# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The company was under intense pressure to adjust its policies. But in this presidential election year, no big changes are planned.

Facebook had been under pressure to change its hands-off rules for political ads. Credit... Jason Henry for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - Defying pressure from Congress, Facebook said on Thursday that it would continue to allow political campaigns to use the site to target advertisements to particular slices of the electorate and that it would not police the truthfulness of the messages sent out.

The stance put Facebook, the most important digital platform for political ads, at odds with some of the other large tech companies, which have begun to put new limits on political ads.

Facebook's decision, telegraphed in recent months by executives, is likely to harden criticism of the company heading into this year's presidential election.

Political advertising cuts to the heart of Facebook's outsize role in society, and the company has found itself squeezed between liberal critics, who want it to do a better job of policing its various social media platforms, and conservatives, who say their views are being unfairly muzzled.

The issue has raised important questions regarding how heavy a hand technology companies like Facebook - which also owns Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp - and Google should exert when deciding what types of political content they will and will not permit.

By maintaining a status quo, Facebook executives are essentially saying they are doing the best they can without government guidance and see little benefit to the company or the public in changing.

In a blog post, a company official echoed Facebook's earlier calls for lawmakers to set firm rules.

"In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies," Rob Leathern, Facebook's director of product management overseeing the advertising integrity division, said in the post. "We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public."

Other social media companies have decided otherwise, and some had hoped Facebook would quietly follow their lead. In late October, Twitter's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, banned all political advertising from his network, citing the challenges that novel digital systems present to civic discourse. Google quickly followed suit with limits on political ads across some of its properties, though narrower in scope.

Reaction to Facebook's policy broke down largely along party lines.

The Trump campaign, which has been highly critical of any attempts by technology companies to regulate political advertising and has already spent more than $27 million on the platform, largely supported Facebook's decision not to interfere in targeting ads or to set fact-checking standards.

"Our ads are always accurate so it's good that Facebook won't limit political messages because it encourages more Americans to be involved in the process," said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign. "This is much better than the approaches from Twitter and Google, which will lead to voter suppression."

Democratic presidential candidates and outside groups decried the decision.

"Facebook is paying for its own glowing fake news coverage, so it's not surprising they're standing their ground on letting political figures lie to you," Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter.

Ms. Warren, who has been among the most critical of Facebook and regularly calls for major tech companies to be broken up, reiterated her stance that the social media company should face tougher policies.

The Biden campaign was similarly critical. The campaign has confronted Facebook over an ad run by President Trump's campaign that attacked Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s record on Ukraine.

"Donald Trump's campaign can (and will) still lie in political ads," Bill Russo, the deputy communications director for Mr. Biden, said in a statement. "Facebook can (and will) still profit off it. Today's announcement is more window dressing around their decision to allow paid misinformation."

But many Democratic groups willing to criticize Facebook had to walk a fine line; they have pushed for more regulation when it comes to fact-checking political ads, but they have been adamantly opposed to any changes to the ad-targeting features.

On Thursday, some Democratic outside groups welcomed Facebook's decision not to limit microtargeting, but still thought the policy fell short.

"These changes read to us mostly as a cover for not making the change that is most vital: ensuring politicians are not allowed to use Facebook as a tool to lie to and manipulate voters," said Madeline Kriger, who oversees digital ad buying at Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC.

Other groups, however, said Facebook had been more thoughtful about political ads than its industry peers.

"Facebook opted against limiting ad targeting, because doing so would have unnecessarily restricted a valuable tool that campaigns of all sizes rely on for fund-raising, registering voters, building crowds and organizing volunteers," said Tara McGowan, chief executive of Acronym, a nonprofit group that works on voter organization and progressive causes.

Facebook has played down the business opportunity in political ads, saying the vast majority of its revenue came from commercial, not political, ads. But lawmakers have noted that Facebook ads could be a focal point of Mr. Trump's campaign as well as those of top Democrats.

Facebook's hands-off ad policy has already allowed for misleading advertisements. In October, a Facebook ad from the Trump campaign made false accusations about Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The ad quickly went viral and was viewed by millions. After the Biden campaign asked Facebook to take down the ad, the company refused.

"Our approach is grounded in Facebook's fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process and the belief that, in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is already arguably the most scrutinized speech there is," Facebook's head of global elections policy, Katie Harbath, wrote in the letter to the Biden campaign.

In an attempt to provoke Facebook, Ms. Warren's presidential campaign ran an ad falsely claiming that the company's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, was backing the re-election of Mr. Trump. Facebook did not take the ad down.

Criticism seemed to stiffen Mr. Zuckerberg's resolve. Company officials said he and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's president, had ultimately made the decision to stand firm.

In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University in October, Mr. Zuckerberg said he believed in the power of unfettered speech, including in paid advertising, and did not want to be in the position to police what politicians could and could not say to constituents. Facebook's users, he said, should be allowed to make those decisions for themselves.

"People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world - a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society," he said.

Facebook officials have repeatedly said significant changes to its rules for political or issue ads could harm the ability of smaller, less well-funded organizations to raise money and organize across the network.

Instead of overhauling its policies, Facebook has made small tweaks. Mr. Leathern said Facebook would add greater transparency features to its library of political advertising in the coming months, a resource for journalists and outside researchers to scrutinize the types of ads run by the campaigns.

Facebook also will add a feature that allows users to see fewer campaign and political issue ads in their news feeds, something the company has said many users have requested.

There was considerable debate inside Facebook about whether it should change. Late last year, hundreds of employees supported an internal memo that called on Mr. Zuckerberg to limit the abilities of Facebook's political advertising products.

On Dec. 30, Andrew Bosworth, the head of Facebook's virtual and augmented reality division, wrote on his internal Facebook page that, as a liberal, he found himself wanting to use the social network's powerful platform against Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Bosworth said that even though keeping the current policies in place "very well may lead to" Mr. Trump's re-election, it was the right decision. Dozens of Facebook employees pushed back on Mr. Bosworth's conclusions, arguing in the comments section below his post that politicians should be held to the same standard that applies to other Facebook users.

For now, Facebook appears willing to risk disinformation in support of unfettered speech.

"Ultimately, we don't think decisions about political ads should be made by private companies," Mr. Leathern said. "Frankly, we believe the sooner Facebook and other companies are subject to democratically accountable rules on this, the better."

Mike Isaac reported from San Francisco, and Cecilia Kang from Washington. Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from New York.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Facebook Says It Won't Back Down From Allowing Lies in Political Ads

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The company was under intense pressure to adjust its policies. But in this presidential election year, no big changes are planned. SAN FRANCISCO - Defying pressure from Congress, Facebook said on Thursday that it would continue to allow political campaigns to use the site to target advertisements to particular slices of the electorate and that it would not police the truthfulness of the messages sent out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The company was under intense pressure to adjust its policies. But in this presidential election year, no big changes are planned.

Facebook had been under pressure to change its hands-off rules for political ads. Credit... Jason Henry for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - Defying pressure from Congress, Facebook said on Thursday that it would continue to allow political campaigns to use the site to target advertisements to particular slices of the electorate and that it would not police the truthfulness of the messages sent out.

The stance put Facebook, the most important digital platform for political ads, at odds with some of the other large tech companies, which have begun to put new limits on political ads.

Facebook's decision, telegraphed in recent months by executives, is likely to harden criticism of the company heading into this year's presidential election.

Political advertising cuts to the heart of Facebook's outsize role in society, and the company has found itself squeezed between liberal critics, who want it to do a better job of policing its various social media platforms, and conservatives, who say their views are being unfairly muzzled.

The issue has raised important questions regarding how heavy a hand technology companies like Facebook - which also owns Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp - and Google should exert when deciding what types of political content they will and will not permit.

By maintaining a status quo, Facebook executives are essentially saying they are doing the best they can without government guidance and see little benefit to the company or the public in changing.

In a blog post, a company official echoed Facebook's earlier calls for lawmakers to set firm rules.

"In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies," Rob Leathern, Facebook's director of product management overseeing the advertising integrity division, said in the post. "We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public."

Other social media companies have decided otherwise, and some had hoped Facebook would quietly follow their lead. In late October, Twitter's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, banned all political advertising from his network, citing the challenges that novel digital systems present to civic discourse. Google quickly followed suit with limits on political ads across some of its properties, though narrower in scope.

Reaction to Facebook's policy broke down largely along party lines.

The Trump campaign, which has been highly critical of any attempts by technology companies to regulate political advertising and has already spent more than $27 million on the platform, largely supported Facebook's decision not to interfere in targeting ads or to set fact-checking standards.

"Our ads are always accurate so it's good that Facebook won't limit political messages because it encourages more Americans to be involved in the process," said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign. "This is much better than the approaches from Twitter and Google, which will lead to voter suppression."

Democratic presidential candidates and outside groups decried the decision.

"Facebook is paying for its own glowing fake news coverage, so it's not surprising they're standing their ground on letting political figures lie to you," Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter.

Ms. Warren, who has been among the most critical of Facebook and regularly calls for major tech companies to be broken up, reiterated her stance that the social media company should face tougher policies.

The Biden campaign was similarly critical. The campaign has confronted Facebook over an ad run by President Trump's campaign that attacked Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s record on Ukraine.

"Donald Trump's campaign can (and will) still lie in political ads," Bill Russo, the deputy communications director for Mr. Biden, said in a statement. "Facebook can (and will) still profit off it. Today's announcement is more window dressing around their decision to allow paid misinformation."

But many Democratic groups willing to criticize Facebook had to walk a fine line; they have pushed for more regulation when it comes to fact-checking political ads, but they have been adamantly opposed to any changes to the ad-targeting features.

On Thursday, some Democratic outside groups welcomed Facebook's decision not to limit microtargeting, but still thought the policy fell short.

"These changes read to us mostly as a cover for not making the change that is most vital: ensuring politicians are not allowed to use Facebook as a tool to lie to and manipulate voters," said Madeline Kriger, who oversees digital ad buying at Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC.

Other groups, however, said Facebook had been more thoughtful about political ads than its industry peers.

"Facebook opted against limiting ad targeting, because doing so would have unnecessarily restricted a valuable tool that campaigns of all sizes rely on for fund-raising, registering voters, building crowds and organizing volunteers," said Tara McGowan, chief executive of Acronym, a nonprofit group that works on voter organization and progressive causes.

Facebook has played down the business opportunity in political ads, saying the vast majority of its revenue came from commercial, not political, ads. But lawmakers have noted that Facebook ads could be a focal point of Mr. Trump's campaign as well as those of top Democrats.

Facebook's hands-off ad policy has already allowed for misleading advertisements. In October, a Facebook ad from the Trump campaign made false accusations about Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The ad quickly went viral and was viewed by millions. After the Biden campaign asked Facebook to take down the ad, the company refused.

"Our approach is grounded in Facebook's fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process and the belief that, in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is already arguably the most scrutinized speech there is," Facebook's head of global elections policy, Katie Harbath, wrote in the letter to the Biden campaign.

In an attempt to provoke Facebook, Ms. Warren's presidential campaign ran an ad falsely claiming that the company's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, was backing the re-election of Mr. Trump. Facebook did not take the ad down.

Criticism seemed to stiffen Mr. Zuckerberg's resolve. Company officials said he and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's president, had ultimately made the decision to stand firm.

In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University in October, Mr. Zuckerberg said he believed in the power of unfettered speech, including in paid advertising, and did not want to be in the position to police what politicians could and could not say to constituents. Facebook's users, he said, should be allowed to make those decisions for themselves.

"People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world - a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society," he said.

Facebook officials have repeatedly said significant changes to its rules for political or issue ads could harm the ability of smaller, less well-funded organizations to raise money and organize across the network.

Instead of overhauling its policies, Facebook has made small tweaks. Mr. Leathern said Facebook would add greater transparency features to its library of political advertising in the coming months, a resource for journalists and outside researchers to scrutinize the types of ads run by the campaigns.

Facebook also will add a feature that allows users to see fewer campaign and political issue ads in their news feeds, something the company has said many users have requested.

There was considerable debate inside Facebook about whether it should change. Late last year, hundreds of employees supported an internal memo that called on Mr. Zuckerberg to limit the abilities of Facebook's political advertising products.

On Dec. 30, Andrew Bosworth, the head of Facebook's virtual and augmented reality division, wrote on his internal Facebook page that, as a liberal, he found himself wanting to use the social network's powerful platform against Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Bosworth said that even though keeping the current policies in place "very well may lead to" Mr. Trump's re-election, it was the right decision. Dozens of Facebook employees pushed back on Mr. Bosworth's conclusions, arguing in the comments section below his post that politicians should be held to the same standard that applies to other Facebook users.

For now, Facebook appears willing to risk disinformation in support of unfettered speech.

"Ultimately, we don't think decisions about political ads should be made by private companies," Mr. Leathern said. "Frankly, we believe the sooner Facebook and other companies are subject to democratically accountable rules on this, the better."

Mike Isaac reported from San Francisco, and Cecilia Kang from Washington. Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from New York.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Facebook Says It Won't Back Down From Allowing Lies in Political Ads

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The company was under intense pressure to adjust its policies. But in this presidential election year, no big changes are planned. SAN FRANCISCO - Defying pressure from Congress, Facebook said on Thursday that it would continue to allow political campaigns to use the site to target advertisements to particular slices of the electorate and that it would not police the truthfulness of the messages sent out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In an open letter, the social network's employees said letting politicians post false claims in ads was "a threat" to the company.

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, on Capitol Hill last week. Credit... Eric Thayer for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - The letter was aimed at Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, and his top lieutenants. It decried the social network's recent decision to let politicians post any claims they wanted - even false ones - in ads on the site. It asked Facebook's leaders to rethink the stance.

The message was written by Facebook's own employees.

Facebook's position on political advertising is "a threat to what FB stands for," the employees wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. "We strongly object to this policy as it stands."

For the past two weeks, the text of the letter has been publicly visible on Facebook Workplace, a software program that the Silicon Valley company uses to communicate internally. More than 250 employees have signed the message, according to three people who have seen it and who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation.

While the number of signatures on the letter was a fraction of Facebook's 35,000-plus work force, it was one sign of the resistance that the company is now facing internally over how it treats political ads.

Many employees have been discussing Mr. Zuckerberg's decision to let politicians post anything they want in Facebook ads because those ads can go viral and spread misinformation widely. The worker dissatisfaction has spilled out across winding, heated threads on Facebook Workplace, the people said.

For weeks, Facebook has been under attack by presidential candidates, lawmakers and civil rights groups over its position on political ads. But the employee actions - which are a rare moment of internal strife for the company - show that even some of its own workers are not convinced the political ads policy is sound. The dissent is adding to Facebook's woes as it heads into the 2020 presidential election season.

"Facebook's culture is built on openness, so we appreciate our employees voicing their thoughts on this important topic," Bertie Thomson, a Facebook spokeswoman, said in a statement. "We remain committed to not censoring political speech, and will continue exploring additional steps we can take to bring increased transparency to political ads."

Facebook has been struggling to respond to misinformation on its site since the 2016 presidential election, when Russians used the social network to spread inflammatory and divisive messages to influence the American electorate. Mr. Zuckerberg has since appointed tens of thousands of people to work on platform security and to deter coordinated disinformation efforts.

But figuring out what is and isn't allowed on the social network is slippery. And last month, Facebook announced that politicians and their campaigns would have nearly free rein over content they post there. Previously, the company had prohibited the use of paid political ads that "include claims debunked by third-party fact checkers."

This month, President Trump's campaign began circulating an ad on Facebook that made false claims about former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is running for president. When Mr. Biden's campaign asked Facebook to remove the ad, the company refused, saying ads from politicians were newsworthy and important for discourse.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts who is also running for president, soon took Facebook to task. She bought a political ad on Facebook that falsely claimed Mr. Zuckerberg and his company supported Mr. Trump for president. (Neither Mr. Zuckerberg nor Facebook have endorsed a political candidate.)

Image

Facebook employees monitor election-related content at the company's offices in Menlo Park, Calif. Some workers proposed new ways of dealing with political ads. Credit... Monica Davey/Epa-Efe, via Rex

Ms. Warren said she wanted to see how far she could take it on the site. Mr. Zuckerberg had turned his company into a " disinformation-for-profit machine," she said.

But Mr. Zuckerberg doubled down. In a 5,000-word speech to students at Georgetown University in Washington this month, the chief executive defended his treatment of political ads by citing freedom of expression. He said Facebook's policies would be seen positively in the long run, especially when compared with policies in countries like China, where the government suppresses online speech.

"People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world - a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society," Mr. Zuckerberg said at the time.

Mr. Zuckerberg also said Facebook's policies were largely in line with what other social networks - like YouTube and Twitter - and most American television broadcasters had decided to run on their networks. Federal law mandates that broadcast networks cannot censor political ads from candidates running for office.

Inside Facebook, Mr. Zuckerberg's decision to be hands-off on political ads has supporters. But dissenters said Facebook was not doing enough to check the lies from spreading across the platform.

While internal debate is not uncommon at the social network, it historically has seen less internal turmoil than other tech companies because of a strong sense of mission among its rank and file workers.

That has set it apart from Google and Amazon, which for the last few years have grappled with several employee uprisings. Most notably, 20,000 Google workers walked off the job in 2018 to protest the company's massive payouts to executives accused of sexual harassment.

Last week, Google employees again challenged management over new software that some staff said was a surveillance tool to keep tabs on workplace dissent. At an employee meeting on Thursday, Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, said he was working on ways to improve trust with employees, while acknowledging it was challenging to maintain transparency as the company grows. A video of Mr. Pichai's comments was leaked to The Washington Post.

Amazon has faced employee pressure for nearly a year to do more to address the company's impact on climate change. Some employees worked on a shareholder resolution to push the company on the matter, and more than 7,500 Amazon workers publicly signed a letter to support the proposal. In September, Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, announced the company was accelerating its climate goals, aiming to be carbon neutral by 2040.

In the Facebook employee letter to Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives, the workers said the policy change on political advertising "doesn't protect voices, but instead allows politicians to weaponize our platform by targeting people who believe that content posted by political figures is trustworthy."

It added, "We want to work with our leadership to develop better solutions that both protect our business and the people who use our products."

The letter then laid out product changes and other actions that Facebook could take to reduce the harm from false claims in advertising from politicians. Among the proposals: Changing the visual design treatment for political ads, restricting some of the options for targeting users with those ads, and instituting spending caps for individual politicians.

"This is still our company," the letter concluded.

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Karen Weise contributed reporting from Seattle.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dissent Erupts at Facebook Over Hands-Off Stance on Political Ads

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In an open letter, the social network's employees said letting politicians post false claims in ads was "a threat" to the company. SAN FRANCISCO - The letter was aimed at Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, and his top lieutenants.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The celebrities of Silicon Valley live private lives. We don't know much about them outside of the mega-companies they lead, though it's fun to speculate on the shoes they wear, the restaurants where they feast, and their comings and goings at Burning Man.

One thing's for certain: many of the rich and famous tech executives come home to the same zip code.

Public records reveal that Silicon Valley billionaires including Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, HP CEO Meg Whitman, and Google chairman Eric Schmidt reside in the idyllic suburb of Atherton, California. In 2016, it was the third priciest zip code in the US, according to Forbes.

I recently spent the day in Atherton scouting the homes of top tech CEOS.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We scouted the homes of the top tech executives, and they all live in this San Francisco suburb for the 1%

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The celebrities of Silicon Valley live private lives. We don't know much about them outside of the mega-companies they lead, though it's fun to speculate on the shoes they wear, the restaurants where they feast, and their comings and goings at Burning Man.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Last October, as Facebook grappled with the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a speech in Brussels in which he sought to distance the iPhone maker from its peers. Cook railed against the "data industrial complex," and chastised companies like Google and Facebook for collecting personal information from users and weaponizing it against them. "This is surveillance," he said. "This should make us very uncomfortable. It should unsettle us."

The speech was meant to reaffirm Apple's position in Silicon Valley as the Patron Saint of Privacy, the company willing to protect user data while others profit from it. In many ways, that reputation is well-earned. After all, Apple refused to help the FBI break into an iPhone that belonged to one of the alleged perpetrators of the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack. Its devices are among the most secure in the world, and its has aggressively curbed data-tracking in its own apps. But the company's recent actions in China demonstrate that Apple's privacy, security, and human rights virtues appear to have a limit. They don't always extend beyond Beijing's borders.

Earlier this month, Apple removed HKmap.live-an app that pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong used to track police activity-from its iOS App Store, after an op-ed criticizing the tool was published in People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper. Apple also removed the Quartz news app from its China App Store, after the outlet extensively covered the protest movement in Hong Kong. Around the same time, Apple began hiding the Taiwan flag from users in Hong Kong and Macau; the Chinese Communist Party asserts that Taiwan is formally part of the country under its One-China policy. (The emoji was previously banned only on the mainland.)

Apple says it removed HK.map.live not because of pressure from China, but because it posed a safety risk. "Many concerned customers in Hong Kong have contacted us about this app and we immediately began investigating it," an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. "The app displays police locations and we have verified with the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau that the app has been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement."

In an internal letter to employees, Tim Cook reiterated that Apple had credible reason to believe HK.map.live was "was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence." But protest leaders, as well as Charles Mok, Hong Kong's IT legislator, disputed that the app, which relies on crowdsourced information and doesn't identify individual police officials, legitimately posed a danger. "I can't recall an Apple memo or statement that crumbles so quickly under scrutiny," wrote John Gruber, an influential Apple commentator, referring to Cook's letter. "For a company that usually measures umpteen times before cutting anything, it's both sad and startling."

And last week, Buzzfeed News reported that Apple told some Apple TV+ show developers in 2018 to avoid portraying China in a poor light, as other studios have in the past. "That really says [Chinese] censorship is reaching audiences outside of China," says Yaqui Wang, a Human Rights Watch researcher who studies the country. "Those shows are not just watched by Chinese people. Americans should be worried about this." Apple declined to comment on Buzzfeed's reporting.

Taken together, the decisions show Apple's acute concern about upsetting China's leaders. "Over the past several years, Apple has made a series of concessions in the realm of free speech and privacy protection," says Wang. "Every time you concede, it's a signal to the Chinese government that you are open to more submission." Last year, to comply with local laws, Apple began storing data and keys to Chinese iCloud accounts in China, making it easier for the government to potentially obtain information on its citizens. And in 2017, Apple removed apps from The New York Times from its Chinese App Store, as well as hundreds of virtual private networks that may have allowed Chinese users to access content blocked by the country's internet censors. The latter are illegal in the country.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Apple's Good Intentions on Privacy Stop at China's Borders

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Last October, as Facebook grappled with the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a speech in Brussels in which he sought to distance the iPhone maker from its peers. Cook railed against the "data industrial complex," and chastised companies like Google and Facebook for collecting personal information from users and weaponizing it against them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Recent polling finds the COVID-19 pandemic has softened the backlash against big tech firms. A majority of Americans now support tech firms being involved in tracing COVID-19, for example.

The recent round of polling is a turnaround from 2019. In 2015, 71 percent of Americans said tech companies had a positive impact on the United States, with that number falling to only 50 percent by 2019, according to the Pew Research Center. Over those same years, negative views of tech went from the high teens to 33 percent.

But during the pandemic tech companies are stepping into a new field - public health. Google and Apple have announced an initiative to support contact tracing through Bluetooth technology, which tracks when people come in contact with an infected person. MIT researchers have developed an app to serve a similar purpose, and other tech companies are lending their support to help combat COVID-19 in a variety of ways.

Taken together, the results from a number of different polls raise questions about a continued desire for products and services that focus on privacy and security, which were the beneficiaries of an estimated $124 billion in spending on this industry in 2019, according to Gartner estimates.

A Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll covering late April found 68 percent of Americans would now share their COVID-19 test results with officials using an app, though that dropped to 45 percent if the app tracks with whom they come into contact and sends them alerts if one of those people tests positive for coronavirus. Such measures are currently on the table in the U.S. and Europe.

Even so, people have an improved view of tech companies generally during the pandemic.

Thirty-eight percent of Americans say their view of the tech industry is more positive since the start of the outbreak, according to a Harris/Axios poll. Forty percent said the tech industry should be providing solutions, and an overwhelming 81 percent said they support large tech companies helping with contact tracing.

The results are heartening for public health officials given that any contact tracing app in the U.S. would likely not be mandatory, and a recent study said any such app would need to be adopted by 60 percent of a population to be effective.

The question is whether these positive feelings hold when the pandemic passes. To companies that have built their businesses around the notion of privacy as a commodity that's here to stay, that seems unlikely. Previous distrust of big tech companies that came to a head as a result of data and privacy violations have expanded the Overton window, a publicly acceptable range of policy proposals, in such a way that makes privacy a fixture of our world, not a passing fad.

The question is whether these positive feelings hold when the pandemic passes.

Tor Bair, the Head of Growth at Enigma, a decentralized, open source protocol, said privacy and security will always be essential, even if user attitudes towards privacy fluctuate over time.

"If big tech firms commit to defending the privacy and security of their users by default, then users will expect privacy as a universal value," said Bair. "Anyone who then takes advantage of that trust will be punished by users, not to mention regulators. In this world, privacy technologies become an essential core of any product."

And while consumer views go back and forth when it comes to trusting Apple or Google, for example, there are still industrial clients such as oil or shipping companies that see the ability to share data privately and securely as a fundamentally part of their businesses, according to Duncan Greatwood, CEO of Xage Security. His company provides a decentralized platform for protecting the industrial internet of things, among other data security measures.

"I think that a crisis like this does give people a bit of a pause and say, 'Maybe privacy isn't quite as important as I thought it was,'" said Greatwood. "But I do believe that once this crisis is past, people will care about their privacy. That's certainly the case in the industrial world we operate in."

Looking beyond the pandemic, a National Research Group polling report published just days ago found two out of three Americans are excited about how technology can "accelerate positive trends on the other side of the curve."

Disclosure Read More

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Public Opinion Shifts on Big Tech and Privacy - CoinDesk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Recent polling finds the COVID-19 pandemic has softened the backlash against big tech firms. A majority of Americans now support tech firms being involved in tracing COVID-19, for example. The recent round of polling is a turnaround from 2019.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Five weeks. That's how long it took The Markup - the new digitally savvy investigative publication, focused on tech accountability, that launched today - to find someone who could send out its email newsletters without violating its privacy standards.

The Markup tested and rejected eight different email providers - including the industry's 800-pound gorilla, Mailchimp - before finally turning to Revue, a small Dutch company that agreed to custom-build a newsletter with no user-tracking features. (No one had requested the option before, apparently.)

The process ended up being longer - and more expensive - than the outlet's founders anticipated. But then again, not much about the road to The Markup's long-awaited launch this week has been easy.

Originally slated to launch in early 2019, The Markup was dreamed up by a journalist-programmer pair - Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson - who brought on a third cofounder, Sue Gardner, who had previously led the Wikimedia Foundation. Anticipation grew for the nonprofit news organization that promised to build on the prize-winning investigations that Angwin and Larson had worked on together at ProPublica.

Just months from launch, however, chaos: Gardner and Larson forced out Angwin, the project's most prominent public face, a move that prompted The Markup's editorial team to resign en masse in protest. Craig Newmark, the Craigslist founder who had contributed most of the $23 million raised for The Markup's launch, promised to look into the firing. What followed was an array of accusations and counteraccusations about management styles, techlash, and spreadsheets.

The editorial team of @team_markup has signed a statement of unequivocal support for our Editor in Chief, @JuliaAngwin: pic.twitter.com/aTRsmM6oeo

- The Real Team Markup (@MarkupReal) April 23, 2019

A few months later, the machine got rebooted, this time without Gardner and Larson. Angwin and her editorial team were reinstated and Nabiha Syed, former general counsel at BuzzFeed, was announced as president. (Angwin and Syed will both report to an independent board of directors.)

We are happy to announce that we are back at our desks and hard at work. Big thanks to everyone for your support. Please follow us all over at @team_markup to see what's next: https://t.co/5Vv0OaMZce

- The Real Team Markup (@MarkupReal) August 6, 2019

The leadership dustup may have been a unique gift for a team-based newsroom that will pair data scientists and journalists together on collaborative investigations. The editorial team rallied behind the publication's mission of impartial, investigative journalism - not anti-tech advocacy, as some accused Gardner of pushing for - and ended up spending a lot of time working out of Angwin's living room as governance issues were sorted out.

"I never would have wished for those events to happen, but it was actually an excellent team-building exercise," Angwin said. "It wasn't about me and my vision, it was about us and our vision. We really pulled together and I think, even today, that we all feel a sense of ownership in it."

That support made all the difference during these stressful past few months when the team was working (ok, and doing a lot of eating) at my kitchen table. We are back at the office now and so thrilled to be back to work. THANK YOU pic.twitter.com/EPd6i5pXxG

- Julia Angwin (@JuliaAngwin) August 6, 2019

"Like I said, I would not have chosen it," Angwin added, laughing. "But I bet you a lot of companies would pay a lot of money for that amount of solidarity to be created amongst their crew."

On opening day, The Markup crew led with an investigative feature on a previously undisclosed algorithm used by the insurance giant Allstate, two "Ask The Markup" features about DNA testing kits and online shopping, and letters from Angwin and Syed. Each article provides embed code to republish it via Creative Commons license.

That Allstate story is copublished with Consumer Reports. It's in some ways the Platonic form of a Markup story: A large corporation (Allstate) makes important decisions (how much you pay for car insurance) using an algorithm that's seemingly inscrutable to the people affected by it. The Markup - using its " unparalleled roster of quantitative journalists...committed to finding the true meaning in large amounts of data " - figures out that the algorithm isn't making decisions the way it's supposed to. That finding gets rendered confidently in prose:

...we found that, despite the purported complexity of Allstate's price-adjustment algorithm, it was actually simple: It resulted in a suckers list of Maryland customers who were big spenders and would squeeze more money out of them than others.

...as well as in a deep technical explanation that goes far beyond what most data journalism offers: more than 5,000 words, 21 footnotes, three scatterplots, one decision tree, 10 other charts, and a "Confusion Matrix."

The Allstate story also features an unusually detailed set of credits at the bottom of the story - an indication of the disparate sets of skills needed to do the sort of algorithm inquisition that The Markup aims for.

The site's digital Page 1 also prominently promotes a tips page that encourages readers to share information, with a list of options also shows The Markup's range: regular old email, encrypted messaging apps Signal and WhatsApp, snail mail ("the Post Office cannot open your mail without a search warrant"), or SecureDrop over Tor. Oh, and a signup form for that custom-built, privacy-first email newsletter.

A newsroom apart

Most of The Markup's 19-person newsroom is based in New York. There are two staffers working from California, but they're based in Los Angeles, not San Francisco or Silicon Valley. The distance is intentional, and it isn't measured only in miles: While other tech publications sometimes face criticism for getting too close to the world they're covering, The Markup is doing its own thing.

"We deliberately decided not to have a Silicon Valley bureau," said Angwin. "We're an investigative outlet, doing deep investigations and explanatory work that asks, 'What does this all mean?' And honestly, I feel like you get a better perspective for that type of work when you're a little more removed from the industry."

There are plenty of journalists in Silicon Valley reporting on "open secrets at industry parties" etc. We are focused on the impact of technology on society .. which means we are more likely to be reporting in Detroit or Houston or partnering with journalists in Myanmar.

- Julia Angwin (@JuliaAngwin) August 26, 2019

The site also plans to distinguish itself from tech-focused peers through what Angwin and Syed have dubbed "The Markup Method," à la the scientific method.

It's a three-step process:

Build. We ask questions and collect or build the datasets we need to test our hypotheses.

Bulletproof. We bulletproof our stories through a rigorous review process, inviting external experts and even the subjects of investigations to challenge our findings.

Show our work. We share our research methods by publishing our datasets and our code. And we explain our approach in detailed methodological write-ups.

Angwin, a Palo Alto native who studied math at the University of Chicago and pursued computer programming before she found journalism, said The Markup is inspired by that scientific approach of amassing evidence, sharing methods, and providing data for other researchers to challenge or build on their work. Building data sets themselves allows The Markup to do more than just "opportunistic" data journalism that makes "a pretty visual" out of existing data sets, Angwin said.

Using public records requests, web scraping, and other resource-intensive tools, The Markup hopes to tackle projects that other outlets don't have the time or energy to complete. Don't expect to read about product launches or earnings calls or today's cybersecurity vulnerability - but the site does want to confront many-tentacled questions like "Is tech too big?" and "What impact are algorithms having on society?"

"We have some of the best data journalists and the most investigative firepower out there," Angwin said. "We want to make sure we're using it on the right problems."

As part of "bulletproofing" their work, The Markup will present the targets of their investigations - typically technology companies and government agencies - with the data they've collected and the code they've used to analyze it before publication. "We offer them an opportunity to challenge our findings," Angwin said. "Because the truth is that they have the most incentive to show us where we are wrong, and we want to find the flaws in our work." (For today's story, "Allstate declined to answer any of our detailed questions and did not raise any specific issues with our statistical analysis, which we provided to the company in November, including the code used to calculate our findings.")

That "show your work" ethos will allow readers - whether academics, policymakers, or the general public - to see the data, code used to analyze it, methodological information, and explanatory videos to help them dig into things themselves, even if they don't have experience in programming or data science. Angwin said she hopes other journalists, in particular, will be able to use the work to further the story and write about how the technology is affecting their own communities.

It's not always advisable (or legal) to share original data and documents, however anonymized, and not every story will be accompanied by original data and documents. (Angwin mentioned Reality Winner, the NSA contractor currently serving a five-year sentence after the F.B.I. used clues on a printout shared by The Intercept to identify her as a reporter's source.) But The Markup hopes to publish as much as it can; here's the Allstate story's data and code on GitHub.

Doing things differently

The Markup's privacy policy is 2,771 words long, and each one of them is the result of considered thought. It promises readers they won't be exposed to third-party tracking and that the site will not exploit or sell any of their information. Keeping this promise proved more challenging than the founder originally anticipated (as in its newsletter quest), but The Markup hopes that readers will appreciate the effort and support the nonprofit.

"If you feel grateful for the work and that we're honoring your privacy, we hope that will encourage you to donate," Angwin said. (Those millions from Newmark and other funders should help, too.)

Syed's letter acknowledges the tradeoff. The Markup will have to do reader engagement and measure impact within the self-imposed limitations, which also preclude advertising, since digital ads almost always require reader-tracking elements.

Because we don't track you, we won't know if you like our work. We don't know if you open our newsletter or if your cursor lingered over a particular story. We don't have the metrics that let us approximate whether a story changed your worldview or, better yet, gave you the tools to change your world. All we have is...you. And so we will have to do things the analog way: We want to build a connection with you directly.

(As its donate page puts it: "We prefer doing things the hard way.")

That kind of engagement approach means going back to the future. She says part of her efforts include reaching out to marketing professors and asking what audience engagement looked like in, say, 1985.

