Category Archives: Big Tech

The GOP Senate candidate has railed against "Big Pharma" on the campaign trail.

April 8, 2022, 9:11 AM

4 min read

Television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, has a considerable financial stake in major pharmaceutical firms and Silicon Valley giants, newly released records show -- despite railing against "Big Pharma" and "Big Tech" on the campaign trail.

The disclosures, released late Wednesday, indicate that the GOP candidate and celebrity television doctor has poured millions of dollars into companies like Amazon and CVS -- a revelation seemingly at odds with a central tenet of his message to voters.

"I've taken on Big Pharma, I've gone to battle with Big Tech," Oz said on Fox News in December. "I cannot be bought."

A political newcomer, Oz is facing off against David McCormick, a longtime hedge fund executive, in a competitive Republican primary. Both men have immense wealth, and some observers say Oz's investments could complicate his bid to connect with the Keystone State's blue-collar voting base.

According to the disclosure report, Oz, together with his wife, owns between $6 million and $27 million in Amazon stocks, between $1.7 million and $6.6 million in Microsoft, and between $1.3 million and $5.7 million each in Apple and Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc.

Oz and his wife also have between $615,000 and $1.3 million in shares of Thermo Fisher Scientific, between $15,001 and $50,000 in Johnson & Johnson, and between $50,001 and $100,000 each in CVS and the pharmaceutical company AbbVie.

In this Feb. 27, 2022, file photo Dr. Oz speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Fla.

Notably, one of Oz's campaign ads denouncing Big Tech includes Oz saying that he took on Facebook -- and indeed his disclosures do not show him owning any stock in the popular social media company.

In all, Oz's disclosure shows that he and his spouse together own between $104 and $422 million in various assets and holdings.

Among his other investments, Oz and his wife together own between $11 million and $51 million in shares of Asplundh Tree Trimming, a company co-founded by Oz's wife's family.

Other assets include between $6 million and $30 million in shares of the convenient store company Wawa, as well as between $5 million and $25 million in shares of the online health engagement platform Sharecare, where Oz sat on the board of directors until last year.

Oz and his spouse also own between $1.5 million and $6 million shares in the fertility clinic network Prelude Fertility, and between $500,000 and $1 million in shares of Pantheryx, a biotechnology company that specializes in bovine colostrum products. Oz has served as a director of both companies, the disclosure report shows.

According to the report, Oz and his spouse also own between $11 million and $47 million in commercial and residential real estate properties.

Over the past year and a half, Oz reported earning between $20 million and $50 million, including more than $2 million in salary as the host of "The Dr. Oz Show," more than $7 million in profit from his company Oz Media, LLC, and millions of dollars in capital gains, dividends and interest from his various financial investments.

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Despite railing against Big Tech and Big Pharma, records show Dr. Oz has invested millions in both - ABC News

Sen. Elizabeth Warren loves talking about antitrust. In fact, she says, she cant think of anything more fun to talk about.

Antitrust is not a topic most people associate with fun, but the Massachusetts Democrats passion for it is entirely believable. Its not just the excitement and earnestness with which she talks about competition laws and how to change them; its also the fact that she has been talking about it for years. Longer, in fact, than many of the politicians who talk about it now.

Shes also why many of them are talking about it now. Warren took antitrust reform and anti-monopoly power out of relatively small academic and advocacy circles and thrust it into the national conversation. Then she ran for president and brought the phrase break up Big Tech and the concept into the mainstream. Now theres an administration and a Congress in place that might actually do some of the things shes been pushing for. And Warren is still talking, because she still has a lot of work to do.

Getting everybody lined up to push back against a powerful, well-financed industry is tough, Warren told Recode. But the fact that its tough doesnt mean its okay not to do the work. It just means shame on Congress for not sucking it up and doing what needs to be done.

Shes referring to a package of bipartisan, Big Tech-targeted antitrust bills. Some of those would change things a lot; they could, indeed, break up Big Tech. Those bills are also going nowhere in Congress. The bills that are much more likely to pass but whose progress has been slow give a few massive companies new rules about how they can run their digital platforms and services.

If youve only been paying attention to the Big Tech antitrust reform movement for the last, say, year and a half, you may not realize how instrumental Warren has been in building it. She ceded much of that Break Up Big Tech spotlight to the prominent Big Tech critics heading up the two federal agencies that enforce antitrust laws the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the lawmakers heading up those antitrust bills. Warren isnt on the Judiciary Committee that those bills came out of, and her name isnt on any of them.

But now Warren has an even more ambitious project: Her new bill, the Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act, doesnt just break up Big Tech: It breaks up Big Everything, and it prevents companies from getting too big in the future. It would also fundamentally change how agencies evaluate and block proposed mergers, a process that currently gives companies a lot of power and agencies relatively little. Warren says the bill crystallizes her vision for how the government can stop industry consolidation that has broken Americas markets, hurt its economy, and threatened its democracy.

The bill comes at a time when the auspicious beginnings of the Biden administrations pro-competition, anti-monopoly agenda have given way to the reality of how difficult it is to actually get things done. With midterms approaching, however, things appear to be picking back up. Congress is poised to pass some of those antitrust bills and confirm Alvaro Bedoya, the Democratic commissioner the FTC needs to fully carry out its chairs vision. Warren says she gives props for Bidens pro-competition executive order, which is making progress. But Biden was also slow to officially support those antitrust bills, and his administration has pushed back on the European Unions attempts to regulate Big Tech.

Elizabeth Warren has a few things to say about all that.

Why introduce a big new antitrust bill when Congress is close to passing a few other antitrust laws? The answer lies in chicken sandwiches.

