As Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. banished users and groups supporting the violent mobs at the U.S. Capitol last week — including President Donald Trump himself — downloads surged for a less restrictive social media app called Parler. But in an effort to prevent further riot organizing, Google Inc. and Apple Inc. booted Parler from their app stores, and Amazon.com Inc. shut off its web services.
“We will not cave to pressure from anti-competitive actors!” John Matze, Parler Inc.’s chief executive officer, said on his site Friday. “We WON’T cave to politically motivated companies and those authoritarians who hate free speech!”
In reality, Matze doesn’t have much choice. His free-speech-centric network, where some extremists turned to rally insurgents and organize future uprisings, was deemed an “ongoing and urgent public safety threat” by Google. Apple quickly rejected as insufficient a Parler plan to moderate its content. Amazon employees asked that the web giant “deny Parler services until it removes posts inciting violence, including at the Presidential inauguration.” Amazon plans to shut down the service at midnight Sunday, according to Matze. Tiếp tục đọc “Bans on Parler and Trump Show Big Tech’s Power Over Web Conversation”→
TTCT – Sự kiên nhẫn dành cho nhóm Big Tech, gồm năm công ty công nghệ Mỹ Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook và Microsoft, rốt cuộc đã cạn.
Liên tiếp ở châu Âu và cả trên sân nhà, một loạt đơn kiện của chính quyền nhắm vào những gã khổng lồ công nghệ trong năm 2020 cho thấy những tượng đài này không hề “bất khả xâm phạm” như ta tưởng. Tiếp tục đọc “Big Tech tiếp tục bị phán xét”→
Welcome to our final newsletter of 2020. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and interest in our work over the year. We will return in early January and in the meantime wish you an enjoyable festive break and every success in 2021.
New white paper: Digital trade in the Asia-Pacific
Deborah Elms 22 December 2020
As we move into 2021, what are the key issues facing digital trade in Asia? The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted global trade and upended many longstanding business models. Firms are rapidly shifting to develop or expand digital capabilities to manage highly altered supply and demand pressures. Despite the growing importance of digital trade, the ability of governments to tackle a range of issues of relevance to managing the online environment still lags behind the speed of innovation for firms. Effective and efficient regulatory policies can support continuing economic growth in the digital economy. Given the overwhelming importance of small firms to every country in Asia, failure to create supportive policies will impede the region’s attempt to advance sustainable and inclusive development. This new paper from the Hinrich Foundation – the first in a series of six reports on digital trade in the Asia-Pacific authored by Dr Deborah Elms, Executive Director at the Asian Trade Centre – identifies eight issues that governments and firms across the region will need to tackle to reap the full benefits of the digital opportunity.
In this short podcast our Director of Research, Dr Andrew Staples, invites Dr Deborah Elms to provide an overview of paper and to highlight the importance of the RCEP agreement for digital trade in Asia.
INTERVIEW WITH RESEARCH FELLOW Hinrich Foundation Research Fellow, Alex Capri, discusses his latest paper with Dr Staples. Released last week, Techno-nationalism and corporate governance examines how the US-China tech cold war has politicized the business environment for multinationals and the implications for corporate governance. Techno-nationalism, he observes, now requires firms to evaluate or restructure their cross-border operations to reduce risks.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT While 2020 proved to be challenging for all of us, it was also a productive year for our research fellows. Please find below a selection of our most read articles and papers on the key issues impacting global trade in 2020 including the coronavirus pandemic, geopolitical tensions and the US-China trade war, the emergence of “techno-nationalism,” the US presidential election and the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
A Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company office in Tainan, Taiwan.Credit…An Rong Xu for The New York Times
The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union perpetually threatened to spark conflict in nations all over the world, including battles over the control of a vast array of natural and industrial resources. The new Cold War, between the United States and China, is increasingly focused on access to just one industry in one place: computer chips made in Taiwan.
Amnesty report accuses sites of openly signalling they will bow to authoritarian regimes
A person using Facebook at a cafe in Hanoi, Vietnam, last month. Photograph: Kham/ReutersRebecca Ratcliffe South-east Asia correspondentTue 1 Dec 2020 00.01 GMT
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Facebook and YouTube are complicit in “censorship and repression on an industrial scale” in Vietnam, according to a report by Amnesty International that accuses the platforms of openly signalling that they are willing to bow to the wishes of authoritarian regimes.
By Phan Anh November 22, 2020 | 01:37 pm GMT+7A Vietnamese man plays game on a mobile phone. Photo by Shutterstock/Tuan Hung.Vietnam has the highest number of adult gamers in the world in 2020, according to a recently released global consumer survey by German data portal Statista.
Ninety four percent of Vietnamese said they gamed at least occasionally while nearly 20 percent said they were frequent gamers, according to the Statista Global Consumer Survey.
