Category Archives: Big Tech

Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)

If youre reading Gizmodo, odds are youre aware Big Techs gotten itself into trouble before. But between brutal antitrust battles, a lengthening laundry list of lawsuits, and persistent privacy problems, even the most dogged observer can find it difficult to remember the contours of a specific scandal or pinpoint when, exactly, we started thinking about that specific problem with that social network. To that end, the newly formed Tech Oversight Project has devised a one-stop Wiki filled with enough Big Tech badness to clog up a Congressional hearing.

At its launch, the Big Tech Wiki features around 90 separate links to pages on a diverse assortment of topics and issues. Viewers, for example, can find entries explaining Metas lobbying efforts against antitrust legislation listed alongside a breakdown of Googles fraught relationship with the U.S. military. The Wiki also features pages dedicated to Big Tech Lying to Congress and Big Tech as The New Big Tobacco. Many of the titles sound like the Google searches of a worked-up tech critic.

Sacha Haworth, The Oversight Projects Executive Director, spoke exclusively with Gizmodo over the phone to explain the groups reasons for creating the Wiki.

The goal is to provide an encyclopedic reference for those who are trying to learn a bit more about the context and history of Big Tech. We also wanted to remind folks of their [Big Techs] behavior as monopoly powers, Haworth said.

Those spheres of influence include famous jockeying among social media companies and emerging tech but also includes lesser-known areas like fintech and the automotive industry, Haworth said. The organization hopes the Wiki will serve as a useful starting point of information for journalists, staffers working on legislation or general consumers looking to learn more about general Big Tech malfeasance.

In addition to the pages for broader topics and arguments, the Wiki features dozens of handy entries on tech terms, products, and legislative efforts. The creators included the names of lesser-known Big Tech lobbying groups like American Edge, which the Oversight Project describes as a dark-money astroturf group formed by Facebook in 2020 designed to combat potential federal regulations. The Wiki also features a listing calling out the group NetChoice for consistently speaking out against lawsuits potentially threatening Google, one of its clients. Those lesser-known players in Silicon Valleys orbit are poised to take on a more important role in the years to come now that the Internet Association, once the Big Techs primary unified lobbying arm, is officially dead.

The Tech Oversight Project launched earlier this year with the aim of using campaign-style initiatives to hold Big Tech accountable. So far, those efforts have included several reports detailing tech giants hypocrisy on issues like support for an open internet and others that criticized Alphabet, Apple, and Meta for reluctance to work with the U.S. military in developing next-generation artificial intelligence.

The group receives funding from eBay founder Pierre Omidyars left-of-center Omidyar Network and the Economic Security Project. Supporting new antitrust legislation making its way through the U.S. House and Senate sits at the top of the Oversight Projects list of policy goals, an agenda that shines through in the Wiki, with its repeated entries highlighting techs anti-competitive practices.

The Wiki also highlights four featured pages for anyone uninterested in clicking through the entire collection. Those featured pages, which can be interpreted as the Oversight Projects primary areas of interest include Google is a Monopoly, Facebook is a Monopoly, Big Tech and National Security, and Big Tech spreading Anti-Vax.

Haworth said the Wiki, though lengthy, is still far from exhaustive and that the organization plans to continue updating the Wiki with more entries and new information moving forward.

We tried to present this information in a straightforward manner so anyone learning about this for the first or hundredth time could use it as a resource, Haworth said. No matter what your issue with Big Tech is, theres something for everyone here.

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Watchdog Group Publishes Encyclopedia of All the Nasty Things Big Tech Has Done - Gizmodo

Consumers recognize the negative impact Big Tech companies have on the main street shops and businesses that our country was built around.

Raul Lopez| Guest Columnist

Tennessee Voices: A conversation with Raul Lopez

Men of Valor Executive Director Raul Lopez spoke with Tennessean Opinion Editor David Plazas.

Nashville Tennessean

Americans have become increasingly concerned about the monopolistic tendencies of big tech companies. Many of these large tech firms have taken unobstructed action to control our search platforms, limit consumer choice and restrict third-party access to leading digital marketplaces.

Americans are beginning to take notice.

Recent polling by the Washington Post found that 72% of internet users do not trust Facebook to responsibly handle their personal information. Another poll found that 68% of American adults say major tech companies have too much power and influence in todays economy.

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One way to restore trust between big tech and the general public is for Congress to beef up our countrys anti-competition laws, consumer data regulations and the ability for tech companies to suppress information, dictate consumer spending and search habits.