The Big Tech antitrust bills address one industry, and only a few players in it. But many other industries have become hugely consolidated over the last several decades. Chicken, for example. That consolidation has been blamed for everything from the high prices you pay for that chicken to the low prices farmers are forced to sell their chickens for to the few poultry-producing giants out there. But the harm isnt just in the prices, Warren says. Its also in who makes sandwiches out of that chicken.

Think about two fast food chains in a region, she said. One of them does hamburgers almost exclusively, and the other one does chicken sandwiches almost exclusively. They can merge, and keep their prices and products the same. As far as the consumer is concerned, nothing has changed for their wallet or their taste buds. Antitrust agencies, which typically only look at consumer welfare when reviewing mergers, will likely approve it. But mergers dont just affect consumers: The world has changed for those workers, Warren said.

The two chains no longer have to compete with each other for employees by offering superior wages, benefits, and working conditions so, Warren says, they dont offer those things. Studies have shown that as markets become more concentrated, wages stagnate. And that means you might have less money to spend on that chicken sandwich. Its more expensive, even if its price stays the same.

If we want the benefits of competition, then it means when markets get very concentrated, we need to look at what weve lost, Warren said. Not just in terms of consumer choice. Its very important, but its not the only thing.

The bill would require antitrust agencies to take factors like impact on the labor market into account in addition to the impact on consumers. The bill isnt limited to Big Tech (or chicken sandwiches), but Big Tech companies wont be thrilled if the criteria for evaluating mergers expand especially the ones that havent had to worry about consumer welfare standards because their products are free. Thats also assuming their proposed merger isnt prohibited outright. Under Warrens new bill, mergers over a certain size or that consolidate the market too much are forbidden. And consummated mergers that have harmed competition, workers, consumers, or competitors can be broken up.

The Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act also fundamentally changes the agencies merger review process and power. Right now, if companies want to merge, its on the FTC or the DOJ to make the case for why they shouldnt, and they have to sue the companies to block them. The onus is entirely on the agencies, which oversee thousands of mergers a year. With relatively little in resources, they can only challenge a few of those mergers. Doing so may mean a long court battle thats difficult to win.

With Warrens bill, its the companies that have to do the work. They have to show that their proposed merger wont harm competition, consumers, and the labor market. If they cant, the agencies have to reject it. The companies have to sue if they still want to merge. Ideally, companies will try to merge less, and the mergers they do try wont be harmful.

Its going to change how mergers are even conceived of by the companies, Alex Harman, director of government affairs, antimonopoly, and competition policy at Economic Security Project Action, said. Because then its not like the game of Monopoly where its just collecting assets. Its now going to be like, Oh, I actually need to make a case for this, that theres a lack of harm, and that theres a benefit.

Its a seemingly complicated bill that tries to make things simpler. Instead of adding regulations to one industry that its most powerful players can figure out how to work around, she just wants to break them apart.

Structural change, where possible, minimizes regulation and maximizes the benefits of a functioning market, Warren said.

Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at nonprofit Public Knowledge, says she likes what the bill is trying to do and sees the need for it. But shed like more antitrust experts to weigh in before the bill becomes law, because its such a big change: to make sure that were getting the details right.

And William Kovacic, a competition law professor at George Washington University and former Republican FTC chair, said the bill left him with too many questions on how it would actually work in practice. For example, he said, theres a list of general things agencies have to consider when deciding to approve a merger, but not much detail or guidance beyond that. So its left to the agencies to create the definition of harms to competition, workers, and small and minority-owned businesses.

And where you have lots of discretion, here come the political influencers from Congress, from the executive departments from the White House, the lobbyists all come parading into my office and tell me what to do, Kovacic said. If Im going to have to do this, I just want to know how ... [Congress] cant just drop this into my lap. You figure it out.

Warrens political career has been defined by advocating for consumers, laborers, and small businesses against the big, powerful companies that make a lot of money at their expense. First, it was big banks in the wake of the financial crisis. Then she went broader: When she gave the keynote speech at New Americas Open Markets conference in 2016, she was one of the first nationally recognizable politicians in decades to talk about comprehensively addressing monopoly power. A week later, antitrust was on the Democratic party platform for the first time since 1988. A year later, it was a major part of its agenda.

She fought hard behind the scenes to bring that back onto the platform, Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), an anti-monopoly, small business advocacy group, told Recode.

It was a major part of Warrens 2020 presidential campaign platform, and her call to break up Big Tech was one of the best-known parts of it. Her plan for that: reversing mergers like Metas acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, and prohibiting companies like Amazon from owning platforms while offering their own products on them. And although Warren was one of the first and most prominent figures to recognize the threat of Big Techs power and demand that it be reined in, she wouldnt be the last.

In the years since, weve seen a massive House investigation into competition in digital markets and the bipartisan antitrust bills, some of which are quite similar to Warrens campaign proposals. Her allies and so-called acolytes have key, influential positions in the Biden administration. That sweeping executive order promoting competition was partially written by former Warren aide Bharat Ramamurti, who is now a deputy director of the National Economic Council. And Warren strongly advocated for Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter to head up the FTC and the DOJs antitrust division, respectively.

Personnel is policy, Warren said.

Personnel also isnt perfect. Bidens commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, criticized the European Unions efforts to rein in Big Tech at an event for pro-business lobbying group the Chamber of Commerce, saying they disproportionately targeted American businesses. Thats a message the Biden administration seemed to echo in its endorsement of Americas antitrust bills. Warren has sent two letters to Raimondo since (neither answered) asking who shes talking to in Big Tech and their lobbying groups.

It is not the job of the Secretary of Commerce to echo the lobbyists talking points on behalf of Big Tech, Warren said.

