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement." The social media company added that it was still committed to the acquisition at the price and terms agreed in Apriland, according to reports, Twitters chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde told employees on Wednesday (8th June) to anticipate a shareholder vote on the deal as early as July or August of this year.

Meta is facing legal action over allegations that its image-sharing platform, Instagram, ignited an eating disorder, self-harming behaviours, and suicidal thoughts in a preteen girl.

Filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Monday (6th June) by the Social Media Victims Law Centre, the lawsuit concerns teenager Alexis Spence. Spence created her first Instagram account without her parents knowledge at the age of 11, despite the platforms minimum age requirement of 13. According to the case, Instagrams algorithm immediately exposed Spence to content glorifying anorexia and self-harming, causing significant damage to her mental health.

Now aged 19, Spence has been hospitalised for anorexia, anxiety, and depression, and is struggling to recover from self-harming behaviours due to what the complaint describes as, the harmful content and features Instagram relentlessly promoted and provided to her in its effort to increase engagement.

In support of its complaint, the lawsuit makes numerous references to the Facebook Papers, leaked documents from Meta exposing the firms awareness that Instagram worsens mental health and body image amongst its users, particularly teenage girls. Previously unpublished documents from the leaks in which the company referred to tweens as herd animals who want to find communities where they can fit in, have been cited by the case to prove Metas intentions to draw younger, vulnerable users to the platform.

If you look at the extensive research that [Meta] performed, they knew exactly what they were doing to kids, and they kept doing it, commented Matthew P. Bergman, the founder of the Social Media Victims Law Centre and representative for the Spence family. I wish I could say that Alexis case is aberrational. Its not. The only aberration is that she survived.

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Amazon Targets Smaller Businesses with Local Ads Team; Big Tech Fights to Halt Antitrust Bill - ExchangeWire

The latest inflation figures on June 10 were worse than expected and the effect on stock prices was brutal. A list of stocks in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100 Index that have fallen at least 60% from 52-week highs is below.

The consumer-price index report for May from the Bureau of Labor Statistics came in much worse than expected, with a 1% increase in prices during the month and a year-over-year CPI increase of 8.6% a new 40-year record.

Hand-in-hand with the inflation report was a record-low figure for the University of Michigans Consumer Sentiment Index.

Heres a summary of performance for the 11 sectors of the S&P 500 SPX and other broad indexes, as of 11:40 a.m. ET on June 10:

All 11 sectors of the S&P 500 were down for the day.

The only sector with a positive return in 2022 has been energy, with a 57% gain as the price of West Texas Crude Oil CL has risen 59%, based on continuous forward-month prices compiled by FactSet.

To take a broader look at large companies suffering the biggest share price declines, we added the components of the Nasdaq-100 Index NDX to the S&P 500 for a list of 519 companies after removing duplicates. (The Nasdaq-100 includes the largest 100 nonfinancial companies, by market capitalization, in the full Nasdaq Composite Index COMP. )

Within that enlarged group, these 19 stocks have dropped at least 60% from their 52-week highs:

Click on the tickers for more about each company.

Then readTomi Kilgores detailed guide to the wealth of information for free on the MarketWatch quote page.

The stock that was down the most from its 52-week high was DocuSign Inc. DOCU, also the worst performer on June 10 after the company lowered its billings outlook. Analysts then downgraded the stock.

Continued here:

These 19 large-cap stocks have now dropped at least 60% from their 52-week highs - MarketWatch

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Privacy. You would be hard-pressed to find a word used as frequently or with as much weight in recent years. As the world hurtles towards an increasingly digital future, concerns over data privacy have reached a fever pitch.

From high-profile cases of data breaches to tales of government surveillance, it seems that scarcely a day goes by without another story about how our personal information is being mishandled.

The digital age has brought with it many amazing advances, but it has also created new threats to our privacy. One of the biggest dangers comes from the way that big tech companies collect and use our data.

Most people are now familiar with the term data mining the process by which companies collect large amounts of data about our online activity and use it to target ads and sell products. But data mining is just the tip of the iceberg. Many tech companies are now using sophisticated methods to track our every move, both online and offline.

This tracking is made possible by the proliferation of devices that are connected to the internet. These devices collect a wealth of data about our whereabouts, our behaviors and even our physiology. This data is then used to create detailed profiles of each individual user.

