Morning Consult Tech: What’s Ahead & Week in Review
 

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Essential tech industry news & intel to start your day.
December 5, 2021
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Happy Sunday, tech readers. Before we get to this week’s quiz question, here’s a brief plug for Morning Consult Global, which launches on Monday.

 

Morning Consult Global uses our proprietary research data, original reporting and analysis, and will put economic and world events into context, giving you unique insight into today’s complex business environment. You can subscribe to our newest publication right here.

 

Now, to the quiz. While national regulations of social media platforms are in the news, state-level actions have also been making headlines after a federal judge blocked Texas’ social media law that would have prevented platforms from banning users over their viewpoints.

 

According to a Morning Consult/Politico poll in September, just after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed the bill that he said would combat alleged anti-conservative bias in social media content moderation, what percentage of registered voters said they supported the law?

 

A: 19%

B: 26%

C: 44%

D: 53%

 

The answer is at the bottom of this week’s newsletter.

 

What’s Ahead

Instagram head Adam Mosseri will testify Wednesday before a Senate consumer protection subcommittee. Why it’s worth watching: Instagram has been under sustained scrutiny for its mental health impacts on young people and executives’ knowledge of the trend, exposed during The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series and the subject of an investigation by a bipartisan group of state attorneys general. This will be Mosseri’s first time testifying before Congress.

 

 

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee will hold a hearing Thursday on what it said will be an “array of proposals” to hold big technology companies accountable. Why it’s worth watching: Another subcommittee already debated the future of Section 230, which protects social media platforms from liability over their content, last week. As lawmakers work on potential regulations of social media sites, this hearing will explore ways to “enhance transparency, promote online safety, and hold Big Tech accountable,” officials said in a press release.

 

 

The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice will hold a joint workshop on competition in labor markets on Monday and Tuesday. Why it’s worth watching: The workshop will close with a discussion about collective bargaining in the gig economy, with National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo participating as one of the panelists. As workers have sought to unionize at various gig economy companies or be recognized as employees rather than independent contractors, the debate over the future of the gig economy and the thousands of people who make money through app-based services is intensifying. 

 

The event comes amid new developments on the issue in Europe: A European Union plan seen by Bloomberg would reclassify as many as 4.1 million people who work for delivery and ride-hailing apps as employees and recognize another 3.8 million as self-employed, in a move the European Union estimates would cost gig economy companies 4.5 billion euros ($5.1 billion) a year. A risk assessment from the European Commission said the draft proposal, set to be made public this week before the commission looks to gain support from member states and the European Parliament, could undercut worker flexibility and raise prices for customers.

 

Events Calendar

 

Week in Review

Antitrust

  • The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit to stop Nvidia Corp.’s acquisition of chip designer Arm Holdings, saying the proposed $40 billion sale would give chipmaker Nvidia control over the technology and designs “that rival firms rely on to develop their own competing chips.”
  • The United Kingdom’s Competitions and Markets Authority ordered Meta Platforms Inc. to sell GIF platform Giphy, after it found that the acquisition “could reduce competition between social media platforms and increase Facebook’s already significant market power.” The $315 million deal has come under repeated scrutiny from the United Kingdom’s antitrust body, which in August provisionally ruled that Meta should be required to sell Giphy due to competition concerns.

Resignations

  • Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey resigned and was replaced by Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal. Dorsey, who will remain as CEO of digital payments company Square Inc., said in a statement that he believes Twitter “is ready to move on from its founders.” Agrawal quickly announced a reorganization of the company, according to a companywide email obtained by The Washington Post, with head of engineering Michael Montano and chief design officer Dantley Davis resigning by the end of the year. The Washington Post said the reorganization appears to primarily affect Twitter’s consumer, revenue and core tech divisions.
  • Meta executive David Marcus, who led the company’s push into digital payments through its Diem cryptocurrency and payments app Novi, resigned Tuesday. The company’s cryptocurrency efforts have come under intense regulator scrutiny, and in a series of tweets announcing his departure, Marcus said his “entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring it.”