"I've heard that we are tying our hands behind our backs, but there must be a way to engage an audience without subjecting readers to a surveillance ecosystem," Syed said. "The privacy policy creates tension with another trend in journalism, which is audience engagement, but I think it's a fascinating opportunity to put our money where our mouth is and build the world we want to see." Instead of user-tracking features, The Markup will rely on social media, direct feedback on the tools they build, event attendance, and participation in upcoming educational seminars.

Angwin said The Markup is also working on building privacy-protecting analytics tools, browser extensions, and custom forms that can structure the information readers and tipsters want to send along. (Structured data is a lot easier to analyze than responses to a callout for tips on Twitter.)

Its marketing is also distinctly analog. A striking street-art-style poster - by radical feminist film and digital studio Mala Forever - reading "Big Tech Is Watching You. Who's Watching Big Tech? The Markup" went up last week in San Francisco. On Tuesday, New Yorkers will start seeing The Markup advertised on the subway. The publication also bought a billboard along a highway into Silicon Valley and will play videos on buildings in San Francisco this week.

"We want people to think about tech in the physical world, as they walk and live and breathe," Syed said. The poster, she hears, is quite close to a bus stop for Google employees.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"Big tech is watching you. Who's watching big tech?" The Markup is finally ready for liftoff

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After a false start, the unconventional team of algorithm investigators is ready to dive deep. "I've heard that we are tying our hands behind our backs, but there must be a way to engage an audience without subjecting readers to a surveillance ecosystem."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This story is part of a group of stories called

The Interface is a daily column and newsletter about the intersection of social media and democracy. Subscribe here.

On Monday the six Bay Area counties announced that they would extend stay-at-home orders through May, citing ongoing difficulties in preparing for future spikes in new cases. A prominent question as elected officials attempt to govern through the next several months is to what extent they will rely on technology solutions to help them identify possible infections. Over the weekend, we saw a variety of ideas on this subject begin to play out around the world.

First, Apple and Google announced some changes to their collaboration on a system-level API for public health authorities, which will use people's smartphones to inform them when they have been in the presence of someone who is later diagnosed with COVID-19. The changes are largely meant to address privacy concerns, but to me they're most notable for a change in terminology. Instead of "contact tracing," the companies are now referring to their project as an "exposure notification" system. I had previously argued here that Bluetooth-based solutions were unlikely to be effective for real contact tracing, which requires human beings to track down leads. But "exposure notification" seems like something these companies are well suited to do, and I'm glad they're now thinking about it in those terms.

One country that has been persuaded of the companies' approach is famously privacy-conscious Germany. Germans were instrumental in devising the (tongue twister alert) Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing project, an effort to do exposure notification in a way that protected citizens from their governments. But the project would have required operating system-level changes to Apple's iOS by making Bluetooth available to public-health apps that sought to process exposure notifications on a central server controlled by the government.

For privacy reasons, Apple said no, and now Germany has signed on with Apple's system. Here are Douglas Busvine and Andreas Rinke in Reuters:

Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections, backing an approach supported by Apple and Google along with a growing number of other European countries. [...]

Germany as recently as Friday backed a centralised standard called Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT), which would have needed Apple in particular to change the settings on its iPhones. When Apple refused to budge there was no alternative but to change course, said a senior government source.

(As an aside, the idea that we live in a time where Apple is telling Europe what forms of exposure notification will be permitted is basically the entire thesis behind / pitch for the existence of this newsletter. Not because I believe Apple abused its power, but because the world is still catching up to the idea that Apple and a handful other tech giants have this power.)

England, on the other hand, has said to hell with it. The country's National Health Service is developing its own contact-tracing app that it says will work even when it is in the background and the screen is off, a limitation that has stymied other such apps. The reason it is developing its own app is so that it can process exposure notifications on its own server - the thing that Apple declined to implement for Germany at the operating system level. Here's Leo Kellion reporting for the BBC:

"Engineers have met several core challenges for the app to meet public health needs and support detection of contact events sufficiently well, including when the app is in the background, without excessively affecting battery life," said a spokeswoman for NHSX, the health service's digital innovation unit. [...]

It has opted for a "centralised model" to achieve this - meaning that the matching process, which works out which phones to send alerts to - happens on a computer server. This contrasts with Apple and Google's "decentralised" approach - where the matches take place on users' handsets.

The NHS says it will be easier to notify people believed to be infected using a centralized approach. We'll see! Meanwhile, Australia says 1 million people have downloaded its own contact-tracing app, COVIDSafe, which also uses a centralized approach. The app is based on Singapore's open-source TraceTogether app, whose effectiveness at exposure notification is somewhat under dispute. (Not least because only a small minority of the population is using it.)

Western approaches to exposure notification continue to be rooted in privacy fears, but that's not the case everywhere. Last month, Israel's internal service, the Shin Bet, was granted emergency powers to track confirmed cases of COVID-19 and analyze patients' movements to aid in contact tracing. It reportedly marked the first time Israel had used technology built for counterterrorism purposes for civilian uses.

But Israelis have their privacy sensitivities, too. On Sunday, Israel's top court ruled that if the Shin Bet wishes to continue the practice, it will need to be explicitly permitted in legislation.

It was a weirdly rare reminder that, while so much of the pandemic response has focused on technology - on testing and tracing - lawmakers have a role to play, too.

The Ratio
Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech platforms.
⬆️ Trending up: WhatsApp has drastically lowered the number of viral forwarded messages on the platform. Earlier this month, the company limited the number of people a viral message could be forwarded to to just one, and now it says viral forwards are down 70 percent. (Neha Alawadhi / Business Standard)

Pandemic

⭐ Amazon is asking warehouse employees who have stayed away from work during the pandemic to return for scheduled shifts beginning May 1st, or request a leave of absence. The company offered unpaid time off without penalty for workers uncomfortable with coming in, but it only runs through April. Here's Matt Day at Bloomberg:

The largest online retailer has been scrambling to deal with a surge in orders that arrived just as outbreaks of COVID-19 began to hit its own ranks. Some workers have said Amazon wasn't doing enough to keep them safe, cries that led to walkouts and protests rarely seen in Amazon's workforce. Amazon stepped up the cleaning of its facilities and forced workers to keep their distance from one another.

But many employees at warehouses across the U.S. stayed home, either out of fear of catching or spreading the disease, or to care for children unable to attend school. Some had hoped to continue to stay away until the pandemic recedes and businesses reopen.

Amazon is piloting the use of video conference calls to verify the identity of new merchants who want to sell goods on the platform. It's part of the company's plan to counter fraud without in-person meetings in the pandemic. (Reuters)

A French court rejected Amazon's appeal against a ruling that restricts what it can deliver during the coronavirus crisis. The news marks a victory for unions that had criticized the company's safety measures. (Mathieu Rosemain and Sarah White / Reuters)

European Union officials softened their criticism of China in a report documenting how governments push disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. The officials were bowing to heavy pressure from Beijing. (Matt Apuzzo / The New York Times)

A US Army reservist and mother of two has become the target of a conspiracy theory that claims she brought COVID-19 to China, despite never having tested positive for the virus. It's turned her life upside down. (Donie O'Sullivan / CNN)

Trolls and bots are flooding social media with disinformation encouraging states to end the quarantine. The bots have helped stoke protests calling on government officials to let people go back to work, despite the ongoing health risks. (Thor Benson / Business Insider)

Child abuse images and online exploitation are surging on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as tech companies' moderation efforts continue to be constrained during the coronavirus pandemic. (Olivia Solon / NBC)

While most people in the US are waiting for antibody tests to become available, some wealthy and well-connected individuals are already getting access to them. The vast majority of these tests been vetted by the Food and Drug Administration and are not guaranteed to be accurate. (Emily Mullin / OneZero)

Doctors are becoming social media influencers as people struggle to find accurate information about the pandemic. But online fame comes with risks that are only heightened by the importance of their job. (Abby Ohlheiser / MIT Technology Review)

Influencers are offering free money to followers as the pandemic continues to disrupt peoples' livelihoods. While influencers typically frame the move as charity, it's also a a savvy growth strategy. (Taylor Lorenz / The New York Times)

Food delivery by robot is surging during the pandemic. It could accelerate a shift away from human delivery workers. (Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica)

Lockdown measures have stopped many protesters from going outside. So they're getting creative online. (Christopher Miller / BuzzFeed)

DJs are live streaming sets to big online audiences as the coronavirus pandemic keeps people trapped indoors. But few artists are actually getting paid. (Shawn Reynaldo / Pitchfork)

Virus tracker

Total cases in the US: At least 977,256

Total deaths in the US: More than 50,000

Reported cases in California: 43,787

Total test results (positive and negative) in California: 553,409

Reported cases in New York: 292,027

Total test results (positive and negative) in New York: 826,095

Reported cases in New Jersey: 111,188

Total test results (positive and negative) in New Jersey: 227,775

Reported cases in Massachusetts: 54,938

Total test results (positive and negative) in Massachusetts: 244,887

All total cumulative. Case data from The New York Times. Test data from The COVID Tracking Project.

Governing

⭐ Nearly two years since the General Data Protection Regulation was passed in Europe, it's still struggling to fulfill its promise. The privacy law was heralded as a model to crack down on the invasive, data-hungry practices of Big Tech. Adam Satariano at The New York Times has the story:

But since the law was enacted, in May 2018, Google has been the only giant tech company to be penalized - a fine of 50 million euros, worth roughly $54 million today, or about one-tenth of what Google generates in sales each day. No major fines or penalties have been announced against Facebook, Amazon or Twitter.

The inaction is creating tension within European governments, as some leaders call for speedier enforcement and broader changes. Privacy groups and smaller tech companies complain that companies like Facebook and Google are avoiding tough oversight. At the same time, the public's experience with the G.D.P.R. has been a frustrating number of pop-up consent windows to click through when visiting a website.

President Trump retweeted a gif of Joe Biden with his tongue out. On Twitter, people tried to claim this was a "deepfake." It's not, and the distinction matters. (Samantha Cole / Vice)

A young mechanic at a Honda dealership in Indiana was fired from her job after management learned she was making amateur porn on OnlyFans outside of work. Her boss said the account "might encourage [her coworkers] to approach you with unwanted sexual conduct or comments." (Otillia Steadman / BuzzFeed)

Chinese regulators ordered ByteDance to suspend downloads of its nascent Slack-style office app after discovering content from banned sites like Facebook and Twitter. The move was a blow to the startup's broader internet ambitions. (Zheping Huang / Bloomberg)

Industry

Things to do
Stuff to occupy you online during the quarantine.
Find a COVID-19 test year you. AllClear is a new open-source project that claims to have the most comprehensive listing of testing sites in the United States - more than 9,000 so far.

Remix these public domain audio clips. The Library of Congress is begging you to!

Watch Christine Baranski, Meryl Streep, and Audra McDonald perform "Ladies Who Lunch" on Zoom in honor of Stephen Sondheim's 90th birthday. They're all great but McDonald goes truly HAM and it's wonderful to see and hear.

Those good tweets

zoom calls are exhausting because actually listening takes half the energy of performing the act of listening
- Sarah Marshall (@Remember_Sarah) April 27, 2020

What's something you're proud of about this quarantine? For me it's that I never finished The Irishman
- Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) April 27, 2020

And finally...
Commissioner Resigns After He Threw a Cat During Zoom Meeting
Christopher Mele has a tale of what not to do at work during quarantine:

The cat meowed loudly again. "OK, first, I'd like to introduce my cat," Mr. Platzer said, lifting it close to the camera and then, with two hands, tossing it off screen.

The cat squeaked as it was being thrown, and a thud could be heard.

Please do not throw your cats off screen when you are on Zoom! Honestly it was the only part of your appearance on Zoom that any of us were looking forward to.

Talk to us

Send us tips, comments, questions, and fan fiction about tech giants declaring themselves to be nation states: casey@theverge.com and zoe@theverge.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Big Tech is dictating the terms of the coronavirus response to national governments

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Interface is a daily column and newsletter about the intersection of social media and democracy. Subscribe here. On Monday the six Bay Area counties announced that they would extend stay-at-home orders through May, citing ongoing difficulties in preparing for future spikes in new cases.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Power Technology | Energy News and Market Analysis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Technology companies are wielding increasing influence beyond what may be considered their traditional domains. Apple, for instance, has sold close to one and a half billion iPhones over the last decade, and with increasing scrutiny over where it sources the metals and rare earth minerals required to produce these products on such a scale, the company has had to consider the environmental footprint of its actions in a manner similar to a mining company, or an offshore oil and gas firm.

The Californian tech giant is not alone in this, and as technology embeds itself deeper into the lives of people around the world, these companies will be under increased pressure to keep up production, sale and distribution of their products and services, all while under intense environmental security. In response, many of the world's leading technology companies have made grand environmental pledges, as they aim to improve their own environmental performance, or spark wider social change with regard to carbon emissions and dangerous pollution, as the 2050 climate deadline looms ever larger. We consider the pledges made by four of these companies, and assess whether they could be as effective as the firms hope.

Microsoft's $1bn carbon-negative pledge

Microsoft is leading the way as tech companies look to improve their environmental record, going beyond pledges to reach carbon neutrality, and instead targeting carbon negativity. The company aims to be removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it is producing by 2030, an ambitious plan that could see pollution reduced, not merely stifled, should it be realised.

The company's plans include the creation of a $1bn fund to develop carbon reduction, capture and removal technologies, a significant investment that could go a long way to reaching this 2030 target. Microsoft has also pledged to make a number of logistical and institutional changes to improve efficiency at its operations, hopefully leading to the kind of incremental change that can be achieved without such a vast capital investment. By 2025, all of the company's assets will be powered by renewable energy, and on-site vehicles will all be electrified by 2030.

These goals also critically include scope three emissions, those produced by Microsoft's partners across its supply chain, which are often the most industrially intense, and thus pollution heavy; Microsoft notes that scope three emissions can be greater than the sum of scope one and two emissions, those directly produced by the company in question. There is an element of plausible deniability to scope three emissions, and companies have been known to absolve themselves of responsibility for them, claiming they cannot be held responsible for the actions of their partners, which can obscure the true environmental cost of a company's actions. By tackling these emissions head on, Microsoft could help set a new standard for accountability in the tech sector.

Amazon aiming for carbon neutrality by 2040

While smaller in scale than Microsoft's pledges, Amazon's targets cover a longer period, with the company aiming to become carbon-neutral by 2040. Amazon has announced plans to be wholly reliant on renewable power for its energy by 2030, up from 40% today, and its AWS cloud is already 3.6 times more efficient than the average cloud data server in the US, while producing an environmental footprint that is 88% lower.

Amazon is also targeting a number of industries and practices crucial to its core business, aiming to change the fundamental processes upon which the company is built. It has invested $400,000 into electric vehicle start-up Rivian, which has supplied the retailer with 100,000 electric delivery vans. The company's Shipment Zero policy also aims to make its delivery shipments net zero by 2050, and encompasses a range of recycling and reusing policies for a number of material.: Amazon plans to open 50 recycling plants across its operations, which will recycle 7,000 tons of plastic film a year; the company also plans to recycle 250 tons of paper used in shipping labels for use in animal bedding.

Should projects like these be successful, they will demonstrate the viability of overhauling a company's core activities, and could help introduce a cultural change for sustainability in big tech. Rather than clean practices being token gestures bolted on to an environmentally harmful framework, it could showchanges that can be incorporated wholesale into a company's identity.

Apple targets recycling and reuse

In a similar manner to Amazon, Apple is targeting recycling as it looks to improve its environmental performance. The company's much-publicised 'iPhone dismantling robot' spearheads a recycling initiative that has seen Apple dramatically reduce its need for mining new rare earth minerals for use in its products; it expects to have cut its aluminium-bearing bauxite production by 900,000 tonnes in 2019, and 29,000 tonnes of tin ore in the same year.

Apple has already achieved some success with this project in its use of paper, having sourced 100% of the wood fibres used in its packaging from recycled sources, or what it calls "responsibly managed forests" for two consecutive years.

However, these approaches lack the holistic emphasis of companies' such as Microsoft and Amazon. In the 2018 financial year, 74% of Apple's vast carbon dioxide production of 25.2 million metric tons was produced by its manufacturing arms, a figure that will not be diminished by redoubled efforts to recycle materials. Furthermore, while the company enthuses about the 2.8 million tons of carbon dioxide it has saved through its various projects since 2011, these figures do not include the critical scope three emissions which Microsoft has taken such pains to target directly. Apple's work in developing its recycling processes is undoubtedly positive, but as the world's environment struggles in increasingly dramatic ways, it is unclear if this will be enough to make a significant impact.

Samsung's reforms to operation and efficiency

Samsung is aiming to reform many of its operations and processes to improve efficiency, and reduce the volume of waste, such as carbon dioxide, produced at its operations. The company aims to cut its emissions by roughly half over a two year period, from 3.59 tons of carbon dioxide per million Korean won in 2018 to just 1.55 by the end of 2020. Similarly, it is targeting a year-on-year reduction in carbon dioxide production of seven million tons of carbon dioxide in 2020, which would see the company's total carbon dioxide reduction reach 250 million tons since 2008.

Many of the company's policies centre around changes to workplace culture and working habits, such as a pledge to increase reliance on video conferencing, rather than environmentally costly in-person visits around the world, part of a wider plan to tackle scope three emissions.

Samsung also plans to supplement these targets with a number of new infrastructure projects, such as the construction of a 5.5MW solar power facility on the roofs of its Chinese locations as part of a plan to rely exclusively on renewable power by the end of this year, and further plans to build solar and geothermal facilities in carparks and rooftops in its South Korean offices. This latter project is part of the nation government's plan to increase the country's reliance on renewable power to 35% by 2040, and the alignment of private and state interests helps highlight the significance of these commitments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Big tech and big power: companies' climate change pledges

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Technology companies are wielding increasing influence beyond what may be considered their traditional domains. Apple, for instance, has sold close to one and a half billion iPhones over the last decade, and with increasing scrutiny over where it sources the metals and rare earth minerals required to produce these products on such a scale, the company has had to consider the environmental footprint of its actions in a manner similar to a mining company, or an offshore oil and gas firm.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
De hoeveelheid data die Google verzamelt groeit en groeit, maar er is ook één type persoonsgegevens dat juist steeds schaarser wordt bij het Amerikaanse techbedrijf: telefoonnummers van bevriende politici. Nog maar kort geleden kwamen de leidinggevenden van het bedrijf haast dagelijks in het Witte Huis van toenmalig president Obama, voor lobby en overleg. Dat was ook de tijd dat Europese boetes voor techbedrijven als Google en Apple in Washington nog af werden gedaan als jaloezie op een bloeiende Amerikaanse innovatieve sector.

Maar de stemming in de VS is de afgelopen jaren omgeslagen. Links maakt zich zorgen over de concentratie van economische macht bij grote techbedrijven, rechts maakt zich zorgen over de manier waarop sociale media als Facebook en Twitter stemmen in het publieke debat het zwijgen op kunnen leggen, en ook veel Amerikanen in het politieke midden zijn flink geschrokken van de aanhoudende privacyschandalen en de Russische inmenging bij de verkiezingen.

Deze week kwam de regering in actie. Facebook kreeg woensdag van de Amerikaanse handelswaakhond een boete van 5 miljard dollar wegens schending van de privacyregels. Bovendien maakte het ministerie van justitie bekend dat het een mededingingsonderzoek opent naar de vraag of 'marktleidende online platforms' (lees: Google, Apple, Amazon en Facebook), zich schuldig hebben gemaakt aan praktijken die 'schadelijk zijn geweest voor consumenten'.

Daar hebben die techbedrijven natuurlijk al een antwoord op paraat: consumenten profiteren juist, want die betalen ofwel niets voor onze diensten (Google, Facebook), ofwel minder dan bij een traditionele winkel (Amazon).

Monopolies

Maar Makan Delrahim, de mededingingsbaas binnen Justitie die het onderzoek gaat leiden, lijkt het breder te zien. In een toespraak afgelopen maand liep hij vooruit op het onderzoek en trok een parallel met de roemruchte rechtszaken tegen grote monopolies van begin twintigste eeuw, zoals Standard Oil, dat uiteindelijk in 34 aparte bedrijven werd opgeknipt. Zo'n oppermachtig oliebedrijf was op de korte termijn ook goed voor consumenten, die lagere prijzen kregen doorberekend. Maar op langere termijn, aldus Delrahim, leggen zulke monopolies de economie lam.

De toon die Republikein Delrahim aanslaat, verschilt niet eens zo veel van die van de Democratische presidentskandidaat Elizabeth Warren. Zij voert campagne met een plan om grote techbedrijven gedwongen op te splitsen. Overnames die slechts dienden om concurrentie te neutraliseren, zoals die van Instagram door Facebook, moeten volgens haar ongedaan worden gemaakt. Ook wil ze de verstrengeling van functies op de grote platforms tegengaan: Google zou dan bijvoorbeeld moeten worden opgesplitst in een zoekbedrijf en een advertentiebedrijf.

Verschil met Europa

De Amerikanen kiezen daarmee een andere insteek dan Europa. De EU heeft de afgelopen jaren gedetailleerde wetgeving uitgewerkt over bijvoorbeeld privacy en auteursrechten, en stelt de grote techbedrijven verantwoordelijk voor het naleven daarvan. Verregaande regulering, dus. Amerikaanse monopoliebestrijders als Warren en Delrahim geloven eerder in de kracht van zo vrij mogelijke markten om techbedrijven bij de les te houden op het gebied van bijvoorbeeld privacy.

Regulering heeft als paradoxaal nadeel, betogen critici, dat het de techbedrijven uiteindelijk alleen maar machtiger maakt: om te kunnen voldoen aan gecompliceerde wetgeving, zijn zulke grote investeringen nodig dat jonge, kleine bedrijven veel minder kans maken.

Maar opknippen is ook geen wondermiddel: het is de vraag of het op basis van de huidige wetgeving überhaupt lukt, en zo ja, dan hou je alsnog behoorlijk grote bedrijven over. De techbedrijven zullen zich dus zeker zorgen maken over het politieke tij, dat overal tegen zit, maar het einde van hun heerschappij lijkt nog niet direct in zicht.

Wie wint er bij het nieuwe Europese copyright?
De EU wil makkelijke inkomsten van tech-giganten aanpakken. Maar critici vrezen: dat heeft ook gevolgen voor het leuke filmpje dat u op Instagram uploadt.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
De hoeveelheid data die Google verzamelt groeit en groeit, maar er is ook één type persoonsgegevens dat juist steeds schaarser wordt bij het Amerikaanse techbedrijf: telefoonnummers van bevriende politici. Nog maar kort geleden kwamen de leidinggevenden van het bedrijf haast dagelijks in het Witte Huis van toenmalig president Obama, voor lobby en overleg.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
ED en Krant.nl maken deel uit van DPG Media. Onze sites gebruiken cookies en vergelijkbare technologieën ('cookies') onder andere om je een optimale gebruikerservaring te bieden. Ook kunnen we hierdoor het gedrag van bezoekers vastleggen en analyseren en deze informatie toevoegen aan bezoekersprofielen.
Cookies kunnen worden gebruikt om advertenties te tonen en artikelen aan te bevelen op de websites en apps van DPG Media die aansluiten op jouw interesses. Ook derden kunnen jouw internetgedrag volgen. Cookies kunnen gebruikt worden om op sites van derden relevante advertenties te tonen. Cookies van derde partijen maken daarnaast mogelijk dat je informatie kunt delen via social media zoals Twitter en Facebook.

ED deelt de informatie die zij verkrijgt middels het gebruik van cookies en vergelijkbare technieken, waaronder ook persoonsgegevens, in een samenwerkingsverband genaamd NLProfiel met Sanoma, DPG Media, Telegraaf Media Groep en RTL Nederland, om gezamenlijke groepsprofielen op te stellen. Door op 'Ja, ik accepteer cookies' te klikken, ga je akkoord met de verstrekking van jouw (persoons)gegevens aan deze Nederlandse uitgevers voor de totstandkoming van gezamenlijke groepsprofielen, welke dit zijn kan je lezen op www.nlprofiel.nl.

Meer informatie hierover vind je in ons cookie-statement.

Om artikelen op ED te kunnen lezen, dien je de cookies te accepteren door op 'Ja, ik accepteer cookies' te klikken.

De serviceafdeling is te bereiken op telefoonnummer 088 - 013 9940. De servicepagina kun je hier vinden. Klik hier om direct de Krant.ed.nl te lezen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ED en Krant.nl maken deel uit van DPG Media. Onze sites gebruiken cookies en vergelijkbare technologieën ('cookies') onder andere om je een optimale gebruikerservaring te bieden. Ook kunnen we hierdoor het gedrag van bezoekers vastleggen en analyseren en deze informatie toevoegen aan bezoekersprofielen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tech news and expert opinion on the world's biggest companies from The Telegraph's technology team. Read articles and watch video on the tech giants

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Franklin Foer in conversation with Hanna Rosin

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Zonder stil te staan bij de gevolgen heeft de wereld de producten en services van vier reusachtige bedrijven omarmd. Google, Facebook, Apple en Amazon presenteren zich als voorvechters van individualisme, efficiëntie en diversiteit, maar ondertussen leiden hun algoritmes tot eenheidsworst, privacyschending en een overdosis comfort. Het resultaat is een onstabiele, bekrompen en slecht geïnformeerde wereld waarin geen ruimte is voor introspectie. Een wereld die niet zelf nadenkt.

Ontzielde wereld legt dit mechanisme van automatisering en homogenisering onder het vergrootglas. Elegant brengt Franklin Foer de geschiedenis van computertechnologie in kaart - van de Verlichting via Alan Turing en Stewart Brand naar het hedendaagse Silicon Valley - en toont daarmee niet alleen de dreigende crisis, maar ook de noodzaak van verzet. Hij laat feilloos zien wat er op het spel staat - en hoe we het tij kunnen keren.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Zonder stil te staan bij de gevolgen heeft de wereld de producten en services van vier reusachtige bedrijven omarmd. Google, Facebook, Apple en Amazon presenteren zich als voorvechters van individualisme, efficiëntie en diversiteit, maar ondertussen leiden hun algoritmes tot eenheidsworst, privacyschending en een overdosis comfort.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The dominance of Big Tech raises a series of concerns: Is their market power economically harmful? If so, what are the right policy remedies? Can big internet companies be taxed better? Should they be broken up, or should their conduct be constrained by public regulation?In a five-part series, Martin Sandbu's Free Lunch addresses these questions. Below you can read all the articles from the series as well as earlier pieces on the same topic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The dominance of Big Tech raises a series of concerns: Is their market power economically harmful? If so, what are the right policy remedies? Can big internet companies be taxed better? Should they be broken up, or should their conduct be constrained by public regulation?In a five-part series, Martin Sandbu's Free Lunch addresses these questions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
De Correspondent leest voor

Maurits Martijn - De belangrijkste techcriticus ter wereld bouwt een anti-Google

In de lente van 2018 staat Evgeny Morozov op een rubbermat in een hotelkamer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. De belangrijkste technologiecriticus ter wereld is bang. Bang om dood te gaan en te weten dat er belangrijke boeken bestaan die hij niet kent.

Verspreid over zijn kamer liggen boeken. Het zijn er honderden, duizenden misschien. Op de grond, op de stoel, in het bed, onder het bed, naast het bed. Overal boeken.

Voor hem, op een bureau, ligt er één opengeslagen. Een iPad filmt de pagina's, die hij met twee vingers in straf tempo omslaat. Op goede dagen scant hij zo honderd bladzijden per minuut, twaalf boeken in een uur, honderd op een dag.

Hij luncht, hij sport, hij slaapt en hij scant. Dagen achter elkaar.

Evgeny Morozov scant de boeken waarvan hij vindt dat hij ze ooit moet lezen. Dat weet hij, omdat hij een systeem heeft bedacht waarmee hij van alle boeken ter wereld kan bepalen hoe relevant ze zijn. En dat werkt niet alleen voor boeken, maar voor álle informatie en kennis.

Op die rubbermat in Massachusetts wordt het idee van geboren: een site die wekelijks de allerbeste en relevantste boeken, podcasts, wetenschappelijke artikelen, video's en journalistiek aanbeveelt aan iedereen die de wereld beter wil begrijpen.

Maar The Syllabus is meer dan dat. Morozov wil mensen aan het denken zetten. Met The Syllabus levert hij kritiek op de manier waarop online informatie en kennis ontdekt en verspreid worden, op basis van clicks, likes & shares - op basis van populariteit. Met The Syllabus bouwt Morozov een systeem dat op een nieuwe manier de relevantie van informatie bepaalt - een manier die misschien wel beter is dan Google.

Juist: Evgeny Morozov, de belangrijkste criticus van de ideologie van Silicon Valley, begon een online dienst met een even megalomane missie als menig techbedrijf.

En ik was erbij, toen hij vorige maand vanuit Zuid-Italië The Syllabus met de wereld deelde.

We zijn een halfuur onderweg, wanneer chauffeur Antonio naar een kluitje witte huizen in de verte wijst. Daar gaan we heen: Rose, een dorpje met vierduizend inwoners, gebouwd op een steile heuvel dicht bij de kust van Calabrië, op de wreef van de Italiaanse laars.

Het is het huis van de familie van Morozovs vrouw. Hij nodigde me hier uit om bij de lancering van The Syllabus te zijn.

'Waar ken je hem van?' vraagt Antonio terwijl hij zijn auto de Calabrische heuvels instuurt.

Ja, waar ken ik Evgeny Morozov van? Voor mij, als journalist die de invloed van technologie probeert te begrijpen, is de Wit-Russische schrijver al meer dan tien jaar onmisbaar.

Ik hoorde voor het eerst van hem toen hij in 2008 als blogger schreef voor een paar Amerikaanse sites. Zijn artikelen maakten hem als jonge twintiger berucht: hij liet geen spaan heel van entrepreneurs, trendwatchers en andere figuren die de digitale heilstaat predikten. Met zichtbaar genoegen ontleedde hij hun utopische vergezichten totdat er niets meer van overbleef. ' This is a book that should have stayed a tweet ',

Ik ken hem ook van die allereerste keer dat ik hem interviewde, in 2013, een

Ik: 'In je nieuwste boek uit je stevige kritiek op journalisten die over technologie schrijven. Zij begrijpen niet wat technologie is en zijn totaal niet kritisch. Welke lessen kunnen journalisten trekken uit jouw ideeën?'

Hij: 'Waarom vraag je dat aan mij? Jij bent hier toch de journalist?'

Ik ken Morozov óók van de twee fenomenale boeken die hij schreef: uit 2011 en uit 2013, waarmee hij al jaren voordat dat in de mode raakte.

Morozov bestrijdt in zijn werk de mythe dat 'het internet' en 'het digitale' unieke, nog nooit vertoonde fenomenen zijn, en dat deze technologieën de aanjagers zijn van revolutionaire tijden. Dat de iPhone, Google, Uber uitvindingen zijn - nee, innovaties! - die hun gelijke niet kennen, historische uitzonderingen, mogelijk gemaakt door de uitzonderlijke genialiteit van technerds in Silicon Valley.

Morozov laat juist consequent zien dat digitale technologie onderdeel uitmaakt van bestaande systemen en niet losstaat van de geschiedenis en de politiek-economische werkelijkheid.

Zo kon Silicon Valley ontstaan doordat de Amerikaanse overheid investeerde in technologieën om de Koude Oorlog te winnen. Werden de algoritmes van Googles zoekmachine gefinancierd door meerdere Amerikaanse ministeries. Versoepelden westerse steden tijdens de financiële crisis van 2008 de regels om je huis te kunnen verhuren, waardoor inwoners wat bij konden verdienen en waardoor Airbnb enorm kon expanderen.

Morozov bestrijdt in zijn werk de mythe dat 'het internet' en 'het digitale' unieke, nog nooit vertoonde fenomenen zijn

Morozov toont hoe de mythe van het uitzonderlijke Silicon Valley ons verblindde voor de werkelijkheid. Politici en journalisten geloofden dat het internet de wereld zou democratiseren, en bedachten daardoor niet dat vijf grote bedrijven de dienst uit zouden gaan maken. Google en Facebook werden gezien als idealistische bewegingen, niet als beursgenoteerde bedrijven die hun aandeelhouders ieder kwartaal betere cijfers moeten laten zien. De Verenigde Staten predikten jarenlang het internetvrijheidsevangelie, terwijl ze tegelijkertijd met de geheime dienst NSA een zeer geavanceerd online surveillancesysteem optuigden.

De mythe was krachtig en invloedrijk. Google, Facebook en Amazon kregen juridische en fiscale uitzonderingsposities, omdat politici heel lang geloofden dat het uitzonderlijke bedrijven waren. En steden rolden blind de rode loper uit voor Uber en Airbnb.

Nu, in 2019, is kritiek op Big Tech een populair gezelschapsspel, maar ik vraag me weleens af: wat als we iets eerder naar Evgeny Morozov hadden geluisterd?

Dat wil ik chauffeur Antonio antwoorden, maar mijn Italiaans is er te belabberd voor. En Antonio's Engels bestaat niet.

Wanneer hij de auto parkeert voor het groene hek van de Calabrische villa, komt Evgeny Morozov al aangelopen. In korte broek, wijd T-shirt en sandalen. Hij opent het hek, schudt mij de hand en begint in vloeiend Italiaans met Antonio te praten. Hij legt uit dat ik over vier dagen opgehaald kan worden, en samen lopen we naar het grote huis.

Daar moet het gebeuren. Daar werkt Evgeny Morozov met vier kompanen aan de launch van The Syllabus. Over drie dagen zal het project waar Morozov de afgelopen zes jaar zijn denkkracht in stopte live gaan. Als alles tenminste volgens plan verloopt.

Morozov leidt me kort rond, geeft me een pruim uit een van de pruimenbomen, plukt druiven van een tros en wijst me op de olijfgaard en de geiten. In de villa tref ik geen dampend datacenter of hysterisch rennende stagiairs. Wel een paar computers en zijn team van vier. Ik ben de enige journalist, de enige pottenkijker.

Het is vrijdag, de launch is maandag, ik vertrek dinsdagochtend, en er moet nog heel veel gebeuren.

Het is duidelijk dat ik hier in huis niet de enige bewonderaar van de Wit-Russische denker ben.

'Ik ben kennelijk de zegt Nikolai Maximchuk van 22, als ik hem naar zijn rol vraag. Hij is een volle neef van Morozov. Nikolai is geen techneut - hij studeerde Liberal Arts in Berlijn - maar de jonge Wit-Rus 'begrijpt het allemaal wel een beetje', die technologie die nodig is voor The Syllabus. Hij zit vrijwel onafgebroken achter zijn scherm. Net als de anderen.

De dagen zullen er min of meer hetzelfde uitzien. Eat, sleep, code, repeat. Iedereen heeft een werkplek in de ruime woonkamer. Alleen Morozov heeft een eigen werkkamer, op de eerste verdieping.

