Category Archives: Big Tech

Stocks capped another wobbly day of trading on Wall Street with more gains Thursday, as strength in technology and healthcare companies outweighed a pullback elsewhere in the market.

The Standard & Poors 500 index eked out a 0.3% gain, good enough for its third straight all-time high. The benchmark index managed to end higher despite a majority of its companies closing lower. Gains for several big technology stocks, including Apple, countered weakness in chipmakers, industrial firms and energy companies. Treasury yields rose and crude oil prices fell.

Stocks wobbled between small gains and losses for much of the day in quiet trading as investors weighed a mix of new economic data showing jobless claims fell last week and inflation at the wholesale level jumped more than expected last month.

The market is a little sleepy today, said Greg Bassuk, chief executive of Axs Investments. Investors are looking to hang their hat on some outsized economic data that can give more certainty around the extent to which the economy is opening up.

The S&P 500 rose 13.13 points to 4,460.83. The Dow Jones industrial average also recovered from an early slide to gain 14.88 points, or less than 0.1%, closing at 35,499.85. The blue-chip index also set its third record high in three days.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq added 51.13 points, or 0.3%, to close at 14,816.26. Small-company stocks fell, dragging the Russell 2000 index down 6.27 points, or 0.3%, to 2,244.07.

Investors worked through a mixed picture of economic data Thursday. The Labor Department said that jobless claims fell to 375,000 from 387,000 the previous week, another sign that the job market is healing from the pandemic.

At the same time, inflation at the wholesale level jumped to a higher-than-expected 1% in July, matching the rise from the previous month and dimming hopes that the upward trajectory of prices would begin to slow. The producer price index has risen a record 7.8% over the last 12 months. Thats the largest one-year increase in a series going back to 2010.

Much of the increase is coming from services, such as airline travel. Airline ticket prices are especially high as the industry tries to recover from the pandemic-forced slump in travel. Other areas are starting to ease up, though, with food costs falling for the first time since December.

Investors have been particularly concerned about inflation for several months, despite assurances from the Federal Reserve and other officials that any inflation would be temporary and a result of the economy recovering. Bond yields have risen sharply in the last week on those concerns, with the 10-year Treasury note trading at 1.37%, up from 1.34% the day before.

The hopes for a continued recovery in the jobs market and concerns about inflation are hovering over the market as investors try to gauge the pace of economic growth after a sharp increase earlier in the year. Analysts expect the economy to grow at a slower pace as it moves past the pandemic and the sharp comparisons between 2021 and 2020.

We dont have a different economy than what we had going into the pandemic, said Kimberly Woody, senior portfolio manager at Globalt. Once you get rid of the comparisons and you cross the anniversary of the fourth quarter, youre right back at the same economy you had before.

Big Tech companies added to the S&P 500s gains Thursday. Apple rose 2.1% and Adobe gained 1.3%, while chipmakers Micron Technology fell 6.4% and Lam Research slid 4.1% for some of the biggest declines in the index.

Investors also bid up shares in companies that reported better-than-expected quarterly results. Organon & Co. jumped 11.9% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after the companys earnings and revenue topped Wall Streets forecasts. Dillards also got a boost from its latest quarterly report card, rising 5.1%.

Walt Disney Co. rose 5.1% in after-hours trading after the media giant returned to profitability in its most recent quarter as reopened theme parks sent its revenue higher.

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Stocks end higher on Wall Street as Big Tech climbs - Los Angeles Times

After back-to-back-to-back record closes for the Dow DJIA, +0.04% and S&P 500 SPX, +0.16%, investors might be asking whats next?

Anyone suffering from triskaidekaphobia the fear of the number 13 or friggatriskaidekaphobia, fear of actual Friday 13th, might want to start their weekends early as were cruising through the first one since November 2020.

But in fact, the last two such Fridays in March and November 2020 produced 9.3% and 1.4% respective gains for the S&P 500, notes LPL Financials chief market strategist Ryan Detrick in a blog post. Black cats and broken mirrors might be scary on this day, but stocks shouldnt be, he said.

That said, August and September are historically dicey months for investors, Detrick adds.

Its also shaping up to be a bull market for the ages, possibly the fastest to double off the lows since the 1940s, Detrick said. As of Thursdays close, the S&P 500 was 98.79% above its 2020 bear market low of 2,237.40 hit Monday, March 23, 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

All that bullishness does worry some. That brings us to our call of the day from John Kosar, chief market strategist at Asbury Research, who said whether or not the S&P 500 gets an overdue correction depends on large tech.

The traditional market leaders during a normal, healthy bull market semiconductors, technology and small cap have for the most part been inconsistent leaders in 2021. And the only two that have actually led at times semis and tech have been passing that mantel back and forth like they dont want it, Kosar told clients in a post.

He lays things out in a series of charts looking at the performance of the Nasdaq-100 NDX, +0.32%. The first shows how the index has been tested and thus far rebounding from its 21-day moving average (DMA), for the fourth time since rising above it on May 24.

His next chart (lower panel) shows daily total net assests invested in the Invesco QQQ exchange traded fund QQQ, +0.35%, which tracks the Nasdaq-100, testing their 21-DMA from above. As the chart shows, those assets have been above that DMA since May 24, which points to monthly expansion, a trend that has driven a 12% rise in techs.

In his last chart, the strategist shows that since Aug. 10, the QQQ has moved to a trend of monthly relative underperformance versus the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF SPY, +0.18%. The red highlights on the left point to a similar trend for QQQ versus the S&P 500 ETF between April 26 and May 24, which coincided with an 8% fall in QQQ and 8% decline in the Nasdaq-100.