PUBLISHED FRI, NOV 13 202010:19 AM EST UPDATED FRI, NOV 13 202012:10 PM ESTSam Shead@SAM_L_SHEADCNBC
KEY POINTS
The U.K. government has rolled out new rules to protect Britain’s innovative companies from being snapped up by other nations.
But is it too little, too late? Arm was sold to Japan’s SoftBank in 2016 and DeepMind was sold to Google in 2014.
Even though DeepMind and Arm are no longer British in some people’s eyes, there are a number of other fast-growing tech companies that very much are.
Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson giving a statement in Downing Street in central London on April 27, 2020 after returning to work following more than three weeks off after being hospitalized with the Covid-19 illness.DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS
LONDON – The U.K. government introduced new rules this week that are designed to protect Britain’s best and brightest companies from being gobbled up by other, potentially hostile, nations.
Mckinsey.com In just a few months’ time, the COVID-19 crisis has brought about years of change in the way companies in all sectors and regions do business. According to a new McKinsey Global Survey of executives,1 their companies have accelerated the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions and of their internal operations by three to four years. And the share of digital or digitally enabled products in their portfolios has accelerated by a shocking seven years.2 Nearly all respondents say that their companies have stood up at least temporary solutions to meet many of the new demands on them, and much more quickly than they had thought possible before the crisis. What’s more, respondents expect most of these changes to be long lasting and are already making the kinds of investments that all but ensure they will stick. In fact, when we asked executives about the impact of the crisis on a range of measures, they say that funding for digital initiatives has increased more than anything else—more than increases in costs, the number of people in technology roles, and the number of customers.To stay competitive in this new business and economic environment requires new strategies and practices. Our findings suggest that executives are taking note: most respondents recognize technology’s strategic importance as a critical component of the business, not just a source of cost efficiencies. Respondents from the companies that have executed successful responses to the crisis report a range of technology capabilities that others don’t—most notably, filling gaps for technology talent during the crisis, the use of more advanced technologies, and speed in experimenting and innovating.3Tiếp tục đọc “How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point—and transformed business forever”→
Federal officials also said Iran and Russia have obtained voter registration data.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe called the measures “desperate attempts by desperate adversaries.” | Gabriella Demczuk /The New York Times via AP
The Iranian government is behind recent emails threatening Americans with retribution if they do not vote to reelect President Donald Trump, national security officials said on Wednesday.
In addition, Iran and Russia have obtained the voter registration data of some Americans, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said during an abruptly scheduled evening news conference.
October 21, 2020 The New York Times, Wednesday Morning
Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin at Google headquarters in 2004.Ben Margot/Associated Press
When two Stanford University graduate students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founded Google in 1998, the U.S. economy looked different than it does today.
As the compiler of Decree 91 on fighting spam SMS, calls and messages, an official with the Authority for Information Security, Dang Huy Hoang, said he was happy that he could contribute to reducing ‘garbage’ in digital space.
Spam messages, e-mails and calls have been a burning issue for years. How to prevent spam is a topic of discussion at many National Assembly’s sessions.
CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc —————
Số: 91/2020/NĐ-CP
Hà Nội, ngày 14 tháng 8 năm 2020
NGHỊ ĐỊNH
CHỐNG TIN NHẮN RÁC, THƯ ĐIỆN TỬ RÁC, CUỘC GỌI RÁC
Căn cứ Luật Tổ chức Chính phủ ngày 19 tháng 6 năm 2015;
Căn cứ Luật Giao dịch điện tử ngày 29 tháng 11 năm 2005;
Căn cứ Luật Công nghệ thông tin ngày 29 tháng 6 năm 2006;
Căn cứ Luật Viễn thông ngày 23 tháng 11 năm 2009;
Căn cứ Luật Xử lý vi phạm hành chính ngày 20 tháng 6 năm 2012;
Căn cứ Luật Quảng cáo ngày 21 tháng 6 năm 2012;
Căn cứ Luật An toàn thông tin mạng ngày 19 tháng 11 năm 2015;
Căn cứ Luật An ninh mạng ngày 12 tháng 6 năm 2018;
Theo đề nghị của Bộ trưởng Bộ Thông tin và Truyền thông;
Chính phủ ban hành Nghị định về chống tin nhắn rác, thư điện tử rác, cuộc gọi rác.
Chương I
NHỮNG QUY ĐỊNH CHUNG
Điều 1. Phạm vi điều chỉnh
Nghị định này quy định về chống tin nhắn rác, thư điện tử rác, cuộc gọi rác và quy định về quảng cáo bằng tin nhắn (SMS, MMS, USSD), thư điện tử và gọi điện thoại; quyền và nghĩa vụ của cơ quan, tổ chức, cá nhân và bổ sung quy định xử lý vi phạm hành chính về tin nhắn rác, thư điện tử rác, cuộc gọi rác.