Big Tech has deliberately maneuvered themselves into monopolistic positions. Their rise to the top has left many in their wake, including many of Americas small businesses and the everyday consumer. In addition, big tech and social media platforms regularly silence or de-platform voices they disagree withincluding conservatives and people of faith.

Thankfully a bipartisan coalition of voices in Congress have finally decided enough is enough. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act is now in front of lawmakers.

Tennessee's very own Senator Marsha Blackburn who serves on both the Judiciary Committee and the Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee has been a trusted advocate on addressing big tech overreach.

More: Marsha Blackburn: Whats the key to keeping kids safe online? Big Tech bipartisanship. | Opinion

If enacted, this bill would create a series of updated rules and enforcement mechanisms to effectively regulate big techs anti-competitive practices;like unfair personal preference for a platforms products or services and obvious discrimination against other businesses and products.

The hope is that these common-sense regulations would act as a deterrent to big techs monopolistic behavior while also allowing small businesses to gain back a portion of the market share that has been taken from them.

Americas small business community is made up of a diverse, driven and resilient population of citizens. Citizens have relied on the prospect of the American Dream to support their families and communities.

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Big Techs actions have had a direct impact on the opportunity and viability to achieve success as a small business ownerespecially within Latino and other minority communities.

It is also no secret to the American consumer that these corporations have harmed the opportunity for the small business community to thrive. Consumers recognize the negative impact big tech companies have on the main street shops and businesses that our country was built around.

Many rural and small towns that used to be the hub of American innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit now appear desolate, having suffered from anti-competitive practices and unfair treatment by big tech.

For the good of the American small business community, the American consumer, the livelihood of millions and for the continued prospect of the American dream, it is now more urgent than ever for our leaders in Congress to address the monopolistic tendencies and overreach of big tech. The rules and regulations that govern big tech must be rewritten to provide actual protections for consumers and business owners alike.

Raul Lopez is the executive director for Latinos for Tennessee, an organization committed to promoting faith, family, freedom and fiscal responsibility.

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Local Tennessee officials need to regulate big tech and protect our small businesses | Opinion - Tennessean

It is often said that people are entitled to their opinions. But are they really? Do you have a God-given right to believe that torture is good, or that the moon landings were faked? To the extent that opinions are not merely secret possessions but dispositions to act a certain way in society, they are everyones business. So, no, you dont have an inalienable right to your dumb opinion.

Unfortunately, that was also the position of the Spanish Inquisition and witch-hunters, who dreamed up vicious ways of attempting to uncover inner impiety. So these days we generally separate opinions (or beliefs) from the expression of them. Expression can be regulated, in the case of incitement to hatred, for example, but opinion is sacrosanct. Its a fundamental freedom, but one that is everywhere under attack.

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So begins human rights lawyer Susie Alegres fascinating book, which sketches a brief history of legal freedoms from the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi onwards, and explains the conceptual struggles behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights announced in 1948. That text defends rights to freedom of both thought and opinion: some delegates understood thought to mean religious belief, while others considered it superfluous as an addition to opinion; it was the Soviets who insisted it remain, out of respect for the heroes and martyrs of science.

But if opinion was merely a private, internal affair, why did its freedom need protecting at all? This was, Alegre explains, at the behest of the British, who insisted that in totalitarian countries, opinions were definitely controlled by careful restriction of the sources of information, stressing that interference could happen even before an opinion was formed. The Brits, having had a Propaganda Bureau and then a Ministry of Information, as well as birthing a certain George Orwell, knew what they were talking about.

If propaganda undermines the right to freedom of opinion, however, then we are all in trouble. And this is one of the main arguments that Alegre pursues. The modern online environment, polluted as it is by fake news, violates our freedom to form reliable thoughts. On this view, the people who stormed the US Capitol in January 2021, in the apparently sincere belief that the presidential election had been stolen by Joe Biden, were victims; and so are the millions of ordinary Russians who believe what the state-controlled media is telling them about the so-called special operation in Ukraine.

The online world, Alegre argues, harms our freedoms in many other ways, and is of a piece with the cruel history she sketches of phrenology, lobotomies and CIA mind-control experiments. It was recently reported that Nadine Dorries, the UK minister for culture wars, stormed into a meeting with Microsoft and demanded to know when they were going to get rid of algorithms: not really possible for a software company, since all computer programs are made of algorithms, but the story does reflect an increasing public suspicion of the ways machines are being used to manipulate us.