These profiles are extremely valuable to companies, who use them to target ads, sell products and influence our behavior. In other words, they use our personal information to make money.

This business model has come under fire in recent years, as more and more people have become aware of the ways that their personal data is being used without their consent.

So what can be done to protect our privacy in the age of big tech? There are no easy answers, but there are some steps that we can take to help ensure that our privacy is not violated.

The answer is not merely a matter of public policy but an overall paradigm shift in the way we think about privacy. This would of course involve:

This last point goes back to the original intent of the internet. As a matter of fact, the internet was designed to be a decentralized network, where each user could connect to any other user without going through a central server. This design was based on the belief that decentralization would make the internet more resistant to censorship.

Unfortunately, this vision has not been realized. Instead, we have seen the rise of a small number of giant tech companies that now control most of the internet. These companies use their power to censor and manipulate the information that we see, and they collect vast amounts of data about our online activity.

This centralization of power is dangerous for democracy and privacy. It gives these companies too much control over our lives, and it makes it easy for them to violate our rights.

We need to build a new internet that is decentralized and democratized. This new internet should be designed to protect our privacy and promote free speech. It should give power back to the people, and it should be resistant to censorship and control.

The first step in building this new internet is to create decentralized alternatives to the centralized services that we use today. These alternatives will be built on the principles of privacy, security and freedom.

Privacy is a complex issue, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. But by taking some simple steps to protect our privacy, we can make a difference. We can make sure that our data is not used to violate our rights, and we can help build a new internet that is free from censorship and control.

Daniel Saito is CEO and cofounder of StrongNode.

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Big tech vs. data privacy: It wasnt meant to be this way - VentureBeat

Pending tech regulations across the world are set to impact business practices at all levels.

The UKs pending Online Safety Bill and the EUs Digital Services Act are designed for the regulation of big tech, but there is the issue of legal but harmful and unintended consequences that can affect your business

Civil servants do their best to consider all implications, but there is always something they havent thought about, Sue Turner OBE, AI and data governance and ethics specialist, told me.

The fear is that companies will proactively over-censor themselves for fear of being censored by the regulator, Jacquie Hughes, media policy and regulatory specialist, said.

The issue relates to two pieces of pending regulation, the Online Safety Bill (originally called the Online Harms Bill) in the UK and The Digital Services Act in the EU. The two bills will have repercussions for businesses and business owners who might consider that their business is as far removed from big tech as you can get.

Furthermore, as has been the case with GDPR, the impact of these two pieces of pending legislation will reach far beyond the continent of Europe. GDPR has been followed by a spat of regulations worldwide, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the pending Personal Data Protection Bill in India, and LGBD in Brazil.

When GDPR came out, many specialists in the area argued it was primarily aimed at the regulation of big tech, but its impact on businesses, small and large, is there for all to see.

A guide to IT governance, risk and compliance Information Age presents your complete business guide to IT governance, risk and compliance.

The most controversial area of the Online Safety Bill is legal but harmful. The Bill requires companies to take on a duty of care with online content; and could result in heavy fines for companies or even criminal prosecution for its managers that fail to meet the requirements. But it creates ambiguity. Companies will be required to monitor and, if necessary, censor content that is legal but deemed harmful.

Legal but harmful is the battleground. Its why the joint committee which put forward recommendations for amending the Bill suggested getting rid of it and just sticking to clearly defined illegal harms, Hughes said.

It leaves too much ambiguity and too much to judgement by individual companies, she added.

Turner opined that the Bill might put people off being creative. She explained by giving an example of a company that was keen to interact with its community, encouraged more diverse views, and wanted discussion from which it could learn. In short, it wanted to do the things that most regulators, shareholders and the public would approve.

But the company became concerned that it might fall foul of the Online Safety Bill.

There is the issue of legal but harmful. So how do you set up your guard rails? asked Turner. She said: This company is running away from it.

And that is worrying as we want companies to have more diverse views.

This begs the question, precisely why is the government promoting legal but harmful and there is the thorny area of risk.

Clause 59 of the Bill is telling; it refers to risk assessment duties for content that is legal but harmful.

In other words, companies are being asked to apply a risk approach to their online safety, but this is riddled with ambiguity.

Hughes explained: The government was keen to keep it in because it wanted to deal with the whole plethora of so-called harms.