Other appointments dont have the tools they need to do the job they want to do. Khan has a clear vision for how to approach antitrust in Big Tech (and beyond), and how to re-shape the FTC to carry it out. But shes only had a few months in her tenure with the majority Democratic votes. Commissioner Rohit Chopra (another big Warren ally) left the FTC to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last fall. Republicans have held up his replacements confirmation for seven months and counting.

We are entirely committed to getting the FTC commissioner through, Warren said. And I understand the urgency of the moment on that. With an FTC that is divided two-two, were not getting the work done over at the FTC that we need.

Even a gridlocked FTC has been able to do some things. Lockheed Martin and Nvidia abandoned their acquisition plans when the FTC sued to block them. Khan and Kanter announced they would be rethinking merger guidelines over the next year. When Chopra was still on the commission, it was able to successfully re-file its lawsuit against Meta. But the FTC didnt challenge Amazons merger with MGM. Microsoft and Google have announced huge mergers of their own. They dont seem too worried that Khans FTC will be able to stop them. And while the DOJ is believed to be preparing to go after Googles ad tech business, it also recently approved Discoverys $43 billion merger with WarnerMedia. The Microsoft, Google, and Discovery acquisitions, by the way, would all be prohibited under Warrens bill.

But Warrens legislation isnt what were likely to get. Those would be the Open App Markets Act and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. The first bill would force Apple and Google to open their devices up to alternate app stores and payment systems. The second would forbid Big Tech companies from preferencing their own products on their platforms. Amazon wouldnt be able to give its Basics line special placement on its Marketplace and Google wouldnt be able to give its restaurant rankings special placement on its search page.

While we wait for Democratic leaders in the House and Senate to give those antitrust bills a floor vote, Big Tech companies are doing everything they can to defeat them. Theyve spent record amounts of money on lobbying and tried to take their case against the bills to small businesses and the American people. Theyve bankrolled their own advocacy groups. Sen. Ted Cruz said that Apple CEO Tim Cook personally called him about the Open App Markets Act the night before it was voted out of the Judiciary committee (Cruz voted for the bill to advance). Some moderate Democrats, especially Californias lawmakers, are openly opposed to the bills, making cooperation (and votes) from Republicans especially important.

Warren says Congress had a lot of essential issues on its plate to tackle, and thats caused some of the delay. But shes still frustrated that Congress hasnt taken up antitrust as quickly as it could. Not just this session, either.

Much of this work should have been done 15 years ago, before the concentration was as bad as it is, she said.

Warrens bill has been introduced in the Senate, with a companion version in the House. Its got several cosponsors, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, and Richard Blumenthal, and Reps. Katie Porter (a former Warren student), Mondaire Jones, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

But none of them are Republicans, who balk at both the prospect of giving government agencies any authority and appearing to agree with Warren on anything. The incremental and targeted approach of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who headed up the antitrust bills in the Senate, is different from Warrens. Its also the approach that will get the bipartisan support needed to pass anything now.

So will the Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act become law in this Congress? No, but thats probably not the point. The bill is a look at what could be, and maybe sooner than you think. When Warren first started talking about antitrust reform back in 2016, any change at all seemed far away at best. Its very close now. Dont be too surprised if we see bills influenced by Warrens vision become law in the future, or in the FTCs and DOJs revised merger guidelines.

She continues to be a major leader in articulating how we should think about concentrated market power and what we should do about it, Mitchell, of the ILSR, said. Shes continuing to lay out policy architecture that Im certain will be influential.

How influential does Warren think shes been? Her initial answer was a rare (for her), I dont know. But heres what she does know: These are good ideas and Im willing to get out there and fight for them.

Im willing to challenge both people in government and the big companies, Warren said. The status quo is letting giant companies rake off billions and billions of dollars in profits that, in competitive markets, would have stayed in the hands of consumers, employees, and small businesses. Today, theyre just getting shut out.

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Elizabeth Warrens plan to break up Big Tech and other mergers - Vox.com

The Canadian government this week introduced a law bill that would force the likes of Google and Facebook to pay Canadian news publishers for using their articles online.

The Online News Act was created to address what Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez described as a crisis in the country's media sector that has resulted in 451 outlets disappearing between 2008 and 2015. "We want to make sure that news outlets and journalists receive fair compensation for their work. We want to make sure that local independent news thrives in our country," Rodriguez said in a press statement.

Specifically, the proposed law seeks to ensure journalists and publishers get a fair cut of the revenues Big Tech banks from aggregating, distributing, sharing, or summarizing stories; the exact arrangements have yet to be hammered out.

Reactions to the bill from the tech companies concerned, specifically Google and Facebook, included a desire to cooperate with the Canadian government toward a satisfactory solution. Both said they were still reviewing the legislation.

Canada also took feedback from news organizations and journalists in the run up to the bill's announcement, and officials said "a large majority of submissions stressed the importance for action regarding declining revenues in the news sector." Respondents also said they were concerned about the power imbalance between news distributors and news organizations, though no consensus emerged on how the government should take action.

Rodriguez said the Canadian bill was inspired by Australia's News Media Bargaining Code, which has the same goal of charging news aggregators to use Australian content.

Like the Australian bill, the Canadian one gives power to news outlets to collectively bargain with online distributors to reach an equitable revenue sharing model. It includes provisions for developing a regulatory framework for arbitration when agreements can't be reached, and penalizes companies that violate the act, with the power to do so vested in the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

Not all news aggregation platforms would fall under the act. It specifically states that platforms with pre-existing agreements (which are still considered fair under the new act) and those which don't present a bargaining imbalance would be exempt, and news intermediaries can apply for exemption if additional criteria are met.

Ultimately, the goal is to "regulate digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contributing to its sustainability, including the sustainability of independent local news businesses," the act stated.