Researchers in facial-recognition AI systems, for example, claim to be able to read political affiliation from a photograph; social-media companies analyse posts for indicators of personality traits; fitness trackers are attempting to move into mood-tracking; and fancy new brain-scanning lie detectors have been used by prosecutors in Indian courts, arguably infringing the right to avoid self-incrimination. Even if the claims for such technologies are so far overblown, they all represent novel attempts to intrude into what used to be a private mental space.

Here Alegre adroitly cites Nineteen Eighty-Four and its discussion of the lesser-discussed sibling of thoughtcrime, which Orwell called facecrime: It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in a public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide.

From facecrime to Facebook, and Orwells prolefeed (the rubbishy entertainment and spurious news which the Party handed out to the masses) to the Twitter feed, is a worryingly short distance. Its amusing that liking a Facebook page called Being Confused After Waking Up From Naps is a strong predictor of male heterosexuality, but its grimmer to learn that a leaked Facebook document boasted it was able to target moments when young people need a confidence boost on behalf of advertisers. Any and all information we feed into the social-media maw, Alegre notes, will be analysed to reveal psychological traits or fleeting states of mind that will, in turn, be used to manipulate our behaviour or to tell others how they should treat us. This is particularly egregious in the realm of behaviour-tracking targeted at children.

Whenever you hear tech companies paying lip-service to ethics, Alegre warns, you should be suspicious. You dont need to be much of a cynic to see why ethical guidelines may be more palatable to big tech than actual regulation. Ethics are optional. Legal remedies, then, are required. The headline remedy she suggests is quite thrillingly radical: an outright ban on surveillance advertising the kind dependent on trackers and cookies, that beams out your personal data to hundreds of companies whenever you load a webpage. We never asked for it, and we dont like it. Just make it illegal, along with other key parts of the digital panopticon, such as emotion analysis tech in public places, or Amazons voice-activated Alexa devices. When my daughter asked why she couldnt have an Alexa like her friends, Alegre relates heroically, I told her that it is because Alexa steals your dreams and sells them.

We have all sleepwalked into this gloomy fairytale, and its time to wake up. There remain questions, though, about how far regulation can or should go, since it seems impossible to police all the manifold threats to our cognitive autonomy that Alegre identifies. Some, indeed, are hardly peculiar to the digital age at all. If inferences can be drawn about your inner world based on your appearance, she writes, it does not matter what you actually think or feel. Your freedom to be who you are is curtailed by societys judgment of you. Maybe so, but this is lamentably inevitable if you want to live in society at all.

If it should be impermissible, meanwhile, for governments, companies or people to seek to manipulate our opinions, on the grounds that this violates our right to freedom of thought, one wonders what kind of persuasive speech would still be allowed in such a brave new world. Arent arguments of all kinds political, scientific, artistic attempts to manipulate the opinions of others? How do we sort the good kind of manipulation from the bad? A benevolent philosopher-king would no doubt figure this out for us, but in the regrettable absence of one it doesnt seem likely that many people would want to leave it up to a legal authority, whether or not its called a Ministry of Truth.

Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds by Susie Alegre is published by Atlantic (20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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Freedom to Think by Susie Alegre review the big tech threat to free thought - The Guardian

A HOUSE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE MOONBy Rebecca Scherm

Rebecca Scherms second novel, A House Between the Earth and the Moon, centers on Parallaxis, a space station designed by the tech corporation Sensus as an orbital luxury condo for billionaires. Sensus has hired a team of world-class scientists to construct the station and make it habitable long-term. In return, they are told, they and their families can live there, safe from the catastrophic climate change that is devastating society below. They are not told they will also be experimental subjects; Sensus is using the station to test Views, its new, top-secret surveillance and behavioral modification system.

The novel makes us feel the terror of a 2030s Earth where extreme weather events are so common that whole cities routinely burn to the ground and even the affluent have become nomadic, always one step ahead of natural disasters. Mass deaths are a staple of daily news, and privacy is a thing of the past, available only by going off the grid and doing without the evacuation alerts that would warn of approaching floods or wildfires. We share the desperation of Alex, whose work on carbon-extracting algae has become a race against time: He wanted to save his planet, and with each disastrous year, his work became more necessary and less possible.

Just as frightening is the depiction of space-station life, where all necessities must be flown in from a dying Earth, and weight restrictions mean that everyone wears combo clothes that come in packets the size of a deck of cards. The fake sky has a glitching panel; walls meant to have a pearlescent glow look like packing material; the air is kept safe by technology still in the process of development. The inhabitants also live at the mercy of Sensus, and the reader never loses the sense of how precarious this existence is, and how terrifying it is to depend on the whims of corporate bosses for ones survival. In that regard, it feels a lot like life on Earth in 2022.