In summary, his first two charts are bullish, showing an advance for big tech is intact, but Chart 3 warns of downside to come.

A decline below NDX 14,974, and/or a new trend of monthly contraction in the total net assets invested in QQQ, would confirm this and suggest that a Tactical correction has begun in this market-leading index, said Kosar.

Opinion:The ultimate bull case for the stock market: It keeps making new highs

Data revealed import prices cooled off in July, with the University of Michigans preliminary consumer sentiment index for August still to come.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration late Thursday authorized an extra COVID-19 shot for those with compromised immune systems, adding to the emergency-use authorizations for the Pfizer PFE, +2.62% and Moderna MRNA, -0.42% COVID-19 vaccines.

Asia stocks came under pressure Friday, with some fingers pointing at a potential blow to supply chains after China shut down the Meishan Terminal of the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port over a COVID-19 case. Its the worlds biggest by tonnage shipped. Import prices also surged in South Korea.

Disney DIS, +1.00% reported its strongest sales and profit since before the pandemic late Thursday, as theme park business boomed and 116 million new subscribers were added to its streaming service. Shares are up.

ContextLogic WISH shares are slumping after the parent of e-commerce site Wish reported slowing demand for products and less activity on its platforms. Airbnb shares ABNB are down after the lodging-booking company reported blowout earnings, but didnt give specific guidance. DoorDash DASH, +3.50% is taking a hit after record orders and order volume from the online food-ordering group, but a weak forward outlook.

Teslas TSLA, -0.70% chief executive officer Elon Musk will on Friday host a leading candidate to replace German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the electric car makers work-in-progress car and battery factory.

Amazon Studios AMZN, -0.29% will move filming of its Lord of the Rings TV series to the U.K., despite New Zealand offering up extra subsidies.

U.S. stocks opened mostly higher, with the Dow and S&P 500 hitting intraday records near Fridays open, and the pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 SXXP, +0.21% looking at its 10th straight win. But oil CL00, -1.53% BRN00, -0.48% was slipping after COVID-19-related demand warnings from the International Energy Agency and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Return to old-fashioned farming proves a runaway success for vinyards and olive groves in Spains Andalusia region.

The White Sox outslugged the Yankees in Iowas Field of Dreams baseball game that seemed cheesy at times, but maybe what we didnt even know we needed.

What happens when a woman mourning her mothers death reaches out on Twitter:

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The S&P 500 is nearly 99% above its March 2020 low. These 3 big-tech charts will tell you if things are about to unravel - MarketWatch

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK A bipartisan bill in the Senate that targets Big Tech was introduced Wednesday with app stores run by Apple and Google as top targets for action, and theres movement in the House as well. But a Washington, D.C. think tank is warning that the House package approved by the Judiciary Committee poses a threat to small businesses.

An analysis by the Data Catalyst Institute finds that the House bills will cause havoc and collateral damage. The group assigned the bills a C-minus grade.

Congress is threatening to upend a century of antitrust precedent in their crusade against the tech companies that saved millions of small businesses during the pandemic and power millions more during our recovery, said Connected Commerce Council (3C) President Jake Ward. 3C sponsored the study.

Good news for Epic? Senate bill targets Apple, Google app store dominance

From the White House to the Federal Trade Commission to the halls of Congress, extremist antitrust policies wont solve competition problems, but will instead create mountains of new problems for the small businesses policymakers claim they are protecting, Ward added.

The bills are intended to enhance antitrust enforcement and restore competition online. They include:

Ending Platform Monopolies Act American Choice and Innovation Online Act Platform Competition and Opportunity Act of 2021 Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act of 2021

We appreciate the Committees goals, but this so-called Populist Antitrust (also known as Hipster Antitrust) legislation is broadly written and would have many unintended consequences. We are particularly concerned with the bills impacts on small businesses, the authors of the DCI report say.

3C warns that the legislation would impact digital tools and services provided to small businesses by Google, Amazon, Facebook and others.

The proposed bills would make for a more volatile and uncertain business environment for small businesses. If Members of Congress are serious about helping Main Street businesses, they should talk to small business owners about what they need instead of forcing game-changing regulations on them that no one wants, Ward. explained.

The full analysis can be read online.

3C describes itself as a non-profit membership organization with a single goal: to promote small businesses access to digital technologies and tools.

DCI says it is a research organization working to inform and shape policies that provide both meaningful protection and promote economic and social good.

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Big Tech antitrust legislation will hit small business too, think tank warns - WRAL Tech Wire

Image: Getty Images

Three United States senators have introduced a Bill they have labelled as a breakthrough blow against "big tech bullying".

The Open App Markets Act, introduced by Democrats Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar, and Republican Marsha Blackburn, specifically targets Apple and Google and their respective app stores.

The senators said the Bill aims to set fair, clear, and enforceable rules to protect competition and strengthen consumer protections within the app market.

In a statement, the trio said Apple and Google have gatekeeper control of the two dominant mobile operating systems. They said their respective app stores allow them to exclusively dictate the terms of the app market, inhibiting competition and restricting consumer choice.

Blumenthal expects the legislation will "tear down" coercive anticompetitive walls in the app economy, giving consumers more choices and offering smaller startups a fighting chance.

"For years, Apple and Google have squashed competitors and kept consumers in the dark -- pocketing hefty windfalls while acting as supposedly benevolent gatekeepers of this multibillion-dollar market," he said, referring to the Bill as a "breakthrough blow against big tech bullying".