As opposed to the tech industry's reaction to the Australian law, its response to Canada has been downright timid. When Facebook heard of Australia's plans, it blocked the ability of users to share any Australian news articles on its social network before agreeing to un-ban the content and enter a peace pact with the government.

Google, meanwhile, said it would pull its search engine out of Australia if forced to pay for news, though has since invested nearly $1 billion dollars to expand staffing and grow its cloud operations in the country.

Australia's bill passed and went into effect on March 2, 2021, and neither Facebook nor Google have left Down Under. Now, with Canada planning to enact the same measures, neither appears to want to fight the prospect of paying more for news.

The Online News Act has only gone through its first reading in Canada's House of Commons, which still gives Big Tech and its allies time to decide if and how to contest it.

The rest is here:

Canada wants Big Tech to share its riches with news publishers - The Register

The metaverse has the potential to transform education in the classroom. Yet we must be careful how we allow Big Tech companies to intrude into our schools. Next-generation educational technology must not come at the cost of turning our children into nothing more than yet another data extraction source.

Before we allow the likes of Meta, Google and Tencent into the fabric of our education system, we need clear assurance that it will not simply be "business as usual." Before we let our children anywhere near the metaverse, we must be absolutely clear who is watching, and how.

In the next 10 years, the biggest development in education will be the introduction of the metaverse into everyday learning. Virtual Zoom classrooms have already become the norm thanks to the pandemic. What if instead of the teacher giving the lesson, it was a students' favorite celebrity beamed into their bedroom via the metaverse?

Historians are already working on projects to faithfully recreate locations from the past such as St. Andrews Cathedral and the lost Palace of Westminster which was burned down in 1834. Imagine a student having their next history lesson inside the Colosseum at Rome, or consider the implications of a student taking a front seat on the battlefield during the American Civil War; the metaverse could make all of this possible.

However, for all the opportunities for educational enrichment, the metaverse also presents a big threat to child safety.

In 2016, the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested data from millions of Facebook profiles without their users' consent. The firm would target users by inviting them to play free games either on Facebook or on a separate app. These games would then require users to log in and give their consent to share not just their data but that of their friends and mutual friends.

Once the data was compiled, Cambridge Analytica would then build psychological profiles of the users before targeting them with tailored political advertisements designed to persuade them to vote for the Leave Campaign or for Donald Trump in the U.S presidential election.

Facebook mounted a lengthy defense and claimed they weren't at fault. Following the scandal, many resigned themselves to the fact that Facebook's business model relied upon the selling of personal data and if too much regulation was brought in, the service would have to begin charging.

We know Generation Z shares a lot more online because they spend more time on the internet than their older peers. They are less risk-averse to how their data is shared despite them being the first generation to have their entire lives tracked digitally. Facebook's age limit is 13 though there are few checks to stop children younger than this from signing up.

So-called Web 3.0 and blockchain technologies promise to challenge this model by decentralizing the internet and allowing individuals to monetize their content and themselves without relying on a third party of their terms of service. In effect, this puts ownership at the forefront of Web 3.0. We can't be surprised, we live in a capitalist society; the internet is the biggest and most profitable marketplace to ever have existed.

However, we must exercise caution. The "free" business model of Web 2.0 gives schools the ability to interact with the entire canon of human knowledge online. However, this must not come at the cost of data harvesting, and contextual advertising that can warp the minds of our young people.

We must remember that in the metaverse, it will not only be possible to extract information of screen time and clicks. Our eye movements, body movements and even vital signs like heart rate could be tracked in order to form even more eerily accurate digital profiles of people. I sincerely hope that education will not fall prey to the model of surveillance capitalism.

We need a middle ground. The open-source spirit of the previous two decades should always be a given when it comes to education. However, we need to make sure that this doesn't come at the cost of privacy and data harvesting. One of the guiding principles of child welfare is the assumption that children cannot give consent until they are 16. The same principles should apply to their data online. It should remain inviolable until they fully understand the consequences of selling it.

The transformative potential of the metaverse for the classroom is groundbreaking. We must leverage these technologies for the benefit of our children. If we allow our children to become part of Big Tech's ravenous data harvesting business model, then we will only have ourselves to blame.

Leon Hady is the founder of Guide Education. He is an award winning headteacher and contributor to BBC News and The Independent.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Originally posted here:

The Metaverse is a Huge Opportunity for Education. Big Tech Must Not Ruin It | Opinion - Newsweek

WASHINGTON, April 6, 2022 The House of Representatives passed two bills Tuesday to incorporate maternity health concerns into broadband mapping and to improve coordination with spectrum, according to a press release.

The first bill, named the Data Mapping to Save Moms Lives Act, will incorporate maternal mortality and morbidity data into the Federal Communication Commissions health mapping platform to better understand how access to broadband can improve our countrys response to maternal challenges.

The second bill, called the Spectrum Coordination Act, will require the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the FCC to revamp and improve their efforts overseeing the use of the airwaves.

Both of these bills passed the Energy and Commerce Committee in November of last year, and now must go through the Senate.

Were proud of the work that went into these bills and look forward to them becoming law, said Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr., D-NJ, and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle, D-PA, in a joint statement.

The FCC and the NTIA, under new head Alan Davidson, have already committed to improving spectrum coordination in an announcement in February.

Twenty-eight members of Congress wrote a letter late last month to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack concerning the departments ReConnect program allowing providers to obtain funding during its third wave of applications for the same areas that are receiving funding through the Federal Communications Commissions Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.

Given the unprecedented amount of broadband funding that has now been appropriated through the [Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act], our concerns about duplication of Federal resources are magnified, the March 29 letter said.

Instead of dedicating valuable funding to completing the task of finally connecting unserved rural communities, the next round of ReConnect could direct a substantial amount of funding to areas that already have robust broadband service, the letter added.