The authors clear, relatable voice and close personal focus make the book compulsively readable. Scherm spends as much time on the questions of whether Alex will be able to heal his marriage and how his teenage daughter will deal with a cyber-bullying incident as she does on global catastrophe. Plotlines proliferate at all levels. One of the most absorbing sections concerns Rachel Son, one of the co-founders (with her sister, Katherine) of Sensus, who is sent to the space station by her dominating sibling despite her abject terror, and rapidly disintegrates from anxiety and alienation.

The approach does have pitfalls, however. It ultimately feels peculiar that the Son sisters are treated primarily as people with ordinary problems, even as they test and implement Views, their mass mind-control project. The Views plotline, meanwhile, is shown from the perspective of a lonely data scientist, Tess, who is given access to the visual feeds of Parallaxis employees and their families and becomes consumed by voyeurism, living vicariously through her subjects to the point of stalking. Scherm manages the difficult trick of making us care about these essentially unsympathetic characters, but neglects to explain how Views is meant to work, or why hiring Tess to watch their subjects go to the bathroom would be of use. Similar weaknesses undercut the novels ending, which focuses on individual emotions in a way that feels increasingly trivial, while failing to offer a convincing resolution to the political and environmental crises.

But in general, A House Between the Earth and the Moon is a thought-provoking and absorbing read. By deftly combining the subjects of big tech and climate change, Scherm has created a world that fully embodies the anxiety and indignity of our times.

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In a Climate Crisis, the Future Relies Alarmingly on Big Tech - The New York Times

NEW YORK, March 25 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 ended higher on Friday as financial shares rose after the benchmark Treasury yield jumped to its highest level in nearly three years.

The Nasdaq ended lower, and tech and other big growth names mostly declined, but they finished off session lows following a late-session rally.

For the week, the Nasdaq and S&P 500 registered solid gains of 2% and 1.8%, respectively, and the Dow was nominally higher with a 0.3% rise.

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The S&P 500 financials sector (.SPSY) gave the S&P 500 its biggest boost on Friday, rising 1.3%, while technology (.SPLRCT) and consumer discretionary (.SPLRCD) sectors were the only two major sectors to end lower on the day.

Investors are assessing how aggressive the Federal Reserve will be as it tightens policy after Fed Chair Jerome Powell this week said that the central bank needed to move "expeditiously" to combat high inflation and raised the possibility of a 50-basis-point hike in rates in May.

U.S. Treasury yields jumped on Friday, with the benchmark 10-year note surging to nearly three-year highs, as the market grappled with high inflation and a Federal Reserve that could easily spark a downturn as it aggressively tightens policy.

Ten-year Treasury yields were last at 2.492% after earlier rising above 2.50% for the first time since May 2019.

The equity market is pricing in a higher rate environment, said Keith Buchanan, portfolio manager at Globalt Investments in Atlanta.

That is causing bank stocks to outperform, while "adding more pressure to the riskier elements of the market," such as growth shares, he said.

Higher borrowing rates benefit banks, while higher rates are a negative for tech and growth stocks, whose valuations rely more heavily on future cash flows.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 153.3 points, or 0.44%, to 34,861.24, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 22.9 points, or 0.51%, to 4,543.06 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 22.54 points, or 0.16%, to 14,169.30.

Shares of growth companies like Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) eased after leading a Wall Street rebound earlier this week.

The utilities sector (.SPLRCU) also rose sharply, hitting a record high as investors favored defensive stocks with the Russia-Ukraine war still raging after a month.

The sector ended up 1.5% on the day and up 3.5% for the week, while the energy sector (.SPNY) ended up 2.3% on the day and jumped more than 7% for the week following sharp gains in oil prices.

Moscow signaled on Friday it was scaling back its ambitions in Ukraine to focus on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists. read more

Economists at Citibank are expecting four 50 basis points interest rate hikes from the Fed this year, joining other Wall Street banks in forecasting an aggressive tightening path against the backdrop of soaring inflation. read more

The U.S. central bank last week raised interest rates for the first time since 2018.

"The market's really macro driven," said Steve DeSanctis, small- and mid-capitalization equity strategist at Jefferies in New York. "Company fundamentals haven't really mattered."

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 11.92 billion shares, compared with the 14.28 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.08-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.40-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 57 new 52-week highs and five new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 73 new highs and 79 new lows.