She warns that companies will remove content in advance rather than risk a fine afterwards.

She said: Ofcom will have to consider lots of things such as volume of complaints, degree of harm, measures the company took to mitigate the harm whether they had good compliance measures, etcetera in place. But its not ideal. It is huge ambiguity.

She added, somewhat pithily: Judging psychological harm is just a minefield.

The core issue here is another law, not a law defined by an Act of Parliament or Congress, but rather something more akin to a law of human nature or maybe of nature the law of unintended consequences.

Regulators are trying to do the right thing; the Internet is becoming dangerous, but practice and theory are often quite different.

Turner warns of two levels of effect.

She said: There are a lot of good things with the Online Safety Bill, but medium-sized companies or non-specialists may lack core skills and might struggle to comply.

So, lack of technical skills, at a time of well-publicised labour shortages, might be a key constraint, especially in the digital economy. Furthermore, these technical skills are not lacking in the big techs.

Regulation might be designed with big tech corporations in mind, but it might be the big techs with in-house expertise who can better manage regulations and understand and quantify the risk.

But the pending bills on online safety and digital services might be just the beginning.

Turner speculates that we might see regulations requiring the auditing of AI algorithmic systems, an area the UK government is already considering.

She said: We have all got used to being audited on our financial position; it is second nature, but we may have to do this on how we use technology in our business; not just internally, but with suppliers.

These are precisely the areas that big techs are better equipped to deal with.

Hughes warned that the Online Harms Bill bites on every business using the Internet and adds regulation to the space where it didnt exist before. It makes every company responsible for the risks its service represents and makes lots of new activities unlawful.

The Joint Committee on the Online Harms Bill says: We recommend the Bill is restructured. It should set out its core objectives clearly at the beginning.

Hughes said: The government has deviated from the recommendations by still including legal but harmful in the Bill. The joint committee recommends removing that.

Many companies have already taken pre-emptive action in advance of this Bill.

Remember, its part of a package of regulations of businesses using the Internet that didnt exist before, including setting up the digital marketing unit at the CMA, the childrens code, and all the stuff coming out of Europe.

Any business will no longer be able to use the Internet without consideration of these regulations.

Its trying to bring the online world in line with the offline world.

Related:

Bank IT compliance: how financial services can stay compliant with regulations Exploring strategies that can help organisations stay on the right side of the law, meeting regulations and industry-adopted standards.

Global AI regulation? Possibly, and its starting in the EU Lori Witzel, director of research for analytics and data management at TIBCO Software, explores the possible impact of the proposed EU legislation for AI on businesses.

What regulation means for digital interoperability Following the recent introduction of the EU Digital Markets Act, Dominic Wellington, director of market intelligence at MongoDB, considers what regulation means for interoperability.

Continued here:

How the regulation of big tech can affect your business - Information Age

Article by Kawal Preet, President, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa (AMEA), FedEx Express

Technology governs our existence: how we live, work, travel, and connect as humans. The most significant innovations in emergent tech of the last decade AI, autonomous tech, blockchain all continue to advance. And the biggest tech innovations of our time are now interconnected. Its this seamless integration that has become the gamechanger: set to change everything from infrastructure to transport to how you order your pizza delivery.

So exactly how smart does our future look? Buckle up as we explore the three technology trends that are shaping tomorrow:

There was a time when smart simply meant something that could connect or talk to other household tech, or devices that were powered by the internet: smartphones; smart TVs; smart in-car audio. But today, we can safely assume that when someones talking smart, they mean powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and how we are storing, processing, and using data.

The marriage of AI and data clouds is allowing us to operate at increasing levels of sophistication and precision in society and in business. At FedEx, our business is undergoing constant and rapid transformation thanks to tech. Were teaming up with Microsoft and putting data to work through our digital and physical networks. Through our data transformation, were focused on delivering an unprecedented level of insight and control into the global movements of goods for faster, more efficient deliveries. And this is just the beginning.

A whole new world of data means that any business big or small can now digitize its supply chain by leveraging data to drive breakthrough real-time inventory tracking and logistics management. The progress is ground-breaking.

Its typically machine-learning algorithms that power the benefits of AI. Its become impossible, in many ways, to imagine life without it. From Siri to Alexa, AI has permeated the tools and apps we use to carry out everyday tasks and navigate our leisure time. From driving assistants and customer service to language translation and more sophisticated ways to use data, AI is everywhere.