The lawmakers recommend that federal departments and agencies work together to avoid duplication.

Concerns about duplicate funding is partly why the disbursement of money from the IIJA awaits accurate broadband maps from the FCC.

A day after it was revealed that SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, the social media company announced that the worlds richest man will sit on its board of directors.

On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the appointment of Musk in a tweet, saying, Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to use that he would bring great value to our Board.

Hes both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term, he added.

The announcement came a day after it was revealed that Musk, who was critical of free speech policies on the platform, paid $2.9 billion for Twitter stock.

Musk is to join Twitters 11-person board in a term that expires in 2024. He has agreed not to own more than 14.9 percent of Twitters stock or take over the company, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

Musk did not sign an agreement that stops him from influencing company policies, unlike other board members.

Originally posted here:

Russian Disinformation, Canadian Big Tech, WideOpenWest Sale, Broadband Emerging Leaders - BroadbandBreakfast.com

This, from the industry that loves to move fast and break things.

Amazon Prime is *incredibly* popular with Americans. How popular? There are more than 150 million members in the U.S, with many (most?) there to enjoy free* two-day shipping. Thats roughly equal to the number of Americans who VOTED in 2020. And Amazon is betting all 150 million will do almost anything to keep that free shipping including abandoning any pretense that they prefer to live in a free country that supports capitalism and free-market principles.

Dont Break Our Prime is a deeply cynical ad campaign thats being thrust onto your TVs and Internet space as pro-competition legislation makes its way through Congress. Amazons monopoly power has deeply hurt American small businesses for years and made Jeff Bezos so much money that his hobby is going to space but lately, the tech giants tactics at crushing competitors have kicked up a notch.

Amazons customer base is so large that many small companies *have* to sell products on their platform. Thats weird, because it makes Amazon both a fulfillment service *and* a retailer. There have long been accusations that Amazons data nerds study all these competitors on their platform, rip off their products, and then advantage Amazon brands when consumers search for items. More than accusations, actually. Congress recently made a criminal referral about this practice to the Department of Justice.

The kind, gentle term for this minus the sneaky data harvesting is self-preferencing. And yes, some supermarkets put their own brand of toilet paper on the best shelf, right there next to the Charmin. If there were a few dozen Amazon-like services out there, self-preferencing there wouldnt be so bad. But since Amazon has 150 MILLION U.S. MEMBERS on Prime, its deeply anti-competitive. Kind of like owning most of the gas refineries, and most of the gas trucks, and most of the gas stations.

So the U.S. Senate is considering legislation that would ban this practice of advantaging its own products over competitors. Both Democrats and Republicans support the idea.

Amazon has now come out swinging. As is tradition with such campaigns, it is not attacking the premise of the bill. Its hitting consumers in an emotional spot, with the message that given all these concerns about inflation, and supply chains, and the pandemic now would be a terrible time to lose Amazon Primes free shipping! Dont Break Our Prime!

What are the particulars of this argument? Please read up on it.Heres a position piece from Project Disco (?) which attempts to explain why Amazon NEEDS its anti-competitive behavior in order to provide two-day shipping. And heres a Wired piece that does a good job of debunking that press release.

It should be clear that this isnt about two-day shipping. Rather, Amazon is hoping the popularity of Prime gives it enough clout to beat back, or at least delay, reasonable efforts at reform.

This is just the tip of the spear, however. Tech industry lobbyists are using this Dont Break Our Tech model to defend the status quo in the face of various reform efforts. Google serves up the most self-serving links, rather than the best links, it has engaged in ad bid-rigging, its business has been called the biggest data breach of all time,but if Congress messes with that, maps wont work! Your privacy will be violated. Also, China will become more powerful!

These are emotionally compelling arguments; they just might work. But as you begin to see all these Dont Break Our messages, please keep something in mind. Silicon Valley invented the phrase move fast and break things. So its deeply ironic that Big Tech firms are suddenly afraid of trying new things that might break something.

The techlash is real. Human beings are realizing that for all the great gifts tech has given us, there are serious costs. The pendulum has swung too far. Big Tech companies arent the only source of trouble, but they are a good place to start. Tech companies are so large they dont really have to answer to anyone right now. Facebook paid a $5 billion fine for ignoring a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission anddidnt really change anything. Its time to draw some boundaries around the monoliths. As Harvards Francella Ochillo said to me in my recent docu-podcast, Defending Democracy from Big Tech, while we keep arguing about the details, these firms are making billions of dollars. We want techland to be free for competition. To do that, were going to have to break (up) a few things. So what? Were on iPhone 13. The beta version of tech reform might not be perfect. Thats shouldnt stop us. The cost of inaction is far too high. Im here for v2.0, and 3.0 and 13 pro! You should be, too.

*Free shipping isnt free, of course. Prime costs money! The cost is built into the products you buy. As with Uber, the price is being (temporarily) subsidized by investment money, which is another way of saying its a Ponzi scheme. Also, Amazon drivers live awful lives because of Prime. Theres all that cardboard. Free is never free.

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'Don't Break my Prime?' Actually, it's time to move fast and break....Big Tech bobsullivan.net - Bob Sullivan.net

With another pandemic winter behind us and the threat of omicron waning, workers are grabbing their briefcases and heading back to the office.

Kastle Systems, a property technology company, reports almost 62% of Austin metro offices were occupied as of March 30, a figure that jumped nearly 9% from the week before then. It's higher than what's seen in Dallas and Houston and even metros on the coast.

This return to the office in Austin and elsewhere is being driven in part by big tech.

For example, some Google employees returned to the office months ago. Last month, Google said it expected most workers to return to offices three days a week and have two days of remote work by this month.

Starting next week, Apple will ease out of remote work by starting a hybrid schedule that requires two in-office days weekly and tacks on another in late May.