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Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York, Devik Jain and Amruta Khandekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Marguerita Choy

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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S&P 500 ends higher with financials as Treasury yields jump - Reuters

'Barron's Roundtable' deputy editor explains the impact of regulations on Big Tech: 'there are potentially serious repercussions here'

The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to advance to a confirmation vote for President Biden's nominee to the Federal Trade Commission, privacy advocate and Georgetown University law professor Alvaro Bedoya.

The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee was deadlocked 14-14 on Bedoya's nomination, but the full Senate voted 51-50 on Wednesday with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie.

The U.S. Senate voted to move forward with Alvaro Bedoya's nomination to the FTC on Wednesday. (Georgetown Law)

If confirmed, Bedoya will give Democrats a majority at the FTC, which enforces federal consumer protection and antitrust laws.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT PROBING SUPPLY-CHAIN DISRUPTIONS, TARGETING COMPANIES EXPLOITING THE CRISIS TO CHARGE MORE

"Without Mr. Bedoya, the FTC and members are left handicapped and incapable of moving forward, so today's motion to discharge is a matter of immense importance and I hope all my colleagues who care about fighting inflation and price manipulation vote to proceed with Mr. Bedoya's nomination," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor before the vote.

Bedoya, the Director of Georgetown Laws Center on Privacy & Technology, previously worked as chief counsel to a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy.

His research has focused on consumer privacy, facial recognition technology, and surveillance.

FTC Commissioner nominee Lina M. Khan testifies during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 21, 2021. (Graeme Jennings/Pool via REUTERS)

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The current chair of the FTC, Lina Khan, is an outspoken critic of Big Tech and is spearheading the agency's antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that the social media giant suppressed competition with a "buy or bury" strategy.

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U.S. Senate votes to move forward with Alvaro Bedoya's nomination to the FTC - Fox Business

My first faculty position was at Old Dominion University in southern Virginia, where I saw racism up close and personal. Southern Virginia, being a very conservative place, was also a tough environment in which to be openly gay, so I moved, eventually ending up at the University of Connecticut.

I had a very difficult experience with harassment in Connecticut that impacted my mental and physical health. That experience politicized me and led me to be more outspoken about LGBTQ+ issues. I then moved to the California Institute of Techology, which felt to me like a nirvana for both science and inclusivity. It was a place where my husband and I were welcomed and loved. However, the funding for my position was not secure, so I had to move again.

At the University of Wisconsin, where I went next, I had supportive colleagues, but I still experienced discriminatory treatment that distracted me from science and came with high legal expenses. It was because of these experiences that I decided to start being more open about discussing sexual and gender identity issues. But the real turning point for me in taking an active advocacy role was the 2012 APS March Meeting.

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Physics - Seeking Diversity When Faced with Adversity - Physics

Europes one-two punch

The European Union has just agreed on one of the worlds most far-reaching laws to rein in the power of tech companies.

The Digital Markets Act is aimed at stopping the largest tech platforms from using their interlocking services and considerable resources to box in users and squeeze emerging rivals. It could potentially reshape app stores, online advertising, e-commerce, messaging services and other everyday digital tools, in Europe and beyond.

The law will apply to gatekeeper platforms with a market value of more than 75 billion euros, or about $83 billion, which include Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft. Violators of the law, which could take effect later this year, would face significant fines.

The law is part of a one-two punch by European regulators. As early as next month, the E.U. is expected to reach agreement on a law that would force social media companies to police their platforms more aggressively. And these come after the bloc put the worlds strictest rules to protect peoples online data into effect in 2018. (Thats why nearly every website has pop-ups asking you for permission to track your data.)

Here are some of the potential effects of the new law:

Apple would have to allow alternative app stores for the first time, and companies like Spotify and Epic Games would be allowed to use alternative billing systems inside their apps. Google said this week that it would begin to allow this for some apps.

Speaking of Google, it would have to give Android users options to use other email and search services on handsets in Europe (similar to what it has already been doing in response to a previous E.U. antitrust judgment).

Amazon would be barred from using data collected from outside sellers on its services so that it could offer competing products, a practice that is the subject of a separate E.U. antitrust investigation.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, would be required to offer a way for users of rival services like Signal or Telegram to exchange messages with somebody using WhatsApp.

The largest sellers of online ads, Meta and Google, would be limited from offering targeted ads without consent.

