On Tech: When taming Big Tech goes wrong

What the United States can learn from Europe's efforts to restrain America's tech giants.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story August 4, 2020 When taming Big Tech goes wrong Ceylan Maurer By Shira Ovide What if the U.S. government tries to restrain the power of America’s tech superstars, and it doesn’t work? That’s essentially what has happened so far in Europe, where some regulators and lawmakers have been ahead of the United States in putting guardrails on Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. I talked with my colleague Adam Satariano, who writes about technology in Europe, about what happens when government officials decide they want to do something about Big Tech, but struggle to figure out what that something should be. Shira: What’s been Europe’s approach to the American tech superpowers? Adam: Europe started doing antitrust investigations several years ago. But the resulting lawsuits and regulation haven’t done much. Google is the best example. Investigations into allegations of anti-competitive tactics took years. The European Union then fined Google several billion dollars for breaking the law. But critics say that Google wasn’t forced to change much, so this did little to restore competition. What can American lawmakers and regulators learn from Europe’s mistakes? Speed is crucial, otherwise regulators are fighting yesterday’s battles. There was also a problem with enforcement. Europe passed a highly-touted privacy law called General Data Protection Regulation, but it’s been a flop at limiting data collection by the biggest tech companies. Much of the policing of the law was left to Ireland, which simply doesn’t have the resources to keep up. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT It sounds as if the lesson is that you can believe there’s a problem with tech companies’ power, but it’s hard to craft an appropriate response. Without a doubt. The authorities in Europe are changing their tactics now. They’re looking at rewriting laws to directly target the way big tech companies do business: How they use data or box out rivals, and ways they give their products preferential treatment. But after a few years covering this in Europe, I have become much more suspect about these efforts at regulation. There’s a lot of potential for unintended consequences. What have been the unintended consequences? A big one is the ripple effects of several countries, especially Germany, making new rules against hate speech online. The worry is that gave cover to countries to enact censorship laws. Turkey cited Germany’s hate speech law in enacting its new social media restrictions. Another law, known as the right to be forgotten, has also raised concerns about limiting the availability of information online. Does this mean we should be skeptical about any U.S. government action against Big Tech? Maybe. But it’s still been interesting to watch this growing realization among the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic about the size of these companies and the influence they hold over their democratic societies and how they operate, including their communication systems, information flow and commerce. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT You can sense this feeling that lawmakers think they must do something, but aren’t quite sure what that is yet. The next 12 to 18 months are going to be extraordinary. Hello, dear readers! Several of you had asked about differences in how the United States and Europe handle regulation of technology. This conversation gets the ball rolling on that subject. Please keep the questions coming. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Twitter’s blunder is a symptom of our broken internet Twitter is in hot water with the U.S. government. Let me explain why you should be angry. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Twitter and may fine the company up to $250 million for using people’s phone numbers in ways that users didn’t expect, my colleague Kate Conger wrote. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT This stems from Twitter’s disclosure in October that the phone number you might have listed as a second form of account verification — in addition to a password — might also have been used to target advertisements at you. This is not good. Phone numbers used for security purposes shouldn’t be repurposed for Twitter to make money. Twitter said this was a mistake, but it hasn’t said how long this practice had gone on or how it made this error. (Facebook had gotten in trouble for the same thing.) There are two interrelated problems revealed by what might seem like Twitter’s minor flub. First is the problem of companies ignoring common sense. People who enter a phone number to keep impostors out of their Twitter accounts do not expect that number to be used to target ads. Period. Therefore, companies should absolutely not do this. Two, Twitter’s mistake is a symptom of the broader scourge of online surveillance. Internet advertising is an arms race waged with our data, and that leads to ever more intrusive harvesting and use of our information. This is not only a concern for tin-foil-hat privacy paranoiacs. Companies like Facebook and Google have a big leg up over all other companies that sell digital ads because they have more and better data than anyone else. Every other company is tempted to play catch up by resorting to increasingly creepy ways of collecting user data. That might include Twitter, or apps we’ve never heard of that gather our location information and sell it without our knowledge to other data-hungry companies. All the tech problems are connected. Before we go … I suspect people will have feelings about this: Stacey Steinberg, a children’s rights lawyer and photographer, says that parents sharing information, including photos, about their children online may unwittingly be providing fodder for bullying or child abuse. These risks have made her think twice before she shares information about her kids on social media. Maybe this newsletter should just be memes? On Instagram and other apps, news organizations and activists have captivated audiences’ attention by posting less text and more charts, graphics and other easy-to-digest ways to convey news and information, according to Axios. This is a pattern that younger people latched onto a long time ago: Quick-scan visuals like memes are a great way to explain complicated things. The online forum that traces the internet’s past five years: Wired has a fascinating look at a Reddit group about President Trump that became one of the most popular and divisive gatherings online. The article tells how this group’s story encapsulated the evolution of internet forums in molding or policing people’s personal interactions and beliefs. Hugs to this Check out these ethereal cuttlefish embryos bobbing around in their eggs. Yes, those tiny black dots are the cuttlefish babies’ eyes. (Thank you to an On Tech reader, Dr. Julie Drawbridge, for suggesting this video.) We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for On Tech with Shira Ovide from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