Iedere dag kent twee hoogtepunten, om half twee 's middags en acht uur 's avonds. Dan loopt de eigenaar van het plaatselijke restaurant met dampende, heerlijke, vettige pastaschotels het huis binnen en schuiven we aan tafel. Twee keer per dag wordt er drie kwartier gepraat en gelachen, om daarna weer aan het werk te gaan.

Pauzes zijn er nauwelijks. Het is nog onduidelijk of Morozovs systeem wel tijdig op volle kracht zal draaien.

Maandag moet er een site staan waar bezoekers zich kunnen abonneren op negen die linken naar de relevantste informatie van de zestig belangrijkste thema's van deze tijd, en waar bezoekers hun eigen, kunnen samenstellen.

De dagen zullen er min of meer hetzelfde uitzien. Eat, sleep, code, repeat

Nikolai leert hier vreselijk veel, vertelt hij me. Door met technologieën en databases te werken, maar vooral van zijn grote voorbeeld, zijn neef Evgeny Morozov. 'Alleen al in zijn omgeving zijn is leerzaam.'

Dan is er een stille Italiaan van 23 die allerlei klusjes voor het team doet.

De Spaanse Ekaitz Cancela (26) is een jonge schrijver en de inhoudelijke rechterhand van Morozov. 'Mijn taak is om Evgeny's denken zo te vertalen dat een machine het begrijpt.' Cancela is een apart figuur - overduidelijk zeer intelligent, maar niet altijd even makkelijk verstaanbaar in het Engels. 'Hij weet alles, hij heeft alles in zijn hoofd', zegt-ie over Morozov. 'Alle research die hij doet, hij leest het ook allemaal echt. Ongelooflijk.'

'Maar', zegt hij, 'het is niet zozeer de hoeveelheid die hij leest, het is wáthij leest. Hij leest góéden gericht. Dat leerde ik van hem: geen bullshit meer lezen.'

Cancela is een uitgesproken idealist, een gesprek met hem gaat al snel over in een bezeten bespiegeling op het kapitalisme. 'Stel je voor dat Karl Marx hetzelfde systeem zou hebben als Evgeny!' The Syllabus kan de wereld beter maken, denkt hij. 'Zó kan het internet óók werken. En dat bouwen wij!'

Morozovs partner in The Syllabus is Edward 'Eddy' Tomordy (36). De Schots-Oostenrijkse Tomordy zegde een paar maanden geleden zijn baan op als partner van een New Yorks hedgefonds dat honderden miljoenen beheerde. 'Na de wereld naar de kloten te hebben geholpen, wil ik nu iets moois maken', zegt Tomordy half ironisch, half gemeend. Samen met Morozov financiert hij The Syllabus.

Morozov en Tomordy studeerden samen in Berlijn en zijn al ruim vijftien jaar bevriend. 'Ik ken heel veel hele slimme mensen, maar Evgeny is echt van een ander niveau', vertelt Tomordy me. 'Toen we twintig waren, was al duidelijk dat hij een different mind had en daar blijf ik me over verbazen. Hij denkt zo anders, een superhuman. Het mooie is dat met The Syllabus een deel van Evgeny voor een groter publiek beschikbaar zal zijn.'

Bestaande informatiebronnen schieten tekort

Evgeny Morozov snijdt courgette en wortel voor een groentesoep. Het is zaterdagmiddag 12 uur en we zitten samen aan de keukentafel. Hij snijdt en praat, ik luister en let op. Gesneden groenten gooit hij in de Total Control Soup Maker van Morphy Richards.

'Ik heb tot één uur', zegt hij. 'Dan begint mijn Chinese les.'

'Chinese les?'

'Ja, drie dagen per week een uur. Kom zo maar kijken.'

En hij vertelt me over het systeem dat hij ontwikkelde om de relevantie van boeken te bepalen.

Het begon in 2013, toen Morozov aan Harvard aan zijn nieuwe boek begon te werken. Zijn boek In The Atlantic verscheen een zeer uitgebreide en rijke recensie van dat boek. was net verschenen en maakte de toen pas 28-jarige Morozov wereldberoemd.

Al was hij daar zelf niet zo van onder de indruk, of liever: hij was niet zo onder de indruk van zichzelf. 'Oppervlakkig', noemde het 'wonderkind' zijn eigen werk. 'Ik heb meer invloed dan ik zou moeten hebben', zei hij tegen een interviewer van NYT: 'The Internet's Verbal Contrarian'.

Hij wilde een intellectuele geschiedenis van het internet schrijven, maar vond zijn eigen boeken te simpel, te mainstream, en begon over andere onderwerpen te lezen. Over informatietheorie, cybernetica, counterculture, lsd, architectuur, design, psychoanalyse, neoliberalisme, en wat niet meer. Zijn boek moest een boek over alles worden. (Het is nog niet af. Uiteindelijk zullen er drie boeken verschijnen, vermoedt Morozov nu.)

Tegelijkertijd leerde hij nieuwe talen. Spaans, Italiaans, Portugees. Een beetje Pools, een beetje Nederlands, een beetje Noors, Zweeds en Roemeens. Hij wist: ik moet nóg veel meer boeken lezen.

Maar wie uit zo veel boeken kan kiezen, moet extreem selectief zijn. Hoe bepaal je dan wat je leest? Of belangrijker: hoe bepaal je wat je níét leest?

En dus dacht Morozov na over een methode om de relevantie van boeken te berekenen. 'Ik moest een manier bedenken om alle tien miljoen boeken in Harvard Library te beoordelen zonder ze te lezen. Ik moest ze ordenen, ranken, gebaseerd op mijn interesses.'

Hij kreeg een ingeving: wat als ik bij het einde begin? Bij de hypothetische index van het boek dat ik nog niet heb geschreven? Daar moeten immers alle belangrijke concepten, mensen en instanties in staan. Als hij die zou kunnen vergelijken met de inhoud van alle boeken die verschijnen en een manier vond om te berekenen hoe goed ze matchen, dan wist hij welke boeken relevant zijn, en welke hij dus moet lezen.

De man die zichzelf ooit een 'digitale ketter' noemde, begon te experimenteren met online zoekmethoden en scrapingtools. Hij bouwde appjes, programmeerde code, schreef scripts. Met hulp van zijn neefje Nikolai en bijgestaan door Wit-Russische developersbouwde hij een eerste, rudimentair systeem. Een systeem dat werkte.

'Shit. Ik heb er te veel groenten in gedaan.' Morozov haalt wat stukken courgette uit de Total Control Soup Maker en drukt op de aanknop van het apparaat.

Hij woonde inmiddels in Barcelona, vertelt hij, waar zijn vrouw Als gevolg daarvan kon hij niet meer in de buurt van de Harvardbibliotheek en al die belangrijke boeken zijn.

Dus begon hij reisjes in te plannen naar Cambridge, Massachusetts om in hotelkamers al die boeken in te scannen. In een paar jaar maakte hij twaalf van dit soort tripjes en digitaliseerde hij meer dan tienduizend boeken.

'Tegen de tijd dat ik aankwam, had de bibliotheek al een paar honderd boeken voor me klaarliggen'

Morozov: 'Twee weken voor elke trip paste ik mijn methode toe om te weten welke boeken ik moest reserveren. Ik schreef verschillende scripts om te controleren of de boeken beschikbaar waren op Harvard, of dat ze besteld moesten worden bij andere bibliotheken. Tegen de tijd dat ik aankwam, had de bibliotheek al een paar honderd boeken voor me klaarliggen. Ik nam veel handbagage en IKEA-tassen mee, laadde ze op een karretje en bracht ze naar mijn hotel. Ik plande mijn reizen zo dat ik elke avond naar de bibliotheek kon om nieuwe boeken te halen. Zo verspilde ik geen tijd.'

Soms maakte hij het wel erg bont. Dan nam hij boeken uit Harvard mee naar Barcelona en scande hij ze daar. De 90 kilo boeken vloog hij later weer mee terug naar de VS.

Waarom?!

'Ik heb genoeg over psychoanalyse gelezen om te weten dat daar iets diepers bij mij zit', zegt hij. 'Maar ik hoef niet te weten wát.' Hij excuseert zich en rent naar boven. Tijd voor de Chinese les.

Na de Chinese les vertelt Morozov me dat hij al steeds beter zinnen kan lezen.

We staan aan zijn hoge bureau in zijn werkkamer. Morozov heeft zijn koptelefoon nog op van de les die hij online volgde. Zijn iPad ligt binnen handbereik. Iedere vijf minuten checkt hij chatprogramma Slack om te kijken waar zijn team beneden mee bezig is.

'Deze week las ik in het Chinees een verhaal over een familie die een intelligente hond in huis had', vertelt hij. 'Als ze zeggen: "drink water", dan doet die hond dat. Op dat niveau kan ik de taal goed aan. Artikelen over geopolitiek nog niet.'

Juist nu, zegt-ie, heeft hij de afleiding van de Chinese les nodig: 'Ik moet dit doen.' Zijn andere lessen zette hij in de week van de launch wel tijdelijk stop. Duits ('ik spreek het goed'), Portugees ('ik spreek het vrij goed'), Frans ('ook goed, nog niet vloeiend'), Italiaans ('vloeiend, ik neem alleen les als ik op tv moet'), Spaans ('vloeiend').

Als hij tijd over zou hebben, zegt hij, dan bouwde hij met de hulp van een paar techneuten zo een app om talen veel sneller te leren. 'Ik heb zo veel talen geleerd met zo veel verschillende apps en tools, dat ik een eigen methode heb bedacht - een betere methode, durf ik wel te zeggen - om het leren van talen te optimaliseren.'

'Optimaliseren.' Het woord is gevallen. Sinds ik hier ben zoemt het door mijn hoofd. Ik associeer het met Silicon Valley, algoritmes van Google, zelfhulpboeken. Op maat gesneden informatie. Amerikaans efficiëntiefanatisme.

Ik associeer het níétmet Evgeny Morozov. De man die in zijn boeken tekeergaat tegen technologische oplossingen voor ingewikkelde problemen en het streven naar perfectie, die pleit voor niet-geoptimaliseerde politiek, het maken van fouten, het omarmen van het toeval. Juist die man blijkt zelf een geoptimaliseerde informatieverwerkingsmachine te zijn.

'Ik heb een goed leven', zegt hij wanneer ik hem dat voorleg. 'Ik was deze zomer een paar weken aan het Italiaanse strand, waar wij diners hadden met 25 mensen.' Hij bedoelt maar: niet iedere minuut hoeft efficiënt te zijn. 'Maar als ik werk, dan wil ik mijn tijd besteden op een manier die alles wat ik doe maximaliseert.'

'Ik kan niet lezen wat toevallig de weg naar mijn inbox of mijn Twitter heeft gevonden'

Dus bestelde hij een speciale rubberen werkmat waar je pijnloos twaalf uur op kunt staan. Kocht hij twee soepgadgets om snel soep te kunnen koken. Brengt een kok uit het dorp iedere dag exact om half twee dampende pastaschotels als lunch.

'Veel dingen in mijn leven komen uiteindelijk neer op: niet te veel tijd verliezen.'

Dat geldt ook voor The Syllabus, vertelt hij. 'Alles begon met de realisatie dat ik mijn leestijd zoveel efficiënter in moest richten. Ik kan niet lezen wat toevallig de weg naar mijn inbox of mijn Twitter heeft gevonden. Ik had een efficiënt en zelfvoorzienend systeem nodig. En ik wist dat niemand anders dat voor mij zou gaan maken.'

Wat Morozov met zijn systeem wil bereiken

Morozov zit inmiddels op een grote oranjerode zitzak in zijn werkkamer. Op de zitzak ligt een zwangerschapskussen, omdat hij daarmee langer zonder pijntjes op de zitzak kan zitten. We hebben ongeveer een halfuur, zegt hij, veertig minuten misschien. Dan ligt de volgende to-do op hem te wachten.

Ik vraag hem: maar je bouwt The Syllabus niet alleen voor jezelf, wat wil je ermee bereiken? Wat bekritiseert de grote criticus met dit project?

Hij benadrukt dat hij geen grootse revolutie nastreeft - 'we proberen hier geen planeconomie als alternatief voor de markteconomie te bouwen' - maar dat hij wel, grofweg, twee doelen heeft.

Er is iets fundamenteel problematisch aan de manier waarop informatie wordt ontdekt en verspreid, legt Morozov uit. De grootste informatiebedrijven zijn volledig afhankelijk van advertenties: Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Het gevolg is dat er online een bepaald type informatie wordt beloond. Informatie waar advertenties naast verkocht kunnen worden, informatie die klikt, die makkelijk te verpakken is, die gestandaardiseerd kan worden.

Zo verdwijnt belangrijke, relevante informatie naar de achtergrond. Die laat zich niet makkelijk verpakken, wordt niet veel geretweet en krijgt geen duimpjes omhoog.

'Die informatie voldoet niet aan de dominante criteria van succes', zegt hij. Morozov wil laten zien dat het ook anders kan. Bij The Syllabus wordt relevantie niet bepaald door populariteit en spelen 'clicks' geen rol.

Belangrijke, relevante informatie verdwijnt naar de achtergrond op platforms die afhankelijk zijn van advertenties en 'clicks'

Binnenkort, vertelt Morozov, gaat hij werken met gastredacteuren, 'zeer interessante eclectische intellectuelen, artiesten en journalisten'. Zij zullen Morozovs systeem gebruiken om informatie te ontdekken en die te delen met de gebruikers van The Syllabus. de wereldberoemde muzikant en producer.

'Dit zie ik ook als het kapen van de manier waarop de aandachtseconomie werkt. In plaats van al die beroemdheden die dingen posten op Instagram, hopen wij dat intellectuelen de aandacht van hun achterban op de meer serieuze content weten te richten.'

Daarnaast beschouwt Morozov The Syllabus ook als een soort 'guerrilla-actie'. 'Het is absurd dat de informatie waar het meeste onderzoek in zit en die van de hoogste kwaliteit is, totaal niet toegankelijk is. Grote, wetenschappelijke uitgeverijen zijn daar helemaal niet in geïnteresseerd, terwijl dat onderzoek met belastinggeld is betaald! Stel je voor dat mensen zouden zien welk onderzoek er met hun belastinggeld is gedaan. Dan zouden ze misschien wel eisen dat die kennis openbaar en gratis wordt. Het zou een mooi neveneffect zijn als de manier waarop wetenschappelijke uitgeverijen werken, verandert.'

Terwijl hij met mij praat, handelt hij een paar lopende zaken af op zijn iPad.

Ik wil van hem weten hoe zijn systeem precies werkt, maar dat wil hij me niet tot in detail uit de doeken doen, zegt hij. Dit is het geheime recept van The Syllabus.

Globaal werkt het als volgt.

De kern is dat The Syllabus op grote schaal informatie van bronnen die er volgens Morozov toe doen (wetenschappelijke uitgeverijen, universiteiten, et cetera) automatisch een score geeft en kan categoriseren.

The Syllabus werkt daarbij met Van Energy & Extractivism tot Post-fascism & Far-right Populism en van Geopolitics of Tech & Cybersecurity tot Finance en Migration & Demography - je zou kunnen zeggen: de belangrijkste thema's van deze tijd. Dit zijn ook de thema's die een rol spelen in het boek dat Morozov wil schrijven, legt hij uit. 'Het zijn mijn onderzoeksinteresses, aangevuld met vijf tot tien thema's die ik belangrijk vind om de wereld te begrijpen.'

Alle boeken, artikelen, video's en podcasts die binnenkomen krijgen een score op al die zestig thema's. Morozov: 'Stel dat er een wetenschappelijk artikel verschijnt dat over architectuur, de geschiedenis van drugs, neoliberalisme én klimaatverandering gaat. Dan geeft het systeem dit artikel hoge scores op die vier onderwerpen, en lage scores op de 56 andere onderwerpen.'

Cruciaal daarbij zijn de 'taxonomieën' van Morozov en zijn team. Dit zijn de belangrijkste woorden, concepten, namen en instituten van de zestig thema's. In de taxonomie van, bijvoorbeeld, het neoliberalisme staan vanzelfsprekend Hayek en Friedman, Davos en de Wereldbank, Thatcher en Reagan. Als er een overlap is tussen de inhoud van een stuk informatie en de taxonomieën, dan valt de score hoog uit op dat thema.

'Het zijn mijn onderzoeksinteresses, aangevuld met vijf tot tien thema's die ik belangrijk vind om de wereld te begrijpen'

Die taxonomieën - sommige bestaan uit wel duizend begrippen - worden zowel automatisch als handmatig bepaald. Bijvoorbeeld: het team kiest veertig belangrijke boeken en artikelen over klimaatverandering. Daar maakt het met speciale software een inhoudsanalyse van, en zo ontstaat een lijst met de meest voorkomende inhoudelijke termen. Die taxonomieën worden vervolgens handmatig verfijnd. Morozov of een van teamleden doet online onderzoek naar de gegenereerde woorden en namen, en bepaalt of ze echt belangrijk zijn en in de lijst passen.

'Je kunt die taxonomieën wel beschouwen als onze sensoren', zegt Morozov, 'die aangeven hoe goed nieuwe content overeenkomt met de thema's.'

Hoe Morozov die informatie binnenhaalt en analyseert, is het geheim van de smid, zegt hij. Hij wil niet vertellen hoe hij zijn taxonomieën vergelijkt met de daadwerkelijke inhoud van video's, podcasts, boeken en artikelen. 'Daar zit onze cutting edge innovation. '

En dit is nog maar de eerste fase. Het categoriseren en scoren van alle informatie is de grove schifting. Vervolgens wordt alles door Morozov en zijn adjudanten beoordeeld, meerdere keren, waardoor uiteindelijk een selectie ontstaat van de allerbeste en relevantste informatie die in een week verschijnt, gerangschikt naar thema.

Dat is intensief werk. Tijdens mijn verblijf luistert de Spaanse schrijver Ekaitz Cancela uren per dag naar podcasts en besteedt Morozov dagelijks een paar uur aan het reviewen van wetenschappelijke papers.

Tegelijkertijd draait er een ander systeem dat de bronnen van informatie monitort. Dit zijn podcastmakers, twitteraars, videokanalen die Morozovs team vertrouwt omdat zij bewezen afzenders van kwaliteitsinformatie zijn. Ook daar past Morozov allerlei 'trucjes, algoritmes en technieken' toe om nieuwe informatie te vinden en de lijst van bronnen continu te verversen.

Deze twee methoden - het vergelijken van de contentmet de taxonomieën en het monitorenvan afzenders - worden door The Syllabus gecombineerd. Als het systeem een boeiend artikel boven laat drijven omdat het matchtmet het 'neoliberalisme', dan worden de auteur en de uitgeverij ook opgenomen in de lijst van interessante bronnen. Of: als tientallen mensen dat artikel vervolgens op Twitter delen, detecteert het systeem dat en bekijkt het automatisch wat die twitteraars nog meer voor contentdeelden.

'Het is een levend systeem', zegt Morozov, 'het is nooit af.' Er is een constante feedback loop, waardoor de taxonomieën, informatiebronnen en de belangrijke content continu verversen en veranderen.

'Zo werkt mijn brein ook',

Ik vraag mij ondertussen af of The Syllabus niet te véél op Morozov lijkt, een te goede kopie van het bizarre brein van dit supermens. Dit is een man die wij stervelingen niet bij kunnen benen. Verwacht hij niet te veel van ons? Kunnen wij dit wel gebruiken? Is The Syllabus niet té veel, té eclectisch, té diepgaand?

Morozov: 'Ik weet niet hoe het gebruikt moet worden en door wie. We zien wel.'

De veertig minuten zijn om. Hij moet door.

De dagen daarop neemt het stressniveau in het huis toe. Er wordt nog harder gewerkt en nog minder live met elkaar gepraat. Er zijn wat irritaties hier en daar, er wordt gezucht en gesteund.

Op maandagochtend, launch day, word ik wakker van een ritmisch geratel. Ik loop naar het balkon en zie een opgewekte Morozov op zijn hometrainer, in de weer met zijn iPad in een houder. Het uitzicht is schitterend, de zon zweeft laag boven de heuvels.

'Kijk', wijst Morozov vanaf zijn hometrainer. 'Dit is toch net Silicon Valley? But without all the bullshit.'

Vannacht, toen ik al sliep, besloot het team voor een totaal ander designvoor The Syllabus te kiezen. Een paar dagen werk is daarmee verloren gegaan, waardoor het nog moeilijker zal worden om vandaag te launchen.

De koppies beneden zien bleek en verbeten. Niet Morozov. Morozov is relaxed, brengt rust en maakt continu grappen.

Ekaitz, de Spaanse schrijver, pakt een doos met overgebleven pizzapunten van gisteravond.

'Nee, Ekaitz!' lacht Morozov. 'Neem een wortel! We zijn toch geen Silicon Valley-start-up?'

Wanneer Ekaitz later - niet voor de eerste keer - een glas laat vallen: ' Ekaitz! Silicon Valley start-ups move fast and break things. Here things move slow and still get broken.'

Hoe later het wordt, hoe duidelijker het ook wordt dat het niet gaat lukken vandaag. Om half acht deelt Morozov mee dat we niet uit eten zullen gaan om de launch te vieren. 'We vieren het hier, ook als er niets te vieren is.' Hij kijkt in de koelkast of er nog eten is.

'We doen net als Greta', zegt hij dan. 'We eten alleen de restjes.'

Wanneer ik op het punt sta naar bed te gaan, komt hij lachend naar me toe. 'Maakt het voor je verhaal iets uit als we morgen pas launchen? Ik verwacht dat het morgenochtend wordt, half negen, zodat jij het nog mee kan maken.' Want om kwart voor negen komt chauffeur Antonio mij weer ophalen.

Een paar dagen voor mijn vertrek vertelde ik een collega over mijn aanstaande bezoek aan Evgeny Morozov. 'Je gaat dus een aantal dagen doorbrengen met een soort persoonlijke godheid', zei hij. ' Fan bezoekt idool, dat betekent meestal dat je fan-dom op de proef gesteld wordt.'

Ik ben Evgeny Morozov de afgelopen dagen alleen maar meer gaan bewonderen.

Op dinsdagochtend sta ik om zeven uur op. Op de gang kom ik een opgewekte Morozov tegen. Nee, The Syllabus zal voorlopig niet lanceren, zegt hij, door 'een paar kleine technische issues'. Vanmiddag, misschien. Waarschijnlijk. 'Om een uur of één', denkt hij.

Dan drukt hij een stapeltje A4'tjes in mijn handen. 'Ze zijn amazing', zegt hij. Het zijn printjes van de die The Syllabus aanbiedt. Een heet ' The Intellectual' en gaat over 'kunst en ideeën'. ' The Machinist' is voor geïnteresseerden in technologie, in ' The Progressive' staat content over 'politieke economie', ' The Activist' over 'sociale rechtvaardigheid' en ' The Cosmopolitan' over 'internationale studies'. En dan zijn er ook nog ' best of '-nieuwsbrieven: de beste video's, podcasts, journalistiek en wetenschappelijke artikelen.

Ik blader door de geprinte velletjes en zie titels van boeken die ik meteen wil lezen, podcasts die ik zelf nooit zou vinden, video's die ik op weg terug naar Nederland zal bekijken.

Evgeny Morozov knikt tevreden. Hier gaat het hem om. De informatie is er, de syllabi zijn gevuld.

Ik vind het mooi om hem zo te zien. Dat het design van The Syllabus nog niet werkt, dat de nieuwsbrieven pdf'jes zijn die hij uit moet printen en dat de launch later komt dan gepland: het doet er allemaal niet zoveel toe.

'Het systeem werkt', zegt Morozov.

Beneden drink ik een espresso en neem ik afscheid van het team.

We lopen naar buiten. Antonio staat al klaar. Morozov escorteert me naar de auto. ' I don't know about the launch', zegt hij dan, ' but the lunch will be great.'
The Syllabus werd uiteindelijk op woensdag gelanceerd.
Meer lezen?

De plasticvanger van Boyan Slat: ineffectief, peperduur en mogelijk een ramp voor het zeeleven Biologen, oceanografen en plasticexperts waarschuwen Boyan Slat al jaren voor de impact van The Ocean Cleanup op het zeeleven. Lees het verhaal van Tamar Stelling hier

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
De belangrijkste technologiecriticus ter wereld bouwt een anti-Google

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Evgeny Morozov was al jaren voordat het in de mode raakte kritisch op Big Tech. Maar altijd vanaf de zijlijn. Toen bedacht en bouwde deze briljante denker een systeem dat breekt met de dominante wetten van de aandachtseconomie. Ik was erbij, toen hij vorige maand vanuit Zuid-Italië The Syllabus met de wereld deelde.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This will be the last story I file to my editors using Google Docs for the next month-or possibly forever.

Starting today, I am going to stop using any of the services offered by the so-called "Big Five" tech companies-Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple-for the next four weeks in order to better understand the real cost of total convenience. That means no more Android phone, Gmail, Google Maps, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, two-day Prime delivery, computers running Windows, Facebook posts, or any of the myriad other services offered by the five giants of Silicon Valley.

It's a cold turkey detox from the tech that runs the world.

WHY THO

As is the case with many bad ideas, it started with a tweet. I have a crappy Samsung phone that is going to die any day now and solicited Twitter for advice on whether I should replace it with a Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel, or an iPhone. Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler had a better idea: Why not try using an old LG Nexus he had flashed with a version of Sailfish, an independent mobile OS? Even better-why not try going a month without any products from these tech giants?

I supported the idea in principle, but had a hard time seeing how it would work in practice. My life revolves around the products and services provided by the big five. All my emails, documents, and photos are stored on Google's cloud servers, Google powers my two-factor authentication, I browse the web with Chrome, Google Maps is the only way I know how to navigate New York City, I depend on Amazon to save me from having to haul 40-pound boxes of cat litter several city blocks each month, all my computers run Windows, I'm writing a book using Word, I stay in touch with friends around the world using WhatsApp, and I've used Android phones for nearly a decade.

Despite my total dependence on these products, however, I also have a deep-seated distrust of the companies behind them.

Amazon's success is built on the labor of its nearly 600,000 underpaid and overworked employees, huge tax breaks, and the total invasion of our personal space with spy-ready products like Alexa. Facebook harvests user data and allows nearly anyone to target you with advertisements, a business model which resulted in an epidemic of fake news, political ad targeting in the US and Britain, and allegedly fueling genocide in Myanmar. Google is a military contractor that has more data on us than any company in the world and uses its products to target us with ads while aggressively avoiding taxes. Apple's flagship products are built on the suffering of its contractors in the developing world, from the children dying in cobalt mines in Congo to the Foxconn factories in Shenzhen, where nets hang over the courtyards of labor barracks to stem the rising tide of worker suicides. And finally there's Microsoft, a company slapped with landmark antitrust suits in the US and Europe that has cooperated with Chinese censorship and handed over user data to the NSA for its infamous PRISM program to spy on US citizens.
Read More: Douglas Rushkoff in Real Life
In short, I found myself a hypocrite. On the one hand, I was staunchly opposed to many of the business practices that made these companies into the globe-striding behemoths they are today. On the other hand, I was a sucker for the total convenience their products provided.

While some of the products these companies have created have undoubtedly made people's lives-especially in developed countries-easier, this has come at a significant cost. It's a truism in the tech world that if a company's product is free then the real product is you, and the negative consequences of this way of doing business are growing more apparent with each passing year.

AGAINST TECHNO-FATALISM

In 2016, the documentarian Adam Curtis produced a documentary for the BBC called Hypernormalisation . It's a great documentary and everyone should watch it, but what's really important is Curtis's main thesis: The reason why everything is so fucked up today is that we are unable to imagine a better future and so instead we pretend that everything is okay as the world comes apart at the seams around us.

It's apparent to me that a similar process is at work in Silicon Valley. With the exception of Microsoft and Apple, which have been around for nearly half-a-century, these Big Five companies have quickly infiltrated our lives over the past decade or so and have become so integral to our day to day lives that it is quickly becoming impossible to imagine life without them.

We are in the grips of a techno-fatalism-a belief that technology can't be other than what it is-and this prevailing attitude is best exemplified by a recent article written by the New York Times technology reporter Farhad Manjoo. Titled " Tech's Frightful Five: They've Got Us," the article is an exploration of how "we are, all of us, in inescapable thrall to one of the handful of American technology companies that now dominate much of the global economy."
Read More: How to Delete Your Facebook
Manjoo has already conceded that there's no escape from these companies, but that's not the main point of the article. The point is to get the reader to take a quiz, which reinforces their dependence on these companies. Manjoo prefaces the quiz with this hypothetical: "If an evil, tech-phobic monarch forced you to abandon each of the Frightful Five, in which order would you do so, and how much would your life deteriorate as a result?"

The rest of the article is Manjoo describing which tech companies he couldn't live without in order of importance. He sings the praises of the convenience afforded him by various Amazon products, which the quiz told him was the most indispensible company to his life. He anticipates criticism for one paragraph, writing "If such a future makes you blanch, that's the right reaction. I have fallen victim to the convenience trap, and you're right to laugh at me, and also to spin dystopian visions from my behavior."

Yet rather than spend any time on meaningful introspection about this criticism, Manjoo wraps up the article in the next paragraph: "Sure, you can decide to opt out; you can drive to Target, your life won't end if you don't patronize Amazon. But if it's not Amazon for you, it'll be another of the five. Or more likely, it already is. It's too late to escape."

To look at the current technological landscape and to state that things can't be different is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way technology develops. Manjoo's argument is only justified in a very narrow sense. If you use the internet, it's next to impossible to completely avoid third-party services that rely on Big Five products like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, and Google is building undersea cables so eventually accessing any site on the internet will likely involve at least one Google tool.

For me, the next month is a challenge to the assumption that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple products are too convenient to possibly resist. By replacing these companies' products with their independent open source equivalents, I am going to test the idea that the convenience afforded by these products outweighs their downsides. To be clear, my goal isn't to get "off the grid," but rather to try to stay connected and live as normally as possible by using alternative products and services.

Admittedly, I'm in a pretty ideal position to undertake this experiment. For starters, I already deleted my Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and I refuse to use Apple products because I can't stand the company's closed ecosystem, so two of the big five have already been largely cut out of my life. I'm also fairly technologically literate and have a small amount of experience with things like Linux, which will undoubtedly make the transition to alternative platforms easier. I also have a job that allows me to undertake this kind of experiment and live in the densest city in the US, so there are plenty of stores to make up for lack of access to Amazon.

Over the next few weeks, I will be talking with the people fighting the big five's monopolization of everything by developing alternative tools and will write a guide to replacing these products in your own life. At the end of the month, I'll take stock of the experience and write a follow up article about what it was like to unplug from the big five. I'll be the first to admit that there may be products that are so indispensable that my quality of life may greatly deteriorate without them. But I won't know until I try.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why I'm Quitting Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple for a Month

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This will be the last story I file to my editors using Google Docs for the next month-or possibly forever. Starting today, I am going to stop using any of the services offered by the so-called "Big Five" tech companies-Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple-for the next four weeks in order to better understand the real cost of total convenience.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With enemies like these, the industry is going to need some friends.

Stephen Lam / Reuters

Updated on June 5 at 12:39 p.m.
In October 2016, then-President Barack Obama hosted a miniature version of the blowout tech conference South by Southwest, which the White House called South by South Lawn. Obama, as The New York Times put it at the time, had "brought Silicon Valley to Washington." He even hinted that if he hadn't been president, he might have become a venture capitalist. "The conversations I have with Silicon Valley and with venture capital pull together my interests in science and organization in a way I find really satisfying," he said.

My, how times change! Most American politicians would not be caught consorting so openly with the technology industry these days. And now that Big Tech lacks top cover, government agencies are moving in. According to new reports, Google and Apple face deeper investigation by the Department of Justice, while the Federal Trade Commission takes on Amazon and Facebook.

At a broad ideological level, two things have happened. First, the idea of cyberspace, a transnational, individualistic, largely unregulated, and free place that was not exactly located in any governmental domain, has completely collapsed. Second, the mythology of tech as the carrier of progress has imploded, just as it did for the robber barons of the late 19th century, ushering in the trust-busting era. While Big Tech companies try to establish a new reason for their privileged treatment and existence (hint: screaming "CHINA!"), they are vulnerable to attacks on their business practices that suddenly make sense.

But these changes did not occur in the ether among particles of discourse. Over the past three years, an ecosystem of tech opponents has emerged and gained strength. Here's a catalog of the coalition that has pulled tech from the South Lawn into the trenches.

Angry Conservatives: The biggest change, of course, came with the 2016 campaign and the ultimate election of Donald Trump. Though Trump played the social-media game with tremendous success, conservatives criticized the platforms during the campaign and have continued to do so throughout the past two and a half years. Most recently, the president announced that he is collecting reports of social-media grievances. There has been a steady drumbeat over the same time frame of stories about tech companies' left-leaning workforces, which conservatives have spun into a fable about how they are being suppressed. The evidence is thin, but it seems plausible to most people who believe that the platforms censor political viewpoints.

Disillusioned Liberal Tech Luminaries: Alongside the conservative-outrage machine, the biggest body blows that the tech industry has taken have come from disillusioned liberals who worked for those companies. While their specific critiques vary, most of them feel that the platforms aided and abetted the election of President Trump-that is to say, roughly the opposite of the conservative critique above. Many have come to expand their criticisms to the basic mechanisms of the technology industry, from the former Googler Tristan Harris, who works on " Time Well Spent," to the Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, who has called for the government to break up the company.

Antitrust Theoreticians: The version of antitrust regulations that emerged in the 20th century held that consumer prices had to rise in order for monopolistic conditions to cause harm. That framing protected Big Tech companies such as Google and Facebook, which give away their products to users. How can there be consumer harm if consumers are paying $0.00? But a new wave of antitrust scholars, now centered at the Open Markets Institute, has argued that this view is outdated because free services can still be harmful to societies. It's opened the door to new attacks on the market power of Big Tech, and it's already gained adherents.

Democratic Presidential Candidates: Headlined by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democratic presidential contenders have proved ready to tussle with Big Tech. Drawing on the new antitrust doctrine, Warren has argued for breaking up the Big Tech firms "to restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and to ensure that the next generation of technology innovation is as vibrant as the last."

Rank-and-File Tech Workers: For years and years, tech companies very rarely leaked. Workers were generally pretty happy, and corporate cultures discouraged talking with outsiders. That's changed. Now all kinds of tech workers with different agendas-from James Damore types to anti-sexual-harassment campaigners to union organizers-have begun to talk with the press, publicly or privately. The pressure has led to important internal reforms, but has also opened the companies up to new political attacks from a range of directions. All the leaks have eroded the sense of impenetrability that used to surround operations such as Google.