And if youre an SME, AI is truly the business tool for you. AI software can be used to automate processes in manufacturing, warehouse deployment, and inventory, or simply arrange the work rotas of your employees. It can even help you understand your customers better, thanks to tech that can analyze buyer behavior patterns and map audience traits.

Kawal Preet, President, FedEx, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa

AI goes hand in hand with robotics another trend that continues to gather pace. Robots have gone from obscure and experimental tech to mainstream stalwarts of the service industry. We see bots in our shopping malls, airports, and hospitals so much so that in the most developed Asia Pacific countries, we barely give them a second glance. In the healthcare industry, of course, they can help save lives, but they also have less critical functions, smoothing the wheels of industry.

At FedEx, were taking advantage of AI robotics tech in our warehouses. We have launched an AI-powered intelligent sorting robot in China to sort inbound and outbound packages. As the growing e-commerce sector makes our warehouses busier, we can re-allocate our team members to focus on more important tasks requiring uniquely human skills.

Its the integration of AI into robots the brain capable of algorithm learning and interpreting conditions that has made them so effective. Of course, this technology is something we are keen to put into action ourselves.

We hope to see this type of technology used in the way we service our customers throughout the region in the future ultimately making life easier for small businesses.

The future of mobility is an extremely hot topic right now. Transportation is arguably undergoing the biggest shake-up since the introduction of the steam locomotive or the first passenger aircraft. Future mobility is looking to solve three key pain points: safety, sustainability, and convenience.

The new wave of transportation from electric vehicles to passenger drones can help bring about a cleaner world with fewer emissions in our cities as we work globally towards net-zero and beyond.

Autonomous vehicles driverless, with their own brain and ability to map and detect their environment through sensors, satellite technology, and other means have the goal to ultimately remove human error, meaning more safety on our roads and in our communities.

These vehicles are expected to help solve the last-mile problem getting goods through the final mile to the destination. Autonomous technology is helping to close this gap, which in turn is better for urban air quality and the amount of energy or fuel consumed per capita.

FedEx recently started testing autonomous delivery vehicles in Beijing, China, in collaboration with Neolix. Pushing forward into a more sustainable, intelligent era for logistics is the logical next step for our industry. The zero-emission, the all-electric delivery vehicle is powered by L4 level autonomous technology. The cargo box can also be converted into a temperature-controlled compartment and a smart parcel locker.

The rapid growth of e-commerce requires more flexible and efficient digital logistics solutions to enhance last-mile delivery. Autonomous driving technology and delivery bots are just two of the options that can help transform how we move goods around the world and in and out of urban areas.

So, there you have it. As we look ahead to the second half of 2022, we predict that were going to see even greater opportunities for intersection and integration of our digital and physical worlds. Online environments are increasingly mirroring our real ones whether through online shopping, immersive and experiential retail, or online avatars for everything from customer service to gaming, education, and dating.

Remember tech isnt something that only big businesses can afford. There are software and apps of every size and scale that businesses of all sizes can implement into their daily workflow. By doing so, you can streamline processes, improve efficiency, and ultimately turn more profits for your enterprise something every business should be striving for.

The views in this article is that of the author and do not represent Tech Wire Asia.

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The big tech thats shaping tomorrow today - Tech Wire Asia

Thousands of local papers have shuttered their doors in recent years, and those surviving are facing unprecedented challenges in remaining both economically viable and as the lifeblood of their communities.

All the while, Big Tech monopolies like Alphabet and Meta through sites like Google News and Facebook News have come to dominate the news and publishing industries by expropriating the work of smaller and local operators via their news aggregator sites.

The Founding Fathers enshrined protections for a press free from government regulation in the First Amendment to the Constitution because a free and diverse press is the backbone of a healthy and vibrant republic. But the Founders could not have envisioned a future in which nearly all news and information would be controlled by just a handful of private entities.

This is not only blatantly unfair it is a threat to the free press and, thus, to democracy itself.

The American people not only understand the severity of this threat, but moreover, are united on the need to curb Big Techs undue power and unjust profiteering in the news and publishing industries.

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New polling by Schoen-Cooperman Research which was conducted among a representative sample of U.S. adults, and commissioned by News Media Alliance reveals widespread public concern over Big Techs outsize influence with respect to news and publishing, as well as broad-based support for Congress taking action to rein in these monopolies.