"This bipartisan Bill will help break these tech giants' ironclad grip, open the app economy to new competitors, and give mobile users more control over their own devices."

The move follows testimony provided during the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee probe that highlighted the alleged gatekeeper control the two major players have in stifling competition in the app store market.

See also: New antitrust legislation targets Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

The new Bill, the senators said, would protect developers' rights to tell consumers about lower prices and offer competitive pricing; protect sideloading of apps; open up competitive avenues for startup apps, third party app stores, and payment services; make it possible for developers to offer new experiences that take advantage of consumer device features; give consumers more control over their devices; prevent app stores from disadvantaging developers; and set safeguards to continue to protect privacy, security, and safety of consumers.

"Apple and Google want to prevent developers and consumers from using third-party app stores that would threaten their bottom line," Blackburn added. "Their anticompetitive conduct is a direct affront to a free and fair marketplace. Senator Blumenthal, Klobuchar, and I are committed to ensuring US consumers and small businesses are not punished by Big Tech dominance."

Klobuchar added that competition was critical for protecting small businesses and consumers, spurring innovation, and promoting economic equity.

"But as mobile technologies have become essential to our daily lives, it has become clear that a few gatekeepers control the app marketplace, wielding incredible power over which apps consumers can access. This raises serious competition concerns," she said.

"By establishing new rules for app stores, this legislation levels the playing field and is an important step forward in ensuring an innovative and competitive app marketplace."

Lawmakers in the United Kingdom and Australia are among the other jurisdictions also probing the alleged anticompetitive practices of the two major players, but both Apple and Google have respectively denied the claims their app store practices stifle competition.

Apple rejected the characterisation of the App Store being the most dominant app marketplace, telling an Australian watchdog that other options existed for iOS users, such as going to a website. It believes that there is a healthy, competitive market.

Meanwhile, Google said previously that the launch of Android, as the "first truly open and comprehensive mobile platform", disrupted and opened up the "stagnant mobile industry" by lowering barriers to entry and expansion and creating choice at every platform level.

"We built Android to create more choices in mobile technology. Today, anyone, including our competitors, can customise and build devices with the Android operating system -- for free," Google senior director of public policy Wilson White added last month.

Following the announcement of the Bill, Epic Games lauded the proposed outlawing of certain contractual obligations that app developers are forced to accept from major app stores, saying the Bill targets the issues at the core of its case.

"Apple and Google's anticompetitive app store conduct is in clear violation of existing antitrust law, which is why Epic brought litigation against them," Epic Games VP of public policy Corie Wright said.

"The introduction of this Bill is an important milestone in the continued fight for fairer digital platforms. Its passage would enable developers to seek injunctions for violations of the Act, which will help level the playing field for small companies standing up to monopolists who are abusing their market power.

"This will make it easier for developers of all sizes to challenge these harmful practices and seek relief from retaliation, be it during litigation or simply because they dared speak up."

Epic Games has beenembroiled in a legal stoushwith both Apple and Google, with allegations of competition restrictions in payment processing and app distribution headlining the claims.

Drain the App Store swamp: Elect an independent third party

It's time for a new third-party, truly independent app store -- one not tied to an existing player -- so that developers and end-users can determine their own fates.

States bring antitrust suit against Google over Play Store

Attorneys general from 36 states and Washington, DC is suing Google over its management of the popular app store.

Tim Cook defends App Store: 'If Apple is a gatekeeper, we just opened the gate wider'

Apple CEO Tim Cook hits back at criticism of the company's App Store business practices.

Tinder publisher swipes left on Apple's claims of thriving app store competition

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Match Group, and even Huawei have weighed in on the ACCC's probe into app marketplaces.

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US Bill introduced to curb 'big tech bullying' in the app store space - ZDNet

Healthy competition can be a good thing, and that also rings true amongst big tech firmsfuel for a trading opportunity in the Direxion Daily Dow Jones Internet Bull 3X Shares (WEBL).

The growing importance of cloud computing prowess is already sparking legal battles between two of the biggest and brightest in tech.

Microsoft has protested the National Security Agencys (NSA) decision to award a lucrative cloud-computing contract to Amazon, a Business Insider report said. Microsoft filed the protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal agency tasked with probing government spending decisions. It came after the NSA gave Amazon Web Services the deal, Nextgov reported, citing the protest documents.

Amazon versus Microsoft has been an ongoing battle as both vie for position as top dog in the ever-growing cloud computing industry. As those two duke it out, traders can seize opportunities for growth in WEBL.

The new protest filing comes after years of wrangling between two tech giants over the DoDs Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, the Business Insider report added. In 2019, the DoD granted Microsoft the $10 billion contract, which Amazon argued former President Trump had improperly influenced through his public criticisms of former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Amazon is also WEBLs biggest holding, so any advancements to improve or scale is cloud computing business further is a win-win for the triple-leveraged fund. WEBL seeks daily investment results equal to 300% of the daily performance of the Dow Jones Internet Composite Index.

ETF traders looking for a specific play to leverage a drop-off in cloud computing can look to the Direxion Daily Cloud Computing Bear 2X Shares (CLDL).

CLDL seeks 200% of the inverse (or opposite) of the daily performance of the Indxx USA Cloud Computing Index. The fund, under normal circumstances, invests in swap agreements, futures contracts, short positions, or other financial instruments that, in combination, provide inverse (opposite) or short leveraged exposure to the index equal to at least 80% of the funds net assets (plus borrowing for investment purposes).

For more news and information, visit the Leveraged & Inverse Channel.