Europes new rules are a preview of whats to come elsewhere, since its often easier for companies to apply the standards across their entire operations rather than in one geography. Still, companies are expected to look for ways to diminish the impact of the new law through the courts.

The U.S. charges four Russians with a vast infrastructure cyberattack. The group, which includes three officials in Moscows domestic intelligence agency, is accused of hacking energy companies around the world including a nuclear power plant in Kansas from 2014 to 2018.

China Eastern Airlines grounds hundreds of Boeing jets. The airline temporarily halted the use of 223 737-800 planes, the model involved in the crash of a flight that carried 132 people; no survivors have yet been found. Adding to the mystery surrounding the cause of the crash is that both pilots were among the most experienced in China.

Uber reaches a truce with Big Taxi in New York City. The ride-hailing giant will team up with two taxi companies, Curb and CMT, to let New Yorkers order a yellow cab via the Uber app. The deal will help both sides of a longtime rivalry recover from the pandemic.

Instacart cuts its valuation by nearly 40 percent. The privately held grocery delivery app told employees it now valued itself at $24 billion, down from $39 billion. The move reflects the battering tech companies have faced in the public markets, but could also give employees more upside with newly issued stock-based compensation.

A campaign to let unvaccinated athletes play in New York succeeds. Executives at pro sports teams, including the Mets owner Steve Cohen, paid tens of thousands to lobby city and state officials on changing Covid protocols, The Times reports. Mayor Eric Adams of New York City announced the end of the ban yesterday, though he insisted lobbying played no role.

The U.S. and E.U. announced a deal that would see more American natural gas shipped to Europe, as the Continent tries to reduce its reliance on Russian energy. European officials rejected Russias demand that it pay for gas in rubles.

President Biden said that Russia should be removed from the G20 (and if not, Ukraine should be allowed to attend the groups meetings).

The Russian crew of a $700-million yacht docked in Italy, which U.S. officials say could be owned by Vladimir Putin, abruptly left their jobs. Goldman Sachs paused new business with a private equity firm whose money comes mostly from sanctioned Russian oligarchs, one of whom described to The Financial Times what his life is like under the restrictions.

The U.S. will accept up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine, but its underresourced immigration system is already struggling to process tens of thousands of Afghans.

For up-to-the-minute news, see The Timess live blog and updated maps.

Last month, Jennifer Sey quit a top job at Levis, giving up a potential shot at C.E.O., via an essay that was widely circulated online. In the post, Sey said the clothing company where she had worked for more than 20 years warned her against expressing her personal views on social media, broadcast media and elsewhere, that closing schools during the pandemic made kids worse off. She quit instead of negotiating an exit package, which attracted even more attention to her situation.

March 25, 2022, 3:52 p.m. ET

Her departure raises issues like whether corporations can control the personal speech of their employees and the politics tied to speaking on certain platforms, like Fox News opinion shows, The Timess Sapna Maheshwari reports.

Seys tweets went beyond just questioning school closings. She criticized guidance from the C.D.C. and accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of fearmongering. This came as Levis was trying to set Covid safety protocols in its stores and manage potential pushback from customers and employees. Outside of the company, Seys comments drew threats of boycotts. Levis said that its social media guidelines allow employees to speak out online, as long as they are mindful of the companys reputation.

Sey said her speech should have been protected, since she was speaking as a concerned mother, not a corporate executive. She argued she was subject to viewpoint discrimination by Levis, and said there hadnt been a problem in the past when she spoke in support of liberal causes.

Complicating matters is that executives are expected to speak out more often on social issues these days. A private employer can impose restrictions on employees speech or conduct, said Sarah Sobieraj, a professor of sociology at Tufts University. The key issue here is where that boundary lies and what about when youre not working.

Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, on criticism of the leagues stance on human rights in China. The former N.B.A. player Enes Kanter Freedom has taken the league to task for continuing to do business in the country, and said that he is being blackballed by teams as a result.

Mark Sirower has been scrutinizing deals for decades, and finding mostly failures. His 1997 book The Synergy Trap examined the major mergers of the 1980s, deeming two-thirds of them ultimately unsuccessful.

In a new follow-up with his Deloitte colleague Jeffery Weirens, The Synergy Solution, they examine more than 1,000 deals spanning 24 years, worth over $5 trillion with similarly dismal results. Yet dealmaking is hotter than ever. Sirower talked to DealBook about this moment in mergers. The interview has been edited and condensed.

Whats happening in M.&A.?