Traditional Democratic Corporate Reformers: Reining in corporate power has long been part of most Democratic politicians' agenda. But now that zeal is often directed not just at Wall Street or automakers, but also at tech companies. In his position as the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey has repeatedly battled tech-company executives who have testified before him. He's a traditional Democratic establishment force, an ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and clearly sees the tech industry as the kind of corporate power that needs to be reined in, starting perhaps with new privacy regulations. "We've been talking about it for years, yet nothing has been done to address the problem," Pallone said at a February hearing. "It's time that we move past the old model that protects the companies using our data and not the people."

Privacy Advocates: It would be hard to argue that privacy advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have had too big of an impact on tech companies, even after the Edward Snowden revelations gave them far more ammunition than they had in years past. Just look around at the data every person on Earth seems to be leaking. The activists remain in the background, pushing for reforms and calling out tech-industry lobbying. Their political alignments might prove difficult to pin down, however, as more muscular government involvement runs counter to the foundational principles of most early internet-privacy proponents.

European Regulators: Nobody has been harder on Big Tech than European regulators, who caused quite a ruckus with their General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, the jury is still out on what the ultimate impact of the GDPR might be on tech firms and everyday users. Europeans have more control, but Big Tech companies might be the real winners (something tech companies have been whispering about many regulations). That said, it's hard to imagine that the Europeans are done battling American tech companies' dominance in their lives.

The Media Industry: Having had its lunch eaten, its lunch money taken, and its person shoved into a toilet and a locker by Big Tech, the media industry has begun to fight back. Across the board, the longtime frenemy relationship that most publishers tried to maintain with the Big Tech companies has soured. One thing to watch: With the Facebook wave receding and Google solidifying its control over traffic, the media industry might start to find some love in its heart for Google, while maintaining its open season on Facebook.

The Telecom Industry: Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T might not be the most popular companies in the world, but the old-line telecoms know that Big Tech is their most important competitor. After years of losing regulatory battles, they've begun to claw their way back. With the banner of mobile innovation now passing to 5G, it wouldn't be shocking to see them ramp up their efforts against the platforms that use their networks.

Scholarly Tech Critics: The technology industry has long had skeptics in the academy, but over the past five years, those researchers have landed many more blows, from many different angles. They've exploded myths, coined new language for problems, and created rallying cries for those inside and outside the industry. Cataloging them all would be impossible, but this sample gets at the breadth of the critiques: Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism; Evgeny Morozov's To Save Everything, Click Here; Zeynep Tufekci in The New York Times; Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants; Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction; Siva Vaidhyanathan's anti-paeans to Google and Facebook; Frank Pasquale's The Black Box Society; Safiya Umoja Noble's Algorithms of Oppression; Sherry Turkle's Reclaiming Conversation; Malkia Cyril's powerful essays; and Jean Twenge's alarming work on youths and their relationship to technology.

Apple: Of the Big Tech companies, Apple is the one that has the most at stake in the regulatory battles. On the one hand, it needs the other giants to produce the apps that make an iPhone worth buying. On the other hand, anything that reduces its perceived value-such as, perhaps, corporate or government surveillance-is bad. Apple can take the moral high ground in some ways because it doesn't use data in the same way as surveillance-capitalism companies such as Google and Facebook, as Zuboff points out. And it has now taken to highlighting its more privacy-protective approaches and building new ones, which calls attention to the mountains of data its rivals use more intensively.

Oracle and Other Business-Software Companies: Oracle has long been a Google enemy, in part because Google gives away the kinds of products that Oracle sells to big companies and governments. (They're also locked in an ugly lawsuit over software copyrights.) The company has helped fund a particularly hard-hitting and effective operation called the Google Transparency Project out of the Campaign for Accountability, which has traditionally gone after Republicans for ethical violations.* The Transparency Project, which is funded by Oracle and other Google rivals, drew massive attention to Google's remarkable funding of scholars and academics.

Yelp and Other Consumer-Protection Organizations: Google has also drawn the ire of other competitors, which are mad at Google because of its presentation of search results. That group is headlined by Yelp, which created a new lobbying campaign to criticize Google on antitrust matters called Focus on the User. Its partner in the effort is Fight for the Future, an organization that shares some ancestry with MoveOn and other liberal, internet-interested activists.

The Chinese Internet Industry: For years, American internet companies were dominant around the world. That's no longer as true. The Chinese internet is enormous-and with ByteDance's TikTok, it's begun to make inroads into Western markets. As Korean and Japanese internet companies have discovered, beating Western companies on their home turf is hard, but China has cultivated a plausible alternative ecosystem for messaging, social media, and other apps. It's not WhatsApp or nothing as long as there's WeChat.

Big Tech may survive this scuffle with only a couple of lumps, à la Microsoft in the 1990s. Or something much bigger may be in the offing. But one thing is for sure: After disrupting so many industries and having created so many enemies in consolidating control of the internet, it's going to be difficult for tech companies to find friends.
* This post previously mischaracterized Oracle's role in the Google Transparency Project.

This article is part of "The Speech Wars," a project supported by the Charles Koch Foundation, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and the Fetzer Institute.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
miniature version of the blowout tech conference south

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
basic mechanisms of the technology industry

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Coalition Out to Kill Tech as We Know It

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With enemies like these, the industry is going to need some friends. Updated on June 5 at 12:39 p.m. In October 2016, then-President Barack Obama hosted a miniature version of the blowout tech conference South by Southwest, which the White House called South by South Lawn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. It's difficult to get jazzed about smartphones and social networks when they might be ruining the world. That's what my guest, Farhad Manjoo, writes. And he's been covering tech for 20 years. For the last three, he's written the New York Times column "State Of The Art" in which he explores how the latest tech ideas are shaping the future. Now he's writing a series about the Frightful Five. That's his name for tech giants Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, which make up half of the top 10 most valuable companies on the American stock market and which Manjoo says collectively influence just about everything else that happens in tech, as well as the rest of the global economy. He's also writing a book about the five.

Farhad Manjoo, welcome to FRESH AIR. What makes the Frightful Five frightful? What did they have to do to get on your list?

FARHAD MANJOO: So what makes them frightful, first of all, is that they are very, very big. And they play a huge role - they all play sort of huge roles in our lives kind of personally and at a kind of society-wide level. So if you live kind of a modern American life, it's impossible to, you know, to live without all of them for most people. And more than that, they sort of are being asked to do and they kind of know more about us than any corporations in history. They're more - they've become kind of more like governments than companies with the amount of money they have, with the kind of power they have over democracy in society.

We're seeing that with the way that, you know, news on Facebook and Google affected the election, with their impact on the economy, you know, the way they're disrupting kind of how retail works, with their impact on jobs and inequality. And eventually, you know, they're all working on artificial intelligence. And their technologies will affect probably most of our jobs. Most of the ways that people make money now are going to be changed by technologies that these companies make.

GROSS: Yeah. And when you say that they're like governments, they're sometimes more like governments than corporations, you point out that they're doing things that government - that our government used to do in terms of innovation. What are some examples that you're thinking of?

MANJOO: Yeah. So, you know, many of the technologies that we use today at kind of their earliest levels were started by grants for the Defense Department or just kind of basic science research. Now a lot of that is being done by these companies. Artificial intelligence is kind of the primary example. These companies are going to be building the future of transportation in the United States, in the world. You know, they're building self-driving cars. They're building drones. They're building kind of the infrastructure of the United States - the infrastructure of the next 20, 30, 40 years in ways that we used to look to kind of governments to do.

You know, Amazon has a fleet of planes, drones. It is in the kind of shipping business. It affects stores around you. Much of the kind of physical world around you is being shaped by, you know, that one company. And you can point to kind of similar ways that all the other companies are shaping the world around you in ways that are sort of huge economically and socially and that are kind of unavoidable. Like essentially - in one of my pieces, I wrote that they kind of blanket the entire society in their technology, and you can't really escape them.

GROSS: When we talk about Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, we're also talking about companies that most people don't know are owned by these five mega tech companies. So what are some examples of things that we might not associate with Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft but really are part of them?

MANJOO: Right. So Facebook, for example, also owns Instagram - one of the most popular social networks in the world. It owns WhatsApp, which is I think the most popular messaging app other than a couple that are in China. And, you know, it owns Facebook, which reaches 2 billion people a month. Google, in addition to kind of the Google search engine, it has a whole suite of mapping technologies. So there's Google Maps, but there's also Waze, another popular app for getting around. Google owns YouTube. Amazon, in addition to Amazon the store, it owns many different kind of media and publishing properties, so Audible, which has audio books. Amazon also owns Zappos the shoe company. It sort of owns this suite of different e-commerce sites.

And Amazon is sort of doing more than shopping now. One of its huge ventures is artificial intelligence. And you can personify it through their device called the Amazon Echo, which you put in your house and you talk to. It's your assistant. So, you know, these are examples of companies and products that are part of the five. And they really exemplify the way the five are going into - you know, they're really stretched far horizontally. Kind of every product or service that you might want to use, you're going to touch one of these companies.

I think Google is the most - is the perfect example of this. So what Google did a couple years ago is they switched from being Google, Google incorporated to Alphabet. So Alphabet is a holding company, many people may not have heard of it. Every time I write about Alphabet I have to very - I have to specify that we're actually talking about Google. But what Alphabet is is it's a holding company that has Google. Google is its sort of biggest property, but then it has a whole bunch of other companies you may not have heard of.

One of them is like their research lab called Google X, another is something called Google Brain, which is a company that is looking at ways to have artificial intelligence do things like medical diagnosis. There is a self-driving car company called Waymo. There's another health company called Verily. There's sort of a suite of companies that are under this alphabet umbrella related to Google. So they get all their money from Google but, you know, in the future, the plan is that Google as an entity will be just one of many different companies owned by this larger company that will, you know, affect everything that we do.

GROSS: So like the origin stories for like Google, Facebook and Apple, they're all about like a guy or a couple of guys in a garage or dorm room dreaming up these great ideas that lead to something remarkably innovative. But now you're saying now that these companies that they dreamed of are so big, they're actually in some ways suppressing innovation - the innovations of other, you know, men and women in their dorm rooms or garages dreaming up ideas. So in what ways do you think that these companies now sometimes suppress innovation?

MANJOO: This, I think, is the huge change in how the tech industry works now versus how it worked back when some of these companies were starting up. It's still possible to come out to Silicon Valley and start, you know, some new app, some - create some new piece of hardware that lots of people like and that takes the world by storm. But there's now kind of a ceiling on how successful your idea can be, and the ceiling is kind of determined by these five companies.

So one of the things that these five companies have done kind of masterfully is create these platforms that startups have to use to get to customers. So they all own these cloud-storage services. So Amazon is an example. If you want to store your media online - so, for example, all the movies that you watch on Netflix are actually stored on Amazon servers - so every time you use Netflix, Netflix is kind of paying Amazon for that kind of storage.

GROSS: I have to tell you, I was really surprised when I read that. I didn't know that.

MANJOO: Yeah. It's surprising, first of all, because they're such different companies. You wouldn't really know - you wouldn't really think that they would have that kind of connection. And then they're also competitors. Netflix makes original TV shows and so does Amazon. And so, you know, in this way, Netflix has this dependence on one of its competitors. There are lots of different examples of this though.

There - you know, all app makers have to put their apps in the Apple app store or the Google app store. And when they sell in those apps, 30 percent of that money goes to Apple or Google. They all have to advertise on Facebook or Google to get customers because that's become the way to advertise on digital platforms. And so any new app - Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, all the other sort of smaller companies online - have to go through these five to get to their customers. And what ends up happening is that other companies succeed, but always these five benefit off of that success.

GROSS: So what's an example of how one of these big companies dealt with a new startup or a new innovation that might've been competitive or appealing?

MANJOO: Yeah. The best example we've seen recently is sort of what's happened to Snapchat. So Snapchat is a very popular and really innovative idea. So Snapchat is an app where primarily teenagers, young people, send messages that disappear. So they don't last forever. You send a picture and kind of a caption to your friend. They see it for a little while, and it disappears.

And the other thing you do on this app is you make something called a story, which is like a slideshow of your day. And after a day, your friends see it and then it goes away. And these were very popular. And Facebook, which is obviously the leader in social networking, they noticed the popularity of Snap, and several times they tried to buy the company. Facebook offered Snap $3 billion, and Snap turned them down. And then earlier this year Snap went public on the stock market, and it was sort of this huge event for them. You know, this is the next step in kind of the evolution of their company.

And right after that, Facebook copied Stories, this format that's very popular on Snapchat. It copied it to essentially all of Facebook's platforms, and basically overnight the version of Stories in Instagram, in Facebook's company, became far more popular than Stories in Snapchat. And ever since then Snapchat's stock has suffered, and analysts and other people I talked to have a much kind of dimmer view of the future of that company than they did before because Facebook is gunning for them, and it's just really hard to see how they can kind of get out from under that competition.

GROSS: So you see that as an example of how one of the big companies can suppress or co-opt the innovation of a startup?

MANJOO: Yeah. It's the role of startups in the modern tech economy is to provide, you know, ideas for the big companies to kind of run with and make money from. And the other thing that the startups do is they pay a lot of money for the goods and services that the big companies provide. So half of Snapchat's revenues actually go to Google because Google hosts the actual content on Snapchat.

So in this weird way, you know, Snapchat is paying half of its revenues to Google, one of the five. It's being copied left and right by another of the five, Facebook. And it's trying to make money in the Internet ad economy, and the biggest players in the Internet ad economy are Google and Facebook. So it's also competing with them for advertisers. It's a really unenviable position to be in.

GROSS: Well, let's take a break here, and then we'll talk some more about what my guest, Farhad Manjoo, calls the frightful five, which is Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. He writes the tech column "State Of The Art" for The New York Times, and he's doing a series on this group that he calls the frightful five. We're going to be right back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is Farhad Manjoo, who writes about tech for The New York Times. He writes the "State Of The Art" column, which explores how the latest tech ideas are shaping the future. And he's now writing a series about big tech companies, the ones he calls the frightful five - Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

Now, you say the frightful five are so big, and yet they're not regulated by the government and they don't really fit into the standards that we measure monopolies by. Like, they don't conform to monopoly standards. So what's different about these tech companies from companies that we might consider a monopoly?

MANJOO: So one of the differences is that they're new and they're growing in new markets. And in those markets, it's sort of - in some ways it's kind of too early to call them the winners, according to regulators. And other ways, they've sort of grown really quickly, but many people see sort of more room to grow. So it's, according to regulators and others who study these markets, kind of perhaps too soon to say that they've won.

But for example, you know, Amazon has disrupted essentially all of the retail business, like, everyone from Walmart to, you know, every mom and pop shop has some fear and strategy for responding to the threat of Amazon. But if you look at kind of the size of Amazon and the scope of the entire retail business, it's not that big. It's not even half of all online sales, and it's something like 8 percent of all retail sales in the United States.

So it's growing very quickly, and it has built this infrastructure for kind of the future of commerce. It's built all these warehouses and this very efficient way of shipping goods to people. And everyone who understands e-commerce understands that, like, the future of retail in America belongs to Amazon. But at this point, it's small. And so for regulators who worry about...

GROSS: Wait. Small when measured against overall retail numbers and...

MANJOO: Right. So yes. So at this point...

GROSS: 'Cause there's nothing small about Amazon so (laughter)...

MANJOO: (Laughter) You're right.

GROSS: ...Sounds like a contradiction.

MANJOO: Yeah. But at this point it's, you know, it's about a quarter of the size of Walmart. It's growing very quickly, growing faster than than Walmart is, but it's only a quarter of the size of Walmart. It just beat out last year sales of Costco, and it is a very small percentage of overall retail.

So if you're a regulator worried about kind of monopolies, a monopoly threat, it's difficult to kind of look at traditional ways of measuring monopolies, like how much market concentration there is. Or another thing you'd worry about is, is this company big enough that it's able to kind of control prices? Well, Amazon is not that big. It's not sort of, you know, if you're worried about suppliers of goods being priced out, you really would worry about Walmart more. I mean, Walmart is sort of known for low prices and its demands on suppliers to constantly lower their prices.

And so for regulators who are worried about the dominance of a single company on a sector, Amazon presents this real puzzle for them. In fact it's such a puzzle that progressives and people on the left who've studied antitrust say that we need a whole new slate of laws and regulations to contain Amazon and to regulate it than we do now. The fundamentally kind of antitrust laws that we have today don't work for Amazon.

GROSS: So what kind of laws are they thinking about?

MANJOO: So there was this - one of the interesting things I discovered in looking at these five companies is that there's been this sea change in America in how we think about dangerous kind of corporate dominance. And before the 1980s, we were essentially a lot more strict in the United States about corporate size. And you know, the government was a lot more interventionist in preventing mergers that may affect how a market works.

And what happened in the 1980s is that, you know, a group of economists and lawyers known as the Chicago School and the Reagan administration kind of completely changed how we looked at corporate dominance in America, especially about sort of the danger, how we thought of the dangers of monopolies. And so the upshot of that is they looked mostly at price when determining whether a merger could go through, whether a company could get bigger. And they didn't look at sort of non-price effects like customer service or the effect on suppliers or the effect on the environment or adjacent industries.

If you look at price only, you won't - you're not likely to kind of stop Amazon because one of the benefits that Amazon has had is that investors sort of have been betting on kind of constant growth from Amazon, and as a result they don't really expect Amazon to be very profitable. Amazon is sort of famously not profitable at all because it reinvests everything it makes into building out more warehouses and building, you know, to getting bigger for the next year.

And so Amazon really doesn't have to raise prices. It constantly lowers prices. It has this effect on the rest of the of the retail business that results in lower prices. So if you were looking at prices alone, you would say this is a great company. It's great for customers that this company is kind of constantly lowering prices and forcing everyone else to lower prices. Under the kind of current view of antitrust, Amazon seems like a positive force rather than a negative force.

But if you go back, according to, you know, the people who want us to rethink how we do antitrust, if you go back to kind of a pre-1980s view of this structure and this market, you would see that Amazon is sort of, you know, getting its kind of corporate tentacles into a large part of the economy, into shipping, and how warehouses work and robots. Things that will allow it to dominate in the future that we're kind of just not good at regulating at this point.

GROSS: My guest is Farhad Manjoo, who writes The New York Times tech column "State Of The Art," and he's writing a series about the tech giants he calls the frightful five - Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook. After we take a short break, he'll talk about the dark side of Google and smartphones and why he set up cameras in his home that record everything his family does in the living room and dining room. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Farhad Manjoo, who writes The New York Times tech column "State Of The Art" about how the latest tech ideas are shaping the future. He's now writing a series about the tech giants he calls the frightful five - Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. The frightful five are also the subject of a book he's writing. He says there's an ongoing debate about whether they should be regulated, but they're hard to regulate because they're so different from the type of corporate giants that antitrust laws were designed for.

So, you know, one of the things people are wondering, like, should this be regulated is, fake news. And, you know, Facebook and Twitter are responding to concerns about fake news and where are ads coming from. So Twitter has issued, like, new guidelines for what it's going to do. You want to run through - Twitter's not part of your frightful five, but it's still pretty big, and it's important in the context of what we're talking about. Do you want to just run through some of the things they plan on doing?

MANJOO: Yeah. Both Twitter and Facebook sort of had these - posted these guidelines earlier, which is they plan to - they say they plan to show you who's running these ads, who's sort of - who's paying for the ads and to be more transparent about other ads that those people have posted. So If you - so one of the problems that we've seen is that, you know, these kind of shady groups that are not kind of identified - you don't know where the money is coming from. You don't know what their agenda is. You don't know what other advertisements they've run.

They've been able to kind of place these ads all over Facebook and Twitter and kind of affect the news and, you know, protests and kind of just society in America under these guidelines that companies are rolling out voluntarily. But you know, there might be legislation to this effect. That will be less possible because you'll be able to - it's plausible you'll be able to kind of find out who's running these campaigns.

GROSS: In terms of Facebook, aren't they considering, like, working with fact-checking partners and labeling stories that are disputed as fake news?

MANJOO: Yeah. So one of the real difficulties about looking at these companies is that in some ways, regulating them, making them better gives them more power. So Facebook is now - so Facebook's news feed is sort of one of the most popular places for getting news in the world. It's you know - combined, more people read it than, you know, all the major newspapers in the country, the TV networks. It's extremely influential.

And right now there's very little fact-checking that Facebook does, which is, you know, what led to this proliferation of fake news and these kind of echo chambers that people have. The solution to that could be that Facebook decides it's going to partner with fact-checking companies, and perhaps it might do fact-checking itself. And Facebook would sort of be in some way the arbiter for what's right and wrong on Facebook. That may help with the fake news problem. I think it's unclear at this point.

But the kind of upshot of that is, on the other hand, you get Facebook kind of acting as something like the ministry of information for kind of every country in which it operates, where, you know, it might be able to decide, like, this is true, and this is not true. How it'll make those decisions and who it'll employ to make those decisions I think is a big question. And, like, suddenly it's going to have this power, and it's going to come about perhaps as a solution to another problem that it itself caused.

GROSS: So throughout this interview, we've been hearing a lot of your, you know, kind of criticisms about these five companies. And we should say you're hardly a technophobe. And reading about how you have your house wired (laughter) - you've got, like, everything in your house. You've got, like, all the gadgets and all the new, like, Internet of things kind of things. So let's start with, like - you wrote a column about how you've basically made your home into a reality show because your living room and - is it dining room...

MANJOO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Are wired with cameras that - kind of like a lot of public bathrooms, when you walk in in those bathrooms, the lights turn on. When you walk out, they turn off because they have, like, motion sensors. And that's how these cameras are wired. So describe for us the setup that you have with these cameras and why you're doing it.

MANJOO: OK, so I'll describe the setup first. So they're - it's sort of in the public places of our house so, I mean, not the bedrooms - so the dining room, the living room, the kitchen.

GROSS: And not the bathroom (laughter).

MANJOO: Not the bathroom, yes. And there are a bunch of cameras. I think there are five now. And they kind of get all angles. And the reason I'm doing it is because I have two kids - young kids, 7 and 5 - almost 5. And you know, like everyone else who raises kids today, I take a lot of photos of them and a lot of videos, but I always feel like I'm missing stuff. They're extremely, like, cute. And I'm busy, and they say things, and I - and, like, I always worry that I'm just, like, missing their lives.

So I got this idea because I saw some researchers had done this. Like, psychology researchers had a videotaped their own children to kind of look at their language development. And I thought, wouldn't that be super interesting to do that, to just have memories of my kids? It took a lot of lobbying of my wife, who is just not a tech person at all. And she, you know, was worried about the privacy implications and just, like, the idea of being surveilled in your house.

Eventually I convinced her. I managed to kind of get her buy-in. We've been doing it for about a year now. And it'll be interesting, you know? It'll be really just, like, fascinating to me to watch those videos in the future and to show my kids those videos, you know, like, if my daughter who's now 5 is, like, 25 and to show her, like, what she looked like and what she said. And you know, I'd love to have memories of my own childhood from then. And I think they will appreciate that in the future.

GROSS: OK. So part of what I'm hearing here is you saying, like, you're too busy to watch your kids grow up, so you retire, you'll be able to watch the TV version (laughter).

MANJOO: Yeah. I mean, I'll cop to that. It's - that is a slightly cynical way to put it, but I don't think it's wrong. I mean, I think in many instances, we do now miss out on our children. I try not to. And you know, one of the things this helps me with is I don't have to pick up my phone to take videos of them. I can sort of just be in the moment. Like, we were - I was playing video games with my son last night, and he, like, said - you know, he was just, like, very - it was just very interesting and memorable for me to watch him, like, learn how to play this video game. And I would like to see that again (laughter) at some point. And so the idea of having that is - and it just feels like I'm capturing these memories that will one day be useful.

GROSS: So have you been using those videos to settle arguments such as, no, I did tell you about this; you say I didn't, but I'm telling you I did, and now we will watch the tape and prove that I am right?

MANJOO: It has been tempting.

(LAUGHTER)

MANJOO: I have wanted to do that. I've just resisted 'cause I don't - especially with my wife, like, I don't want to have the video sort of come between us. I have used it as, like, a disciplinary tool with my kids. So like, I've told my son, you know, like, not to start a fight with his sister. And then, like, I've sort of slyly mentioned I will be able to see if you did, you know, if they're alone in the room or something. And that's the kind of extent that I've used it - just kind of as a warning that I can look back at what's happening.

GROSS: So my understanding is - right? - that the system that you have, the camera system - it records for a week, and then it deletes everything at the end of a week except for the things you've asked it to save.

MANJOO: Yeah, that's how it works. It's like a surveillance camera at a convenience store, you know, it has a loop.

GROSS: (Laughter) Just what everybody wants in their home.

MANJOO: Exactly. It has a loop, a seven day, you know, storage of everything you take. So when something memorable happens, something I just want to capture, I write a note to myself of the time in my phone. And then once a week, I look at the videos. I go back to that time, and then I save those videos.

GROSS: So what's a moment you're really glad you were able to preserve on video?

MANJOO: It's the small things. So it's like we're having dinner and my daughter says something completely unexpected, like, makes a joke for the first time - like, this has happened - you know, says something that makes the whole rest of the family laugh. And she's 5. And so that's like - it happens once for the first time. And it like surprised her. And she got kind of embarrassed about it. And she didn't know that, like, making everyone laugh was like a good thing, was like something that people wanted to do. She thought that we were laughing at her.

It was like a cute moment and a touching moment. And, you know, ordinarily, like, we'd just forget that. You just never have that moment. And now I have that. It's just like - dinners - really interesting things happen at dinner, I've realized after this. And just having those moments is going to be really fun in the future.

GROSS: So your kids are 7 and 4 now. Do they understand that cameras are recording them? And if so, does it make them self-conscious?

MANJOO: They do understand that cameras are recording them because I've shown them the videos. It hasn't made them self-conscious. What's actually happened is it's sort of done the opposite. It's made them performative. So my daughter will like - like if we play a song, she'll like go to the camera and sort of do a dance for the camera.

And I think this is the influence of YouTube. They watch YouTube. And on YouTube, there's, you know, kids their age performing for cameras. Like, they have their own sort of YouTube shows. And because my kids watch YouTube and have these cameras that they know sort of are recording things that can be on YouTube, it seems like they act like - they try to act like YouTube stars, like people are watching them and they're trying to cultivate an audience.

GROSS: Well, I think about how really different that was from like when I was growing up and the only people who were on video were people on TV. And there were only a few channels, so very few people were on TV. And it just seemed so, like, remarkable and impossible. And it's just amazing how like in a few decades how radically things can change. I know I'm stating the obvious, but it's no less remarkable even though it's obvious.

MANJOO: Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with that. I mean, I really wonder what my children's sort of conception of celebrity is going to be. They follow a YouTube star who's - it's weird even calling someone a YouTube star. He has - he's, you know, I think around 10 years old. And he has a following of, I think, a few million people on YouTube. And he just does kid stuff. Like he plays and he plays with toys and plays video games. And other kids watch him do this.

We were on vacation in Hawaii, and we passed a kid that my kids swore was that kid, the sort of the YouTube star. And it was as if they had seen like, you know, the biggest celebrity. Like, they were shy. They were talking to each other about, like, whether that was him. They wanted to like go and search for him and get his autograph. It was like, you know, very cute and wondrous to see, but it was something I'd never heard of in like in my own definition would not sort of qualify as a celebrity, as someone worth meeting. But for them, he was like the biggest star of all time.

GROSS: Also interesting. (Laughter) OK. If you're just joining us, my guest is Farhad Manjoo. And he writes the "State Of The Art" column at The New York Times, which explores how the latest tech ideas are shaping the future. He's now writing a series about the tech companies he calls the Frightful Five - Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. He's also writing a book about these companies. We're going to take a short break and then be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF OF MONTREAL'S "FABERGE FALLS FOR SHUGGIE")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Farhad Manjoo, who writes the "State Of The Art" tech column for The New York Times and is now writing a series of articles about the tech companies he calls the Frightful Five - Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

So throughout this interview, we've been hearing a lot of your, you know, kind of criticisms about these five companies. And you write, it's difficult to get jazzed about smartphones and social networks when they might be ruining the world (laughter) and that technologies that we were most excited about 10 years ago are now implicated in just about every catastrophe of the day.

MANJOO: Yeah. It is difficult for me to get excited about technology anymore. Like, you know, I write a column about technology. And like, as a result of that, I get to try out basically everything there is. And it's sort of been my dream job because I like wanted to do that. I'm interested in the future, and I'm interested in sort of what's going to happen with all this new stuff. But my sort of default position about whether this stuff is going to be good or bad in the world has changed.

So in the past, my kind of reflexive bias of a new piece of technology was - tended toward optimism. You know, I had the feeling that probably it's better than the stuff we have now, and because it's better than the stuff we have now, it's going to kind of make us more efficient or help us like connect with people. And that has to be good.

And, you know, that's the way - that's sort of the default position of, I think, everyone in Silicon Valley. Like, people who run these companies have this idea that any new piece of technology is probably going to be good. And my own view has shifted on that. I think that we should all be more skeptical of the unseen and longer-term potential dangers of these technologies before we kind of rush to embrace them.

And my default view is no longer sort of optimism. It's more - it's, like, skepticism and just a more balanced view of, like - like, this thing could be big. It could be important. But it could be important in positive ways and plausibly very negative ways and that we should consider sort of both of those things.

GROSS: What's an example of something that you initially thought was really positive and you came to see the dark side of it? I'm sure there's many examples to choose from here (laughter).

MANJOO: (Laughter) Yeah. I mean, a really kind of clear example is Google, the search engine. So it just sounds - it sounds obvious that providing the world information for free on demand is going to be good. Like, throughout human history, we have been better when we learn more, when we get more information, when we produce more, when we share more. That's sort of the story behind public libraries and, like, encyclopedias and just books and printing in general.

And so you would imagine that having that be accessible to the whole world would just naturally be good. And there are many arguments that, you know - there's sort of a lot of benefit I think from having Google as a search engine and having all this information. But on the other hand, there's no doubt that Google has led to, you know - has fed the rise of conspiracy thinking in America.

Like, anyone can produce some piece of content that questions some completely valid fact about the world. They can put together a lot of information that suggests there's another point of view. Like, there are people who believe that the Earth is flat. And they can make YouTube videos about it, and they can make web pages about it. And then a lot of people start talking about it, and that starts trending on Google. Like, you will search for 9/11 or, like, whether the Earth is flat or not, and you will find at the very, you know, in prominent locations on Google this other view of the world.

And you can get sucked into that and you can start believing things that are completely not true as a result of this tool that was made to enlighten the world. So you know, that's, like, an example of, you know, something that people thought would be obviously good. And it's just much more complicated than we initially thought.

GROSS: OK, well, (laughter) you have an interesting job. Thank you so much for telling us about it.

MANJOO: Thanks so much for having me. This was really fun.

GROSS: No, my pleasure. Farhad Manjoo writes The New York Times tech column "State Of The Art" and is writing a series on the tech giants he calls the "Frightful Five: Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon." He's also writing a book about them. After we take a short break, Justin Chang will review the new film "The Square," which won the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How 5 Tech Giants Have Become More Like Governments Than Companies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. It's difficult to get jazzed about smartphones and social networks when they might be ruining the world. That's what my guest, Farhad Manjoo, writes. And he's been covering tech for 20 years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Big Tech’ isn’t one big monopoly – it’s 5 companies all in different businesses

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When thinking about regulating them, it’s useful to know Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft have some similarities. But generally they’re not competing with each other – or anyone else.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Then, in the last half decade, something strange happened: The sharks began to get bigger and smarter. Nearly a year ago, I argued that we were witnessing a new era in the tech business, one that is typified less by the storied start-up in a garage than by a posse I like to call the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google's parent company.

Image

Facebook is among a group of five tech companies that make up half of the world's 10 most valuable companies, when measured by stock market value. Credit... Michael Short/Bloomberg

What has changed is public perception. For years, most of the Five enjoyed broad cultural good will. They were portrayed in the news media as forces of innovation and delight, as the best that American capitalism had to offer. The exceptions were Microsoft, which reached towering heights through corporate ruthlessness in the 1990s, and Amazon, which got under people's skin for, among other things, making books cheaper and more widely accessible, thereby hurting bookstores.

Silicon Valley grew cloistered, missing people's unease with the speed with which their innovations were changing our lives. When Apple took on the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year over access to a terrorist's iPhone, many in tech sided with the company, but a majority of Americans thought Apple should give in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tech Giants Seem Invincible. That Worries Lawmakers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Then, in the last half decade, something strange happened: The sharks began to get bigger and smarter. Nearly a year ago, I argued that we were witnessing a new era in the tech business, one that is typified less by the storied start-up in a garage than by a posse I like to call the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google's parent company.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
State of the Art

Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

Credit... Doug Chayka

A few weeks ago, I bought a new television. When the whole process was over, I realized something incredible: To navigate all of the niggling details surrounding this one commercial transaction - figuring out what to buy, which accessories I needed, how and where to install it, and whom to hire to do so - I had dealt with only a single ubiquitous corporation: Amazon.

It wasn't just the TV. As I began combing through other recent household decisions, I found that in 2016, nearly 10 percent of my household's commercial transactions flowed through the Seattle retailer, more by far than any other company my family dealt with. What's more, with its Echos, Fire TV devices, audiobooks, movies and TV shows, Amazon has become, for my family, more than a mere store. It is my confessor, my keeper of lists, a provider of food and culture, an entertainer and educator and handmaiden to my children.

This may sound over the top. But what about you? I suspect that if you closely examine your own life, there's a good chance some other technology company occupies the same role for you as Amazon does for me: as warden of a very comfortable corporate prison.

This is the most glaring and underappreciated fact of internet-age capitalism: We are, all of us, in inescapable thrall to one of the handful of American technology companies that now dominate much of the global economy. I speak, of course, of my old friends the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

An Amazon warehouse in Robbinsville, N.J. Amazon sells not only goods but also home services. Credit... John Taggart for The New York Times

These are all worthy topics for discussion, but they are also fairly cold and abstract. So a better way to appreciate the power of these five might be to take the very small view instead of the very large - to examine the role each of them plays in your own day-to-day activities, and the particular grip each holds on your psyche.

So, last week I came up with a fun game: If an evil, tech-phobic monarch forced you to abandon each of the Frightful Five, in which order would you do so, and how much would your life deteriorate as a result? To help answer this, please take a moment with this column's companion quiz.

When I went through the thought experiment, I found that dropping the first couple of tech giants was pretty easy - but after that the process became progressively more unbearable. For me, Facebook was the first to go. I tend to socialize online using Twitter, Apple's messaging system, and Slack, the office-chat app, so losing Mark Zuckerberg's popular service (and its subsidiaries, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) was not such a big deal.

Next, for me, was Microsoft, which I found slightly more difficult to quit. I don't normally use any Windows devices, but Microsoft's word-processing program, Word, is an essential tool for me, and I'd hate to lose it.