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Where Will Competition in Big Tech Lead Investors? - ETF Trends

Part of the reason the company has focused its initial efforts on Canada is that the nation has large amounts of survey data in the public domain, including narrative field reports, timeworn geologic maps, geochemical data on drill hole samples, airborne magnetic and electromagnetic survey data, lidar readings, and satellite imagery spanning many decades of exploration.

We have a system where we can ingest all this data and store it in standard formats, quality-control all of the data, make it searchable, and be able to programmatically access it, Goldman says.

Once it has compiled all the available information for a site, KoBolds team explores the data using machine learning. The company might, for instance, build a model to predict which parts of ore deposits have the highest concentrations of cobalt, or create a new geologic map of a region showing all the different rock types and fault structures. It can add new data to these models as its collected, allowing KoBold to adaptively change its exploration strategy almost in real time, Goldman says.

GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

KoBold has already used insights from machine-learning models to acquire its Canadian mining claims and develop its field programs. Its partnership with Stanfords Center for Earth Resources Forecasting, under way since February, adds an additional layer of analytics to the mix in the form of an AI decision agent that can map out an entire exploration plan.

Stanford geoscientist Jef Caers, who is overseeing the collaboration, explains that this digital decision-maker quantifies the uncertainty in KoBolds model results and then designs a data collection plan to sequentially reduce that uncertainty. Like a chess player trying to win a game in as few moves as possible, the AI will aim to help KoBold reach a decision about a prospect with minimal wasted effortwhether that decision is to drill in a particular spot or walk away.

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The big tech quest to find the metals needed for the energy overhaul - MIT Technology Review

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In the fall of 1998, Susan Wojcicki had just turned 30 years old and was working at the marketing department of some big company in the Bay Area. Wojcicki was hardly a failure. She had a college degree and a job. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that anyone who knew her at the time thought she was going to become rich and powerful someday. But things change fast.

In one of those amazing windfalls of good fortune, these great movies about Wojcicki rented her garage to the two guys who founded Google. And voila. Twenty-three years later, she's worth more than half a billion dollars and runs YouTube, the largest digital platform in the world.

We tell you this not to attack Susan Wojcickis life story, good luck is a great thing, but simply to remind you that many of the people now in charge of your life have no relevant qualifications to justify the power they now hold. They just fell into it, as people do.

SKYNEWS AUSTRALIA ANCHOR SLAMS YOUTUBE FOR MOST EXTREME CANCELATION OF FREE SPEECH IMAGINABLE

What's infuriating is that they won't admit this. They pretend that the control they wield is part of the natural order of things somehow, that they deserve it, that theyre God. Most of them forget that not so long ago they worked in the marketing department. Susan Wojcicki announced that she plans to censor any information about COVID that she doesn't like, even if that information has been posted by physicians who are treating COVID.

SUSANWOJCICKI: But then we also talk about removing information that is problematic, of course, anything that is medically unsubstantiated to people saying like take vitamin C, you know, take turmeric, like those oral will cure you. Those are examples of things that would be a violation of our policy. Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy. And so remove is another really important part of our policy.

CNN BRIAN STELTER:So you're not just putting in the truth next to the lie, you're taking the lie down. That's a pretty aggressive approach.

Where do they learn to go up in tone on the last syllable? But yes, as the eunuch just told you, that's a pretty aggressive approach, that's for sure. To restate: Susan Wojcicki has no medical background at all. She's not a doctor. She's not a researcher. She's hardly an eminent epidemiologist. In fact, Susan Wojcickis main contribution to science is drawing the doodles that appear on Google's homepage. True, she's from the marketing department.

In no sane country would Susan Wojcicki be in charge of determining what constitutes problematic medical disinformation. And certainly, in no sane country would she be allowed to silence physicians who are treating the virus.

But because of the way our system is structured, Wojcicki is certainly allowed to do that, and so she is. This week Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who, by the way, is an actual doctor, not just some guy who rented his garage to Larry Page in the 90s, tried to make an obvious point. And it's this: The masks that you buy at the airport in order to comply with federal law will not keep you from getting COVID.

Rand Paul was not just guessing about this, the science is very clear, no honest person will deny that. But Susan Wojcicki doesn't think you should know that because that'll make you harder to control. So she pulled Rand Paul's video from YouTube. Here's part of what she tried to censor.

SARA CARTER WANS OF BIG TECH'S GROWING DOMINANCE: THIS IS A MOVEMENT TOWARD FACISM

RAND PAUL: Most of the masks you get over the counter don't work, they don't prevent infection, saying cloth masks work when they don't actually risk lives, as someone may choose to care for a loved one with COVID while only wearing a cloth mask.

Oh, so controversial disinformation, you can't say that. But wait, before they repainted the slogans on the side of the barn, pretty much everyone was saying just that. "The typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not really effective in keeping out the virus, which is small enough to pass through material." Where's that from? It's from an email that Tony Fauci sent just last year. In fact, just last week, Joe Biden's former COVID adviser said the very same thing.

DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM:We know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out. Either you're breathing out or you're breathing in. And in fact, if you're in the upper Midwest right now, anybody who's wearing their face cloth covering can tell you they can smell all the smoke that we're still getting.

If you could smell the smoke, you can get COVID. Got it. The point is there was nothing kooky or inaccurate about Rand Paul's video on masks. It was true. People who know what they're talking about agree with it, including the people in charge of our COVID response.

But it was censored anyway. And the fact that YouTube did censor it anyway is a scandal. It's one of many such scandals playing out in our country right now.