Reporting from the Wall Street Journal noted that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other leadership at the company work from Hawaii, Cape Cod and Europe though workers made a return to the office on March 28.

This increased office activity means downtown Austin is bustling once again for office workers, influencers and people looking for entertainment. TikTokers are pointing to their favorite dining spots like the Fareground Food Hall. Castle Hill Fitness just brought back weekly workouts for yoga, dance and cardio. The Paramount Theatre is hosting a comedy festival this month while venues like ACL Live and Stubb's Bar-B-Q have regular shows slated for the spring and summer.

This liveliness is only the start. With tower announcements and leases from giants like Meta and TikTok pouring into downtown, there's bound to be even more activity in and outside the office in the coming months and years.

Sixth of Guadelupe will lease all 33 of its commercial floors to Facebook parent company Meta.

A February study from the Pew Research Center shows 60% feel less connected to their coworkers now, showing a want for back to office work. Still, a majority, 61%, say they are choosing not to go into their workplace.

Andrew Brodsky, a professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, says labor market conditions are favorable to employees at this point in time.

In the case employees don't want to return to the office, they can find a company that will allow remote work.

Part of what organizations are struggling with is that some employees really want to come back to the office because they like that collegiality, theyre much more productive in the office and other ones want to just continue working virtually, Brodsky said. So theres a little bit of conflict from two sides about how to remediate that.

Different incentives, such as Google reimbursing workers for a subscription to e-scooter maker Unagi or allowing hybrid schedules, could be part of the solution for companies to get employees back in the office and fill newly-leased buildings.

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Downtown Austin is looking like itself again as big tech returns to the office - Austonia

Chief sustainability officers are all the rage. Tech companies are hiring them left and right and holding them up as the human talismans of their commitment to fighting climate change, one (sometimes dubious) net zero goal at a time.

In some cases, CSOs have real power to bring companies in line with their climate ambitions. But in others, they are window dressing. To get at where CSOs are able to exact real change, we looked at eight major tech companies reporting structures and whether or not executive compensation is tied to meeting sustainability goals.

Giving a CSO a direct line to the CEO not only empowers them to actually make real changes to the way a business operates, it also sends a clear signal to the rest of the company that sustainability is a central part of the business plan and not an afterthought. According to a survey of CSOs by Deloitte and the Institute of International Finance, 32% report directly to the CEO, and 13% report to the head of marketing.

If youre reporting to the head of marketing and youre trying to influence someone in risk, youre pushing a boulder uphill. Theyre going to perceive what you do as a marketing campaign, when really youre aiming for strategic transformation, one of the surveyed CSOs told Deloitte.

In Tim Mohins view, the role of the CSO is changing rapidly. In the past, corporate sustainability used to be much more of a marketing issue, and now it sits more in the financial risk and business strategy side of things, according to Mohin, the CSO at carbon management startup Persefoni who has literally written the book on corporate sustainability. For a company to have a true commitment to sustainability, its CSO needs to understand how the business operates from a corporate risk and finance perspective, so that they can have the authority and credibility to make real change. Mohin believes its better for a CSO to start off with a solid background in business or product area expertise, then build in the ESG knowledge rather than working the other way around.

Kentaro Kawamori, Persefonis CEO, agrees with his CSOs assessment. Questions to ask of companies to really ascertain the strength of their commitments include whether or not theyre linking executive pay to decarbonization, if theyre hiring people with the right sustainability credentials or if, in Kawamoris words, theyre just putting a PR person into the job.

Here are the chief sustainability officers at some of the biggest tech companies were watching here at Protocol.

Who: Kate Brandt, chief sustainability officer

Background and responsibilities: Brandt leads sustainability across Googles worldwide operations, products and supply chain. According to a Google blog post, that means she coordinates with data centers, real estate and product teams to ensure the company capitalizes on opportunities to strategically advance sustainability. Before starting at Google in 2015, she was appointed by former President Barack Obama as the Federal Environmental Executive and was the U.S.s first Federal Chief Sustainability Officer, responsible for promoting sustainability across the federal government.

Reporting structure: Brandt reports to Ellen West, Googles vice president of Engagement within the office of the CFO, who in turn reports to CFO Ruth Porat. Brandt also reports in a dotted line to Urs Hlzle, Googles senior vice president for Technical Infrastructure.

Compensation: Google announced in a public disclosure that it is introducing a bonus program for members of its senior executive team that will be determined in part by performance supporting the companys ESG goals beginning this year.

Who: Lucas Joppa, chief environmental officer

Background and responsibilities: Joppa leads the development and execution of Microsofts sustainability strategy across its worldwide business. He has a Ph.D. in ecology and is a highly cited researcher. (He has an h-index of 45 for those of you academic nerds keeping count.) Before this position, he was Microsofts first chief environmental scientist, founding the AI for Earth program.

Reporting structure: Joppa reports to Brad Smith, president and vice chair of Microsoft.

Compensation: Microsoft announced in 2021 that progress on sustainability goals is part of executive compensation. This is adding onto the practice the companys had since 2016 to tie a portion of executive pay to ESG measures, starting with diversity representation gains. This applies to members of the senior leadership team, including CEO Satya Nadella.

Who: Edward Palmieri, director of Global Sustainability

Background and responsibilities: Palmieri leads Metas global sustainability team of more than 30 professionals, who are responsible for developing and executing the companys strategy on environmental and responsible supply chain issues, according to his LinkedIn. Prior to this role, he was Metas associate general counsel focused on privacy issues. Prior to that, he was the deputy chief privacy officer at Sprint.

Reporting structure: Palmieri reports to Rachel Peterson, Metas vice president of Infrastructure.

Compensation: Executive compensation at Meta is not tied to sustainability goals, according to a Meta spokesperson.

