General
Jeff Bezos has been on a collision course with D.C. for years — this week’s hearing marks a new chapter
Annie Palmer, CNBC
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will finally come face to face with lawmakers looking to question his company’s growing influence at Wednesday’s antitrust hearing. The hearing before the House Antitrust Subcommittee, which will be held over videoconference because of the coronavirus pandemic, will give lawmakers a rare opportunity to grill the Amazon CEO directly about Amazon’s market power and business practices, along with other hot-button issues, like its treatment of warehouse workers during the pandemic.
Tax Hike Under Biden Poses Bigger Threat to Tech Than Hearing
Felice Maranz, Bloomberg
Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc. are girding for a tough hearing in Congress on Wednesday. But the real threat facing the tech firms comes not from lawmakers now, but from higher taxes later if Joe Biden beats President Trump in November, according to one analyst.
Uber, Lyft drivers win unemployment ruling in NY
Kia Kokalitcheva, Axios
New York must immediately start paying unemployment benefits to ride-hailing drivers, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. Why it matters: This is the latest victory for Uber and Lyft drivers who have waged a lengthy campaign pushing for benefits comparable to those received by traditional workers.
The moment of reckoning for the Facebook advertiser boycott
Steven Overly and Laura Kayali, Politico
The widely publicized advertiser boycott against Facebook has less than a week to show it has become a global coalition solid enough, and strong enough, to take on the social media giant. Civil rights groups persuaded more than 1,100 companies and organizations from the U.S. to Germany to Australia to pull their money from the social network during July to pressure Facebook to take more action on hate speech and deceptive posts from politicians.
Global tech show CES in Las Vegas to be only online in 2021 due to COVID-19
Jane Lanhee Lee, Reuters
CES, the biggest global tech and gadget show, held every January in Las Vegas, will be only online in 2021 due to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, organizer Consumer Technology Association said on Tuesday. While big tech companies like Apple, Alphabet’s Google and Samsung have separate product launch events and companies launching electronic gadgets at CES have generally been smaller, the event has been an important venue for technology companies and buyers to meet to conduct business.
White House DACA Restrictions Draw Boos from Tech
John Eggerton, Multichannel News
The Trump Administration’s move Tuesday (July 28) limiting the DACA immigration program after the Supreme Court upholding it has drawn criticism from the tech industry. The Administration is reviewing the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, but in the meantime it is freezing applications for the program.
Intellectual Property and Antitrust
Big Tech Is Going On Trial
Makena Kelly, The Verge
For decades, the tech industry has skirted scrutiny over mergers, acquisitions, and potential anti-competitive behavior as antitrust crusaders argued their case from the sidelines. But this week, the industry’s biggest companies will be forced to confront that evidence head-on.
Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google
Adrianne Jeffries and Leon Yin, The Markup
In Google’s early years, users would type in a query and get back a page of 10 “blue links” that led to different websites. “We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible,” co-founder Larry Page said in 2004. Today, Google often considers that “right place” to be Google, an investigation by The Markup has found.
Ex-Microsoft exec on why Satya Nadella wasn’t asked to testify
Dan Primack, Axios
Microsoft is just as giant as the other Big Tech firms participating in tomorrow’s House antitrust hearing, but a longtime former executive believes it’s successfully dodged scrutiny on the issue because of its past antitrust battles.
Telecom, Wireless and TV
House Members Seek Expanded COVID-19 Aid Help for Broadcasters
John Eggerton, Multichannel News
A bipartisan congressional duo has called on Congress to take care of broadcasters in the next COVID-19 aid package by allowing individual stations that are part of larger groups to qualify as local businesses eligible for the money. Reps. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) and Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), co-chairs of the Congressional Broadcasters Caucus, sent a letter to House leaders asking that broadcasters get expanded eligibility to the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) COVID-19 small business aid.
Huawei Supplier Hires Ex-U.S. Official as China Tensions Grow
Debby Wu, Bloomberg
MediaTek Inc. has hired a former U.S. Department of Commerce official to help the Taiwanese chipmaker navigate worsening U.S.-China tensions that have already ensnared its customer Huawei Technologies Co. Patrick Wilson, who most recently served as director of the Office of Business Liaison for the Department of Commerce, will be appointed vice president of government affairs at MediaTek USA and lead its public policy initiatives, the company said in a draft press statement seen by Bloomberg News.
Mobile Technology and Social Media
YouTube is trying to crack down on QAnon videos. It’s not working
Meira Gebel, Digital Trends
The far-right group QAnon has caught the attention of the public in recent weeks for its ability to maneuver social media platforms to spread misinformation and create viral attention for its conspiracy theories. Social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok have taken action against the group after long-disproved conspiracy theories like #PizzaGate gained new attention, banning accounts and disabling its popular hashtags from showing up in search.
Can Brett Kavanaugh be impartial about Facebook?