歡迎蒞臨：https://ofa588.com/

娛樂推薦：https://www.ofa86.com/

The legend of the lazy unemployed

What Keynes knew but politicians don’t.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story August 4, 2020 Tannen Maury/EPA, via Shutterstock By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist “Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn’t know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love, and to demonstrate how little he knows the world.” So begins B. Traven’s 1927 adventure novel “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” the basis for the classic John Huston movie. Traven, it turns out, knew more about economics than any member of the modern G.O.P. caucus — a group whose members believe that cutting unemployment benefits and thus forcing people to seek jobs at all cost will somehow conjure more jobs into existence. Today’s column was about the failure of Senate Republicans and the Trump administration to come up with any meaningful plan to deal with the expiration of special pandemic aid to the unemployed. Much recent economic research has investigated how much effect this aid had on incentives of workers to seek jobs, with the apparent answer being not much. As I argued, however, this question is largely irrelevant: no matter how hard workers look, they can’t take jobs that aren’t there. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT But there is an objection one might raise: the number of jobs on offer isn’t a fixed quantity. You could imagine that desperate workers would be willing to accept wage cuts, and that reduced wages might induce employers to expand their workforces. This isn’t an argument politicians are likely to make openly — “Vote for Trump! He’ll slash your wages!” But might it have some validity? Well, no. And John Maynard Keynes explained why. (Incidentally, I don’t recommend reading Keynes in the original. His “General Theory” is an extraordinary intellectual feat, unutterably brilliant, but very, very dense.) What Keynes pointed out was that while an individual worker may indeed be able to get a job by accepting a wage cut — because they underbid rivals for the job, or make it possible for the employer to underprice competitors — the story is very different if everyone takes a wage cut. Nobody gains a competitive advantage, so where are the job gains supposed to come from? It’s true that when an economy is suffering from persistent inflation, generous benefits can feed a wage-price spiral even when unemployment is high; this may have been a factor in the “Eurosclerosis” that afflicted some European countries in the 1980s. But this isn’t relevant to America in 2020. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Indeed, if anything, benefit cuts that force workers to compete over scarce jobs can hurt employment, by causing deflation that worsens the burden of debt — a phenomenon my colleague and co-author Gauti Eggertsson calls the “paradox of toil.” Wait, there’s more. The Covid-19 recession, brought on by the necessary lockdown of high-contact economic activities, has been terrible. But it could have been much worse. Tens of millions of workers lost their jobs and their regular wage income — and the job-losers were disproportionately low-wage workers with little in the way of financial resources to fall back on. So absent government aid they would have been forced to slash spending, leading to a whole second round of job losses across the economy. Unemployment benefits, however, sustained many workers’ incomes, averting this second-round depression. So “paying people not to work,” as right-wingers like to describe it, actually saved millions of jobs. In short, things could have been much worse. And sure enough, it seems that they are indeed about to get much worse. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Quick Hits More on the studies finding little disincentive effect from unemployment benefits. Last month federal unemployment benefits were $109 billion; most of that has now vanished, which is a huge hit to the economy. The return of the three-martini lunch. Remember how Obamacare was going to kill jobs? Feedback If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week’s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at krugman-newsletter@nytimes.com. Facing the Music Better treat her rightYouTube Somehow seems appropriate given the stress on “essential workers.” IN THE TIMES When Covid Subsided, Israel Reopened Its Schools. It Didn’t Go Well. As countries consider back-to-school strategies for the fall, a coronavirus outbreak at a Jerusalem high school offers a cautionary tale. By Isabel Kershner and Pam Belluck How Italy Turned Around Its Coronavirus Calamity After a stumbling start, the country has gone from being a global pariah to a model — however imperfect — of viral containment that holds lessons for its neighbors and for the United States. By Jason Horowitz The Mask Slackers of 1918 As the influenza pandemic swept across the United States in 1918 and 1919, masks took a role in political and cultural wars. By Christine Hauser ‘If I Hadn’t Been Transferred, I Would Have Died’ Conversations about death from Covid-19 revolve around patient characteristics. But hospitals matter, too. By Daniela J. Lamas Read the full Opinion report here. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Paul Krugman from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

歡迎蒞臨：https://ofa588.com/

娛樂推薦：https://www.ofa86.com/