Who: Kara Hurst, vice president and head of Worldwide Sustainability

Background and responsibilities: Hurst is responsible for executing the work of the Climate Pledge, sustainable operations and responsible supply chain management, among other things. Prior to Amazon, she was the CEO of the Sustainability Consortium, a nonprofit focused on making the consumer goods industry more sustainable. Before that, she was a vice president at BSR, a sustainable consulting firm.

Reporting structure: Hurst reports to Alicia Boler Davis, Amazons senior vice president of global customer fulfillment.

Compensation: Amazon does not explicitly link senior executive compensation to sustainability goals. In a 2021 proxy statement, the company explained that it does not tie cash or equity compensation to performance goals, stating, A performance goal assumes some level of success by a prescribed measure. But to have a culture that relentlessly pursues invention and is focused on building shareholder value, not just for the current year, but five, ten, or even twenty years from now, we must encourage experimentation and long-term thinking, which, by definition, means we do not know in advance what will work. We do not want employees to focus solely on short-term returns at the expense of long-term growth and innovation. That doesnt mean that shareholders havent tried to make the company tie compensation to climate targets. They just havent been successful.

Who: Emma Stewart, sustainability officer

Background and responsibilities: Stewart, who holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Management, is Netflixs first sustainability officer and is responsible for the companys climate and environmental strategy and execution. She oversees decarbonization efforts across Netflixs corporate and film and TV production operations, the latter which account for the majority of the companys direct emissions. She is also tasked with ensuring Netflixs film and TV content incorporates themes around sustainability. Productions and streaming account for 63% of the companys carbon footprint, while corporate emissions stand at 37%, according to its 2021 ESG report. (Other parts of Netflixs Scope 3 emissions tied to energy used by its viewers dwarf these other sources.) Prior to Netflix, Stewart led World Resources Institutes work on urban efficiency, climate and finance.

Reporting structure: Stewart reports to Netflixs CFO Spencer Neumann.

Compensation: Stewarts compensation is not tied to sustainability goals, according to a spokesperson, and executive pay at Netflix in general is designed to attract and retain outstanding performers, according to a company proxy statement.

Who: Lisa Jackson, vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives

Background and responsibilities: Jackson oversees the companys efforts to minimize its impact on the environment through renewable energy and energy efficiency, using greener materials, and inventing new ways to conserve precious resources, according to Apple. She also leads its $100 million Racial Equity and Justice initiative and is responsible for Apples education policy programs, product accessibility work and worldwide government affairs. Prior to Apple, she was the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Reporting structure: Jackson reports to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Compensation: Apples 2021 proxy statement confirmed that annual bonus payments for execs will increase or decrease by up to 10% depending on whether they meet so-called Apple Values. One of those values is a commitment to environmental protection.

Who: Suzanne DiBianca, chief impact officer and executive vice president of Corporate Relations

Background and responsibilities: DiBianca leads Salesforces stakeholder capitalism strategy, which includes the companys sustainability efforts, ESG strategy and reporting. Shes been at Salesforce for more than 20 years and was previously the co-founder and president of the Salesforce Foundation and Salesforce.org, which provides free or discounted licenses to Salesforce software for nonprofits, educational institutions and philanthropies.

Reporting structure: DiBianca reports to Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff.

Compensation: Salesforce recently announced that a portion of executive variable pay for executive vice presidents and above will be determined by four ESG measures, which for this fiscal year will focus on equality and sustainability. The sustainability measures are tied to reducing air travel emissions, as well as increasing spend with suppliers that have signed the companys Sustainability Exhibit, a procurement contract that aims to reduce its suppliers carbon emissions and align them with the 1.5-degree-Celsius target.

Who: Todd Brady, vice president of Global Public Affairs and chief sustainability officer

Background and responsibilities: The company created the CSO role within the past year. Brady sits within the manufacturing and supply chain organization of Intel. Hes an Intel lifer and has held a variety of leadership roles at the company, including environmental health and safety and product ecology and stewardship, as well as public affairs.

Reporting structure: Brady reports to Keyvan Esfarjani, the Executive Vice President and Chief Global Operations Officer at Intel.

This story was updated to include Netflix's most recent ESG report.

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These people lead sustainability within Big Tech. Here's how much power they actually have. - Protocol

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When it comes to influencing the national conversation, driving news coverage and letting people beat up on each other, Twitter punches way above its weight.

I used to say Twitter was the new AP, but thats far too limited a description. The loudest voices on the social media network may be liberal elites and other activists, but it is, as a certain richest man in the world says, the new public square.

And thats why the ideologically charged debate over Twitters obvious shortcomings is so crucial. The stakes are enormous.

My own feelings on the addictive appits vital, its fun, and too often a toxic sewerpale in comparison to the conservative anger against the Big Tech outlet. And many on the Right are downright excited that Elon Musk just bought himself a seat on the board.

A MOST DAMAGING LEAK: BIDEN WANTS TRUMP PROSECUTED

In becoming Twitters largest shareholder by buying 9 percent of its stock, for under $3 billion, Musk even got the CEO to praise him as the companys "intense critic." What management is hoping, of course, is that he doesnt mount a takeover bid.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk reacts at a post-launch news conference after the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., March 2, 2019. (REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo)

Former chief executive Jack Dorsey has admitted that the staff is left-leaning, and it isnt hard to decipher why conservatives feel dissed and shadow-banned.

Exhibit A, above all, is the permanent ban on Donald Trump. Congressional Republicans such as Lauren Boebert are already urging Musk to reinstate Trump, though at the moment he doesnt have the power to do so.