In third place, full of regrets: Apple. There's nothing I use more than my iPhone, and close behind are my MacBook and iMac 5K, which may be the best computer I've ever owned. Abandoning Apple would prompt deep and truly annoying rearrangements in my life, including braving Samsung's bad software. But I could do it, grudgingly.

It's when I imagine getting down to the last two that life becomes something else. It's here that you begin to confront how thoroughly the Frightful Five have woven their way into our lives, and how completely we've come to depend on them.

In fourth place, for me, was Google. I just can't fathom living without it. Without the world's best search engine, my job would become well-nigh impossible. Without YouTube, it would become significantly less entertaining. Without everything else Google makes - email, maps, calendar, translation software, photo storage and the Android mobile operating system, which I'd need after ditching Apple - I'd be relegated to a life of some poor soul from long ago (say, 1992).

Facebook, popular worldwide, might be hard for some people to give up. Credit... Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

And then, finally, we confront the master of my domain. I have been shopping at Amazon almost since the moment it went online in the 1990s. (I was a curious college student, I liked to experiment.) Every year since, as my life got busier and accreted more responsibility (in other words, as I became more and more of a stereotypical dad), Amazon took on an ever-greater role in my life.

When the kids were born, it became my household's Costco - supplier of diapers and other baby gear. Then it began to launch a series of services designed to remove any decision-making from shopping: My toilet paper, paper towels and other consumables now come to my house on schedule, no thinking required. Then Amazon launched media, and I was more hooked: It had me for packaged goods, so why not movies and TV shows, too?

A few years ago I would have thought that was the limit. Then came Echo, the company's talking computer, which speaks through a persona known as Alexa, and which has infected my family like a happy virus.

Echo has a way of ingratiating itself into one's most mundane moments. I rewired my household's lights to be able to control them through Alexa. I changed the kind of coffee I buy so that I could tell Alexa to reorder it. When Amazon announced, this week, a new screen-enabled Echo, and a feature to let Echos act as phones, I experienced another frisson of possibility. Amazon, I see now, is well on its way to becoming my household's brain, a kind of butler in the sky that runs the place for me.

Which brings me back to my new TV. Did you know that Amazon now sells not just goods but also home services? If you buy a TV, it will offer to sell you a wall mount, and if you buy the mount, it will offer to send someone to your house to install the equipment for a surprisingly reasonable fee. What might, in the past, have taken a trip to several stores, a truck, some tools, some friends, and many hours now gets done in a handful of clicks.

One evening three days after I'd ordered the TV, the Amazon men came by and set up the whole thing while I cooked dinner.

If such a future makes you blanch, that's the right reaction. I have fallen victim to the convenience trap, and you're right to laugh at me, and also to spin dystopian visions from my behavior - a future in which many others do as I do, in which vast portions of commercial activity flow through this single online store. And sure, you can decide to opt out; you can drive to Target, your life won't end if you don't patronize Amazon.

But if it's not Amazon for you, it'll be another of the five. Or, more likely, it already is. It's too late to escape.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tech's Frightful Five: They've Got Us (Published 2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
State of the Art Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. A few weeks ago, I bought a new television.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
'Quitting smoking is easy," said Mark Twain. "I've done it hundreds of times." Much the same goes for smartphones. As increasing numbers of people begin to realise that they have a smartphone habit they begin to wonder if they should do something about the addiction. A few (a very few, in my experience) make the attempt, switching their phones off after work, say, and not rebooting them until the following morning. But almost invariably the dash for freedom fails and the chastened fugitive returns to the connected world.

The technophobic tendency to attribute this failure to lack of moral fibre should be resisted. It's not easy to cut yourself off from a system that links you to friends, family and employer, all of whom expect you to be contactable and sometimes get upset when you're not. There are powerful network effects in play here against which the individual addict is helpless. And while "just say no" may be a viable strategy in relation to some services (for example, Facebook), it is now a futile one in relation to the networked world generally. We're long past the point of no return in our connected lives.

Most people don't realise this. They imagine that if they decide to stop using Gmail or Microsoft Outlook or never buy another book from Amazon then they have liberated themselves from the tentacles of these giants. If that is indeed what they believe, then Kashmir Hill has news for them. She's an American tech journalist who writes for Gizmodo and who recently conducted a fascinating six-week experiment that you might describe as "digital veganism". She set out to answer the question of whether it was possible to live a normal life without using the services of Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple. So, over five weeks, she blocked her access to each one in turn and then, in the final week, cut herself off from all of them. And she reported what she learned as she went.

"My overall impression," she wrote, "is that Google touches almost everything on the internet"

Lots of people have tried various kinds of digital detox, by dropping Google or Facebook for a week, say, but Ms Hill did it really thoroughly. She had a geek collaborator, Dhruv Mehrotra, who created a special virtual private network (VPN) for her through which all of the approximately 2m data packets she would send in a normal day had to pass before heading out on to the net. The special thing about the VPN was that it would stop every packet addressed to any domain or server operated by the particular tech giant that Ms Hill was seeking to avoid that week. And it was this comprehensive blocking technology that really revealed the ubiquity of the tech giants' grip on our networked world.

The scale of this grip is astonishing. Amazon owns 23.22m domains, Microsoft has 21.57m, Apple runs 16.78m and Google 8.72m. Facebook, surprisingly, turns out to have only a measly 122,880. What this means is that almost every interaction you are likely to have with the internet will at some stage touch one or more of these domains, in which case Ms Hill's VPN would stop that interaction in its tracks. You may think that a particular website has nothing to do with any tech giant, but then it turns out that the site is actually hosted on Amazon's or Microsoft's cloud-computing services.

In week one, Ms Hill blocked her access to Amazon and discovered "that it's simply not an option to block Amazon permanently... it would wall me off from too many crucial services and key websites that I can't function without for both personal and professional reasons".

Week two was Facebook, which was relatively easy to block technically (after all, it only has 122,800 domains), but was socially disabling (all those friends and relations and the ordinary business of life). Week three was Google. "My overall impression," she wrote, "is that Google touches almost everything on the internet. I run into it on almost every site and every app that I use. Blocking Google from my life was almost as hard as blocking Amazon, on which much of the non-Google internet relies." (A key element here was the dominance of Google Maps, on which millions of other sites rely.)

And so it went on: much the same applied for weeks four (Microsoft) and five (Apple). And as for week six, when Ms Hill tried to do without all of the five giants, well, you can guess the outcome. What she has demonstrated in this remarkable piece of journalism is that our lives now run on a technical infrastructure that is owned, operated and controlled by a handful of giant corporations, from which there is currently no escape unless you want to hibernate. In which case, we have to come to terms with that celebrated aphorism of Marshall McLuhan: we shape our tools and afterwards they shape us. Kashmir Hill has sketched the shape we're now in. It's not a pretty sight.

What I'm reading

Get your facts right

"I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker. It Was Like Playing a Doomed Game of Whack-a-Mole." Surprise, surprise: Snopes.com and AP have decided that fact-checking for Facebook is a waste of (their) time and energy.

See the light

"Let there be light switches" is a lovely meditation by designer Dan Hill on the significance of activity-sensing lights.

Cell of the century

Jason Kottke has published the best video I've ever seen - a six-minute time-lapse video showing a single cell developing into a salamander. It's basically a cell running the program in its DNA.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It's almost impossible to function without the big five tech giants | John Naughton

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
'Quitting smoking is easy," said Mark Twain. "I've done it hundreds of times." Much the same goes for smartphones. As increasing numbers of people begin to realise that they have a smartphone habit they begin to wonder if they should do something about the addiction.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A couple of months ago, I set out to answer the question of whether it's possible to avoid the tech giants. Over the course of five weeks, I blocked Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple one at a time, to find out how to live in the modern age without each one.
This article was originally published in 2019 and has been updated since its original publication.
To end my experiment, I'm going to see if I can survive blocking all five at once.

Not only am I boycotting their products, a technologist named Dhruv Mehrotra designed a special network tool that prevents my devices from communicating with the tech giants' servers, meaning that ads and analytics from Google won't work, Facebook can't track me across the internet, and websites hosted by Amazon Web Services, or AWS, hypothetically won't load.

I am using a Linux laptop made by a company named Purism and a Nokia feature phone on which I am relearning the lost art of T9 texting.

I don't think I could have done this cold turkey. I needed to wean myself off various services in the lead-up, like an alcoholic going through the 12 steps. The tech giants, while troubling in their accumulation of data, power, and societal control, do offer services that make our lives a hell of a lot easier.

Earlier in the experiment, for example, I realised I don't know how to get in touch with people without the tech giants. Google, Apple, and Facebook provide my rolling Rolodex.

So in preparation for the week, I export all my contacts from Google, which amounts to a shocking 8,000 people. I have also whittled down the over 1,500 contacts in my iPhone to 143 people for my Nokia, or the number of people I actually talk to on a regular basis, which is incredibly close to Dunbar's number.

I wind up placing a lot of phone calls this week, because texting is so annoying on the Nokia's numbers-based keyboard. I find people often pick up on the first ring out of concern; they're not used to getting calls from me.
I don't think I could have done this cold turkey.
On the first day of the block, I drive to work in silence because my rented Ford Fusion's "SYNC" entertainment system is powered by Microsoft. Background noise in general disappears this week because YouTube, Apple Music, and our Echo are all banned-as are Netflix, Spotify, and Hulu, because they rely on AWS and the Google Cloud to get their content to users.

The silence causes my mind to wander more than usual. Sometimes this leads to ideas for my half-finished zombie novel or inspires a new question for investigation. But more often than not, I dwell on things I need to do.

Many of these things are a lot more challenging as a result of the experiment, such as when I record an interview with Alex Goldman of the podcast Reply All about Facebook and its privacy problems.

I live in California, and Alex is in New York; we would normally use Skype, but that's owned by Microsoft, so instead we talk by phone and I record my end with a handheld Zoom recorder. That works fine, but when it comes time to send the 386 MB audio file to Alex, I realise I have no idea how to send a huge file over the internet.

My Gmail alternatives-ProtonMail and Riseup-tell me the file is too large; they tap out at 25 MB. Google Drive and Dropbox aren't options, Dropbox because it's hosted by Amazon's AWS and relies on Google for sign-in. Other file-sharing sites also rely on the tech giants for web hosting services.

Before resorting to putting the file on a thumb drive and dropping it in a IRL mailbox, I call up my tech freedom guru, Sean O'Brien, who heads Yale Law School's Privacy Lab. He also does marketing work for Purism, the company that makes my laptop. O'Brien tries to avoid tech giants in favour of open source technologies, so I figure he might be able to help.

O'Brien directs me first to Send.Firefox.com, an encrypted file-sharing service operated by Mozilla. But... it uses the Google Cloud, so it won't load. O'Brien then sends me to Share.Riseup.net, a file-sharing service from the same radical tech collective that is hosting my personal email, but it only works for files up to 50 MB.

O'Brien's last suggestion is Onionshare, a tool for sharing files privately via the "dark web," i.e. the part of the web that's not crawled by Google and requires the Tor browser to get to. I know this one actually. My friend Micah Lee, a technologist for the Intercept, made it. Unfortunately, when I go to Onionshare.org to download it, the website won't load.

"Hah, yes," emails Micah when I ask about it. "Right now it's hosted by AWS."

As I encountered at the beginning of this experiment, Amazon's most profitable business isn't retail; it's web hosting. Countless apps and websites rely on the digital infrastructure provided by AWS, and none of them are working for me this week.

Micah suggests I download it from Github, but that's owned by Microsoft. Thankfully, O'Brien tells me I can download the Onionshare program directly from Micah's server via command line on my Linux computer. He has to walk me through it step-by-step, but it works. I'm able to run Onionshare, drop my file into it, creating a temporary onion site; I send the URL for the onionsite to Alex so he can download it via the Tor browser. Once he downloads it, I tell Onionshare to "stop sharing," which takes the onion site down, erasing the file from the web.

(In the end, Alex doesn't even wind up using my audio for Reply All's year-end finale. Sigh.)

I realise that's a long story about sharing one file, but it's a nice summation of what online tasks are like this week. There are workarounds for services offered by the tech giants, but they take extra research to find and are often more difficult to use. I wind up in strange parts of the internet, using Ask.com (formerly known as Ask Jeeves) as my search engine, for example, after I ixnay Google.com and realise DuckDuckGo is hosted by AWS.

But Ask.com is not necessarily a great replacement: it's owned by IAC, the media and dating company behemoth. I've just traded one huge corporation seeking to monetise my searches for another, less competent one.

Some strange things are delightful: I discover that my Nokia phone can play the radio, so when I go running, I listen to NPR instead of my usual go-tos: Spotify, a podcast, or an audiobook. I'm planning a trip to South Africa, and wind up in charming conversations with the travel agents I have to call for help; it's more costly and less efficient to book via a travel agency, but it's the only option because travel-booking websites aren't working for me.

Something not delightful is my Nokia 3310's camera; it takes terrible, dark photos. I have an old Canon point-and-shoot digital camera, but I find I don't take many photos this week-because without Facebook and Instagram, I don't have anywhere to share them.
These phones are the nicotine patch for smartphone addiction.
Sometimes I just can't find a digital replacement. Venmo won't work without a smartphone, so I pay our babysitter in cash. I start using a physical calendar to keep track of my schedule. When it comes to getting around, Marble Maps is an option, but I'm confused by the interface, so I stick to places I know, and buy a physical map as a back-up.

"It's funny because Nokia used to have amazing navigation with Navtech," a technologist says to me one day when I'm talking about how hard driving is without mapping apps, "but then they sold themselves to Microsoft."

Fuck, I think, my Nokia 3310 might be made by Microsoft.

But it turns out, while Microsoft did buy Nokia's mobile devices division for $US7.2 billion in 2014, it sold Nokia's "feature phone assets" two years later for a painful write-down, $US350 million, to Foxconn (of Apple outsourcing fame) and to HMD Global, a Finnish firm helmed by a former Nokia executive. HMD Global now uses Nokia's "intellectual property," i.e. brand, to sell phones. Most "Nokia" phones are Android smartphones, but there's a line of "classic" phones, including the 3310, which run an operating system called FeatureOS made by Foxconn.

My Nokia 3310 is not a tech giant phone, but it's certainly tech giant adjacent.

To find out why the HMD Global is still selling dumbphones, I call its Hong Kong-based chief product officer, Juho Sarvikas. Sarvikas tells me that the company thought the core market for "classic" phones would be in Asia and Africa, where smartphones are less prevalent, but he says the devices have done surprisingly well in America.

"Digital well-being is a concrete area now," he says. "When you want to go into detox mode or if you want to be less connected, we want to be the company that has the toolkit for you."

"So these phones are the nicotine patch for smartphone addiction," I say.

He laughs, "I've never put it that way before, but yes."

I had assumed that the phones were for parents who wanted their kids to have phones sans a pipeline to social media and apps.

"That too," says Sarvikas.
Many people I talk to about this experiment liken it to digital veganism. Digital vegans reject certain technology services as unethical; they discriminate about the products they use and the data they consume and share, because information is power, and increasingly a handful of companies seem to have it all. He refers to joining social networks as being "bait" that lures other people into "surveillance traps."
When I meet a full-time practitioner of the lifestyle, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a technologist at the ACLU, I'm not totally surprised to discover he's an actual vegan. I am surprised by the lengths to which he's gone to avoid the tech giants: he doesn't have a mobile phone and prefers to pay for things with cash.

"My main concern is people being able to lead autonomous healthy lives that they have control over," Gillmor tells me during a chat via Jitsi, an open-source video-conferencing service that will work on any web browser. There's no proprietary app you have to download and it doesn't require you to create an account.

Gillmor hosts his own email and avoids most social media networks (he makes exceptions for Github and Sourceforge, because he's an open source developer who wants to share his code with others). He refers to joining social networks as being "bait" that lures other people into "surveillance traps."

Gillmor thinks people will have better lives if they aren't being data-mined and monetized by companies that increasingly control the flow of information.

"I have the capacity to make this choice. I know a lot of people would like to sign off but can't for financial reasons or practical reasons," he tells me. "I don't want to come across as chastising people who don't make this choice."

And there are definitely costs to the choice. "How things are structured determines the decisions people can make socially," he says. "Like you didn't get invited to a party [via Facebook] because you chose not to be part of a surveillance economy."

Gillmor teaches digital hygiene classes where he tries to get people to think about their privacy and security. He usually starts the class by asking people if they know when their phones are communicating with cell towers. "Most people say, 'When I use it,' but the answer is, 'anytime it's on,'" he says.

He wants people to think about their own data trails but also when they are creating data trails for other people, such as when a person uploads their contacts to a technology service -sharing information with the service that those contacts might not want shared.

"Once the data is out there, it can be misused in ways we don't expect," he says.

But he thinks it's going to take more than actions by individuals. "We need to think of this as a collective action problem similar to how we think about the environment," he says. "Our society is structured so that a lot of people are trapped. If you have to fill out your timesheet with an app only available on iPhone or Android, you better have one of those to get paid."

Gillmor wants lawmakers to step in, but he also thinks it can be addressed technologically, by pushing for interoperable systems like we have for phone numbers and email. You can call anyone; you don't need to use the same phone carrier as them. And you can take your phone number to a different carrier if you want (thanks to lawmaker intervention).

When companies can't lock us into proprietary ecosystems, we have more freedom. But that means Facebook would have to let a Pinterest user RSVP for an event on its site. And Apple would need to let you Facetime an Android user.

No one wants to give the keys out when they have customer lock-in.
The Amazon block continues to be the most challenging one for me.
My friend Katie is in town from New York; we have plans to meet for dinner one night at a restaurant near my house, an event marked on my physical calendar. On the morning we are to meet, I get an email from her to my Riseup account with the subject line, "What is happening."

Katie had been sending me messages for days via Signal, but I hadn't gotten them because Signal is hosted by AWS. When she didn't hear from me, she sent an "ARE YOU GETTING MY TEXTS" email to Gmail, and got my away message directing her to my Riseup account.
"ARE YOU GETTING MY TEXTS"
I tell her dinner is still a go, but it's a reminder of the costs of leaving these services. I can opt out, but people might not realise I've left, or might forget, even if they do know.

One day, I ask my husband, Trevor, who declined to do the block with me because he has "a real job," what the hardest part of my experiment is for him. "I never know if you're going to respond to my texts," he says.

"What do you mean?" I ask. "What have I not responded to?

"I sent you some messages on Signal," Trevor says, having forgotten I am off it.
The block provides constant conversation fodder, and I find myself in conversations more often because, at social gatherings, I don't have a smartphone to stare at.
An Ivy League professor tells me he regularly employs a Google blocker. "I had to disable it when I paid my taxes because they have Google Analytics on the IRS website," he says. "It was kind of horrifying."

People under 35 are intrigued (and sometimes jealous) of life without a smartphone; people over 35 just seem nostalgic.

One night, I run into Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, who is delighted to hear about the block. "It's hard to get away from technology," he says. "A friend was just telling me about trying to get a TV that wasn't smart and didn't have a microphone. It was impossible. He wound up getting a 27-inch [computer] monitor."

Sometimes we make the choice to bring technology into our lives, but sometimes it's forced upon us. Television makers have turned their products into surveillance machines that collect what we watch and what we don't watch and sometimes even what we say, and that's just how most TVs come now.

This week, I stop watching TV altogether because we don't have cable and internet TV isn't an option. I hadn't meant to make this experiment a "rejection of all technology"-but it happens despite my intentions.

I'm most frustrated by this with my phone. I would love to be using a tech-giant free smartphone, but they aren't really commercially available yet. If you want one, you need to be technically savvy and install a custom operating system on special phone models. That will hopefully change soon, with commercial offerings on the horizon from Eelo and Purism.

In the past, I would have assumed that idealistic projects like these were doomed, but there seems to be a heightened awareness these days of the dystopia created by the tech giants. Everywhere I look, I see criticism of the Frightful Five.
"Are America's technology companies serving as instruments of freedom or instruments of control?"
A writer I know pens an op-ed in the New York Times: " Hate Amazon? Try living without it." (She didn't actually live without it.) A CNBC tech reporter reveals she gave up Facebook and Instagram for three months and that it "made her a lot happier." A CBS reporter tries and fails to quit Google. A Vice writer gives all the giants up for a month (but not as rigorously as I did). The New York Times writes about apps tracking people's locations with horrifying regularity and granularity.

The tech giants laid down all the basic infrastructure for our data to be trafficked. They got us to put our information into public profiles, to carry tracking devices in our pockets, and to download apps to those tracking devices that secretly siphon data from them.

"Are America's technology companies serving as instruments of freedom or instruments of control?" asks a Californian politician.

It's in the air. The tech giants were long revered for making the world more connected, making information more accessible, and making commerce easier and cheaper. Now, suddenly, they are the targets of anger for assisting the spread of propaganda and misinformation, making us dangerously dependent on their services, and turning our personal information into the currency of a surveillance economy.

The world is flawed, and, fairly or not, the tech titans are increasingly being blamed.

A new book about "surveillance capitalism" by Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff argues that the extreme mining and manipulation of our data for profit is making an inescapable panopticon the driver of our economy.

Zuboff's publicist sent me an advance copy as an e-book, and I've really been enjoying it, but I have to put it down this week because I can't read it on my Kindle. Instead, I'm reading a physical book-Henry Thoreau's Walden, which I ordered from Barnes & Noble. It too is full of calls to re-immerse ourselves in the natural world and not get too caught up in the distractions of modern life.

But, because it was published in 1854, it warns people to get away from work and newspapers rather than smart devices and screens.
For ideas about what the government can do about all this, I call Lina Khan, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute who wrote a blockbuster paper on the need to regulate Amazon's monopoly power. (At least it's a blockbuster by academic standards.) "If users had been told that the price for access would be near-total surveillance, would they have agreed?"
Khan is in New York doing an academic fellowship at Columbia University where she is working on more papers. Khan doesn't have a Prime account and avoids Gmail. Right before I call her, I see a tweet from a video producer at the Washington Post who got bombarded with baby ads after she had a stillborn delivery.

"Please, Tech Companies, I implore you: If your algorithms are smart enough to realise that I was pregnant, or that I've given birth, then surely they can be smart enough to realise that my baby died, and advertise to me accordingly - or maybe, just maybe, not at all," she wrote in yet another reminder that privacy invasions have real harms.

I recount the story to Khan at the beginning of our call and say that this type of anger seems to be on the rise.

"The tech companies' own actions are prompting the tide to turn. It is a belated reckoning, but it seems to be a reckoning nonetheless," she says. "Companies started monetizing user data far before most users even realised their data was valuable, let alone being collected by private actors. If users had been told that the price for access would be near-total surveillance, would they have agreed? Would companies have been forced to offer different business models?"

Khan thinks law enforcers need to get involved to keep these companies from using anti-competitive tactics to dominate the business landscape, as public officials did in the '90s against Microsoft.

"Several of the big tech firms have acquired rivals and inhibited competitors through predatory conduct," she says, a topic that's been in the news recently with the exposure of Facebook emails where CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about cutting off then-viral video service Vine's access to the Facebook social graph. "They have engaged in practices that, a few decades ago, were widely considered monopolistic. We need investigations by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, or state attorneys general."

Europe is on the case, its regulators fining Google and saying Facebook can't combine users' data from Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram without their consent. But antitrust regulators in the U.S. have stayed away from these companies because their services are cheap or free, so they're perceived as pro-consumer, which is ultimately what regulators want to encourage. But how does that work when the "consumer" is what the company is selling?

An uncomfortable idea I keep coming up against this week is that, if we want to get away from monopolies and surveillance economies, we might need to rethink the assumption that everything on the internet should be free.

So when I try to create a fourth folder in ProtonMail to organise my email and it tells me that I need to upgrade from a free to a premium account to do so, I decide to fork over 48 euros (about $75) for the year. In return, I get a 5 GB email account that doesn't have its contents scanned and monetized.

However, I'm well aware that not everyone has $75 to spare for something that they can easily get for "free," so if that's the way things go, the rich will have privacy online and the poor (and most vulnerable) will have their data exploited.
The previous week, my 1-year-old, Ellev, started saying that Alexa is "scary" and "spooky," concepts she learned while trick-or-treating. It's not unreasonable; I can see how a disembodied voice that's always there and always listening would be disconcerting to a toddler-or really any normal human being.
But this week, she keeps crying for Alexa, wanting her to play "Baby shark" and other music that is otherwise absent from our home. "I miss Alexa," she says, and I feel terrible both for depriving her and for making her dependent on an AI at such a young age.

On the last day of the block, Trevor and I are flying to New York, and he's begging me to end the experiment early so we can use the iPad to keep Ellev happy. However, I'm adamant about maintaining the blockade for the six-hour flight.

"I'm changing my seat to a different part of the plane," Trevor warns, kiddingly.

Trevor charges the iPad up in case my will falters. But I hold strong. We read books with Ellev, doodle on a magnetic drawing board, sing songs, and play for at least an hour with sticky, flexible "Wizzle sticks" that come in her Alaska Airlines snack pack. She sleeps for the last hour and a half of the flight, something she doesn't usually do if there is an iPad available.

That was Ellev's 26th flight. In the taxi after we land, Trevor turns to me and says, "That's the easiest flight we've ever had with her."

We get to our Airbnb in Brooklyn, which I booked months before the experiment. (It should technically be banned because Airbnb is hosted by AWS.) There's a lock box on the outside of the apartment building that I open with a four-digit code. Inside is a key that gets us into the building and the same four-digit code opens a digital lock on the apartment's door. I had written down the address and code on a piece of paper knowing I wouldn't be able to access the Airbnb website.
Technology creates the problems that technology solves.
We get in with no problem. We're starving so head to a restaurant we passed in our taxi. Afterward, we need groceries, but Ellev is melting down, so I head to the Airbnb while Trevor goes to shop. I get into the building with the key, but once Ellev and I climb four flights of stairs to the apartment, I realise I don't have the piece of paper with the door code on it-and I don't remember the code.

Ellev is crying and trying to turn the doorknob. I start to feel that desperate panic of an earlier age that nowadays accompanies a dying smartphone battery.

My laptop is inside the locked apartment. I use a password manager, stored on that laptop, to get into all my online accounts, so I couldn't get into Airbnb on another computer even if I wanted to toss in the towel on the blockade.

A masochistic part of my brain reminds me that I am in this mess because I used a site hosted by AWS. I could have just booked a normal hotel room via the phone, and then I would be picking up a new key card at this very moment. Technology creates the problems that technology solves, and vice versa.

While soothing Ellev, I try a bunch of different combinations on the lock based on my vague recollection of what the four numbers are. One of them works. As soon as I get inside, I plug my iPhone into the charger, relieved I'll resume using it the next day.
Critics of the big tech companies are often told, "If you don't like the company, don't use its products." I did this experiment to find out if that is possible, and I found out that it's not-with the exception of Apple.
These companies are unavoidable because they control internet infrastructure, online commerce, and information flows. Many of them specialize in tracking you around the web, whether you use their products or not. These companies started out selling books, offering search results, or showcasing college hotties, but they have expanded enormously and now touch almost every online interaction. These companies look a lot like modern monopolies.

Since the experiment ended, I've resumed using the tech giants' services, but I use them less. I deliberately seek out alternatives to do what I can, as a consumer, not to help them monopolize the market.
I want to embrace a lifestyle of "slow Internet."
But the experiment went beyond that for me; it made me reexamine the role of tech in my life more widely. It broke me of that modern bad habit of swiping through my phone looking for a distraction rather than engaging with the people around me or seeking stimulation in my real world environment.

I deleted time-wasting apps like Words With Friends and a Hearts app. I look at Instagram less often, such that I see friends have tagged me in their stories, but don't see the stories because they've already reached their 24-hour expiration mark.

I turn my phone off around 9pm each night and don't turn it back on until I really need it the next day. It took two weeks of using my "nicotine patch" dumb phone, but I eventually lost the urge to start my day by reaching for my smartphone on the bedside table.

My iPhone tells me in my weekly "Screentime" reports that my usage is down significantly, to under 2 hours per day. My phone feels less like an appendage and more like a tool I use when necessary. I still love using Google Maps or Waze when I'm driving to an unfamiliar place, texting far-away friends and family members, and sharing a beautiful photo on Instagram-but I have regained the ability to put my phone away.

I went through the digital equivalent of a juice cleanse. I hope I'm better than most dieters at staying healthy afterward, but I don't want to be a digital vegan. I want to embrace a lifestyle of "slow Internet," to be more discriminating about the technology I let into my life and think about the motives of the companies behind it. The tech giants are reshaping the world in good and bad ways; we can take the good and reject the bad.

I ask Trevor if he notices anything different about me since the experiment.

"You never know what time it is anymore," he jokes, but it's true. I look at my phone infrequently and there are rarely clocks around, personal devices apparently having made them obsolete. I am more in the moment, but less aware of the actual hour and minute.

This is easily solvable: I'll get a watch. It definitely won't be a smart one.
Goodbye Big Five series was brought to you by:
Reporter: Kashmir Hill (and her family)

Video Producer: Myra Iqbal

Editors: Andrew Couts, Tim Marchman, Kelly Bourdet

The Video Team: Danielle Steinberg, Ben Reininga, Santiago Garcia

The Art Team: Jim Cooke, Therese McPherson

Video Animator: Dominic Elsey
THE END The
Technologist: Dhruv Mehrotra, whose work was supported by a grant from the Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism
This article was originally published 8/2/19.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I Cut The 'Big Five' Tech Giants From My Life And It Was Hell

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A couple of months ago, I set out to answer the question of whether it's possible to avoid the tech giants. Over the course of five weeks, I blocked Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple one at a time, to find out how to live in the modern age without each one....

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, the Big Five tech companies

Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants, are the largest information technology (IT) companies. The concept of Big Tech is similar to the grouping of dominant companies in other economic sectors. It generally includes the Big Five tech companies in the United States: Alphabet ( Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. It can also include tech companies with high valuations, such as Netflix and Nvidia, or companies outside the IT sector, such as Tesla. Groupings of these companies include the Big Four (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta), Big Five (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft), and Magnificent Seven (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla). Big Tech can also include Chinese companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi ( BATX).

In the 20th century, IBM and Microsoft dominated the IT industry. After the dot-com bubble wiped out most of the Nasdaq Composite stock market index, surviving tech startups expanded their market share and became dominant in their respective markets. The term Big Tech began to appear around 2013, when some economists speculated that a lack of regulation could lead to concentrated market power. The term Big Tech became popular following the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, because access to a large amount of data allowed tech companies to influence their users. The term Big Tech is similar to how the largest oil companies were called Big Oil following the 1970s energy crisis, and the largest cigarette producers were called Big Tobacco, as Congress sought to regulate those industries. It is also similar to how, at the turn of the 21st century, the mainstream media became dominated by a small number of corporations called Big Media or the Media Giants.

The Big Five tech companies are dominant players in their respective areas of technology: artificial intelligence, cloud computing, consumer electronics, e-commerce, home automation, online advertising, self-driving cars, social networking, and streaming media. They are among the most valuable public companies. In August 2020, the Big Five accounted for nearly a quarter of the S&P 500. In March 2023, Apple and Microsoft accounted for 13 percent of the S&P 500. In February 2024, the combined market capitalization of the Magnificent Seven tech companies exceeded the combined value of every public company in every G20 country except China, Japan, and the United States as a whole.

Big Tech companies are considered among the most prestigious employers in the world. Specifically, the Big Five are considered structurally and relationally powerful. As such, they have been criticized for creating a new economic order called surveillance capitalism. They serve billions of users, and are able to influence user behavior and control large amounts of user data. Concerns over monopolistic practices have led to antitrust investigations from the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission in the United States, as well as the European Commission. Commentators have questioned the impact of these companies on privacy, market power, freedom of speech, national security, and law enforcement. In 2019, John Naughton wrote in The Guardian that "it's almost impossible to function without the big five tech giants."

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Meta are commonly referred to as the Big Four. They have also been referred to as The Four, the Gang of Four, and the Four Horsemen. They were known as GAFA before Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021. Eric Schmidt, Phil Simon, and Scott Galloway have grouped these companies together based on their ability to create social change. According to Simon and Galloway, this distinguishes them from other Big Tech companies such as Microsoft and IBM. In 2011, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt excluded Microsoft from the group, stating "Microsoft is not driving the consumer revolution in the minds of the consumers."

A more inclusive group called the Big Five defines Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft as the tech giants. They were known as GAFAM before Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021. In 2020, the Big Five ranked as the second through sixth most valuable public companies in the world, behind Saudi Aramco.

A larger group called the Magnificent Seven adds Nvidia and Tesla to the Big Five based on their contributions to the S&P 500 since 2022. In January 2024, the group accounted for 29% of the S&P 500's market capitalization. In 2023, the Magnificent Seven were responsible for almost two thirds of the S&P 500's 24% increase. The group had a 107% return on investment, which analysts credited to the AI boom and Federal Reserve rate cut expectations. In February 2024, as the Magnificent Seven approached an unprecedented combined valuation of $13 trillion, Deutsche Bank noted that the Magnificent Seven would constitute the second largest stock market in the world. Deutsche Bank also noted that for non-US G20 countries, only China and Japan had combined public company profits greater than those of the Magnificent Seven.

Some analysts expressed concern that extreme concentration could cause a stock market crash similar to the dot-com bubble or even the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Others believe the Magnificent Seven can continue to outperform other stocks as capital flows into index funds.

The Big Four or Five tech companies have been referred to in the media as GAFA, GAFAM, MAMAA, and other acronyms. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, may be represented by G in these acronyms, while Meta, the rebranding of Facebook, may be represented by F.

The acronym FANG was coined in 2013 by Jim Cramer, the television host of CNBC's , to refer to Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. Cramer called these companies "totally dominant in their markets". Cramer considered that the four companies were poised to "take a bite out of" the bear market, giving a double meaning to the acronym, according to Cramer's colleague at RealMoney.com, Bob Lang. Cramer expanded FANG to FAANG in 2017, adding Apple to the other four companies due to its revenues placing it as a potential Fortune 50 company. Following Facebook's name change to Meta Platforms in October 2021, as well as the 2015 creation of Google holding company Alphabet Inc., Cramer suggested replacing FAANG with MAMAA, replacing Netflix with Microsoft because Netflix's valuation had fallen behind the other companies. With Microsoft, these companies were each valued at over $900 billion compared to Netflix's $310 billion. In November 2021, The Motley Fool suggested MANAMANA (a reference to the 1968 song " Mah Nà Mah Nà") as an acronym that stands for Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, and Adobe.

The 10 largest corporations by market capitalization

The Big Five tech giants have surpassed the market capitalization of Big Oil energy giants such as ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and Shell. They have also outpaced Big Media companies such as Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Comcast by a factor of 10. In 2017, the Big Five had a combined value of over $3.3 trillion, and made up almost half of the Nasdaq 100. In 2017, Elizabeth Warren criticized Big Tech for offering free services to remain more popular than the competition.