Now, you'd think the media might be on this story. You'd imagine that people who make their living on the First Amendment would defend it and lead the charge against censorship. But no, just the opposite in this bewildering time. Those people encourage censorship. They're out there in public begging the tech companies to suppress news and information to make certain the public never sees it. Doing that makes them feel powerful and protects their monopoly. So now, they're attacking Rand Paul.

We've gone on and on and on, you're not shocked you see this sort of thing so often, you can't be shocked by it anymore. But some perspective: Three years ago, this was a free country. Now it feels like everything that we hear has been written by a committee at the propaganda ministry downtown.

What's the long-term effect? Pretty soon no one's going to believe anything ever again. And that shouldn't shock you because censorship is always counterproductive. It doesn't work. People know they are being lied to, so they tune it out.

The rollout of the vaccines, for example, earlier this year was so heavy-handed, so Soviet, that you've got to wonder how many people it scared away. We would definitely have a higher vaccination rate if they just treated us like adults, but they can't because they don't think we're adults.

Obviously, this can't continue. You cannot have a self-governing country in which people aren't allowed to read what they want, a free press is not an optional feature of a democracy. It's the center of democracy. That's obvious. It's written down in our founding documents. It's always been obvious.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO: REBOOTING BIG TECH - HERE'S HOW WE START CHIPPING AWAY AT THEIR UNLIMITED POWER

So for years now, we have been waiting for the big legacy media outlets - NBC News, CNN, The New York Times - to wake up and recall that they must oppose censorship. It's their duty. It's why they exist. So as much as we criticize them, we've assumed at some point they'll recall that.

But no, that's not going to happen. Let's be honest, they're not going to oppose censorship. They benefit from it. So what's our option? The rest of us living in this country who don't have another passport, who are going to stay here.

We have to replace them. We need something new. Glenn Greenwald has been working on that for quite some time. He spent the last couple of months gathering a group of free thinkers and planning a move to an alternative video platform called Rumble. At Rumble, free speech is the whole point. They don't have censorship. You can say what you want like you lived in America. So naturally, the totalitarians are infuriated by this idea to challenge their hegemony.

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YouTube Susan Wojcicki from the marketing department has pulled down at least one video promoting Rumble. Jeff Bezos' newspaper attacked it. That means The New York Times will soon be on it, along with the Atlantic and The Daily Beast and all the rest of the praetorian guard. Your job, ignore it. You know they are liars. They are frantically defending a system that no one believes in anymore.

If there's going to be a renaissance in journalism and we desperately need one, it will be led not by them, but by people like Glenn Greenwald.

This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the August 12, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

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Tucker Carlson: Mainstream media will never stand up to Big Tech's censorship - Fox News

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Every interaction we have with a piece of technology has been reduced to a data point. Every desire is a marketing opportunity, every banal conversation offers a wealth of consumer research, and every scrap of digital rights we forfeit along the way could be utilized to further diminish our privacy and lock us into a highly commodified ecosystem.

Yes, its possible that big tech rules our lives with a silicon fist, and that we have provided our full consent, allowing these means to become standardized business practice. In looking at the verbose legalese of infinite end-user license agreements (EULAs), we can know that we risk trading our privacy for convenience and funding the richest companies in the history of the world to do it.

But how did we get here where its never been more important to reclaim the right to our personal data? How did this become the new normal, and what exactly can we do about it now? Is it possible we can salvage our privacy and our digital freedom by leveraging blockchain technology? Does the advent of cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, decentralized finance (DeFi), and decentralized applications (DApps) eventually lead to the complete decentralization of the data that the oligopoly needs to survive?

Is blockchain the cure for our big-tech sickness?

The consumer becomes the consumed

The internet was supposed to be a democratizing force that enabled anyone to transact, communicate, share, and learn from one another regardless of where they are physically located in the world. Unfortunately, we made a devils bargain.

In exchange for the free services provided by big tech search, email, social, chat, video, entertainment, etc. we potentially gave up our privacy, accepting the risk of constant surveillance by technologys big brothers: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple.

We dont want to have to search too hard, or remember a host of different passwords, or have to figure out how to get our clock and our calendar synced up. We want to stay in touch with our friends and family, so some of us bend the knee to social networks and eagerly broadcast every single detail of our day because weve been tricked into thinking thats what human interaction amounts to these days.

The data were handing over in exchange for these free services can be used in deeply manipulative and exploitative ways that transcend cynical consumerist gain. Social networks are now believed to be used to undermine the integrity of democracies. Using the high-profile Cambridge Analytica scandal as an example, we can see how our data is potentially being used to sow social discord when power players need to influence political narratives and how some of the largest tech giants in the world may be complicit in the process.

Our data has been weaponized. Misinformation, propaganda, and the calculated polarization of civil discourse are potentially so pervasive that they can embolden home-spun terrorism, violence and hate crimes. Many become trapped within insular echo chambers of dopamine loops and pandering opinions that they may never emerge from.

Quick can you name Facebooks product? You are the product.

Can you name Facebooks customers? Advertisers.

A multi-billion-dollar industry has sprung out of nothing in the past decade that makes us its primary profit model. Its possible that some internet platforms are breaking the law but our culture sometimes champions corporate servility, and accountability is rare.

So how can we regain control and build a better tomorrow in which security and privacy matter once again?

A better future

Its time we eliminate the need for middlemen standing between our culture and our data. There are alternatives to these systems that are transparent and that are resistant to control, censorship, manipulation, and corporate greed. We must look to the emergent technologies that provide a universal, decentralized alternative to our tech-reliant lives.