Indeed, roughly 4 in 5 Americans are concerned that Big Tech companies have too much power over the news and publishing industries (79%), manipulate these industries for their own gain (78%), and are driving small and local news outlets out of business (76%).

Further, approximately three-quarters agree that Big Techs monopoly over the news and publishing industries is a threat to the free press and unfair to publishers, especially to small and local outlets (76%).

In addition to being broadly concerned about this problem, Americans want change and are looking to their elected leaders in Washington to deliver.

Roughly 4 in 5 Americans agree with statements to this effect, including I support Congress taking steps to give small and local publishers more power in negotiations with Big Tech companies (81%), as well as Congress needs to rein in Big Tech by passing reforms that would make the publishing industry fairer for smaller media entities and local operators (77%).

In terms of specific reforms, our survey measured public support for a bill that was introduced this year known as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, or JCPA. This is a bipartisan proposal that would allow news publishers to negotiate, under the authority of a federal intermediary, fair terms for use of their content by Big Tech companies.

Remarkably, after reading a brief description of the JCPA, strong majorities support Congress passing the JCPA (70%) and believe it is important for Congress to pass the JCPA (64%).

Respondents also indicated that a political candidates support for the JCPA or lack thereof would affect their vote in an election. By a 4-to-1 margin, U.S. adults would be more likely, rather than less likely, to back a candidate for Congress who supported the JCPA.

Additionally, 7 in 10 agree that elected officials who oppose the JCPA are allowing Big Tech companies to continue manipulating the news and publishing industries for their own gain, leaving small and local publishers powerless (69%).

Over the last two decades, though the world of news and information has changed dramatically with the expansion of Big Tech, the United States antitrust and anti-monopoly laws have not changed with it.

Congress now has a mandate from the American public to rein in Big Tech and pursue long-overdue reforms that will safeguard local journalisms survival and ultimately will make the news industry fairer, freer and more democratic.

On a personal note, in my experience as a professional pollster who has worked in the industry for more than 40 years, it is rare for an issue or piece of legislation to garner this level of broad-based and enthusiastic public support.

Elected officials from both parties have a unique opportunity to deliver on reforms that are both substantively important and politically viable by advancing the JCPA or a similar version of the bill which our data indicates would have a demonstrably positive electoral impact for these members.

If America is to have a news industry that is truly free and fair, we must stop allowing Big Tech companies to expropriate the work of smaller and local publishers without consequence. Congress can start by passing legislation like the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act into law.

Douglas Schoen is a Democratic campaign consultant and author of several books including The Power of the Vote: Electing Presidents.

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Americans are united in wanting Congress to rein in Big Tech's power over news publishing, by Douglas Schoen - Press of Atlantic City

Written by Chris Duckett, APAC Editor Chris DuckettAPAC Editor

Chris started his journalistic adventure in 2006 as the Editor of Builder AU after originally joining CBS as a programmer. After a Canadian sojourn, he returned in 2011 as the Editor of TechRepublic Australia, and is now the Australian Editor of ZDNet.

Much like how car manufacturers had to be forced to implement safety features such as seat belts, Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant believes social platforms and tech giants need to be guided by international standards.

"What we're saying is this era of technological exceptionalism has got to end," Inman Grant said on a panel at the World Economic Forum on Monday.

"We've got food safety standards, we've got consumer protection laws, we need the companies assessing their risks and then building the potential protections in as a forethought, rather than an afterthought ... embedding those digital seatbelts and erecting those digital guardrails."

As the world hurtles towards a future that could include augmented reality, metaverses, and other different realities, Inman Grant said such experiences could be supercharged, and that also includes when users are harmed in such environments.

"If we don't learn the lessons of the web 2.0 world, and start designing for the governance and safety by design, and security and privacy for the metaverse world -- I mean, what could possibly go wrong with full sensory haptic suits, hyper-realistic experiences, and teledildonics all coming together in the metaverse?" the commissioner said.

"If there's no accountability and no transparency, we're kind of ignoring that human malfeasance will always exist, and so, how are we going to remediate harm?"

Taking a wider view, Inman Grant said as the world gets more polarised and binary, a new balancing of rights may occur.