Alphabet (Google)

Google is the leader in online advertising ( Google Ads), online search ( Google Search), video sharing ( YouTube), email ( Gmail), web browsers ( Google Chrome), web mapping ( Google Maps and Waze), mobile operating systems ( Android), and cloud storage ( Google Drive). Google Cloud Platform is the third most popular cloud computing platform after Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Google and Meta have been called a digital advertising duopoly. Google earns 82% of its revenue and most of its profit from advertising. Alphabet is considered the global leader in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and self-driving cars. In 2019, Google claimed its Sycamore processor had achieved quantum supremacy. In 2021, Alphabet's subsidiary Waymo was the first company to offer public robotaxi service. In January 2020, Alphabet reached $1 trillion in market capitalization for the first time.

In 2017, Amazon was the leader in e-commerce with 40.4% market share, cloud computing, with nearly 32% market share, and live streaming with Twitch controlling 75.6% market share.[citation needed ] With Amazon Alexa and Amazon Echo, Amazon is also the leader in the area of artificial intelligence-based personal digital assistants and smart speakers ( Amazon Echo) with 69% market share followed by Google ( Google Nest) at 25% market share. Amazon Web Services made up 59% of Amazon's profit in 2020, and more than half of the company's profit every year since 2014. After Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) was released in 2006, Google developed Google App Engine (now Google Cloud Platform) and Microsoft developed Windows Azure (now Microsoft Azure). After crossing $1 trillion during trading hours once in September 2018 and again in January 2020, Amazon closed above $1 trillion for the first time in April 2020. In November 2022, Amazon fell below $1 trillion for the first time since 2020, part of a 51% decline from $1.7 trillion at the beginning of 2022 to $834 billion at the end of the year. By May 2023, Amazon stock was again worth more than $1 trillion.

Apple sells consumer electronics, including laptops, smartphones, and smartwatches. Apple shares a duopoly with Google in mobile operating systems, with Apple's iOS controlling 27% market share and Google's Android controlling 72%. In August 2018, Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company in history to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion. In August 2020, Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company in history to reach a market capitalization of $2 trillion. In January 2022, Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company in history to reach a market capitalization of $3 trillion. In January 2023, Apple fell below $2 trillion. Apple closed above $3 trillion for the first time in June 2023 and closed above $3 trillion again in December 2023.

Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) owns the Facebook social network, the Instagram image sharing service, and the WhatsApp messaging service. Facebook also acquired Oculus in 2014, entering the virtual reality market. After closing above $1 trillion for the first time in June 2021 as Facebook, Meta Platforms finished 2021 below $1 trillion. In February 2022, Meta Platforms fell to less than $600 billion (setting a record for the largest one-day drop in U.S. stock market history), and was no longer within the top 20 most valuable U.S. companies after falling to $270 billion in October 2022. In January 2024, Meta crossed $1 trillion during trading hours.

Microsoft controls the majority of market share in desktop operating systems ( Microsoft Windows), productivity software ( Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365), and business communication software ( Microsoft Teams). Microsoft owns the second biggest cloud computing platform ( Microsoft Azure) after Amazon Web Services. Microsoft is also one of the biggest companies in the video game industry ( Microsoft Gaming). In April 2019, Microsoft reached $1 trillion in market capitalization for the first time. In June 2021, Microsoft crossed $2 trillion for the first time, and in October 2021 briefly surpassed Apple as the most valuable company in the world before finishing the year second to Apple at $2.5 trillion. After its stock fell during most of 2022, Microsoft finished the year below $2 trillion. By May 2023, Microsoft stock was again worth more than $2 trillion. In January 2024, Microsoft briefly surpassed Apple as the most valuable U.S. company, and crossed $3 trillion during trading hours.

Smaller companies like Adobe, Netflix, Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce, Snap, Uber, and X are sometimes referred to as Big Tech due to their popular influence. X, although privately owned by Elon Musk, has been criticized for its outsized influence on politics.

In May 2023, Nvidia crossed $1 trillion in market capitalization during trading hours, and was worth $1.2 trillion by November 2023. In February 2024, Nvidia rose above $1.83 trillion in market capitalization, surpassing Amazon and Alphabet to become the third most valuable U.S. company after Apple and Microsoft, and later crossed $2 trillion during trading hours.

Tesla's classification as a Big Tech company has been debated. Business Insider stated that because Tesla makes cars, it should be classified as an automaker. Al Root of Barron's argued that Tesla is a tech company, but not a good one due to differences in the information technology and automotive markets. In The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Wilmot raised concerns regarding the supply chain, especially raw materials, semiconductor shortages, and the price of electric vehicle batteries. In 2022, Fortune included Tesla in Big Tech, and The Washington Post argued that Tesla vehicles are comparable to Apple's iPhone. In October 2021, Tesla crossed $1 trillion in market capitalization. During the 2022 stock market decline, Tesla stock fell 73% from $1.3 trillion in November 2021 to $495 billion at the end of 2022, including a 40% drop in December 2022 alone. In response to the stock price declining over twice as much as the Nasdaq Composite index, Tesla CEO Elon Musk advised employees not to be bothered by the "stock market craziness".

Two Chinese technology companies, Alibaba and Tencent, were among the top ten most valuable public companies worldwide at the end of the 2010s. Smyrnaios argued in 2016 that the Asian technology giants Samsung, Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent could be included in the definition of Big Tech. Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi, referred to as BATX, are often seen as Chinese competitors to Big Tech. TikTok developer ByteDance and drone manufacturer DJI have also been called Big Tech. Futurist Amy Webb has called the combination of the Big Five, IBM, Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent "G-MAFIA BAT".

Nikos Smyrnaios argued in 2016 that four phenomena allowed Big Tech to emerge: technological convergence, deregulation, globalization, and financialization. He argued that people like Nicholas Negroponte promoted technological convergence and made an Internet oligopoly appear desirable. The complexity of information technology made competition law ineffective, resulting in industry self-regulation. Globalization allowed Big Tech companies to minimize their tax burden and pay foreign workers lower wages. Without regulation, Big Tech earned big profits: in 2014, Google, Apple, and Facebook earned over 20 percent profit margins.

Critics have alleged that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act allowed Big Tech to evade responsibility for user-generated content. It states, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Section 230 has been called "the twenty-six words that created the Internet". Without the legal requirement for content moderation, online services could innovate freely and achieved rapid growth in the early days of the Internet.

According to Alexis Madrigal, the innovation that initially characterized Silicon Valley has been replaced by a strategy of growth through acquisitions. For example, Apple started in 1976 as an engineering-focused startup company, and quickly claimed market share from less innovative competitors like Xerox. The tech giants made timely investments in personal computers, websites, e-commerce, mobile devices, social media, and cloud computing, and rank highly on the list of companies by research and development spending. However, large companies tend to focus on operational efficiency instead of new product development.

Legal scholar Tim Wu speculated that Big Tech acquisitions could create "kill zones" that stifle competition by taking potential competitors out of the marketplace. For example, Facebook's acquisition of Instagram prevented Instagram from becoming an independent platform similar to Facebook. On the other hand, Wu stated that Microsoft's concentration of market power created a platform for new kinds of innovation.

According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, "Virtually all so-called killer acquisitions represent the technologies and capabilities the companies view as critical to their competitiveness. If they purchase a company innovating within this zone, they are far more likely to develop its innovation than to bury it. In doing so, they often make the technology available faster and to more people than would otherwise be possible. If companies are prevented from making acquisitions, they are more likely to copy the products or develop alternative innovations than they are to ignore them. Assuming incumbents don't violate intellectual property laws, this type of competition is both legal and socially beneficial."

Competition between cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform contributed to open-source software infrastructure including LLVM and the Linux kernel. The "cloud wars" also caused Big Tech companies to invest in data centers and undersea cables. The operational efficiency of Big Tech technology stacks means startup companies typically must use Big Tech infrastructure instead of building their own.

Nikos Smyrnaios argued in 2016 that Big Tech companies concentrate power by vertically integrating data centers, Internet connectivity, computer hardware (including smartphones), operating systems, applications (including Web browsers), and online services. He also argued that they concentrate power by horizontally integrating different services such as email, instant messaging, online searching, downloading, and streaming across platforms. For example, Google and Microsoft pay for their search engines to be included with Apple's iPhone. According to The Economist, " Network and scale effects mean that size begets size, while data can act as a barrier to entry."

The 2020 American docudrama film The Social Dilemma argues that capitalism is the root cause of Big Tech's harmful practices.

Under United States antitrust law, the consumer welfare standard assumes that large companies are not automatically harmful. Antitrust enforcement generally aims to prevent harm to consumers. According to some policy analysts, Big Tech innovation benefits consumers. Big Tech CEOs have consistently opposed antitrust regulation. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, testified that his company is important to United States national security.[citation needed ] Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, lobbied Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to delay proposed regulations.[citation needed ]

Antitrust investigations of Big Tech began in the late 1990s, leading to the first major case against Big Tech in 2001, when the U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally maintaining its monopoly position in the PC market. Microsoft imposed legal and technical restrictions on PC manufacturers and users preventing them from uninstalling Internet Explorer and using Netscape or Java. The district court ruled that Microsoft's actions constituted monopolization under the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed most of the district court's judgments. The Department of Justice announced on September 6, 2001 that it would not seek to break up Microsoft, and would instead seek a lesser penalty if Microsoft agreed to share its APIs with third-party companies and appoint a three-person panel with access to Microsoft's systems, records, and source code for five years. On November 1, 2002, Judge Kollar-Kotelly accepted most of the proposed settlement, and on June 30, 2004, the U.S. appeals court unanimously approved the settlement.

In the late 2010s, Big Tech was investigated by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission for anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions. Some Democratic presidential candidates proposed breaking up Big Tech companies or regulating them as utilities. FTC chairman Joseph Simons said, "The role of technology in the economy and in our lives grows more important every day...As I've noted in the past, it makes sense for us to closely examine technology markets to ensure consumers benefit from free and fair competition." The United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law investigated Big Tech in June 2020, and published a report in January 2021 concluding that Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta operated in an anticompetitive manner.

On June 24, 2021, the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law held hearings on proposed Big Tech regulations. Pramila Jayapal introduced HR 3825, The Ending Platform Monopolies Act, which passed the committee. The bill proposed prohibiting platform owners from offering products and services on the platforms they own. For example, in 2010, Amazon attempted to acquire Diapers.com. When Diapers.com rejected Amazon's proposal, Amazon started selling diapers at a loss. Facing unprofitability, Diapers.com agreed to let Amazon buy the company even though Walmart was willing to pay more. The committee voted that the reason for Big Tech monopolies is because of the consumer welfare standard, a legal doctrine stating that if the consumer benefits from corporate actions, those actions are generally legal. FTC chairwoman Lina Khan expressed a different view in her publication "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox".

On July 9, 2021, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14036, "Promoting Competition in the American Economy", a sweeping array of initiatives across the executive branch. The order established an executive branch-wide policy to more thoroughly scrutinize mergers involving Big Tech companies, with focus on the acquisition of new, potentially disruptive technology from smaller companies by the larger companies. The order also instructed the FTC to establish rules related to the use of data collection by Big Tech companies for promoting their own services.

The European Commission, which has imposed sanctions on several of the high-tech giants

In June 2020, the European Union opened two investigations into Apple. The first investigation focused on whether Apple uses market dominance to stifle competition in music and book streaming. The second investigation focused on Apple Pay. Apple limits the use of the iPhone's NFC technology by financial institutions, including banks.

According to European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, fines are insufficient to deter anticompetitive practices. Vestager stated, "Fines are not doing the trick. And fines are not enough because fines are a punishment for illegal behaviour in the past. What is also in our decision is that you have to change for the future. You have to stop what you're doing."

In September 2021, the United States and European Union began negotiating a joint approach to Big Tech regulation. The European Parliament passed the Digital Markets Act in March 2022 in order to restrict data collection from European users, require social media interoperability, and allow alternative app stores and payment systems for Apple and Google smartphones. The EU also passed the Digital Services Act in April 2022, which requires tech companies to take down hate speech and child sexual abuse, and ban advertising targeting gender, race, religion, and childhood. Both the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act were enacted by the EU in July 2022. The EU defined Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft as "gatekeepers" under the DMA in September 2023, and required them to comply by March 2024.

According to The Globe and Mail, both left-wing and right-wing politicians have criticized Big Tech. Progressives have alleged "runaway profit-taking and concentration of wealth", and conservatives have alleged "liberal bias". According to The New York Times, "The left generally argues that companies like Facebook and Twitter aren't doing enough to root out misinformation, extremism and hate on their platforms, while the right insists that tech companies are going so overboard in their content decisions that they're suppressing conservative political views." According to , libertarians oppose government regulation of Big Tech due to their support for laissez-faire economics.

Scott Galloway said Big Tech companies "avoid taxes, invade privacy, and destroy jobs". Nikos Smyrnaios described Big Tech as an oligopoly that dominates the information technology market through anti-competitive practices, ever-increasing economic power, and intellectual property. Smyrnaios argued that the current situation is the result of deregulation, globalization, and the failure of politicians to understand and respond to developments in technology. Smyrnaios recommended developing academic analysis of the political economy of the Internet in order to understand the methods of domination and to criticize these methods in order to encourage opposition to that domination.

The practice of banning hate speech has received criticism from conservatives. In July 2020, the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law interviewed the CEOs of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. During the hearings, some members of Congress alleged bias against conservatives on social media. Matt Gaetz protested Amazon's ban on donations to hate groups, stating that Jeff Bezos should "divorce from the SPLC".

On November 5, 2020, President Donald Trump alleged "historic election interference from big money, big media, and big tech". Conservative newspaper The Washington Times criticized Trump's claims as lacking evidence. During Trump's speech that incited the January 6 United States Capitol attack, he accused Big Tech of rigging the 2020 election and promised to "get rid of" Section 230. According to Trump, "They rigged it like they have never rigged an election before, and by the way, last night, they didn't do a bad job either." After Trump's Twitter account was suspended, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief spokesman Steffen Seibert noted that Merkel found Twitter's halt of Trump's account "problematic", adding that legislators, not private companies, should decide on any necessary curbs to free expression if hate speech incites violence.

According to a February 2021 report by New York University researchers, conservative claims of social media censorship could be considered disinformation because the deleted statements were false. The report also recommended that social media platforms should increase their transparency to push back against claims of censorship. Conservatives argued that Facebook and Twitter limiting the spread of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy "proves Big Tech's bias". In some cases, Big Tech platforms reversed actions perceived as censorship. The YouTube channel Right Wing Watch was banned for showing far-right content to expose extreme views, but the channel was restored after viewer backlash. Human Rights Watch stated that excessive content removal, especially on Facebook, meant losing evidence of human rights abuses.

Facebook has also been accused of censoring left-wing opinions. Facebook removed ads by Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, who advocated breaking up Facebook. Warren accused the company of having the "ability to shut down a debate" and called for "a social media marketplace that isn't dominated by a single censor".

Following Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Facebook was criticized for failing to curb disinformation. In the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Facebook users were targeted for political propaganda based on their online activity, which Facebook monitored and shared without consent. In 2019, a Senate Intelligence Committee report criticized Facebook and Twitter for failing to stop the spread of misinformation. In response to criticism of their handling of misinformation and disinformation during the 2016 election, Big Tech companies cracked down on fake accounts and trolling.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Big Tech was criticized for allowing COVID-19 misinformation. According to Representatives Frank Pallone, Mike Doyle, and Jan Schakowsky, "Industry self-regulation has failed. We must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation." President Joe Biden criticized Facebook for allowing anti-vaccine activism. Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said "While they fail to take action, lives are being lost." In response to the criticism, Big Tech companies deleted numerous social media accounts and banned health-related false advertising.

Human Rights Watch has criticized Big Tech, primarily Facebook, for allowing misinformation to spread in developing countries.

Big Tech companies have faced political censorship. China banned Google in 2010 because Google refused to censor search results critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Meta and X have been banned in China since 2009.

In India, Facebook and Twitter were accused of censorship during the 2020-2021 Indian farmers' protest. The Wall Street Journal stated that Facebook only restricted content criticizing the Indian government, even if government supporters posted false statements.

In 2021, Alexei Navalny criticized Apple and Google for complying with a Russian government order to ban the Smart Voting app. On February 24, 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. In March 2022, Russia blocked Facebook and Twitter because of "disinformation" and "fake news". On March 21, 2022, Russia recognized Meta as an "extremist organization", making Meta the first public company recognized as extremist in Russia. Microsoft's LinkedIn has been blocked in Russia since 2016.

On May 9, 2019, the Parliament of France passed a law intended to force Big Tech to pay publishers for the reuse of substantial amounts of copyrighted content ( related rights). The law is aimed at implementing Article 15 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market of the European Union.

Alt-tech is a collection of social networking services and Internet service providers popular among the alt-right, far-right, and others who espouse extremism or fringe theories, typically because they employ looser content moderation than mainstream platforms. The term "alt-tech" is a portmanteau of "alt-right" and "Big Tech".

The fediverse is a collection of federated social networking services that can communicate with each other even if they are controlled independently. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates and multimedia files across the network. The term "fediverse" is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants, are the largest information technology (IT) companies. The concept of Big Tech is similar to the grouping of dominant companies in other economic sectors. It generally includes the Big Five tech companies in the United States: Alphabet ( Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Met de term Internetgiganten wordt een kleine groep mondiale internetbedrijven bedoeld die, in het algemeen of in een bepaalde sector, via het internet een marktoverwicht vertonen, of minstens toonaangevend zijn.

Deze multinationals vertonen meestal volgende kenmerken:

Bij internetgiganten in de ruime zin gaat het om wereldbedrijven zoals Airbnb, Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber, Yahoo enz. In een meer beperkte betekenis gaat het om Google, Amazon, Facebook en Apple ( Frans "GAFA"), soms aangevuld met Microsoft. Deze vier ( Amerikaanse) spelers brachten in het begin van de 21e eeuw belangrijke sociale veranderingsprocessen op gang via hun dominantie en rol in cyberspace.

Benamingen en afkortingen

Reeds in 2011 noemde voormalig Google CEO Eric Schmidt Google, Amazon, Facebook en Apple de "vier ruiters" en zelfs de "bende van vier", een term die ook werd gebruikt door Phil Simon. Onder meer de Amerikaanse hoogleraar marketing Scott Galloway houdt het bij de term "Big Four" of "Grote Vier". Het gaat daarbij niet zozeer om de grootste computerbedrijven als zodanig: technische multinationals zoals IBM of HP brengen volgens hem minder sociale dynamiek op gang dan de Grote Vier.

In de pers heeft men het over de "internetgiganten", "techreuzen" of de "Big Five" of "Big Tech"

In het Franse taalgebied is de afkorting "GAFA" gangbaar, of "GAFAM" indien ook Microsoft wordt bedoeld.

Voor de uitdagers van de grote vier gebruikt men weleens het acroniem "NATU": Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla en Uber; in China, "BATX" (voor Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent en Xiaomi).

Geschiedenis

De dominantie van een kleine groep technologische bedrijven is niet nieuw: in de jaren 1990 waren dat Microsoft, Intel, Cisco en Dell. Het overwicht van de nieuwe internetgiganten liet zich vooral voelen vanaf de jaren 2010.

De grootste internetbedrijven beschikken over een brede waaier aan persoonsgegevens van hun (soms honderden miljoenen) gebruikers. Deze gegevens vormen samen een berg aan big data, waarbij ook de persoonlijke privacy op de helling kan komen te staan, zoals in 2018 bleek met het datalekschandaal bij Cambridge Analytica. De Amerikaanse onderzoeker Shoshana Zuboff ontwikkelde in dit verband het concept 'toezichtskapitalisme' of 'surveillancekapitalisme'. In 2016 keurde de Europese Unie de Algemene verordening gegevensbescherming (AVG) goed, waarbij bedrijven regels opgelegd krijgen voor de verwerking van persoonsgegevens.

Met name Google ligt al langer in het vizier bij de Europese Commissie, met in 2017 en in 2019 miljardenboetes tot gevolg.

In de zomer van 2019 kwam de Amerikaanse overheid in actie: het Amerikaanse Ministerie van Justitie kondigde een kartelonderzoek aan naar de grote technologiebedrijven. Los daarvan was de parlementaire antitrustcommissie een onderzoek begonnen naar het monopoliegedrag van de grote vier. Eerder al had de Dienst voor Consumentenbescherming FTC een onderzoek uitgevoerd inzake privacy, met een fikse boete voor Facebook als resultaat. Ook de Amerikaanse staten, met uitzondering van Californië en Alabama, kondigden aan gezamenlijk onder leiding van Texas een onderzoek in te stellen naar misbruik van marktpositie door Google.

Het is bekend dat de internetgiganten relatief weinig belastingen betalen. Daartoe vestigden de bedrijven die in de EU actief zijn, zich in fiscaal aantrekkelijke landen als Ierland en Luxemburg, terwijl ze enorme omzetten draaien in andere lidstaten, die bijgevolg belastinginkomsten mislopen. Een traditioneel Europees bedrijf betaalde volgens de Europese Commissie gemiddeld 23 procent winstbelasting, zijn hightech concurrent 9,5 procent.

In het algemeen hebben de internetgiganten een relatief klein aantal, meestal hooggekwalificeerde medewerkers in eigen dienst, in vergelijking met hun beurswaarde, bijvoorbeeld:

Facebook heeft circa 40.000 mensen in dienst, bij een beurswaarde van bijna 600 miljard dollar (ter vergelijking: Walt Disney heeft ongeveer 200.000 mensen in dienst, bij een beurswaarde van 250 miljard dollar)

Amazon: meer dan 600.000 mensen in dienst, beurswaarde 900 miljard dollar (ter vergelijking: Walmart, 2,2 miljoen mensen in dienst, beurswaarde 310 miljard dollar)

Worden dan toch externe of hulpkrachten ingeschakeld, dan gebeurt dit vaak onder minder gunstige arbeidsvoorwaarden en precaire statuten.

1. 'Amazon, Google, Facebook en Apple worden veel te dominant' (29 mei 2018). Geraadpleegd op 25 juli 2019.

2. Een verwijzing naar de vier ruiters van de Apocalyps

3. Eric Schmidt's Gang Of Four: Google, Apple, Amazon, And Facebook (2011). Geraadpleegd op 25 juli 2019.

4. Simon, Phil, The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business. Motion Publishing (22 oktober 2011), 312. ISBN 978-0982930250.

5. Europa verdeeld over 'Google-taks'. De Tijd (28 april 2018). Geraadpleegd op 25 juli 2019.

6. Zuboff, Shoshana, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. profilebooks.com, p. 704p.. ISBN 9781781256848. Geraadpleegd op March 2 2019.

7. Cijfers voor juni 2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Met de term Internetgiganten wordt een kleine groep mondiale internetbedrijven bedoeld die, in het algemeen of in een bepaalde sector, via het internet een marktoverwicht vertonen, of minstens toonaangevend zijn. Deze multinationals vertonen meestal volgende kenmerken: Bij internetgiganten in de ruime zin gaat het om wereldbedrijven zoals Airbnb, Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber, Yahoo enz.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Collectively, the "big five" US tech companies-Apple, Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook-raked in more than $800 billion in revenue in 2018. But how did they make their money? An infographic from Visual Capitalist (embedded in full below) breaks it down.

According to Visual Capitalist, 62.8 percent of Apple's $265.6 billion in revenue last year came from iPhone sales. Mac computers accounted for 9.6 percent, and iPads made up 7.1 percent. All other Apple products and services together, including Apple Watch, Apple TV, Beats devices, Apple Pay, and AppleCare, accounted for 20.6 percent.

Amazon earned 52.8 percent of its $232.9 billion in revenue last year from its online stores, 18.4 percent from third-party sellers, 11 percent from Amazon Web Services, and 6.1 percent from subscription services such as Prime. The online retail giant also earned a pretty penny offline-7.4 percent of Amazon's revenue came from its physical stores.

"Amazon's fastest growing segment is offline," Visual Capitalist wrote. "Sales in physical stores jumped 197 percent between 2017 and 2018."

Microsoft, meanwhile, "has the most diversified revenue of any of the tech giants," Visual Capitalist wrote. Of its $110.4 billion in revenue last year, 25.7 percent came from Office products, 23.7 from Azure server products, 17.7 percent from Windows, 9.4 percent from gaming, 6.4 percent from search ads on Bing, 5.3 percent from enterprise services, 4.7 percent from devices such as Surface PCs, and 4.8 from LinkedIn.

Alphabet and Facebook are a different story. The lion's share of Alphabet's 136.8 billion and Facebook's $55.8 billion in revenue last year came from advertising, according to Visual Capitalist.

Further Reading

Gaming Reviews

Gaming Best Picks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Collectively, the "big five" US tech companies-Apple, Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook-raked in more than $800 billion in revenue in 2018. But how did they make their money? An infographic from Visual Capitalist (embedded in full below) breaks it down.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world. It's a great story - but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets.

In the 1990s, Microsoft - the tech giant of its time - was trying to parlay its dominance in computer operating systems into dominance in the new area of web browsing. The federal government sued Microsoft for violating anti-monopoly laws and eventually reached a settlement. The government's antitrust case against Microsoft helped clear a path for Internet companies like Google and Facebook to emerge.

The story demonstrates why promoting competition is so important: it allows new, groundbreaking companies to grow and thrive - which pushes everyone in the marketplace to offer better products and services. Aren't we all glad that now we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with Bing?

Today's big tech companies have too much power - too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They've bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation.

I want a government that makes sure everybody - even the biggest and most powerful companies in America - plays by the rules. And I want to make sure that the next generation of great American tech companies can flourish. To do that, we need to stop this generation of big tech companies from throwing around their political power to shape the rules in their favor and throwing around their economic power to snuff out or buy up every potential competitor.

That's why my administration will make big, structural changes to the tech sector to promote more competition - including breaking up Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
How the new tech monopolies hurt small businesses and innovation
America's big tech companies provide valuable products but also wield enormous power over our digital lives. Nearly half of all e-commerce goes through Amazon. More than 70% of all Internet referral traffic goes through sites owned or operated by Google or Facebook.

As these companies have grown larger and more powerful, they have used their resources and control over the way we use the Internet to squash small businesses and innovation, and substitute their own financial interests for the broader interests of the American people. To restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and to ensure that the next generation of technology innovation is as vibrant as the last, it's time to break up our biggest tech companies.

America's big tech companies have achieved their level of dominance in part based on two strategies:

Using Mergers to Limit Competition. Facebook has purchased potential competitors Instagram and WhatsApp. Amazon has used its immense market power to force smaller competitors like Diapers.com to sell at a discounted rate.Google has snapped up the mapping company Waze and the ad company DoubleClick. Rather than blocking these transactions for their negative long-term effects on competition and innovation, government regulators have waved them through.

Using Proprietary Marketplaces to Limit Competition. Many big tech companies own a marketplace - where buyers and sellers transact - while also participating on the marketplace. This can create a conflict of interest that undermines competition. Amazon crushes small companies by copying the goods they sell on the Amazon Marketplace and then selling its own branded version. Google allegedly snuffed out a competing small search engine by demoting its content on its search algorithm, and it has favored its own restaurant ratings over those of Yelp.

Weak antitrust enforcement has led to a dramatic reduction in competition and innovation in the tech sector. Venture capitalists are now hesitant to fund new startups to compete with these big tech companies because it's so easy for the big companies to either snap up growing competitors or drive them out of business. The number of tech startups has slumped, there are fewer high-growth young firms typical of the tech industry, and first financing rounds for tech startups have declined 22% since 2012.

With fewer competitors entering the market, the big tech companies do not have to compete as aggressively in key areas like protecting our privacy. And some of these companies have grown so powerful that they can bully cities and states into showering them with massive taxpayer handouts in exchange for doing business, and can act - in the words of Mark Zuckerberg - "more like a government than a traditional company."

We must ensure that today's tech giants do not crowd out potential competitors, smother the next generation of great tech companies, and wield so much power that they can undermine our democracy.
Restoring competition in the tech sector
America has a long tradition of breaking up companies when they have become too big and dominant - even if they are generally providing good service at a reasonable price.

A century ago, in the Gilded Age, waves of mergers led to the creation of some of the biggest companies in American history - from Standard Oil and JPMorgan to the railroads and AT&T. In response to the rise of these "trusts," Republican and Democratic reformers pushed for antitrust laws to break up these conglomerations of power to ensure competition.

But where the value of the company came from its network, reformers recognized that ownership of a network and participating on the network caused a conflict of interest. Instead of nationalizing these industries - as other countries did - Americans in the Progressive Era decided to ensure that these networks would not abuse their power by charging higher prices, offering worse quality, reducing innovation, and favoring some over others. We required a structural separation between the network and other businesses, and also demanded that the network offer fair and non-discriminatory service.

In this tradition, my administration would restore competition to the tech sector by taking two major steps:
First, by passing legislation that requires large tech platforms to be designated as "Platform Utilities" and broken apart from any participant on that platform.
Companies with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or more and that offer to the public an online marketplace, an exchange, or a platform for connecting third parties would be designated as "platform utilities."

These companies would be prohibited from owning both the platform utility and any participants on that platform. Platform utilities would be required to meet a standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with users. Platform utilities would not be allowed to transfer or share data with third parties.

For smaller companies (those with annual global revenue of between $90 million and $25 billion), their platform utilities would be required to meet the same standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with users, but would not be required to structurally separate from any participant on the platform.

To enforce these new requirements, federal regulators, State Attorneys General, or injured private parties would have the right to sue a platform utility to enjoin any conduct that violates these requirements, to disgorge any ill-gotten gains, and to be paid for losses and damages. A company found to violate these requirements would also have to pay a fine of 5 percent of annual revenue.

Amazon Marketplace, Google's ad exchange, and Google Search would be platform utilities under this law. Therefore, Amazon Marketplace and Basics, and Google's ad exchange and businesses on the exchange would be split apart. Google Search would have to be spun off as well.
Second, my administration would appoint regulators committed to reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers.
Current antitrust laws empower federal regulators to break up mergers that reduce competition. I will appoint regulators who are committed to using existing tools to unwind anti-competitive mergers, including:

Amazon: Whole Foods; Zappos

Facebook: WhatsApp; Instagram

Google: Waze; Nest; DoubleClick

Unwinding these mergers will promote healthy competition in the market - which will put pressure on big tech companies to be more responsive to user concerns, including about privacy.
Protecting the future of the internet
So what would the Internet look like after all these reforms?

Here's what won't change: You'll still be able to go on Google and search like you do today. You'll still be able to go on Amazon and find 30 different coffee machines that you can get delivered to your house in two days. You'll still be able to go on Facebook and see how your old friend from school is doing.

Here's what will change: Small businesses would have a fair shot to sell their products on Amazon without the fear of Amazon pushing them out of business. Google couldn't smother competitors by demoting their products on Google Search. Facebook would face real pressure from Instagram and WhatsApp to improve the user experience and protect our privacy. Tech entrepreneurs would have a fighting chance to compete against the tech giants.

Of course, my proposals today won't solve every problem we have with our big tech companies.

We must give people more control over how their personal information is collected, shared, and sold - and do it in a way that doesn't lock in massive competitive advantages for the companies that already have a ton of our data.

We must help America's content creators - from local newspapers and national magazines to comedians and musicians - keep more of the value their content generates, rather than seeing it scooped up by companies like Google and Facebook.

And we must ensure that Russia - or any other foreign power - can't use Facebook or any other form of social media to influence our elections.

Those are each tough problems, but the benefit of taking these steps to promote competition is that it allows us to make some progress on each of these important issues too. More competition means more options for consumers and content creators, and more pressure on companies like Facebook to address the glaring problems with their businesses.

Healthy competition can solve a lot of problems. The steps I'm proposing today will allow existing big tech companies to keep offering customer-friendly services, while promoting competition, stimulating innovation in the tech sector, and ensuring that America continues to lead the world in producing cutting-edge tech companies. It's how we protect the future of the Internet.
We can get this done. We can make big, structural change. But it's going to take a grassroots movement, and it starts right now. Sign our petition if you agree, and let's get ready to fight hard together.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world. It's a great story - but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While headlines often focus on what's wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Health is improving. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting. Technological progress in every field means your life should be dramatically better than ours today.

# data[].attributes.headline
Een kritische parodie op Zuckerbergs brief aan zijn dochter

# data[].attributes.subject
Een kritische parodie op Zuckerbergs brief aan zijn dochter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Lieve Jep,

Je moeder en ik kunnen geen woorden vinden om te beschrijven hoezeer je onze harten vult met hoop. Vol verwachting lacht het leven je toe. We hopen dat je gelukkig zult worden en gezond zult blijven zodat je er volop van kan genieten. Deze week vierde je je eerste verjaardag. In je eerste levensjaar heb je ons laten nadenken over de wereld waarin we je graag zouden zien opgroeien.

Zoals alle ouders willen we dat je groot wordt in een betere wereld dan die van vandaag.

In die wereld zullen sociale mediabedrijven je vriendschappen niet kapitaliseren, maar technologieën ontwikkelen die vriendschappen en sociale banden tussen mensen versterken. Zoekmachines zullen de meest objectieve en wetenswaardige zoekresultaten bovenaan plaatsen, in plaats van de resultaten waarmee ze geld verdienen. Internetbedrijven zullen jou als mens respecteren, door alleen gegevens over je te verzamelen waar je expliciet toestemming voor hebt gegeven, en die nooit door te verkopen. Daarnaast hopen we dat je nooit meer reclamevideo's, pop-ups en gesponsorde verhalen hoeft te zien op momenten dat jij wilt genieten, kijken, luisteren of jezelf wilt ontwikkelen.

Natuurlijk, we begrijpen dat de grote internetbedrijven dan minder zouden verdienen. Daar staat tegenover dat alles goedkoper zal worden voor jou en de mensen om je heen. In de wereld van nu verdienen internetbedrijven miljarden aan advertenties die worden betaald door de bedrijven waar wij onze goederen kopen en diensten afnemen. Dit kunnen die bedrijven alleen maar doen door hun advertentiekosten te verrekenen in de prijs van hun producten en diensten. De miljardenvermogens van de wizzkids van Silicon Valley worden dus volledig opgehoest door ons gewone mensen.

Wij hopen daarom dat jij er later over mee mag beslissen waar de giften uit de filantropische miljardenfondsen naartoe gaan. Immers, in de huidige wereld besluiten de dot.com-miljardairs geheel ondemocratisch welke goede doelen gesteund worden en welke niet. Daardoor worden bepaalde doelen, zoals onderwijsinnovatie, overgefinancierd, terwijl andere belangrijke issues als klimaatbeheersing en natuurbehoud er bekaaid vanaf komen, omdat deze niet in zwang zijn bij de digitale oligarchie. Ook zijn er in de afgelopen jaren vanuit de grote fondsen nauwelijks giften gedaan die ten goede kwamen aan etnische minderheden, vrouwenemancipatie, de homogemeenschap en dierenwelzijn.