Its staggering by any historical standard. Were at all-time record highs. In 2021 we had a huge uptick in the value and volume of deals. The value went up roughly 60 percent, to $5.5 trillion. The volume went up 26 percent, to over 60,000 transactions. This is the number that really got me the number of big deals. Deals over $1 billion doubled in 2021, so 2 percent of deals made up over 65 percent of the value.

How should we interpret these numbers?

This is the fourth merger wave Ive seen. When we get to this part of the wave, companies tend to be reactive if theyre unprepared. Companies that werent doing deals start doing them, or companies that have been acquisitive now start doing more or bigger deals, and at near-all-time-high market valuations.

Why such enthusiasm?

One of the things weve learned over time is that M.&A. is highly correlated with rising stock markets. Its partly optimism, thinking it is going to go on forever.

Whats different about this wave?

In the 80s and 90s, it was still pretty much a U.S.-dominated market. Now its very much a global market. U.S. targets last year represented less than half of the total deal value.

Given the pandemic, war and supply chain strains, will the globalization trend end?

The data doesnt bear it out. I thought when Covid hit it was just going to crush our business. And it didnt.

Deals

SoftBank is said to be seeking a valuation of at least $60 billion for the chip maker Arm in its U.S. market debut; Goldman Sachs is likely to lead the I.P.O. (Bloomberg, Reuters)

Bed Bath & Beyond is said to be near a deal with the activist investor Ryan Cohen to add three new directors. (Bloomberg)

Venture capitalists are so eager to invest in crypto companies that theyre willing to forego customary board seats. (FT)

Policy

Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, has reportedly described a much smaller version of President Bidens $3.5 trillion climate and social spending bill that he would accept. (Axios)

Text messages show that Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed President Donald Trumps chief of staff to pursue efforts to overturn the 2020 election. (NYT)

New York State prosecutors charged a former party producer with laundering $2.7 million in Bitcoin for criminals between 2018 and 2021. (NYT)

Best of the rest

Ned Johnson, who transformed Fidelity into an investment-management giant, died on Wednesday. He was 91. (NYT)

Irate Google employees pressed executives about pay and performance reviews at a recent internal town hall. Some also appear particularly unhappy with the company taking away heated bidets at California offices. (CNBC, Protocol)

The podcast host Joe Rogan called activist Big Tech employees lunatics. (NY Post)

As People Go Back to Offices, Competition Heats Up for Parking Spots (WSJ)

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A Big Swing at Big Tech - The New York Times

SYDNEY, March 21 (Reuters) - Australia's media regulator will be able to force internet companies to share data about how they have handled misinformation and disinformation under new laws that will bolster government efforts to rein in Big Tech.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will also be able to enforce an internet industry code on uncooperative platforms, the government said on Monday, joining others around the world seeking to reduce the spread of harmful falsehoods online.

The planned laws are a response to an ACMA investigation that found four-fifths of Australian adults had experienced misinformation about COVID-19 and 76% thought online platforms should do more to cut the amount of false and misleading content online.

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The laws broadly align with efforts by Europe to curb damaging online content, which are due to take effect by the end of 2022, although the European Union has said it wants even tougher measures to stop disinformation given some of the output from Russian state-owned media during the invasion of Ukraine. read more

"Digital platforms must take responsibility for what is on their sites and take action when harmful or misleading content appears," Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said in a statement.

Australians were most likely to see misinformation on larger services like Meta Platforms's Facebook (FB.O) and Twitter Inc (TWTR.N), the ACMA said.

False narratives typically started with "highly emotive and engaging posts within small online conspiracy groups" and were "amplified by international influencers, local public figures, and by coverage in the media", it added.

The authority also noted that disinformation, which involves intentionally spreading false information to influence politics or sow discord, was continuing to target Australians. Facebook had removed four disinformation campaigns in Australia from 2019 to 2020, it said.

It said conspiracy groups often urged people to join smaller platforms with looser moderation policies, like Telegram. If those platforms rejected industry-set content guidelines "they may present a higher risk to the Australian community", the ACMA said.

The crackdown adds another element to the ruling conservative government's assertion that it has taken a big stick approach to tech giants, as it faces an election that is due by May that most polls suggest it will lose.

Fletcher said the new powers for the regulator would be introduced to parliament in late 2022, meaning it would likely be up to the current opposition Labor party to shepherd them through if the government loses the election.

A spokesperson for Labor's shadow communications minister, Michelle Rowland, told Reuters the opposition supported the expanded powers but the government had taken too long to introduce them since they were recommended in 2019.