"I think we're going to have to think about a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online -- from freedom of speech, to the freedom to be free from online violence, or the right of data protection, to the right to child dignity."

Inman Grant earlier told the forum that freedom of speech does not equate into a total free-for-all, and her agency had seen success in getting harmful content taken down.

"Just this week, I issued about AU$4.5 million to a number of sites mostly based in the United States that are hosting the Buffalo manifesto and the gore material."

The eSafety office gained the ability last year to issue takedown notices backed by civil penalties of up to AU$550,000 for companies and AU$111,000 for individuals.

See also: Misinformation needs tackling and it would help if politicians stopped muddying the water

Executive director and co-founder of Access Now Brett Solomon said there was a chance a "state-centric online policing framework" such the eSafety office was not creating a safer internet or world, and could be a dangerous precedent for less liberal nations.

"What [esafety] is engaged in -- this is a very live experiment on society in real time. And how do we actually know the results?" he said.

"How do we know that our communities are safer as a result of this massive, legislative and regulatory model that's sending a message to the rest of the world, there's a big risk here that maybe it's not actually working."

Inman Grant retorted that the agency has helped thousands of people that would not have been able to get content removed due to not being able to bridge the power gap between themselves and the tech giants and social platforms.

Finnish Minister of Transport and Communications Timo Harakka said it was better that any adjustment on rights was done openly and democratically, rather than allowing tech giants to impose decisions themselves. Harakka cited the example of the social platforms eventually getting around to removing former US President Donald Trump.

"Twitter and Facebook never saw problem, suddenly they shut down Trump's Twitter account. So there was a problem but we never got to the real point: What exactly was the policy there?" he said.

Harakka said it was "very, very dangerous" that the algorithms used on social platforms have no transparency.

"For instance, as soon asthe war in Ukraine and the Russian invasion or attacks started, the second most recommended YouTube video was 'Why West is culpable of this attack to Ukraine'," he said.

"So what was this algorithm about? So it's promoting this binary world view, promoting aggression, and these algorithms are in many ways something that need [investigation] while taking care of free speech."

Read more from the original source:

This era of big tech exceptionalism has got to end: Australian eSafety Commissioner - ZDNet

A bill that would allow California parents to sue technology companies over their children becoming addicted to social media has passed a significant milestone.

The Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act passed the state assembly on Monday. This bill, which was submitted in March by state lawmakers, would allow parents to sue companies such as TikTok and Instagram for up to $25,000 if a child is determined to be "addicted" to the app.

If passed into law, social platforms could be considered liable if they "developed, designed, implemented, or maintained features that were known, or should have been known, by the platform to be addictive to child users," the bill reads.

AIRBNB TO REMOVE LISTINGS AND EXPERIENCES IN CHINA

The bill also adopts a vague definition of addiction. If the bill is passed, then a social media company can be held liable for "addiction" if it "indicates preoccupation or obsession with, or withdrawal or difficulty to cease or reduce use of, a social media platform despite the user's desire to cease or reduce that use" and if it "causes or contributes to physical, mental, emotional, developmental, or material harms to the user."

The bill was introduced on March 15 by state assembly members Buffy Wicks, a Democrat, and Jordan Cunningham, a Republican. The bill was filed with the hope of forcing tech companies to "bear some of the social costs that they put on all of our children," Cunningham said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

While the assembly vote is a significant step forward, the bill will still need to be approved by the state Senate before it becomes law.

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Tech companies and business moguls have criticized the bill and threatened to pull out of the state if it becomes law. If the SMPDC Act passes, then "social media companies and online web services would have no choice but to cease operations for kids under 18 and would implement stringent age-verification in order to ensure that adolescents did not use their sites," the bipartisan organization TechNet told lawmakers in a letter.

Lawmakers have been attempting to restrict the effects of social media on youth for years. The efforts gained considerable attention after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen went public in October 2021 and spoke publicly about the company's algorithmic effects on teenagers.

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California bill would allow parents to sue Big Tech over social media addiction - Washington Examiner

NEW YORK, May 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --A tectonic shift is occurring in the financial services industry, as technology companies jostle with incumbent firms for position in a market that is expanding rapidly into new services, according to global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman. Established firms traditionally organized around managing risk are still growing, but most of the industry's value creation is being driven by financial infrastructure, data, and technology (FIT) companies.