You might forfeit ownership of your data once you tweet but can you imagine a social network that doesnt own all your posts and suck the data from them for its collection of advertisers?

With some blockchain-based solutions we dont have to worry about a centralized authority dictating who can say what. Decentralized apps can allow us to remain as anonymous as we desire and can allow users to control their data, their privacy, and their level of collaboration with the larger network on a case-by-case basis.

Under the hood, DApps can replace the role of large corporations with a new model of consensus. With consensus, a distributed network of users can agree on and update the state of any ledger. Anyone can download, verify and take part in updating the ledger, which opens up a whole new world of user-friendly business models.

Central to blockchains value proposition is the idea of trustless collaboration, the ability for businesses and individuals to exchange information and work together without having to establish a formal relationship first. Thanks to blockchain, humans can extend their networks far beyond their immediate domain and collaborate with partners from across the globe, without giving up any sensitive information.

In effect, decentralized applications can be used to realize a specific vision of the internet an information superhighway with equal rights, opportunity and access for all. When Tim Berners-Lee conceived of the World Wide Web in his office at CERN, perhaps he did not dare to dream that his creation would breed a Goliath that could capture and manipulate our attention the way big tech does today.

Democratizing power on the internet away from its corporate gatekeepers and toward independent communities contains the immense potential to humanize a technology that, at times, seems to have spiraled out of control.

Laurence Newman, co-founder of Coinmama, is a serial entrepreneur and a veteran in the Bitcoin space. After struggling to buy Bitcoin himself, Laurence set out to create a seamless, secure and engaging buying experience for one and all, and hence Coinmama was born. In addition to serving on its board of directors, Laurence heads up marketing and strategic partnerships at Coinmama and is passionate about educating the mass of newcomers about Bitcoin and its potential.

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Building the World of Decentralized Blockchain Solutions David to Big Techs Goliath - The Daily Hodl

This week in Washington IP events, both houses of Congress are mainly quiet this week except for an executive business meeting hosted by the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss a pair of bills, including one that would protect venue choices by state attorneys general who have brought antitrust actions against Big Tech firms like Google. Elsewhere, New America discusses efforts to build digital public infrastructure to address access concerns raised during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Atlantic Council explores advances in data collection and technological developments that can help the scientific community gain a better understanding of the worlds oceans to address social problems like climate change.

New America

Designing Accessible and Inclusive Digital Public Infrastructure

At 4:00 PM on Monday, online video webinar.

As of the time of this writing, the U.S. Senate was set to continue debate on a massive $1 trillion bill to finance various improvements to U.S. infrastructure, including about $65 billion that would be earmarked for grants to states for improving broadband Internet access in rural locales and for low-income households. Some commentators advocate for an even greater development of digital public infrastructure given our societys increased reliance on the Internet to reach government services during the COVID-19 pandemic, though others point out that most infrastructure developments during the Internet age and throughout U.S. history have relied on partnerships with private firms. This event will feature a discussion with a panel including Cecilia Muoz, Senior Advisor, New America; Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility Officer, Microsoft; Deon Woods-Bell, Senior Advisor, Global Policy, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Samantha Mack, Elections Language Assistance Compliance Manager, State of Alaska; Tomicah Tillemann, Executive Director, Digital Impact and Governance Initiative, New America; and moderated by Hila Levy, Fellow, Digital Impact and Governance Initiative, New America.

New America

Stretch Your Impact: Building Pathways Towards Tech for Good Careers

At 12:00 PM on Tuesday, online video webinar.

The Stretch Your Impact Summer Series, hosted by New America in partnership with the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center, explores various ways that university-level students with technology backgrounds can utilize their skills to positively impact society. This event will feature a discussion on building career pathways in public interest technologies featuring a trio of Ph.D. candidates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including Serena Booth, Tan Zhi Xuan and Willie Boag. This discussion will also be joined by Milo Phillips-Brown, Professor, Oxford University.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Trademark Basics Boot Camp, Module 2: Registration Process Overview

At 2:00 PM on Tuesday, online video webinar.

This workshop is the second module in the USPTOs eight-part Trademark Basics Boot Camp series, which is designed to teach the basics of trademark application and registration to small business owners and entrepreneurs who can benefit from trademark enforcement. Topics covered in this workshop include application workflow and timeline overviews as well as overviews on post-registration workflows.

Atlantic Council

The Future of Data, Oceans, and International Affairs

At 12:00 PM on Wednesday, online video webinar.

The vast ecosystems that thrive within the oceans of planet Earth are little understood by modern-day scientists but many recognize that a greater understanding of deep sea environments hold great promise for addressing many of societys deepest issues, such as confronting climate change as well as ensuring food security. This event, part of the Atlantic Councils GeoTech Hour series that explores how data advances and new technologies impact geopolitics, will discuss current gaps in oceanographic data and what the importance of filling those gaps will be for addressing current social problems. This event will feature a discussion with a panel including Thammy Evans, Nonresident Senior Fellow, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council; Horst Kremers, Secretary-General, Senior Engineer and Information Scientist, and Information Systems Strategy Advisor, RIMMA CoE; Eric Rasmussen, CEO, Infinitum Humanitarian Systems; Sahil Shah, Co-Founder and Director, Sustainable Seaweed; and moderated by David Bray, Ph.D., Director, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council.

Senate Committee on the Judiciary

Executive Business Meeting

At 9:00 AM on Thursday in 216 Hart Office Building.