Daarnaast hopen we dat ook de besturen van de filantropische fondsen de diversiteit in de samenleving zullen reflecteren. In onze wereld maken blanke mannen 92% van die besturen uit. In de wereld waarin jij groot bent, zullen vrouwen en minderheden hopelijk evenredig vertegenwoordigd zijn.

Wij hopen dat in jouw wereld filantropische fondsen niet gebruikt worden om belastingen te ontwijken. In onze huidige wereld vloeien er miljarden weg voor de gemeenschap door constructies waarin giften fiscaal aftrekbaar zijn. In de Verenigde Staten alleen al loopt de gemeenschap op die manier jaarlijks 53 miljard dollar mis.

Filantropie is nobel, lieve Jep, heel nobel. Maar de huidige Big Philantrophy is gestoeld op persoonlijke willekeur en vatbaar voor ijdelheid en narcisme. Wij hopen dat de verschillen tussen de superrijken en de gewone mensen niet nog groter zullen worden dan ze al zijn, en dat de nieuwe ' Donor Class ' de wijsheid zal krijgen om niet solistisch te besluiten hoe jouw wereld verbeterd moet worden. Wij hopen dat zij iedereen - ook jou - daarbij zullen betrekken. Zoals het hoort in een democratie.

Jep, we houden van jou en voelen ons verplicht de wereld beter aan jou en alle andere kinderen over te dragen. We wensen je een leven toe vervuld van dezelfde liefde, hoop en plezier als jij ons schenkt. We kunnen niet wachten om te zien wat jij aan deze wereld toe gaat voegen.

Liefs,

Mama en Papa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lieve Jep, Je moeder en ik kunnen geen woorden vinden om te beschrijven hoezeer je onze harten vult met hoop. Vol verwachting lacht het leven je toe. We hopen dat je gelukkig zult worden en gezond zult blijven zodat je er volop van kan genieten. Deze week vierde je je eerste verjaardag.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
First-time visitors to Silicon Valley are often struck by how underwhelming it is-a collection ofoffice parks, freeways, and suburbs that doesn't feel like the font of a revolution. But don't let theordinariness fool you: Silicon Valley is less a place than a state of mind, and the technologies and productspouring out of its sprawling campuses have dramatically changed the ways we work and live. Within the last fewyears, the region has also begun to put a big imprint on philanthropy.

In 2017, the 50 largest individual donors in the U.S. gave away $15 billion. Fully 60 percent of those bigfootgifts came from tech titans, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. As recently as 2013, only aquarter of America's top-50 gifts were from barons of the technology industry.

In addition to the surge of resources they are pouring into charitable giving, tech entrepreneurs are also bringingtheir potent optimism, and a willingness to pursue high goals. They understand that taking risks is part of allinnovative problem-solving. They tend to be methodical in researching issues, and disciplined in learning andimproving over time.

Those sorts of virtues have made Bill and Melinda Gates, for instance, some of today's most consequentialdonors. Their vaccine program alone-which is just one portion of their vast philanthropic effort-isestimated to have saved the lives of 8 million preschool children in its first two decades of operation. (Gates,though, is something of a hybrid-mixing tech-philanthropist strengths with some of the more patient andcollaborative qualities of earlier donors in the Rockefeller/Carnegie/Rosenwald mold.)

Philanthropy in Silicon Valley has existed for some time-the Hewletts and the Packards became important giversdecades ago. But the deepening of digital fortunes, and spread of tech perspectives, is now adding a distinctcoloration to American charity as a whole. If we define "Silicon Valley" as not just the SanFrancisco-San Jose corridor but also Seattle and the technology-centered pockets of Boston, New York, L.A., Austin,and other places, we can see that the philanthropy emerging from these tech hubs has some common tendencies:Data-driven decisions. Heavy donor involvement in grantmaking, program management, and evaluation. Gifts (often ofa huge size) that seek to transform whole sectors. Wariness and even scorn for traditional charitable causes andinstitutions. Strong demand for national and global effects.

The new tech moguls are determined to upend philanthropy as they have communications, publishing, entertainment,travel, news, retailing, transportation. There are lots of aspects of this to be excited about, and plenty to worryover. With the principles and perspectives of Silicon Valley increasingly suffusing the charitable world as they dothe rest of our culture, it's a good time to look closely at what this might mean for giving in America.

Surprises on generosity

The first surprise to many Americans will be that, despite the visibility of powerful givers like Gates and MarkZuckerberg, the tech class as a whole is not especially generous. The definitive "How America Gives"database maintained by the Chronicle of Philanthropy shows that tech cities like San Francisco (where 2015charitable contributions were 2.7 percent of local income), Seattle (3.0), and Austin (3.0) lag behind places likeSalt Lake City (5.5), Memphis (5.6), Atlanta (4.6), Nashville (4.0), Grand Rapids (4.6), Jacksonville (4.2), Dallas(3.8), Charlotte (3.6), and Houston (3.7) in household giving.

Giving rates in tech-dominated regions seem to be rising, but the IRS statistics collated in "How AmericaGives" show that techies earning $100,000 to $200,000 are still significantly less beneficent than manyothers with equivalent incomes. One thing keeps the overall donating pace of the computerati from being even moredisappointing: the very richest have been making some massive gifts. There are now at least 70 billionaires, andmore than 75,000 millionaires, just in the small region hugging the west and south shores of San Francisco Bay, andsome of the most wealthy have signed the Gates-Buffett "Giving Pledge" committing to give away at leasthalf of their fortune. As it is increasingly loosed into the philanthropic sector, this money will reshapeimportant parts of American charity.

Some of today's tech philanthropy is already going into very unconventional places. For instance, SiliconValley luminaries like Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and others have put up billions tofund "life-extension" research. "Death makes me very angry," Ellison has said. He openlyproclaims his hope to live forever, and has given about a half-billion dollars in pursuit of that goal.Google's investment is far bigger. Hundreds of individual techies who fear they may reach their end beforethe life-extension scientists have got their app working are making arrangements to have their bodies frozen, inthe hope they can someday be revived.

World change

A similar millenarian streak can be seen in the open planning of Jeff Bezos to seed human beings into space so thatwhen Earth wears out, vast numbers of us will be living elsewhere. "The solar system can easily support atrillion humans," he enthused in a 2018 interview in Berlin (without indicating how today's mere 8billion people will produce that many homo sapiens). "That's the world that I want mygreat-grandchildren's great-grandchildren to live in." (See our article on the investments of Bezos andElon Musk in space, starting on page 34.)

Even much shorter-range philanthropic projects backed by Silicon Valley fortunes often begin with relativelyunbounded donor demands. When Mark Zuckerberg and his wife announced they would steer nearly all of their Facebookstock into philanthropy, they said they were aiming during the lifetime of their child to "cure, prevent, ormanage all diseases"-all diseases, they repeated-on the way to an average lifespan of100 years.

"The rest of us concern ourselves with individuals, neighborhoods, communities, all of which can beimproved," writes Felix Salmon in Wired. Tech billionaires, though, focus on "the whole world,and even hypothetical future worlds." There is more than a whiff of the superman in such enterprises. Theintense abstraction at the core of this type of philanthropy causes Silicon Valley donors to jump completely overand around messy human variables like psychology, history, emotion.

In A Truck Full of Money, his book about Internet pioneers, Tracy Kidder collects examples of theirlanguage and logic. Aspirations are always "universal," "futuristic in vision,""disruptive at their core," "fundamentally game-changing," able to "revolutionizeevery aspect of everybody's life," and aimed at "tens of millions" of people-inshort, a "smorgasbord of awesome." In the tech world, notes software pioneer Donald Knuth,"nothing over 30 months old is trustworthy or interesting."

George Gilder, author of the new book Life After Google, recently had an exchange with Forbes editor Rich Karlgaard on the high mix of sci-fi fixation, militant materialism, and cognitive elitism thatdominates Silicon Valley. Karlgaard describes the philosophy that reigns in the Valley as "a throwback to theProgressive Era of the early twentieth century. The idea that...the smartest people should run society alongscientific management principles. Life organized as a Frederick Taylor factory."

Gilder: I think you're right. A lot of people have an incredible longing to reduce humanintelligence to some measurable crystallization that can be grasped, calculated, projected, and mechanized....

Forbes: Having lived my adult life in Silicon Valley, I think today's dirty secret is a kindof nerd fascism, wherein it's thought that only the highest IQs have legitimacy.... The highest IQ peoplehave a tendency to want to reduce everything to algorithms and predictability, but in doing so, they cut out thesurprise. Yet all great discovery and innovation, by definition, comes as a surprise.

Gilder: Yes, they're destroying information rather than expanding it. If something'sdeterminist, it can't generate information. As Claude Shannon showed, information is the unexpected bits.

As examples of places where technical intelligence has become disconnected from true wisdom, Gilder citestoday's mania among tech elites that artificial intelligence will soon make computers so smart they'llwrench control of the future from human beings. He describes this as "provincialism and myopia, exaggeratingthe significance of the attainments of their own era, of their own companies, of their own special philosophies andchimeras-of themselves, really.

Of course, during their business activities, the cold disciplines of economics and practical realities of humannature act as moderating forces against speculative fantasies. But when tech moguls turn to philanthropicaspirations, there are fewer checks on their utopian demands and push toward quantification, abstraction, andsystemizing. The money gushing out of Silicon Valley today is thus importing into our charitable activities somepronounced new values and practices. There is the obsession with data. A preference for the impersonal anduniversal over the personal and particular. Demand for approaches that aggregate and simplify humans and theirneeds, in order to push large "scale." Huge assumptions are often made that cultural problems can besolved with technical fixes. There is a focus on the national and global over the local. And-always-theassumption that people, cultures, and societies need "transformation."

Spreadsheet philanthropy

Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, daughter of a Silicon Valley real-estate baron and wife of a software mogul, is anenthusiastic advocate of this approach. She directs the Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen Foundation, a kind of missionarygroup for other givers. In her own words, her foundation is a "philanthropic innovation lab" that usestechnology to "globally scale open-source education innovations to help individuals elevate theirgiving."

Arrillaga-Andreessen is an energetic advocate for "disrupting" traditional philanthropy, which shedepicts as hidebound, inefficient, and driven by emotion, and replacing it with "proactive, strategic"donors who network with similar peers online, share tips in web forums on successes and failures, and receiveinstant feedback from grantees through text messages and smart-phone updates. "It is hard to underestimatethe extent to which technology could improve philanthropy," she enthuses in the Stanford SocialInnovation Review. She hungers for a future where, for instance, "data of billions of people"are collected through things like blood tests and "mined and utilized for good in an instantaneousmanner...shattering...the system as we know it."

Arrillaga-Andreessen teaches all of this from a high pulpit at the Stanford Business School, and she has distilledthe message into an online course available at her foundation's website. Her videos walk would-be donorsthough a multi-step method for giving. First, identify a social issue and develop your own "theory ofchange" on how to solve it. Then, using online sources and personal contacts, create "landscapemaps" that "roughly illustrate the complex environment or ecosystem surrounding any socialproblem" and "lay out key stakeholders and both supporting and opposing forces." Next, use thosemaps and quantitative charity evaluators such as GuideStar to determine which nonprofits are pursuing"intervention strategies" that reflect your theory of change. Finally, contact potential grantees toconfirm the fit between that group's intervention strategy and your personal theory of change. After a grantis made, ensure that the nonprofit vigorously implements the intervention strategy by requiring metrics, reports,evaluations, real-time site visits, and "end-of-grant life cycle reports."

If this sounds like a lot of work, it is-and can be a particular burden for charities working in the messyworld of helping hurting people, rather than promoting large-scale systems change. Arrillaga-Andreessen offerscautionaries about not hijacking a nonprofit's programs, or making so many data requests as to overwhelmgroups. But to charity workers up against hard human ills, this business-school approach will inevitably involve a lot of time jaw-boning, making spreadsheets, and writing reports. Some would-be beneficiaries have updatedthe ancient cautionary: Beware geeks bearing gifts.

Missing community

One doesn't really need a theory of change or a complex landscape map to, say, mentor fatherless children. So,not surprisingly, very little tech philanthropy today goes to that kind of grassroots charitable assistance.Pressing human problems like addiction, domestic abuse, persistent poverty, mental illness, foster care, lonelyelders, declining personal responsibility, and others that are not amenable to brisk quantification, that requirehands-on human intervention, that involve moral judgment, are issues that Silicon Valley donors generally avoid.

Technical fixes always trump human-to-human suasions (one nonprofit leader recently shared with Philanthropy the detailed pitch he got from a tech enthusiast for a phone app he believed would solve homelessness). Instead ofintimate, individual human service, tech donors put a strong emphasis on policy change. And rather than givinglocally where they can accurately identify need, observe results, and interact personally with participants (asmost American philanthropists prefer), tech givers have a decided penchant for global or nationwide causes. Theportion of Silicon Valley's giving that goes to charities in Silicon Valley is vanishingly small.

A 2016 report titled The Giving Code (funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation) found that just7 percent of all donations by Silicon Valley private foundations was directed to nonprofits in the Valley. And lessthan half of that went to truly local organizations, as opposed to large institutions like universities orhospitals.

Everywhere else in America, the local community foundation has a special focus on the immediate needs of the hostarea. Thanks to tech donors, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation is by far the largest in the country, with $13billion in net assets, making it richer than the Ford Foundation. Yet most of its grants are shipped off far fromhome. SVCF "should take the 'community' out of its name," says Bill Somerville, who ran oneof the two community foundations that merged in 2007 to become SVCF, before it mushroomed with tech wealth."They don't really focus on this community at all." The organization had thoroughly internalizedthe local culture's mania for growth, "scale," "disruption," and nationaleffects-even opening East Coast offices to raise (and spend) money thousands of miles from its hometurf.

Meanwhile there is plenty of charitable need in Silicon Valley. The income gap between high earners and low earnersis wider here than in any other place in America-and worsening. On the one hand, workers at Facebook got amedian pay package of $240,000 in 2017. At Google's umbrella company (Alphabet), median pay was $197,000. InSilicon Valley as a whole, the average annual wage ($112,060) was about twice the national average.

That average, though, hides the strain on non-tech workers in the region, who are in trouble. According to TheGiving Code, many formerly middle-class families in the area now regularly call upon food banks, clothingclosets, and even homeless shelters. Nearly 30 percent of all local residents depend on some form of public orprivate assistance.

The biggest problem is that all those high-paid tech employees have bid housing prices up to stratosphericlevels. The median home price in the Valley is well over a million dollars. The mortgage and taxes on such aproperty can beggar even a middle-class earner, much less a low-skill worker. And rents have skyrocketed intow.

The distorted housing costs of the Silicon Valley region are a big reason more than a fifth of all Californiansare now considered poor after adjusting for housing. That's a much higher percentage than in any otherstate-including Appalachia or the deep South. Other residents are just keeping their heads above water. Astudy by the United Way found that one out of every three California families is barely able to pay its bills.

And it isn't just a financial gap. There are also deep social needs in Silicon Valley. In a place with thehighest concentration of STEM degrees in the country, a shocking 45 percent of local eighth graders score belowproficient on state algebra tests. Area charities are strained to keep up with these needs-more than 30percent run operating deficits that exceed the national average, and half have less than three months ofoperating cash on hand.

Making space for altruism

With all this need, why the paltry rates of local giving? Rick Williams, a 20-year veteran in philanthropy andsocial services, is CEO of the Sobrato Family Foundation, a rare Silicon Valley funder that is almost completelyfocused on giving locally. (See our interview with founder John Sobrato on page 14.) To Williams, the lack of localgiving begins with the simple reality that the new tech philanthropists, by and large, aren't from theValley. "People tend to give where they're from, and this is not a place where many people haveroots." He says he often meets tech workers in the Valley who have never visited the city of SanJose-the tenth-largest in the country, only 20 miles from the Stanford campus, but a locale outside much ofthe tech industry's consciousness.

The continental and global orientation of tech philanthropy is also a reflection of the Silicon Valley ethos,Williams emphasizes. "For a lot of these donors, the work they do is changing the world. They thinkit's natural that their giving should have the same kind of effect." So they look over the horizon forsplashy national or international projects to support.

In hope of convincing some area donors that they don't have to airmail their money to change people'slives, the Packard and Heising-Simons foundations (the latter founded by a computer-chip engineer) have teamed upto arrange short-term pairings of tech donors with leaders of local charities that meet urgent human needs."We've really got two Valleys that co-exist," says Jill Mitsch from Sacred Heart CommunityService, a San Jose immigrant-aid organization that has been one beneficiary. "Hopefully we can break thatdown."

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook would open facilities in 2019, called Community Hub, for use bycertain local nonprofits. And Google is already connecting some employees to Bay-area charities. In 2017 thecompany turned space on the first floor of its downtown San Francisco office into a place for "experientialevents" like the one that recently brought Googlers together with students and teachers from an East Oaklandcharter school. Justin Steele, who helps run the company's corporate-giving program, recognizes that theaverage tech professional today has a strong bias toward big, quantitative, systemic efforts that upend traditionalpatterns-"similar to the values that guide many of the companies in Silicon Valley." But hebelieves "there is true power in proximity," and hopes that putting a face and personal story in frontof a software coder can spark interest. "A person needs to be close to an issue to have empathy," saysSteele.

One group that has been feeding empathy and fueling generosity by wealthy Silicon Valley residents for two decadesnow is Legacy Venture. The group was founded by a couple of venture capitalists inspired by Bob Buford's callfor busy professionals to make room in their lives for spiritual practice and assistance to others. A nonprofitventure-capital firm, Legacy accepts investments with the stipulation that the principal plus all gains earned overthe life of the investment must eventually go to charities selected by the investor.

The operation has been able to dramatically multiply initial gifts by 1) forgoing earnings of its own and chargingmanagement fees that are only a fraction of what other venture-capital funds collect, 2) using their deepconnections within Silicon Valley to put their money behind the most promising young firms (they have been earlybackers of companies like Skype, Fitbit, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and others), and 3) managing all investmentsfor maximum returns, knowing that every penny will go to philanthropy once cashed out. Wealthy executives from topSilicon Valley businesses have put up most of the $1.5 billion that Legacy is currently overseeing.

Some of the top private venture-capital firms in the Valley "like the idea that our returns go tocharity," according to co-founder Russ Hall, so they often reserve portions of their deals for Legacyinvestors. For all of these reasons, Legacy's gains outstrip most V.C. peers. And in the end it all goes tobeneficiaries like the American India Foundation, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health,College Track, the African Wildlife Foundation, Malaria No More, Human Rights Watch, the Eastside CollegePreparatory School in East Palo Alto, and other domestic and foreign nonprofits.

Clients who are attracted to Legacy Venture by its efficiency at turning gift-money into even larger gifts oftenfind that the seminars and networking offered by the group are an unexpected bonus. Legacy tries to help donorsimprove the quality of their giving. It connects them with others who share common interests. And it feeds andreinforces habits of benevolence.

Praxis Labs is another interesting group that is taking many of the insights and strengths of the high-tech andstart-up cultures and applying them to cultural improvement from a Christian perspective. It operates a businessaccelerator in the mold of Silicon Valley's Y Combinator, but including both for-profit and nonprofitentities. In addition to helping entrepreneurs find economic success, Praxis encourages them to create humane andbeautiful products, pursue moral accomplishment, and be generous to those in need of assistance and uplift.

Operating as a 501c3 charity, the Praxis business accelerator has supported more than 125 new ventures, with a 92percent survival rate, creating several thousand full-time jobs in the process. Its community includes more than500 investors and philanthropists, 250 mentors, and several hundred alumni. Its programs include labs wherestart-up ideas get fleshed out, academies for business founders and students who are interested in business,intensive mentoring opportunities, and gatherings where like-minded individuals can share ideas.

Co-founders Josh Kwan and Dave Blanchard, who live in Silicon Valley and New York City respectively, love and admirethe worlds of technology and entrepreneurship but hope to bring some "alternative imagination" intothose fields. Specifically, they try to make a place for religious wisdom. The HBO show "SiliconValley" once joked that you can be anything you want in Silicon Valley-except a Christian. Kwan andBlanchard tell young entrepreneurs that doesn't need to be true, and their program encourages participants tobring faith into their business ventures, their investments, and their giving. "How can we be sure that whatwe're designing is good for people, and not just good for us?" is an example of the kind of questionPraxis puts before the entrepreneurs and technology creators that it guides.

The herd of free minds

The favorite story line in Silicon Valley is man-against-the-world. The preferred self-image is the braveoutside-the-box thinker who flips conventional ideas upside down. But in politics, Silicon Valley is more like aherd of independent minds. It has become one of the most homogeneous and internally conforming parts of ourcountry.

That can be seen in voting. San Mateo County, which covers much of Silicon Valley plus some rural areas, producedone of the most lopsided county votes in the entire United States in 2016: 76 percent for Hillary Clinton, 6percent for third-party candidates, 18 percent for Donald Trump. In the primary, Bernie Sanders got 41 percent ofthe vote. As Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged in his April 2018 testimony before the U.S. Congress, Silicon Valley is"an extremely left-leaning place."

That was also the conclusion of a major 2017 study by researchers from Stanford. They surveyed more than 600"elite technology company leaders and founders," almost all of them millionaires who are also active inphilanthropy. The findings document the strikingly uniform political orthodoxy of Silicon Valley. Just 8 percent ofthese tech barons voted for Donald Trump. Fully 96 percent favor same-sex marriage, 82 percent want universalhealth care even if it causes tax leaps, 79 percent support abortion, 82 percent want strong gun control. They aretwice as likely as the average Democrat to rank combatting climate change as "extremelyimportant."

The researchers found that these Silicon Valley paragons have little interest in tradition, and little attachmentto any particular culture. They prize foreign travel. They place a high value on personal autonomy. Maximizingsatisfaction and personal development is their top priority. Or as Greg Ferenstein, another student of Valleyculture, put it, "The ultimate goal is to make life as close to the college experience as possible: a timededicated to exploration, while technology ensures that everyone has enough food and leisure to find their uniqueselves."

A glimpse of this ethos as applied to philanthropy can be seen in a blog post written by Holden Larnofsky,co-founder of GiveWell, the charity evaluator favored by many prominent tech philanthropists. He describes on theGiveWell website "some of the deep value judgments and worldviews that underlie our analysis andrecommendations" as to which charities are most worthy of philanthropic support. GiveWell staff, he explains,are "global humanitarians.... We do not agree with the principle that 'giving begins athome': we do not assign more moral importance to people in our communities and in our country than toothers." And GiveWell is "seeking to 'accomplish as much good as possible'...not to'ensure that we do no harm.' " The top goal is "improving humans' control over theirlives and self-actualization."

The Stanford study showed that there are just a few issues where wealthy techies differ from other down-the-lineprogressives: They don't mind income inequality. They prefer increasing economic growth over closing incomegaps. They dislike unions. And they oppose government regulation of their economic markets.

Globalist in outlook, disconnected from local and national culture, resistant to personal restraints, opposed tolimiting by government or labor, supportive of an economic system that lavishly rewards winners while thegovernment redistributes wealth to the losers: this is Silicon Valley's guiding spirit. That leaves littleoverlap with traditional American approaches to civil society, which emphasize local communities,neighbor-to-neighbor care, tightly knit families, religious support, and self-help.

The new tech elite want to liberate people from the traditional boundaries, guard rails, and constraints ofhuman history. They favor big, elite-driven, technocratic solutions to human problems: a caste of brilliantengineers at large companies wielding reams of intimate data on human actions to create new technologiescapable of altering society. The tech class aspires to bring mankind bounty extending far beyond old limits,and then distribute it using more data and dispassionate algorithms (in the process generating fantastic wealthand global power for the technocracy).

Politics and intellectual diversity

Back in the early days of the computer era, the common speculation on the psychology of our tech mandarins wasthat they would be libertarians-devoted to freedom both in economics and social life. That has not proventrue. Journalist Greg Ferenstein has undertaken detailed studies over many years of the political mindset inSilicon Valley. He and others have found that "Silicon Valley's ideology is pro-market. But it isnot pro-liberty. Liberty is not a value. They are highly, highly collectivist."

The fact that political and cultural views in Silicon Valley tend to be so monolithic has deep implications forsome of today's most consequential debates on free speech, civility, and the role of technology. There isfast-growing concern today over the rise of numerous tech monopolies. Facebook has become the de factonewspaper of hundreds of millions of people. Google now picks the answers to two thirds of all the informationqueries made by Americans. Amazon sells half of all printed books and 80 percent of all ebooks, and collectshalf of all U.S. online retail spending. Apple recently became the first company to ever reach avaluation of $1 trillion. Amazon reached the $1 trillion value one month later. Five tech firms-Google,Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon-now wield as much capital value as the GDP of any entire countryexcept the U.S., China, and Japan.

These companies constitute a dominating, near-universal presence in both the personal and professional lives ofAmericans. They set the rules. We follow them.

In the crucial public forums operated by technology companies, extremely opaque and seemingly arbitraryprocesses now regulate posting of videos, purchase of advertisements, inclusion in search results, and otheractions that have become central to participation in public life. Within the last year, authors andorganizations ranging from the Wall Street Journal to ProPublica have complained about having theircontent banned, deleted, warning-labeled, or "de-monetized" (stripped of ads or other moneymakingcapacity) by tech hubs.

Tech professionals often insist they are value-free and objective in their judgments. They are simply rationalscientists following the crumb-trails of facts to undeniable truths. The idea that the tech world could haveits own blind spots, selection biases, intrinsic desires to believe or disbelieve, its own parochial interests,is fiercely resisted. (The television show "South Park" created "Smug Alerts!" as theSan Francisco counterpart of L.A.'s smog warnings.)

The classical American tradition is that truth is best found through the vigorous competition of ideas. Let manyvoices and factions contend-fools and knaves included. Never anoint any in advance with the oil ofundeniability, or let certain participants harrumph that all experts agree, that an issue is"settled," that citizens have a right not to be "offended," that only certain points ofview may be aired.

American freedoms "rest on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information fromdiverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public," ruled the U.S. Supreme Courtin the landmark Associated Press v. United States case that blocked commercial crimping of FirstAmendment free-speech rights. Yet many important issues that are vigorously contested across the U.S. are nowviewed as non-debatable within the narrow ideological confines of Silicon Valley. And many public-spiritedcitizens and philanthropic backers of wide participation in national affairs worry that this ideologicalnarrowness is increasingly being enforced in our new town halls-the online networks operated bytoday's tech class.

Red lights flashing

It isn't just people outside of the tech bubble who are concerned about this. At Facebook, a softwareengineer named Brian Amerige recently posted a statement on an internal message board under the title "WeHave a Problem With Political Diversity." It explained, "We are a political monoculturethat's intolerant of different views. We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick toattack-often in mobs-anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaningideology.... We do this so consistently that employees are afraid to say anything when they disagree withwhat's around them politically."

This is bad for society, the message asserted, because "we are entrusted by a great part of the world to beimpartial and transparent carriers of people's stories, ideas, and commentary." The problem ofpolitical and cultural intolerance "has gotten exponentially worse" in the last two years, according toAmerige. He proposed that concerned workers form a group called "FBers for Political Diversity" toencourage broader thinking within the company. More than 100 Facebook staff quickly signed up.

Of course, there are 30,000 employees at the firm. And some of them immediately attacked Amerige and his newsupport group, then lodged complaints with managers asking that it be blocked as offensive. Given recentexamples where Silicon Valley dissidents have found that contradicting conventional wisdom can cost you yourseat at the table, this mini rebellion must be counted as brave.

In just the last few months, though, several more senior and secure insiders have presented their own warningsthat the tech industry is now bedeviled by resistance to ideas and evidence that don't fit the prevailinggroupthink. Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and nurtured many other star companies, recently excoriatedSilicon Valley as a blinkered "one-party state," then announced he was moving his operations out ofthe region to get away from its intellectual narrowness.

Sam Altman, who runs the Y Combinator tech incubator (and is a political liberal), warned that Silicon Valleyculture is now too closed to unapproved points of view, and that "restricting speech leads to restrictingideas." He complained that "it seems easier to accidentally speak heresies in San Francisco every year.Debating a controversial idea, even if you 95 percent agree with the consensus side," is dangerous intoday's Silicon Valley.

Michael Moritz, who helped launch Apple, Google, and many other tech firms, described the self-righteousbehavior he was seeing across Silicon Valley. "Complaints about the political sensibilities of speakersinvited to address a corporate audience, debates over the appropriate length of paternityleave...grumbling about the need for a space for musical jam sessions. These seem like the concerns of asociety that is becoming unhinged." He warned that if censorious and entitled U.S. tech professionalsdon't put an end to the distractions of today's politically correct pampering and skirmishing,Chinese competitors may overwhelm them.

In a March 2018 New York Times story headlined "Silicon Valley Is Over, Says SiliconValley," tech leaders working at a more middle level of the industry voiced similar concerns. Severalsaid they were considering leaving Silicon Valley to get away from its "left-wing echo chamber thatstifles opposing views." A May 2018 Wall Street Journal article titled "Google vs. Google:How Nonstop Political Arguments Rule Its Workplace" describes endless politicization within the walls ofthe Internet's leading search and advertising firm, and indicates that this is as bad for companyproductivity as it is for national intellectual balance.

Lincoln aims to emancipate

The overweening dominance of progressive views in Silicon Valley is the inspiration for one of the area'snew nonprofits. With the help of donors like the Searle Freedom Trust and the Bradley Foundation, a little bandof Silicon Valley insiders has created a philanthropy of ideas that is working against ideological distortionand unfairness in America's technology heartland. Aaron Ginn left Texas with a degree in behavioraleconomics and Chinese and became a Silicon Valley specialist in using data science to market products and growcompanies. He is also an active Christian-in a place where religious observance has essentially had to"go underground," as he puts it, to survive.

Ginn observes that tech workers who dissent from the Valley's reigning pieties can face harsh personal andprofessional consequences. "A lot of people who work in the Valley were telling me, 'I have to keepquiet about certain things I believe, or it's going to be a problem at work.' " That cultureof self-censorship isn't just bad for the individuals involved, and for America's politicaltradition, Ginn believes. It is also bad for productivity and entrepreneurship. "A culture where peopleare afraid to speak up is not going to produce innovative thinking for too long," he notes.

So Ginn and his friend and fellow tech worker Garrett Johnson-who has a master's from Oxford, timeat a venture-backed tech startup, and some experience in politics-decided to do something about theproblem. They founded the Lincoln Network. It's a nonprofit that provides ideas, research, contacts, andnetworking events for tech workers in Silicon Valley who are open to conservative, libertarian, religious, andother perspectives that are now frowned upon at many area companies and social organizations. Ginn and Johnson(who are both members of racial minority groups) would like to expand Silicon Valley's appreciation ofdiversity to include the most fundamental variations among people-alternative ideals and worldviews.

One of their first projects was to find out how widespread the problem of self-censorship is in Silicon Valley.Like good software engineers, they collected data. The Lincoln Network commissioned a 2017-2018 survey ofnearly 400 tech professionals in Silicon Valley from across the political spectrum. Participants were askedabout their political and cultural beliefs and workplace norms.

The results were striking. Respondents overwhelmingly described their workplaces as liberal. And even amongworkers who are liberals themselves, there was strong worry and hesitation about expressing viewpoints thatdeviated from liberal orthodoxies. One tech worker reported he was gay and a lifelong Democrat, but alsoChristian, and that he thus felt he had to avoid sharing his views on some topics. "The idea of 'Iagree with you 90 percent' is not enough," he wrote. Other survey participants said they carefullycensor their views on social media in order to avoid scrutiny at work or in job searches. Some recountedinstances of outright harassment at work based on political and religious views. A significant plurality ofright-leaning respondents said that the inability to be open about their political, religious, or culturalbeliefs prevented them from doing their "best work." The report is available on Lincoln'swebsite at JoinLincoln.org/viewpoint-diversity.

In addition to documenting the challenges facing dissenters in the Valley, the Lincoln Network is looking to dosomething to increase intellectual tolerance and true inclusion in tech. The group sponsors events at whichparticipants can learn and discuss ideas, and connect with others willing to do likewise. It distributesresearch on public-policy issues with special relevance to the tech industry. It consults with nonprofits andadvocacy groups and donors who are focused on economic, religious, and personal liberty and helps themunderstand how they can use new technology to further their missions.

For Montgomery Brown of the Scaife Family Foundation-which has provided support for the Lincoln Networksince 2016-this aspect of Lincoln's work has high potential. Lincoln's consultancy services"allow a lot of other groups to do their work better." He notes that Lincoln's assistance isavailable to an "ecumenical" range of like-minded organizations, and goes beyond just technicalhelp into providing strategic thinking about where they can best direct their limited tech resources to get themost bang for their buck.

For instance, the group is currently building an easy-to-use online platform that public-sector workers liketeachers can use to request release from compulsory participation in union activities, now that the SupremeCourt's Janus decision has given employees the right to opt out. Bringing the power of newtechnologies into advocacy is an area where the left has leapt far ahead, due to heavy pro bono and otherassistance from Silicon Valley workers. "There is a lot of work to be done" in helpingcentrist and conservative groups catch up in this area, according to Ginn. Lincoln has also partnered with anumber of state-based public-policy organizations, such as the Mackinac Center in Michigan and the EmpireCenter in New York, to assist them in getting wired for the future.

Perhaps most importantly, the Lincoln Network wants to lower barriers that keep economic libertarians, thereligiously observant, political conservatives, and others who don't run with the prevailing grain of theBay area from getting jobs in the tech industry. "The Valley is where the work is being done that ismaking the future," says Ginn. "People from all stripes of thinking need to be here."

Justin Torres was a contributing editor to Philanthropy. Karl Zinsmeister oversees publications at The Philanthropy Roundtable.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Calculating Philanthropy of Silicon Valley

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
First-time visitors to Silicon Valley are often struck by how underwhelming it is-a collection ofoffice parks, freeways, and suburbs that doesn't feel like the font of a revolution. But don't let theordinariness fool you: Silicon Valley is less a place than a state of mind, and the technologies and productspouring out of its sprawling campuses have dramatically changed the ways we work and live.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How the Tech Giants Make Their Billions

At a glance, it may seem like the world's biggest technology companies have a lot in common.

For starters, all five of the Big Tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet) have emerged as some of the most valuable publicly-traded companies in the world, with founders such as Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates sitting atop the global billionaire list.

These tech giants also have a consumer-facing aspect to their business that is front and center. With billions of people using their platforms globally, these companies leverage user data to tighten their grip even more on market share. At the same time, this data is a double-edged sword, as these same companies often find themselves in the crosshairs for mishandling personal information.

Finally, all of these companies have a similar origin story: they were founded or incubated on the fertile digital grounds of the West Coast. The company that has the weakest claim to such origins would be Facebook, but even it has been based in Silicon Valley since June 2004.