And then theres the outrageous decision in 2020 to ban any sharing of the New York Post report on Hunter Bidens laptopwhich Dorsey admitted was a mistake. The story has now belatedly been confirmed by The New York Times and The Washington Post. Now its deemed kosher for public discussion.

Conservatives, and others, also admire Musk as the entrepreneur who founded both Tesla and SpaceX.

Politicos Jack Shafer calls Musk "the anti-media media mogul. Most vanity press moguls praise the media. Musk mostly damns." Indeed, he loves to wage online warfare, but he also has a Trumpian knack for tweeting all kinds of thoughts, such as comparing Justin Trudeau to a certain 1930s German dictator, then adding, "An evolutionary asymmetry helpful to survive, but counterproductive when survival is not at stake."

Elon Musk declared hes "not perverted enough to be on CNN" as the liberal network struggles through a series of embarrassing scandals. (REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo)

The other night, acting like hes already in charge, Musk posted a poll asking users whether Twitter should allow them to edit their messages, which is now verboten.

Musk, who has 80 million followers, is promising big changes, and just last week he said Twitter is "failing to adhere to free speech principles," which "undermines democracy." Hes also asked, "Why is the traditional media such a relentless hatestream"?

That brings us to the key 280 characters or so. The liberal view, as reflected in a Washington Post news story, is that"some inside Twitter worry Musk may push Twitter in a libertarian direction, away from blocking or restricting accounts that cause social harm."

The conundrum, which Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg also regularly faces, is that many on the Left want more active content moderation to block lies, harassment and bullying. But many othersand not only left-wingersfear this leads to censorship and blatant bias based on amorphous standards.

BELATED SCOOPS: WHY 2 TOP NEWSPAPERS ARE FINALLY COVERING HUNTER BIDEN

For my money, Musk is the most interesting CEOand maybe the most interesting dudeon the planet. Who else is talking about living on Mars, challenged Vladimir Putin to physical combat over Ukraine, smoked dope with Joe Rogan, announced on "SNL" that he has Aspergers, and is the worlds richest person to boot? Not to mention that his girlfriend is Grimes, who drew flak for telling Vanity Fair that at times he "lives below the poverty line" and wouldnt buy her a new mattress.

FILE PHOTO: Tesla Inc. founder Elon Musk speaks in Hawthorne, California, U.S. December 18, 2018. (Robyn Beck/Pool via REUTERS//File Photo)

There may well be a personal motive in the Twitter move as well. Four years ago, Musk settled fraud charges with the SEC after tweeting that he was thinking of taking Tesla privatehe claimed it was a jokeand had to step down as chairman and obtain advance approval for tweets. Last month he went to court to scrap the settlement.

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If you want to get a sense of Musks political leanings, try this, from a (real) interview with the Babylon Bee:

"At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue."

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No wonder the anti-wokesters are rooting for the mercurial Musk.

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Why Elon Musk's Twitter move is supercharging the Big Tech debate - Fox News

Friday 08 April 2022 8:00 am

COULD you imagine a better name for someone making their mark out of being the Little Guy than Chris Smalls? Its a story ready-made for a Netflix series. So its curious its success has taken Amazon the company borne out of peddling cheap books by surprise.

Smalls is the leader of the tech giants very first union. After a relentless campaign complete with free doughnuts doled out at the nearby bus stop, the workers for his warehouse voted to unionise.

Amazon has made a matzah off of the backs of poorly-paid factory workers for years. Weve seen a handful of investigations into the working conditions and heard about the company spying on its staff to check if social-distancing rules were being broken.

The surprise for Amazon should be that it took this long. Incredibly, they are still playing catch-up.

The tech giant is reported to be hatching a plan to simply bury the problem by banning the word union and other key words compensation and slave labour on an internal social media app set to launch in the coming months.

If the idea was to boost employee satisfaction, this isnt it.

Tech giants are facing a reckoning on multiple fronts, but the responsibilities owed to their employees are often downgraded in favour of dealing with antitrust and transparency concerns.

In the UK, Uber drivers have been in a face-off with the tech platform over the shoddy amount of compensation they get per ride. Here, at least, a competitive market has benefited them. Even after a deal with the once all-powerful GMB Union, Uber has struggled to keep drivers on the platform.

Last year, I bore witness to an anecdote made possible by exceptional timing. Only moments after leaving an event hosted by Uber I heard two women complaining about how hard it was to get a ride lately. The friends refrain is now ubiquitous in Central London on a Saturday night: Ill try Bolt.

The unions failure to get their hooks into the staff of Big Tech is on one level, astonishing. Both their waning power and the fierce competition in these markets have protected Silicon Valley bosses from this particular assault. But this reprieve may be over.

Over the pandemic, the capitals streets became flooded with a kind of food ninja. The all-in-black, helmeted moped driver armed with a pizza box. For these drivers, speed is key. While they are not rewarded explicitly for speed, the quicker they deliver one order, the quicker they can get to the next and the more they earn. The same is true, of course, for taxi drivers. But where cabbies would have to deal with irate passengers in a jerky journey, food delivery drivers only have the integrity of a margherita to contend with.

The creation of super-fast grocery deliveries has put speed as the competitive factor. What happens if a moped drives into a toddler because they were trying to earn an extra 5 that hour? Their employer will be hauled in front of either a legal court or the one of public condemnation for creating an environment incentivising dangerous driving.

Tech companies have benefited from a race-to-the-bottom on prices, but now theyre struggling with employees pushing back against the complicated working conditions that are the corollary effect of those low prices. Unions are an age-old defence for workers. London can still be brought to a standstill by a handful of disgruntled tube drivers. So it shouldnt have taken a man with a name ready-made for being the Underdog for Amazon and its ilk to be alive to the threat.

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Big Tech's fast-and-dirty employment honeymoon is over as Amazon unionises - City A.M.