Surveillance and privacy

  • Several federal government agencies including the Department of the Army and the Drug Enforcement Agency have bought video surveillance products made by Lorex Technology Inc., a subsidiary of blacklisted Chinese technology firm Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co. Ltd., according to purchasing records seen by TechCrunch and IPVM. Dahua is banned from selling to the U.S. government over concerns that its products are used for Chinese spying, although a Lorex spokesperson said in a statement that its technology is designed for “consumer and business use only,” not for the government.
  • The United States said it will work with friendly countries to curb the sales of surveillance technology and other tools to authoritarian nations that can be used to abuse human rights. The Biden administration said it will write a code of conduct with allies on export policies, as well as have them provide information on technologies used to surveil activists, politicians and others by hostile governments.
  • An unknown hacker gained access to the iPhones of at least nine U.S. State Department employees using spyware developed by Israel’s NSO Group, according to people familiar with the matter and first reported by Reuters. The Washington Post later reported that Apple Inc. contacted 11 U.S. diplomats, including some U.S. citizens, and warned them that their iPhones were the subjects of cyberattacks that focused on U.S. officials working in Uganda and East Africa, according to people familiar with the Apple notifications.
  • Twitter banned users from sharing other people’s private photos and videos without their consent, and said it will remove private media when it is reported by either the person in it or an authorized representative.

Amazon

  • New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) alleged that Amazon.com Inc.’s rollback of coronavirus protocols in at least one warehouse has put workers at risk of infection, and is pursuing an emergency court order to require the company to bring in stricter ones. James filed the motion as part of a lawsuit against Amazon that alleges it put profits over employee safety, and she is also calling for the court to designate an official to monitor safety at Amazon’s New York warehouses as well as the reinstatement of Chris Smalls, who was fired last year after going public about the company’s working conditions.
  • Amazon must hold another union election at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., according to a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board, upholding an objection from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union that alleged the company had undermined the vote. Amazon has not said whether it will follow through on its previous plan to appeal to the NLRB’s national board if it lost at the regional level.

Other big tech news from last week:

  • The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected China Telecom Corp.’s emergency effort to temporarily stop it from being blacklisted by the FCC, ahead of a full challenge in court next year. China Telecom had looked to stay the FCC order, set to take effect in early January, and while the court said it would schedule time to hear legal arguments, its interim ruling means the company must cease operations in the United States next month.
  • In a joint statement seen by Reuters, chief executives at 13 major European telecommunications companies called on U.S. tech companies to invest more in Europe’s networks, saying the U.S. firms rely heavily on them. The CEOs said the strain of increased network traffic means more investments in 5G, fiber and cable, and that with Alphabet Inc., Meta and Netflix Inc. among those relying on that infrastructure for their data and cloud services, they should “contribute fairly to network costs.”
  • Apple CEO Tim Cook and General Motors Co. CEO Mary Barra joined more than 50 other executives of companies that rely on semiconductors in a letter to Congress calling on lawmakers to pass the Chips Act, which would provide $52 billion in subsidies to boost chip production. The letter says that demand for semiconductors has outpaced supply and created a global shortage, which the executives said has “highlighted the need for increased domestic manufacturing capacity.”
  • In its latest threat report, Meta said it removed disinformation networks linked to Hamas, China and anti-vaccine groups, among others, with one Chinese operation found to be a fake Swiss doctor who said the United States was pressuring the World Health Organization to find China responsible for the spread of the coronavirus. Twitter said it made similar moves to take down Chinese disinformation from two networks with more than 2,000 accounts that had looked to project normalcy in Xinjiang and undercut the allegations of human rights abuses of Muslims in the region.
 
Stat of the Week
 

4.4%

The amount AT&T Inc.’s shares dropped on Tuesday after the company’s chief executive officer of communications, Jeff McElfresh, told investors that he anticipates customer growth will slow next year. It meant the company’s shares hit a 12-year low of $22.83 at the end of regular trading, as McElfresh said the addition of new customers through offers like free phones and increased spending spurred by stimulus payments will not keep pace next year.

 
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