Sizing Up the Tech Giants

For all of their commonalities, it seems that there is less of a mold for how these tech giants end up generating cashflow.

But before we get to how Big Tech makes its money, let's start by looking at the financials at a higher level. The following data comes from the 2018 10-K reports filed last year.

Together, the Big Five tech giants combined for just over $800 billion of revenue in 2018, which would be among the world's 20 largest countries in terms of GDP. More precisely, they would just edge out Saudi Arabia ($684 billion GDP) in terms of size.

Meanwhile, they generated a total of $139 billion of net income for their shareholders, good for a 17.3% profit margin.

How Big Tech Makes Money

Let's dig deeper, and see the differences in how these companies generate their revenue.

You are the Customer

In the broadest sense, three of the tech giants make money in the same way: you pay them money, and they give you a product or service.

Apple (Revenue in 2018: $265.6 billion)

Apple generates a staggering 62.8% of its revenue from the iPhone

The iPad and Mac are good for 7.1% and 9.6% of revenues, respectively

All other products and services - including Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, Apple Pay, AppleCare, etc. - combine to just 20.6% of revenues

Amazon (Revenue in 2018: $232.9 billion)

Amazon gets the most from its online stores (52.8%) as well as third-party seller services (18.4%)

Amazon's fastest-growing segment is offline sales in physical stores

Offline sales generate $17.2 billion in current revenue, growing 197% year-over-year

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is well-known for being Amazon's most profitable segment, and it counts for 11.0% of revenue

Amazon's "Other" segment is also rising fast - it mainly includes ad sales

Microsoft (Revenue in 2018: $110.4 billion)

Microsoft has the most diversified revenue of any of the tech giants

This is part of the reason it currently has the largest market capitalization ($901 billion) of the Big Five

Microsoft has eight different segments that generate ~5% or more of revenue

The biggest three are "Office products and cloud services" (25.7%), "Server products and cloud services" (23.7%), and Windows (17.7%)

The remaining tech giants charge you nothing as a consumer, so how are they worth so much?

You are the Product

Both Alphabet and Facebook also generate billions of dollars of revenue, but they make this money from advertising. Their platforms allow advertisers to target you at scale with incredible precision, which is why they dominate the online ad industry.

Here's how their revenues break down:

Alphabet (Revenue in 2018: $136.8 billion)

Despite having a wider umbrella name, ad revenue (via Google, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Ads, etc.) still drives 85% of revenue for the company

Other Google products and services, like Google Play or the Google Pixel phone, help to generate 14.5% of total revenue

Other Bets count to 0.4% of revenue - these are Alphabet's moonshot attempts to find the "next Google" for its shareholders

Facebook (Revenue in 2018: $55.8 billion)

Facebook generates almost all revenue (98.5%) from ads

Meanwhile, 1.5% comes from payments and other fees

Despite Facebook being a free service for users, the company generated more revenue per user than Netflix, which charges for its service

In 2018 Q4, for example, Facebook made $35 per user. Netflix made $30.

So while the tech giants may have many similarities, how they generate their billions can vary considerably.

Some are marketing products to you, while others are marketing you as the product.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Infographic: How the Tech Giants Make Their Billions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At a glance, it may seem like the world's biggest technology companies have a lot in common. For starters, all five of the Big Tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet) have emerged as some of the most valuable publicly-traded companies in the world, with founders such as Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates sitting atop the global billionaire list.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The rise of global technology superstars like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google created new challenges for the competition watchdogs who enforce antitrust laws around the world. The companies dominate markets in e-books and smartphones, search advertising and social-media traffic. The European Union had been the most aggressive jurisdiction so far in trying to regulate Big Tech. Now the U.S. has jumped in with a major splash.

1. Are the tech giants monopolies?

They're powerful, for sure. Google and Facebook Inc. together controlled 60 percent of mobile ad revenue and 51 percent of digital ad revenue globally in 2018, according to eMarketer. In the U.S., Apple Inc. has about 45 percent of the smartphone market; about 47 percent of all U.S. e-commerce sales go through Amazon.com Inc. But under modern antitrust enforcement, those percentages alone aren't enough to alarm regulators in the U.S., which long ago stopped equating big with bad. (Standard Oil's market share got as high as 88 percent late in the 19th century.) What's illegal is for a monopoly to abuse its market power to prevent rivals from threatening its position. U.S. courts ruled Microsoft Corp. did so in the 1990s.

2. Why did Europe get so involved?

EU law sets a lower bar for finding abuse of dominance by a company, so it's easier to run afoul of antitrust restrictions, as evidenced by three antitrust actions against Google in as many years carrying penalties that total $9.3 billion. The U.S. chose not to bring charges against Google for the same conduct the EU found illegal. EU enforcers also have been more wary of big companies collecting consumers' personal data. Strict new privacy rules that took effect in the EU last May under the General Data Protection Regulation gave regulators unprecedented powers to protect people from having their data misused by companies doing business there. Already, Google has been fined 50 million euros ($56.8 million) for privacy violations -- the highest such penalty ever in the EU. Google has appealed.

3. What is the U.S. doing?

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, which both have a mandate to enforce antitrust laws, have carved up oversight of technology giants, with the DOJ preparing to look at Google and Apple and the FTC talking the lead on Facebook and Amazon. That sets the stage for formal inquiries that could last for years, increasing pressure on the companies amid rising criticism that their practices are harming competition in digital markets.

4. How rarely does the U.S. go after monopolies?

The Microsoft lawsuit was the last major monopolization case brought by the U.S. The ensuing 20-year dry spell is often cited by those who argue enforcement has been too timid. President Barack Obama's administration vowed to get tough on dominant companies in 2009 but didn't follow through. The number of monopoly cases brought by the U.S. dropped sharply from an average of 15.7 cases per year from 1970 to 1999 to less than three between 2000 and 2014.

5. What about Asia?

Japan's Fair Trade Commission says Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon need to be examined for possible abuse of their market dominance. South Korea's commission was reported last year to be looking into whether Google Korea was abusing its market position to pressure local game companies to upload their products only onto the Google Play platform. In China, censorship and government control over internet access have made it difficult for U.S. tech companies to compete with the likes of Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent.

6. Is antitrust thinking outdated?

Some lawyers and economists think it's time to move past conventional antitrust enforcement to consider harmful effects from increased concentration such as lower private investment, weak productivity growth, rising inequality and declining business dynamism, or the rate at which firms enter and exit markets. They've gained a high-profile backer in U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who is seeking her party's 2020 presidential nomination and who has proposed dismantling tech giants like Facebook and Google.

7. Have the tech giants abused their power?

As the middlemen for today's essential products and services, platforms like Amazon and Facebook have leverage over both producers and consumers. Amazon used its power over the book market in 2014 to block pre-orders for some Hachette Book titles during a dispute with the publisher over pricing. The tech giants are also growing by snapping up potential rivals that might threaten market share. Data compiled by Bloomberg show the big five -- Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft -- have made 431 acquisitions worth $155.7 billion over the last decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The companies also have control over vast amounts of data about their customers, raising concerns about threats to privacy.

8. What do the companies say?

They argue that their dominance is hardly durable because barriers to entry are low for new competitors. As Google is fond of saying, competition is just "one click away." Due to the nature of competition in the digital marketplace, tech platforms benefit from network effects: As more people use them, the more useful -- and dominant -- the platforms become. Network effects can give a company scale quickly and create what investor Warren Buffett calls competitive moats.

--With assistance from Aoife White and Robert Fenner.

To contact the reporter on this story: David McLaughlin in Washington at dmclaughlin9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Laurence Arnold

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Analysis | Did Big Tech Get Too Big? More of the World Is Asking

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The rise of global technology superstars like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google created new challenges for the competition watchdogs who enforce antitrust laws around the world. The companies dominate markets in e-books and smartphones, search advertising and social-media traffic. The European Union had been the most aggressive jurisdiction so far in trying to regulate Big Tech.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Whο Are the Big Five Tech Companies?

The big five tech companies are:

The total value of the tech giants is over $5 trillion.

Like with "Big Oil"," "Big Tobacco", and "Big Pharma", "Big Tech" is here to stay and shape today's society in more areas than just technology.

What is GAFAM?

Why is it GAFAM (or FAAMG), and not MAGA (Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon) or FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google)?

The acronym, coined by Goldman Sachs, includes these companies for two reasons. First of all, the big five tech companies make up as much as 13% of the value of the whole S&P500 by market capitalization. Second, those are the leading companies that bring sociocultural evolution at a big scale and drive social change at full speed.

As it usually goes with all businesses around the free-market world, big corps have two options: grow or perish. And the way to growth is a one-way street. The name of the game: Merges and acquisitions. Since the day they were founded, the big five tech companies have acquired numerous companies and made them subsidiaries. For example, Hotmail being part of Microsoft is pretty much a given. But did you know that Minecraft, the gaming phenomenon, is also under a Microsoft division? What about IMDb or Twitch being part of Amazon?

In a way, the multinationals are their subsidiaries. And that is why they are so important.

The story of every corporation is that of its acquisitions.
So this is the story of the big five tech companies and their big five acquisitions, as in cost of purchase, fame, or historical significance.
And it goes like this.

Google had a motto for its corporate code of conduct: "Don't be evil". If it had to go for another one, it would most likely be "If you can't create it, buy it". Google's list of acquisitions is a long list indeed, counting more than 240 purchases since 1998 when it was founded. Google may have started as a search engine, but today it is a giant in the technology industry and one of the big five tech companies. In 2015, Google itself was re-organized into a subsidiary of a larger holding company known as Alphabet Inc.

Purchased on: August 15, 2011
Cost of purchase: $12.5 billion

The biggest acquisition from our first GAFAM wouldn't be possible without some behind-the-scenes action and a little corporate drama. At the time, Motorola was the market leader in the home devices and video solutions business. It was a market leader that was bleeding money, however, as it had a fifth straight quarter of losses.

At the point where Motorola needed some help the most, Google showed up a white knight, grabbed Motorola, and put it on its shiny horse. But Knighthood alone doesn't justify a $13.7 billion dollar acquisition, does it? So what could justify such a purchase?

Largely, there were two main reasons that lead to this purchase, namely patents and Samsung.

Regarding patents, Motorola had 17,000 patents, with 7,500 patents more pending - worth a few billion dollars in total. By acquiring Motorola, Google managed to build up the company's patent portfolio which enabled it to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats.

And then, there was Samsung. Samsung was the driving force behind Android, being the operating system's main host. But that wasn't enough for the South Korean tech company. Methodically, it was hiding Android's existence through its interface, mainly through TouchWiz. The Samsung interface was released in 2010 and featured a full-touch user interface. At the end of the day, its bloatware was wasting storage space and slowing the operation of the Android. Despite all that, Samsung didn't stop there. It degraded Android's performance furthermore, by switching out vast parts of the software - phone dialler, calendar, email client, contacts, notification center, music and video player, voice control, and much more - for its own apps.

Google had grown tired of Samsung's bloatware, skins, and gimmicks. Thanks to the Motorola acquisition, and all of its mobile-making capabilities, Google was about to teach a lesson in smartphone manufacturing. And so it did. In 2013, Google made 'its own Galaxy S4'; it increased production of its Nexus flagship phone and released a handful of well-received Motorola handsets which ran almost completely plain versions of Android.

Samsung learned its lesson, and at the beginning of 2014, Google and Samsung signed a new 10-year global patent agreement. Thanks to this deal, Google and Samsung would pave the way for deeper collaboration on research and development. This way, the two companies also showed to the industry that there is more to gain from cooperating than engaging in unnecessary patent disputes.

In any case, Google managed to convince Samsung to tone down its skins and gimmicks and focus on core Android apps. Two days later, Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for 2.9 billion dollars. Mission accomplished.

Fitbit, a consumer electronics headquartered in San Francisco, is known for its smartwatches, fitness trackers, and wearable technology. Fitbit is the fifth largest wearable company in shipments. According to the latest IDC report , it has 4.7% of the 2019 wearables companies' market share, following Apple, Xiaomi, Samsung, and Huawei. By the end of 2019, Fitbit had 30 million active users, Statista reports .

Buy why Fitbit's acquisition by the big tech firm hasn't been completed yet? The truth is that the deal has come under great scrutiny from regulators. The Department of Justice, as well as EU regulators and Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission, are worried. They need to know how the acquisition is going to affect the digital healthcare space. And, most importantly, how is Google going to use the data of Fitbit's million users?

Fitbit co-founder James Park stated:

"On our own, we pushed the bounds of what was possible from the wrist, pioneering step, heart rate, sleep, and stress tracking. With access to Google's incredible resources, knowledge, and global platform, the possibilities are truly limitless".
- Source

Purchased on: October 9, 2006
Cost of purchase: $1.65 billion

In 2005, Google released its video hosting service, Google Video. All videos were hosted on Google's servers and could embed on other websites. This allowed webmasters to host and share videos on their websites without having to worry about their storage or bandwidth.

During the same year, three former employees of PayPal made their own video hosting platform: YouTube. The original idea of YouTube's format was an online dating service, through video. In the absence of enough dating videos, the initial plan changed to "anything-goes" videos.

YouTube surpassed Google Videos since the beginning and kept gaining more and more market share in the video wars. It did some things differently that made it succeed more:

1. Youtube was more open towards the information it gave for every video, such as the number of views.

2. It had more focus on the community with features like a post section with comments.

3. It had the option to create lists with favorite videos and playlists.

YouTube was now at the top. Meanwhile, Google Videos ceased to exist, little by little.

Now, YouTube has become the tech goliath we all know. In Alexa rank it's the second-most popular site, following, well, Google. With one billion hours of content being watched on the platform every day, YouTube has become TV2.0.

Purchased on: September 21, 2017
Cost of purchase: $1.1 billion

Six years after the purchase of the Motorola Company in 2011, Google made its next step in the field of mobile manufacturing. To make it clear right off the bat, Google didn't purchase HTC entirely, only a part of it. Google and HTC already had a close relationship. For example, in the case of the Android smartphones Pixel & Pixel XL, HTC was the manufacturer, and Google was the developer and the marketing force.

The HTC portion that Google acquired was the one responsible for the development of several market-leading smartphones, including the original Pixel. This acquisition also meant the change of hands of about 4,000 employees, who mainly worked in HTC's design and research, as well as non-exclusive licenses to smartphone-related intellectual property held by HTC.

In the words of Rick Osterloh, Google's SVP:

That's why I'm delighted that we've officially closed our deal with HTC, and are welcoming an incredibly talented team to work on even better and more innovative products in the years to come. These new colleagues bring decades of experience achieving a series of "firsts" particularly in the smartphone industry-including bringing to market the first 3G smartphone in 2005, the first touch-centric phone in 2007, and the first all-metal unibody phone in 2013. This is also the same team we've been working closely with on the development of the Pixel and Pixel 2.
Finally, with the official close of this deal, we're expanding our footprint in the Asia Pacific region. Taiwan is a key innovation and engineering hub for Google, and Taipei will now become the largest Google engineering site in APAC.
- Source

Purchased on: October 2003
Cost of purchase: (Undisclosed)

Apart from being one of the big five tech companies and the #1 search engine, Google is also a verb. To google is to search the Internet for information about a person, a topic, et cetera. It was added as an official word to the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid-'00s. Yet, there is another internet term that we use daily both as a noun and a verb: blog.

To blog, or "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog", was used as a noun and verb by Evan Williams, the founder of Pyra Labs. If the name Evan Williams rings a bell, it's because he is one of the co-founders of Medium and Twitter.

Pyra labs is another obscure company that remained under the shadow of its product. In our case, that product is Blogger. Blogger, the famous blog-publishing service was one of the key internet existences that made blogging as big as we know it today. Along with 'Open Diary' and 'LiveJournal', Blogger was part of the Holy Trinity of Blogging.

A great concept, lead by a great mind, at the climax of the dot-com boom, could only mean great success, right? Right - except what followed the dot-com boom was the dot-com bubble burst. The burst hit Blogger hard, being a young company with limited profits and no real business model. Most of the employees left the company while a few stayed and worked just for the cause, without receiving any salary for months. At one point, Evan Williams found himself the only employee of Blogger. But he never gave up. Sometime later, when the online economy began to pick up, the company managed to get funded as some ads also starting appearing on the blogs.

And then Google came along.

The details of the deal remain undisclosed to this day, but what we know is that Google purchased Pyra Labs, Blogger, and its six employees, along with Evan, in October 2003. Later on, Blogger was moved to Google's servers, the platform was redesigned, and all of its services became free. It incorporated new features, too.

In the end, although the amount of money Google gave to acquire Pyra Labs was relatively small, the purchase of Blogger by Google is a truly historic purchase.

Apple is the world's largest technology company by revenue. Right now, Apple is not only the most valuable GAFAM, but also the world's most valuable company.

In contrast with the rest of the big five tech companies, Apple prefers acquiring small companies that can easily integrate into its line of products. With the exception of Beats Electronics in 2014, all purchases from Apple are counted in the millions, not billions.

Apple's investment in the music industry is now pretty much a given. Hence the largest acquisition for the company, to this day, comes as no surprise. Also, Apple's successful marriage of technology with culture was what had inspired Beats Electronics since the beginning. Apple acquiring Beats was a vital solution to its revenue growth, as it had slowed sharply in the last few years.

'Beats by Dr. Dre' price tag at $450 and manufacturing cost at just $14 to create, meant a high-profit margin. This acquisition also managed to make Dr.Dre the first 'hip-hop billionaire'.

Fast forward five years later and Apple's most expensive subsidiary today wasn't exactly a game-changer. For one, Apple shut down Beats' music player, Beats Music, as it integrated with iTunes radio and became redundant.

However, what Apple did with Beats' software, didn't do with Beats' hardware. The core headphone brand is producing headphones to this day, including the Beats Studio 3, and the Powerbeats Wireless headphones, which incorporate the technology of AirPods.

Historically speaking, the music discovery app is one of the oldest apps in the App Store, as it debuted the day the App Store launched, in July 2008. Within ten years, Shazam counted 10 million downloads in 150 countries. The day Apple bought Shazam, the vice president of Apple's Music made an announcement:

"Apple and Shazam have a long history together. Shazam was one of the first apps available when we launched the App Store and has become a favourite app for music fans everywhere. With a shared love of music and innovation, we are thrilled to bring our teams together to provide users even more great ways to discover, experience and enjoy music."
- Source

In 2015, Shazam moved beyond audio identification and introduced visual identification. In addition to identifying objects, Shazam developed visual recognition technology, as a platform for marketers who seek to engage with audiences. At this moment, the app has been downloaded more than 1 billion times, and it even has its own show on American television, called 'Beat Shazam'.

Since iOS 8, Siri incorporates Shazam, and there are connections with Apple Music in the Shazam app. Further integrations between Apple and Shazam are also possibly coming.

When Steve Jobs was overthrown from Apple in 1985, he had money, time, wits, and a lot of ambition. The perfect ingredients for a business venture. In the case of Steve Jobs, the venture was more than one. His energy was channeled into two different activities: computers, just like before, and an uncharted territory - digital animation.

He bought a division from LucasFilm, called Graphics Group, and renamed it to the now-known studio Pixar. Steve Jobs remained the CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar until it was sold to Disney, in 2006.

Next, it was NeXT. In 1985 Steve Jobs founded this small computer and software company. Only three years later, the company released the first NeXT computer hardware which was relatively affordable. The computer was primarily designed for higher education and business applications. But NeXT computers never made it to commercial success.

However, one particular user acquired the NeXT computer and changed the course of history. That man was Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web while operating the OS NeXTSTEP on a NeXT Computer at CERN.

In the meantime, Mac OS was getting old; Apple wanted to do something about it. And so, Apple decided that Steve Job's NeXTSTEP's foundation was what it was looking for. Ergo, in 1997, Apple made its most expensive acquisition for nearly two decades, gaining both the Man and the Machine. The man, Steve Jobs returned to one of the big five tech companies that he had co-founded in 1976. There he would fill in the role of the consultant until he became the CEO in 2000.

As for the machine, some of NeXTSTEP's interface features were used in Mac OS X. In addition, NeXTSTEP's processor-independent capabilities were retained in Mac OS X, leading to both PowerPC and Intel x86 versions.

If you are an iPhone user, you need no introduction to Siri. But maybe you need one for some parts of its history. The personal assistant with the exceptional voice recognition technology was originally developed by SRI International Artificial Intelligence Center. Being a defense research project, it was funded by, well, US taxpayers - for $150m in total.

But how can the cost of a single mobile app be as much as 1 billion dollars? An article from 2010 published by xconomy, The Story of Siri, from birth at SRI to Acquisition by Apple explains:

"The Siri app itself isn't expensive; in fact, it's free to iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch users. The algorithms that make the app work, however, are the product of years of defense-sponsored research." [...] "It's about the artificial-intelligence insights behind it: the chain of machine-learning, natural-language processing, and Web search algorithms that swing into action with every Siri query. When you can access these algorithms from a mobile device like the iPhone, and prime them with a bit of contextual awareness such as a GPS location reading or an understanding of the user's preferences, you have a powerful personal tool that Norman Winarsky, SRI's vice president of ventures, licensing, and strategic programs, likes to describe as a "do engine" rather than a search engine."
Source

One of the most key early acquisitions by Apple was that of Emalogic. Emalogic was a German music/hardware company known for its digital audio workstation (DAW) Notator Logic, or just Logic. After buying Emagic, Logic was no longer available for the Windows OS, and its name also changed to Logic Pro.

From there on, an essential version at a reduced cost, built on the same interface and audio engine launched under the name Logic Express. Based on Logic's audio engine, another product came. The new DAW was part of the bundle iLife, a software suite for macOS and iOS.

Since December 2011, the production of the boxed versions of Logic Pro and Logic Express has stopped. They are now available only through the Mac App Store.

The #1 social media platform is not just a social media platform anymore.

Facebook had initially launched under the name 'FaceMash'. A little later however they changed the name to 'TheFacebook', only to realize that they probably won't succeed as a rock band and dropped the 'The'.

With more than 2.6 billion active users today, its growth doesn't stop. Since its founding, Facebook has been very aggressive with its acquisitions, and it has now become one of the big five tech companies. Despite being only 17 years old, Facebook has purchased over 70 companies.

When WhatsApp was still autonomous, they valued their users' privacy and didn't want to monetize the personal data of their users. Who does that, right? Well, Facebook does. And Facebook does not share the same sensitivities with WhatsApp.

Oculus VR is a relatively young brand. Founded in 2012, the tech company is best known for Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset hardware, designed for video gaming.

Before Facebook's acquisition, Oculus had gone full indie to find the money for their headset. To achieve this, they launched a Kickstarter campaign to develop this demanding piece of equipment. The campaign was more than successful, as it raised a little over $2.4 million - ten times the original goal of $250,000.

Since then, the Oculus VR has made multiple acquisitions of its own. The most prominent of these acquisitions was the 2015 purchase of Surreal Vision, a UK-based startup specializing in 3D scene mapping reconstruction. Another major acquisition was that of Pebbles Interfaces, the Israeli-based company that specializes in hand-tracking technology.

According to Mark Zuckerburg, after developing immersive VR gaming experiences, the goal of VR is now to expand to all sorts of virtual experiences, including social networking.

Purchased on: April 9, 2012
Cost of purchase: $1 billion

Today, the acquisition of Instagram for 1 billion dollars looks natural, but it was met with skepticism when this happened, in April of 2012. Back then, Facebook hadn't held its initial public offering yet (this happened a month later). On top of that, Instagram had just 30 million users and $0 in revenue.

FriendFeed was founded in 2007, and Facebook has had its eye on it since the beginning. In practice, it was a real-time feed aggregator with one mission: "to glue together the web". Up to this day, FriendFeed's influence on the #1 social media network is still present. For example, the 'Like' button traces back to the need for FriendFeed to create a mechanism that would let users know that their friends appreciate what they post.

Facebook acquiring FriendFeed, meant, first and foremost, adding the FriendTeam amongst its ranks. All four founders were former Google employees, who were involved in projects including Gmail, AdSense, and Google Maps. Besides, it managed to do something Google hadn't even dreamed of: to create a real-time web experience.

As the story goes, Amazon started in the mid-'90s as an eCommerce store selling books. Nowadays, it is the biggest retailer globally, surpassing Walmart. It's also the #1 company by revenue, compared not only to GAFAM but to the rest of the world as well.

The multinational has gone beyond the eCommerce industry. With over 100 acquisitions, Amazon's interests span from artificial intelligence to cloud computing. It's clear that no market is safe from the ever-expanding empire of one of our big five tech companies.

When Whole Foods Market, the American organic supermarket chain was bought by Amazon, it was the #1 brand in the organic business - but it was struggling. Sprouts Farmers Markets, Kroger, Trader Joe's, and the rest of its major competitors were gaining ground. Whole Foods had already started to decline. So one day, in full secrecy, the CEO of the soon-to-be subsidiary reached out to Jeff Bezos, and they eventually came to an agreement for 13.7 billion dollars.

Since then, the impact of the deal on the supermarket chain hasn't gone unnoticed. The supermarket chain stores look different, their shelves include more small brands than they used to, and Amazon has renewed efforts to deliver fresh food.

Also, the acquisition of Whole Foods Market gave a bigger brick-and-mortar presence to Amazon through more than 300 physical stores across the US. Moreover, Amazon now has more insight than ever before, as it combines data from online and offline purchases of its customers.

Amazon's second-biggest acquisition yet and one of the biggest entertainment acquisitions in history.

Known for its very popular lion logo, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is the Hollywood studio behind films such as James Bond, Gone With the Wind, The Hobbit, and the Rocky franchises. What's more, MGM has a pretty impressive content library that consists of around 4,000 films and 17,000 hours of TV.

Mike Hopkins, the senior vice-president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, said: "The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of intellectual property in the deep catalogue that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM's talented team" ( Source).

But Amazon is not the only company that is looking to beef up its content library. Just a week before MGM's acquisition, AT&T announced it would merge its streaming service HBO with Discovery's streaming service, Discovery Plus. That move created a major new player in the streaming content landscape that can compete with giants such as Netflix and Disney.

Streaming services have become an industry on their own and many firms, tech or otherwise, want a piece of the pie.

Purchased on: June 26, 2020
Cost of purchase: $1.2 billion

Amazon is no stranger to the automotive industry. In the recent past, the big technology firm has invested in a few self-driving auto startups.

A couple of years ago, Amazon invested in Aurora Innovation, a self-driving technology startup. And, a few months later, the tech giant ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian Automotive, another startup that works on autonomous vehicles. Last year though, the time for an actual acquisition had come. The name of the acquiree - Zoox.

Zoox launched in 2014. The company is a developer of autonomous vehicles with a vision: to produce zero-emissions vehicles. Through Zoox's acquisition, Amazon will probably enhance its logistics network to offer cheaper and faster delivery. Furthermore, Amazon is looking to get rid of human labor and the Zoox purchase might help the tech firm exactly with that.

Twitch is a relatively new brand, founded in the first years of the 2010s. Twitch is a live streaming video platform and by far the most popular one for that matter. In the US, it accounts for nearly 2% of all traffic during peak hours, following Netflix, Google, and Apple.

Day to day, more and more content is produced and uploaded on YouTube to be watched on-demand. Likewise, more content is streamed online. Regarding video-on-demand, Amazon has a service called Amazon Instant, which comes with an Amazon Prime membership. For steaming, however, the world's most powerful online retailer didn't have a service, but it surely wanted one. Enter Twitch.

Before Amazon bought Twitch, Yahoo, and Google both had tried to acquire the streaming site. All companies failed to come to an agreement with the live streaming platform though, except Amazon. In his thank you letter to the community, Emmett Shear, the CEO of Twitch explained why he chose Amazon as the parent company for his brand.

"We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster. We're keeping most everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence. But with Amazon's support we'll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch."

A little bit of history first. More than 20 years ago, Audible released the first portable audio player designed specifically for listening to audiobooks. Given that there were no MP3 players, Audible had to make its own hardware - the Audible Player. The Audible Player became the very first portable digital audio player in volume production. Not only that, but its service was also web-based. Innovation was strong with Audible.

Today, the publishing industry is on the decline. And it's been like this for the last decades. Amazon caught on that early enough and envisioned the bright, and lucrative, future Audible could have.

It would also make a good asset and a great addition to Amazon's digital store. In the dire competition with Apple's iTunes, Amazon had signed deals with major music companies like Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group Corp. Audible, with more than 80,000 programs at the time would assist Amazon's digital store furthermore.

These days, partly due to Audible's acquisition, audiobook sales are booming.

The oldest of the big five tech companies, Microsoft Corporation, made its acquisition debut in 1983. It started with a company best known for its developers who made what is now Microsoft PowerPoint.

Since then, the MS Corporation has purchased an average of six companies a year. All these years, through its successful strategic acquisitions and merges, this GAFAM company has prevailed and continues to deepen its dominance in many technology fields.

LinkedIn's acquisition by Microsoft is not only the biggest for Microsoft, but for our list, too. It's also one of the five biggest tech deals of all time, along with Dell buying EMC Data Storage ($67.0 billion), Avago merging with Broadcom ($37.0 billion), IBM acquiring Red Hat ($34.0 billion), and Softbank taking over Arm ($31.4 billion).

The beginning of 2016 and the end of the same year had little in common for LinkedIn. At the start of the year, the social network's revenue forecast fell far short of expectations. As you can imagine, Wall Street wasn't too happy about it. As a result, LinkedIn's stock price plunged by 46.5% and sank to a three-year low of $110. In a pure deus ex machina moment, Microsoft put an end to all of this.

For Bill Gates' company, this acquisition meant, first and foremost, data. The business social media platform's massive database, with millions of members, passing on Microsoft, meant that the latter company could now compete with Facebook and Google in the data game. All this time, Microsoft had no real insight into the ultimate end users of most of the products it was selling. It was time that changed.

On the other side of the deal, LinkedIn also looked pretty satisfied. In the words of Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, this acquisition results in the combination of the world's leading professional cloud and network. It connected the professional world, with more than 1 billion Microsoft users and more than 467 million members on LinkedIn, with a common goal: "to create more connected, intelligent and productive experiences".

Nuance Communications

Microsoft is on the hunt for growth and it's not afraid to show that through its latest acquisitions. One of these acquisitions is Nuance Communications, a pioneer in conversational AI and cloud-based ambient clinical intelligence for healthcare providers.

Before Microsoft bought Nuance Communications in the spring of 2021, many tech firms, including Apple, had considered acquiring the latter. But why did Microsoft buy Nuance Communications anyway?

Prior to the acquisition, the two companies had formed a successful partnership since October 2019. Their mission was to help transform healthcare delivery for a more sustainable future. As healthcare becomes more receptive to technology, many tech giants are looking to expand their presence in the field. Microsoft is one of them. What's more, Microsoft has voice recognition built into many of its products. Through this acquisition, MS corporation company wants to increase its presence in the healthcare vertical.

The purchase of the telecoms app that specializes in video chat came a bit out of the blue. The reason being that when that happened, Microsoft hadn't made any new subsidiaries for quite some time. Not only that, but the MS enterprise already was well-established in the real-time communication and instant messaging space with many different apps and programs: MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Messenger, Xbox Live, and Lync, which Skype for Business replaced later on.

But as with anything regarding the tech and business world, there is a good explanation.

An unnamed Business Insider source revealed that it was part of Microsoft's plan to make a bigger move in the IP comms, similar to how Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6 billion in 2007. Skypes' user-base, counting more than 660 million at the time, was an excellent audience for Microsoft to sell many of its products. Last but not least, rumors that other companies like Cisco, Google, and Facebook were interested in Skype put pressure on the tech giant.

A couple of years later, Cisco, in particular, lost a court challenge to Microsoft's takeover of Skype.

Purchased on: October 26, 2018
Cost of purchase: $7.5 billion

This is another one of the big Microsoft acquisitions. After Github's 10-years independent run, its streak broke. But this wasn't the first time that the Microsoft enterprise faced the open-source world. The last time this happened it was more of a collision.

What I'm talking about is the notorious Halloween Documents, a series of confidential Microsoft records regarding free software and open-source software. The documents were leaked by open-source software advocate Eric S. Raymond in 1998. Those documents identified open-source software, and in particular the Linux operating system, as a major threat to Microsoft's domination of the software industry, and suggested tactics Microsoft could use to disrupt the progress of open-source software.

The former CEO of the enterprise from 2000 to 2014, Steve Ballmer, was known for his secretive nature when it came to software building. Nonetheless, things have changed since then. His replacement, Satya Nadella has a whole different philosophy which changed the stance of Microsoft's openness, or lack thereof, by 180 degrees. If it hadn't been for that shift of perspective, we wouldn't talk about this acquisition today.

As a matter of fact, Microsoft's investment in Github had started a few years before it even acquired it. According to a case of "Microsoft acquiring GitHub is a good thing," the former company genuinely tried to win over the dev community multi ways:

It open-sourced all of the .NET frameworks on GitHub

It built out rich, system-level Windows features to bring a rich Unix shell to the platform to make development easier

Github began and continues to maintain one of the best open-source code editors available for every platform out there

It became the largest contributor to open-source on GitHub.

Microsoft's whole Windows 10 platform is now built on open-source Progressive Web App technology

Currently, corporate open-source programs are on the rise. For Microsoft, companies that embrace open source technologies usually do better than those which prefer isolation. Managing an open-source program comes with benefits such as: Awareness of open source usage/dependencies, increased developer agility/speed, and better/faster license compliance

TechCrunch confirms open-source software is taking over the world:

Red Hat is being acquired by IBM for $32 billion (3x times its market cap from 2014); MuleSoft was acquired after going public for $6.5 billion; MongoDB is now worth north of $4 billion; Elastic's IPO now values the company at $6 billion; and, through the merger of Cloudera and Hortonworks, a new company with a market cap north of $4 billion will emerge.
- Source

Needless to say, in the case of GitHub, this purchase secured its future and a big part of the future of open-source software.

It's hard to imagine Hotmail before the takeover of Microsoft. Hotmail was founded in the summer of 1996, and the very next year it was already a division of Microsoft. Even before Microsoft though, the webmail service is a growth case study material, for it managed to get 12 million subscribers in the span of such a short time. The best part was that it did so by building brand awareness with $0.

The term growth hacking didn't exist then, but what Hotmail did is a growth hacking case study. Since it was acquired, Hotmail's been through many phases: MSN Hotmail, Windows Live Hotmail, and its final transition, and current form, Outlook.com.

From 2MB to 15GB, and 23 years, Hotmail has come a long way.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
GAFAM: The Big Five Tech Companies Facts (FAAMG)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The big five tech companies are: The total value of the tech giants is over $5 trillion. Like with "Big Oil"," "Big Tobacco", and "Big Pharma", "Big Tech" is here to stay and shape today's society in more areas than just technology.