On Thursday morning, the full Senate Judiciary Committee will convene an executive business meeting to discuss a pair of proposed pieces of legislation, including S. 1787, the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act. Introduced into the Senate in late May, this bill would amend Title 28 of U.S. Code to prevent the transfer of legal actions arising under the antitrust laws in which a state is a complainant. As a recent letter from the leadership of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee to the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts indicates, this bill is designed with antitrust suits against Big Tech giants, especially Google, in mind so that state prosecutors can continue their cases in the venue of their choosing and not have to bring antitrust arguments to a venue preferred by the defendant on a motion to transfer.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Wine & IP: Resources and Policy From the United States Department of Agriculture

At 4:00 PM on Thursday, online video webinar.

This latest installment of the Wine & IP series will focus on policies implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that can help wine producers expand their operations and enforce upon their IP rights covering their wine products. These wine producer resources include the USDAs Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) and how that program interfaces with the Wine Institute to make information available on better wine production practices and activities. Speakers at this event will include Sandi Dreisonstok, Senior Trade Advisor, USDA Foreign Agricultural Service; and Katherine Bedard, Director of International Public Policy, Wine Institute.

Image: Capitol BuildingRights acquired through AdobeStock.

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This Week in Washington IP: Protecting State Venue Choices in Big Tech Antitrust Lawsuits, Designing Accessible Digital Public Infrastructure, and...

During President Joe Bidens first six months in office, his administration has made a priority of revitalizing American alliances and intensifying scrutiny of the technology industry. In Europe, policymakers are also examining the influence of tech companies. These efforts on both sides of the Atlantic crystallized in June with the formation of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC), which Biden announced at a summit alongside his EU counterpart, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. This new body represents an opportunity for policymakers in the United States and Europe to strengthen efforts to improve the online information ecosystem. With politicians and antitrust investigators in both Washington and Brussels scrutinizing the market power of major tech companies, the TTC gives officials in the United States and Europe a venue to make sure that their respective efforts are aligned.

The TTC should be a catalyst for policy that works to govern the myriad information and content-related problems online and a venue for policymakers to answer pressing questions regarding how to regulate online ecosystems. Democracies will fail in their mandate to produce both safe and open communication spaces if they do not confront questions about what makes some types of content manipulation unacceptable while othersincluding influence operations carried out in democratic statesare embraced. The TTC ought serve as a springboard for resolving these problems and broader concerns around of informational manipulation, digital hate, and influence operations.

In 2016, Russia opened the worlds eyes to just how easy it is to use informational flows on social media platforms to undermine democratic politics. Since then, weve seen modest momentum in policy work to curb the panoply of information operations carried out by both state and non-state actors. On the U.S. side, both partisan and procedural gridlock have resulted in a lack of relevant federal legislation. Meanwhile, California, Colorado and Virginia have passed their own comprehensive data privacy laws. This state-to-state fragmentation of policy may pose problems should Washington finally decide to act. The EU has done comparatively better, but it still has a lot of work to do. In the absence of national reforms, platforms have stepped up their efforts to discover information operations on their systems. But while these companies are growing increasingly adept at discovering such operations, much work remains to be done to safeguard the integrity of online platforms. We need governmental policy that mandates transparency and continued action in this space.

On the upside, we are starting to see the beginnings of serious tech policy reform in both the United States and the EU. In the last month or so the U.S. House of Representatives has begun to develop a semblance of direction in its efforts to regulate Big Tech, with the introduction of five legislative proposals aimed at curbing power and corporate consolidation in the industry. Comparatively, the EU has taken a more robust approach to regulating the online information space, with the European Commission putting forward a number of promising policy proposals aimed at shaping the information space. The Digital Services Act (DSA) aims to get rid of illegal online content, such as hate speech or incitement to violence, by increasing platform liability for failures to remove such content, more regular reports and auditing, and improved cooperation between service providers and government and civil society. The EUs AI Act categorizes the artificial intelligence systems according to the risk they pose to online users and proposes to prohibit, among others, the systems used for user manipulation. Later in 2021, legislation on transparency in political advertising will be introduced, and the strengthened final form of the Code of Practice on Disinformation will be released.

Though European states are taking the initiative, there is still a need to tie their efforts to those in the United States. Given that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple are all U.S.-based, laws passed in the United States, in collaboration with efforts in the EU, are likely to have greater impact in correcting the myriad informational problems that currently exist online. But as transatlantic democracies come together to build a more democratic internet, they need clear, systematic, and solution-oriented principles to guide their policy generation. Too often, the debate around these issues returns to stale proposals. For instance, it is time that discussions about confronting disinformation move beyond everyones least favorite 26-word section of the Communications Decency ActSection 230. Policy action confronting digital informational problems must transcend any one law while considering both the functionality of the technology and the firms at the root of such issues. Moreover, lawmakers and companies practicing self-regulation have to consider underlying, associated, and long-term social problems. They should ask: How are the policies we create to address problems like disinformation online simultaneously working to repair our social fabric?

Recent progress in digital regulation has been accompanied by a range of setbacks. In recent weeks, a federal judge in the United States dismissed two anti-trust lawsuits against Facebook due to non-updated definitions of monopolies. Germanys Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), which seeks to respond to the threat of online disinformation, has been repeatedly assailed by detractors who feel it was rushed and consequently flawed. The majority of a similar law in France has been deemed unconstitutional by the countrys high court. While the strengths of the EUs DSA are grounded in what the Electronic Frontier Foundation called a bold, evidence based approach that prioritizes systematization of policy over event-driven panic, it still faces problems of scale, efficacy, applicability, and legality. Its success depends heavily upon broad access to data from social media companiessomething firms have had major issues facilitating for outside researchers.