Zoe Schiffer, The Verge
As Facebook battles mounting regulatory pressure, one of the most powerful judges in the country is facing renewed scrutiny over his ties to the company. On July 24th, a coalition of nine progressive groups, including Demand Justice, Freedom From Facebook and Google, and Accountable Tech, released a statement calling on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to recuse himself from a case involving Facebook due to his close friendship with the company’s vice president of public policy, Joel Kaplan.
‘A Permanent Nightmare’: Pinterest Moderators Fight to Keep Horrifying Content Off the Platform
Sarah Emerson, OneZero
Moderators reported seeing child pornography content ‘every couple hours’.
Cybersecurity and Privacy
Lawmakers want privacy protections included in coronavirus stimulus package
Alfred Ng, CNET
The erosion of digital privacy over the last two decades has caused a healthy sense of skepticism toward data collection — but with the coronavirus pandemic, health officials need people to trust tech companies more than ever. Some lawmakers are arguing that a bill regulating COVID-19 health data can help with that, and want it included in a second stimulus package.
U.S. Revises Indictment of Ex-Twitter Workers Over Saudi Spying
Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg
The U.S. filed a revised indictment against two former Twitter Inc. employees and a Saudi national, alleging the three spied on dissidents for the Middle East country’s royal family. The formal grand jury indictment filed late Tuesday is intended to replace a criminal information, or written accusation, that prosecutors asked a federal court in San Francisco to dismiss earlier in the day.
US officials: Russia behind spread of virus disinformation
Eric Tucker, The Associated Press
Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to exploit a crisis that America is struggling to contain ahead of the presidential election in November, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
Rubio doubts threats hearing will happen this year, citing partisan atmosphere
Martin Matishak, Politico
The acting head of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised doubts Tuesday that the panel will hold a public session on global threats facing the U.S. this year, citing increased partisanship over the nation’s intelligence apparatus. “I’m not sure we’re going to have one, especially after the letters over the last ten days, seeing this sort of heavy politicization of it,” acting Senate Intelligence Chair Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told POLITICO.
Cybersecurity experts warn that it may take weeks or months after the presidential election for a winner to be decided, thanks to the threats of security issues and litigation around the results
Jeff Elder, Business Insider Premium
Despite fears of foreign interference, hacked voting machines, and disinformation campaigns, there is some optimism that the country is better prepared than in 2016. If you’re an American mentally preparing to settle onto the couch on the night of November 3 and see who wins the presidential election – and many other races – you might want to pull the couch out into a sofa bed and get plenty of provisions.
China Is the First Surveillance Superpower
Ross Andersen, The Atlantic
Xi Jinping is using artificial intelligence to enhance his government’s totalitarian control—and he’s exporting this technology to regimes around the globe.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
Online Platforms Boost Small Business Power
Karen Kerrigan, Morning Consult
The power and benefits of the platform economy are on full display during COVID-19. Technology and tech platforms have been instrumental in allowing small businesses and the self-employed to more quickly pivot to strategies for driving revenues, communicating with customers and finding new ones, and running key businesses functions – like meeting payroll and collaborating with their teams – to better navigate the COVID-19 shutdowns.
Amazon Has Too Much Power. Take It Back.
Tim Bray and Christy Hoffman, The New York Times
Covid-19 has created strange bedfellows. Six months ago, a labor leader and an Amazon vice president would have been on opposite sides in discussing the future of work at Big Tech in general and Amazon in particular. Then on May 1, one of us, Tim, walked away from a senior role at Amazon Web Services, and potentially millions in compensation, in protest over the firing of workers who spoke out about conditions in the company’s warehouses.
Four of the World’s Wealthiest Men Are Preparing for Battle
The Editorial Board, The New York Times
Members of Congress will be able to grill tech C.E.O.s at a hearing. Let’s hope they don’t waste the opportunity.
The Age of Mass Surveillance Will Not Last Forever
Edward Snowden, Wired
When I was working at the CIA, if you had told me that there would soon come a youth rebellion that relied on lasers and traffic cones as sword and shield, and that it would come to paralyze one of the world’s richest and most powerful governments, I would have—at the very least—raised an eyebrow. And yet as I write these words nearly a decade later, this is exactly what’s happening in Hong Kong, the city where I met with journalists to reveal the secret that would transform me from an agent of government into one of the world’s most wanted men.
Research Reports
Tech CEO Summer Superbowl
Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas
Charging Unfair “Rents”. “Robber Baron” were German warlords who demanded payment from those seeking to pass their castles on the essential Rhine River.
Using Antitrust Law To Address the Market Power of Platform Monopolies
Marc Jarsulic, Center for American Progress
The data show that the United States has a competition problem. In many industries throughout the country, there is increased concentration, rising profit margins, declining entry, and low investment relative to profits. Moreover, stock market participants have been signaling the problem by assigning very high equity values to a relatively small subset of public firms earning monopoly profits.
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