DIGI, an Australian industry body representing Facebook, Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google, Twitter and video site TikTok, said it supported the recommendations and noted it had already set up a system to process complaints about misinformation.

Register

Reporting by Byron Kaye; editing by Jane Wardell, Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Australia to make Big Tech hand over misinformation data - Reuters

Lawmakers across the country are increasingly looking for ways to crack down on the likes of Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and others, with claims that the platforms employ addictive social media algorithms and exploit children. Last week, legislators in California and Minnesota made strides on proposed legislation that would hold companies accountable for the toll their platforms take on young peoples mental health. The bills coincide with calls in Washington to implement meaningful oversight of Big Tech to help keep kids safe.

The California bill would let parents sue companies that dont take steps to avoid addicting children. The proposal is the first of its kind in the U.S. and the most aggressive state-level effort to rein in Big Tech over its use of algorithmic tools that draw on childrens personal data to generate recommendations and other techniques intended to increase their engagement. It would hold social platforms legally accountable for features that are designed to be addictive to children, such as like buttons and endless scroll. Violators could face civil penalties of up to $25,000 per child or damages that could include $1,000 or more per child in a class-action suit, according to the University of San Diego School of Law Childrens Advocacy Institute, a co-sponsor of the bill.

Still, if passed, this type of liability law likely wouldnt be very successful at reigning in Big Tech, says Abbey Stemler, an associate professor of business law and ethics at Indiana University who specializes in internet law, regulatory theory, and Big Tech data. This law isnt really saying anything, she tells TIME. Its too vague to actually be actionable.

Dubbed the Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act, the proposal was advanced in the California Assembly on March 15 by a bipartisan pair of lawmakers, Republican Jordan Cunningham of Paso Robles and Democrat Buffy Wicks of Oakland, with support from the Childrens Advocacy Institute. Cunningham told the Los Angeles Times that some of these companies intentionally design their apps to keep children coming back for more. He asks: Who should pay the social cost of this? Should it be borne by the schools and the parents and the kids, or should it be borne in part by the companies that profited from creating these products?

Californias bill came on the same day that another state, Minnesota, made strides on another measure aimed at protecting young people from social media. A state committee voted to advance a proposed law that would prohibit social media platforms from using algorithms to recommend content to anyone under the age of 18. The states House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee will now vote on the measure on March 22. If passed, companies would be liable for damages and a civil penalty of $1,000 for each violation of the law. The bill would require anyone operating a social media platform with more than one million users to require that algorithm functions be turned off for accounts owned by anyone under the age of 18, the bill summary reads.

While these types of proposals are intended to force social platforms to bear some responsibility for the damages inflicted by their algorithms, Stemler says a more effective strategy would be to enact measures that address companies ability to access the data that fuels those algorithms in the first place.

The reason why algorithms work is because they suck in as much data as possible about what these young people are doing, she says. And once they have that data, they can use it. So instead of saying, Hey, dont create addictive systems, we really should be focused on [preventing platforms from] learning that data. The easiest way to do that is just to limit access to the data itself.

Another bill put forth by Cunningham and Wick in February, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, takes a similar angle. The proposal would restrict social platforms collection of childrens personal and location data.

Congress has also moved forward with federal legislation designed to help reduce the dangers that kids face online. In February, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn introduced the Kids Online Safety Act, a bipartisan measure that provides kids and their parents with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of algorithmic recommendations (platforms would be required to enable the strongest settings by default).

The push for these regulatory efforts is driven by continued fallout over leaked company documents from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. Those documents showed that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, downplayed its own research on the harmful effects of its platforms on young peopleissues that included eating disorders, depression, suicidal thoughts, and more. This led to a series of Congressional hearings and growing calls for social medias biggest players to face accountability for how they keep young users scrolling through content for as long as possible.

Features that encourage endless scrolling are among the most harmful to young people, according to the companys own research. Aspects of Instagram exacerbate each other to create a perfect storm, one report leaked by Haugen read.

The algorithmic recommendation systems used by popular video platforms like TikTok and YouTube have also drawn criticism. The New York Times reported in December that the inner workings of TikToks algorithm were leaked by a source who was disturbed by the apps push toward sad content that could induce self-harm.

As state and federal efforts grow, Stemler says its crucial that lawmakers get it rightand fast.

My concern for this generations mental health is serious, she says. There are deep problems coming from the pandemic and isolation tech has become the way that young people interact with the world.

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Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com.

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States Could Let Parents Sue Big Tech for Addicting Kids. Here's What That Really Means. - TIME