The failures of laws in France, the fragmented policies of various U.S. states, and the lack of action at the federal level in the United States point to a lack of basic principles, grounded in empirical research, guiding these policies. Rushed and untested approaches hurt not only the digital platforms, but also users and the quality of the information space as such. Given these considerations, it is crucial that the TTC sets tangible principles aimed at guiding multi-sector, cross-platform efforts to manage the digital information ecosystem.

In collaboration with GLOBSECs Alliance for Healthy Infosphere, and several other organizations and individuals from both Europe and North America, we have crafted a set of standards aimed at building a healthy online information space. They are grounded in research and past regulatory experience and speak to issues across the transatlantic online information space. These simple standards include transparency, accountability (for regulators, digital platforms, media, and civil society alike), freedom (for users to choose and decide about their own data), and proportionality (what is illegal offline should be illegal online).

Many of the principles we list are not new. Our intention, rather, is to bring them together in one space in order to cohesively present them to policy and technology communities. Too often, legislators and firms have been derailed by a myopic focus on one or another of these issues and have failed to take a more systematic approachor, in D.C., pass relevant laws full stop. It is crucial that new regulations in the digital information space are holistic rather than piecemeal. The TTC presents a possibility of providing such a broad approach. Its multi-national stature could enable it to rise above the partisan politics of any one country while its underlying goal of rebuilding transatlantic alliances could make implementing any recommendations it makes an easier sell in various legislatures.

With the political climate receptive to regulatory efforts on both sides of the Atlantic, the TTC is the initiative currently best positioned to initiate real policy changes. But the diversity of states included provides opportunity for conflicts with a potential to hamper any results. Prior to launching the working groups, an agreement on a basic set of principles that would guide the TTCs work and decision-making would help to limit conflicts. The transatlantic principles that consider and combine positions from both sides of the Atlantic aim to address this need.

Improving policy requires greater transparency from digital platforms regarding what is happening in the online information spaces they operate. Collectively, policymakers and tech firms know too littleor take too narrow a viewto make informed decisions. U.S. congressional hearings with Big Tech executives and unsuccessful attempts to regulate disinformation illustrate that few in government properly understand the problem. In the rare moments they convene around these issues, this lack of comprehension makes them even less able to agree on what needs to happen.

The transparency offered by companies, meanwhile, is difficult to evaluate. Facebook, for example, claims its AI detects 95% of the hate speech that is removed from the platform. But do we know how much it misses? Is it more successful in the United States than elsewhere? Are there specific languages or cultural contexts it has problems with? While some platforms extant transparency reports are helpful, reporting and identification of hate speech and incitement to violence, for example, should be done with independent oversight and not via organizations that the platforms themselves create and (however tangentially) control.

The TTCs next step should be to map the digital communication space to provide a comprehensive picture of the scope of information manipulation, hate speech, and other harmful content across the transatlantic area. This mapping should focus on several parameters: the nature of the manipulative content (i.e. whether it is organic or inorganic), the amount of it, the speed at which it is spread, who spreads it (including super-spreaders and cooperation hubs), the role of algorithms in spreading content further (or curbing it), andfinallysubsequent actions undertaken by platforms. In short, we must understand what is being spread, who is spreading it, and how they are doing so.

Platforms ought to be willing and eager participants in this endeavor in order to make concrete their recent moves toward transparency and action regarding influence operations and other harmful content. We must more clearly understand what is being done in response to these issues, and companies should be mandated to publicly document their efforts.The mechanism to put this into practice can be borrowed from the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation mentioned above. Its co-regulatory principle depends on close cooperation between platforms, governments, and other vetted stakeholders, such as research institutions. These institutions would be best positioned to carry out the mapping project, which would be done together with platforms in order to ensure objectivity and to protect platform data from going public.

This type of monitoring must go hand-in-hand with independent audits by third-party expertsnot partisan or tech-created entitiesof platforms efforts to manage disinformation. These focused examinations should pay specific attention to implementation, effectiveness, and how effectiveness is determined in every country the platforms operate. Researchers with deep cultural understandings of particular locales should oversee the development of country-specific measures, efficacy tests, and mechanisms to share results.

TTC-initiated mapping and audits would facilitate more informed decision-making on both a regional and national level and help North American and EU allies be more proactive in confronting digital efforts to undermine democracies. If countries and platforms involved contributed to a joint fund paying for the monitoring and audits, it would be a small price to pay for the improvements they could bring to the information space in the transatlantic space.

The problems we face in the digital information space are complex. The steps we take to tackle them should be like any other problem-solving strategy: first map, then understand, then address. At the same time, we must shift from a reactive to a more proactive approach. The digital space is a constantly evolving environment, and the policy solutions must remain flexible to respond accordingly. Basic policy-enforced mechanisms to start monitoring and mapping the information space and the effectiveness of the measures taken against problems like disinformation will provide us a more comprehensive picture of the scale of problems in the digital information space and will provide solid ground for transatlantic cooperation.

Samuel Woolley is the director of the propaganda research program at the Center for Media Engagement, the research director of disinformation work at the Good Systems initiative, and an assistant professor in the School of Journalismall at the University of Texas at Austin.Dominika Hajdu is a research fellow and the program manager of the Strategic Communication Program at GLOBSEC.

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An agenda for US-EU cooperation on Big Tech regulation The EU-US Trade and Technology - Brookings Institution