In its 24th annual State of the Financial Services Industry Report, titled The Tectonic Shift Between Risk, Data, and Technology, Oliver Wyman states that the primary driver of this value shift is the slowing growth of more capital-intensive risk intermediation services, which have been growing at about 3% a year over the last decade, compared with capital-light services linked to connected data services and value technology services, which have been growing at about 8% a year.

As a result of this ongoing shift, nearly one-third of the world's largest 50 financial institutions are now FITs firms, up from only two a decade ago.

"The financial services industry has had a good decade no major crisis, a huge amount of innovation, and playing an important societal role in COVID and on climate," said Ted Moynihan, Partner and Global Head of Financial Services at Oliver Wyman. "The decade has also seen a dramatic change in the financial services landscape, to a wider industry with more firms acting in co-opetition with each other, and overall a shift in relative value from incumbents to new players. With rising interest rates and volatile markets, we anticipate quite different conditions in the next few years, with the benefits going to those firms that can anticipate and pivot to the new sources of value growth."

The Oliver Wyman State of Financial Services 2022 report shows that without more action, this shift in relative value is poised to continue. Most incumbents are struggling to find a decisive way to reorganize around, and invest effectively in, the changing sources of value and growth in the industry.

As big tech business models converge, mobile wallets and moves into embedded finance will become more prominent, according to the report, as the emergence of digital assets and digital identification amplify and accelerate the value shift.

That said, current market and economic conditions may provide an opportunity for incumbent firms to regain share. Rising interest rates should deliver an earnings boost to some banks and insurers, and investors are challenging some big tech and FITs firms' business models. If incumbents can pivot more decisively toward new sources of value and invest earnings carefully, there are significant opportunities.

In addition, the 2022 State of Financial Services report finds that while the top incumbent firms in the industry have increased their market value by 70% over the past decade, delivering $1.3 trillion in new value, a combination of large financial infrastructure, data, and fintech firms have delivered 400% value growth and nearly $2.3 trillion of value. Essentially, more total value is being created outside the incumbent industry, from firms that purport to be in similar ecosystems with the incumbents. And $9 trillion in new value has been created by the big tech industry - even with the significant adjustments in 2022 - which is increasingly moving into financial services through payments initially but is expanding to provide many other financial services.

Additional Key Findings:

To view the Oliver Wyman State of the Financial Services Industry 2022 Report, click here.

Key Exhibits:

About Oliver Wyman

Oliver Wyman is a global leader in management consulting. With offices in more than 70 cities across 30 countries, Oliver Wyman combines deep industry knowledge with specialized expertise in strategy, operations, risk management, and organization transformation. The firm has more than 5,500 professionals around the world who work with clients to optimize their business, improve their operations and risk profile, and accelerate their organizational performance to seize the most attractive opportunities. Oliver Wyman is a business of Marsh McLennan [NYSE: MMC]. For more information, visit http://www.oliverwyman.com. Follow Oliver Wyman on Twitter @OliverWyman.

SOURCE Oliver Wyman

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Big Tech, Merchants, and a Range of Data and Fintech Firms Now Account for 35% of the Value of the Financial Services Industry, According to Oliver...

In tech policy, everything comes with a cost. If you remove more content, youll get accused of censorship. If you reverse course and allow more posts to stay up, youll get criticized for turning a blind eye to harmful speech. If you tighten privacy controls to try to protect against data misuse, youre accused of creating barriers that stand in the way of fair competition. If you loosen them, you increase the risk of data misuse or a security breach.

Developing a sensible policy agenda for reforming the tech sector isnt about finding a cost-free magic bullet; rather, its about identifying reform proposals with benefits that outweigh costs and then getting comfortable with those costs. A pragmatic approach to any tech policy proposal requires being realistic and transparent about its downsides.

New legislation in Europe carves out a bold new path in tech policy, but it creates the impression this path is cost-free. Its not.

In recent weeks, Europe has agreed to landmark deals that will shape power and speech in the tech sector: the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DMA addresses competitive dynamics, imposing a wide array of restrictions on U.S. Big Tech firms. The DSA is focused on expression; it will require platforms to remove illegal content and publish transparency reports while also creating additional responsibilities for large platforms.

These new regulations will dramatically shift how tech products look and feel. Because messaging platforms are obligated to interoperate with other messaging services, Apple and WhatsApp may no longer be able to offer the same level of encryption for messages. Because companies are prevented from offering preferential treatment to their own products, Google may not be able to offer its search results box, which provides a businesss address, phone number, and website at the top of the results page. New content moderation requirements will likely make it harder for smaller tech companies to compete with larger platforms, requiring them to hire more lawyers to handle regulatory compliance rather than engineers to build products.

These tradeoffs are real, but the text creates the misleading impression that its possible to have it all. For example, the provision requiring messaging services to interoperatemeaning that you could send a message from a service like WhatsApp to a different one, like iMessagestates that companies should offer this interoperability without reducing their privacy protections. A company should ensure that interoperability does not undermine a high level of security and data protection.

Maybe a brilliant engineer at a company like WhatsApp or Apple will be able to figure out a way to do that, but its unlikely. Several years ago, when I was leading public policy at WhatsApp, Europe was calling for messaging products like WhatsApp to interoperate with SMS services offered by European telcos like Vodafone and Orange. I asked several WhatsApp engineers if this type of interoperability was possible without weakening the end-to-end encryption that was a default, defining security feature of our product. The answer I received from every engineer I talked to was no. According to recent statements by the head of WhatsApp, the answer seems to be the same today.

Of course, weakening encryption might be a cost that Europeans should be willing to bear. Encryption creates its own set of challenges, frustrating law enforcement and making it easier for harmful content to escape detection. A sober assessment of costs and benefits might still tilt in favor of requiring messaging services to interoperate, since the benefits of interoperability might outweigh the costs to privacy.

The problem is that policymakers are not engaging in an honest, transparent accounting of these costs and benefits. Their proposals create the illusion of a costless future, one in which users send messages freely between platforms with the same level of privacy and security they have today. That future is a myth.

Platforms face tremendous uncertainty as they contemplate how to comply with these laws. Should they alter their products if doing so would require them to degrade security? How much security risk will be tolerable to policymakers in Brussels? Do they need to interoperate with another messaging service that they think is unsafe?

The DMA punts on these questions, leaving them to be figured out over time through lawsuits and consultations with the European Commission. That process will almost certainly be burdensome and uncertain, making it harder for companies to offer the best possible products in Europe.

Despite this ambiguity, these reforms in Europe are on a path to implementation. When they come into effect, Europe will join a small but growing list of countries that have enacted significantly more stringent regulations on the tech sector. China, for instance, has taken steps to tighten its antitrust laws, limit the time that kids spend gaming, and address cybersecurity and privacy risks.

Enactment of real reform should create an opportunity to learn. With new regulatory regimes underway, policymakers can look at the actual costs and benefits of reform, rather than merely speculating about them. In Europe, for instance, experts should track the impact of the interoperability mandate, assessing whether the benefits to innovation and competitiveness outweigh the costs to privacy and security.

These assessments could play an important role as Congress considers its own set of reforms. Several proposals have been introduced by senators and representatives of both parties, and many of them parallel the elements of reform in Europe and China.

Yet like in Europe, U.S. legislators have not provided a clear accounting of the costs and benefits of their proposals. They seek to limit how platforms render search results, but dont discuss the impact on products like Google and Amazon Basics. They seek to restrict the online advertising business, but dont explain how that would affect advertising prices for small businesses. They seek to restrict acquisitions by large platforms but dont examine the effect that would have on the venture capital market in communities like mine, where startups thrive in the Research Triangle Park in part because of the possibility of being acquired by a large company.

Cost-benefit analysis is used routinely by the executive branch to assess whether a government rule would make good public policy. This analysis is not the final word on whether a rule should go into effect, but instead is used as a data point that brings rigor to the policy development process.

The same approach could be useful to Congress as it considers tech reform, enabling the government to better understand the impact of proposals on competition, innovation, safety, privacy, security, expression, and national security. Conducting this process transparently and publishing the results would also foster the kind of open debate that the public deserves.

Its certainly possible the benefits of tech policy reform will exceed its costs. But to pretend that reform is a cost-free exercise sends a misleading signal that could result in making our tech products worse, not better.

Matt Perault is director of the Center on Technology Policy at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a professor of the practice at UNCs School of Information and Library Science, and a consultant on technology policy issues at Open Water Strategies.

Image: Reuters.

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No Magic Bullet: The Difficulties of Reforming Big Tech - The National Interest Online