A victory for the government could remake one of America’s most recognizable companies and the internet economy that it has helped define.
The Justice Department plans to accuse Google of building an illegal monopoly over central parts of the internet.Credit…John Taggart for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department plans to accuse Google of maintaining an illegal monopoly over search and search advertising in a lawsuit to be filed on Tuesday, the government’s most significant legal challenge to a tech company’s market power in a generation, according to officials at the agency.
In its suit, to be filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C., the agency will accuse Google, a unit of Alphabet, of illegally maintaining its monopoly over search through several exclusive business contracts and agreements that lock out competition, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak on the record. Such contracts include Google’s payment of billions of dollars to Apple to place the Google search engine as the default for iPhones.
The agency will argue that Google, which controls about 80 percent of search queries in the United States, struck agreements with phone makers using Alphabet’s Android operating system to pre-load the search engine on their phones and make it hard for rival search engines to become a replacement. By using contracts to maintain its monopoly, competition and innovation has suffered, the suit with argue.
The suit reflects the pushback against the power of the nation’s largest corporations, and especially technology giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Conservatives like President Trump and liberals like Senator Elizabeth Warren have been highly critical of the concentration of power in a handful of tech behemoths.
Attorney General William P. Barr, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, has played an unusually active role in the investigation. He pushed career Justice Department attorneys to bring the case by the end of September, prompting pushback from lawyers who wanted more time and complained of political influence. Mr. Barr has spoken publicly about the inquiry for months and set tight deadlines for the prosecutors leading the effort.
The lawsuit may stretch on for years and could set off a cascade of other antitrust lawsuits from state attorneys general. About four dozen states and jurisdictions have conducted parallel investigations and are expected to bring separate complaints against the company’s grip on technology for online advertising.
A victory for the government could remake one of America’s most recognizable companies and the internet economy that it has helped define since it was founded by two Stanford University graduate students in 1998.
But Google has long denied accusations of antitrust violations and is expected to fight the government’s efforts by using a global network of lawyers, economists and lobbyists. Alphabet, valued at $1.04 trillion and with cash reserves of $120 billion, has fought similar antitrust lawsuits in Europe.
The company says it has strong competition in the search market, with more people finding information on sites like Amazon. It says its services have been a boon for small businesses.
“A significant number of entities — spanning major public corporations, small businesses and entrepreneurs — depend on Google for traffic, and no alternate search engine serves as a substitute,” the report said. The lawmakers also accused Apple, Amazon and Facebook of abusing their market power.
The scrutiny reflects how Google has become a dominant player in communications, commerce and media over the last two decades. It controls 90 percent of the market for online searches, according to one estimate. That business is lucrative: Last year, Google brought in $34.3 billion in search revenue in the United States, according to the research firm eMarketer. That figure is expected to grow to $42.5 billion by 2022, the firm said.
The lawsuit is the result of an investigation that has stretched for more than a year. Prosecutors have spoken with Google’s rivals in technology and media, collecting information and documents that could be used to build a case.
Mr. Barr, a former telecom executive who once argued an antitrust case before the Supreme Court, signaled that he would put the tech giants under new scrutiny at his confirmation hearing in early 2019. He said that “a lot of people wonder how such huge behemoths that now exist in Silicon Valley have taken shape under the nose of the antitrust enforcers.”
He put the investigation under the control of his deputy, Jeffrey Rosen, who in turn hired an aide from a major law firm to oversee the case and other technology matters. Mr. Barr’s grip over the investigation tightened when the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Makan Delrahim, recused himself from the investigation because he had lobbied for Google’s acquisition of the ad service DoubleClick in 2007.
From left, Attorney General William P. Barr and President Trump.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
Mr. Barr pushed prosecutors to wrap up their inquiries — and decide whether to bring a case — before Election Day. While Justice Department officials are usually tight-lipped about their investigations until a case is filed, Mr. Barr publicly declared his intention to make a decision on the Google matter by the end of the summer. He mentioned the agency’s antitrust investigation when asked about unproven charges that conservative speech is stifled online.
This year, most of the roughly 40 lawyers building the case said they opposed bringing a complaint by Mr. Barr’s Sept. 30 deadline. Some said they would not sign the complaint, and several left the case this summer.
Google last faced serious scrutiny from an American antitrust regulator nearly a decade ago, when the Federal Trade Commission investigated whether it had abused its power over the search market. The agency’s staff recommended bringing charges against the company, according to a memo reported on by The Wall Street Journal. But the agency’s five commissioners voted in 2013 not to bring a case.
Other governments have been more aggressive against the big tech companies. The European Union has brought three antitrust cases against Google in recent years, focused on its search engine, advertising business and Android mobile operating system. Regulators in Britain and Australia are examining the digital advertising market, in inquiries that could ultimately implicate the company.
“It’s the most newsworthy monopolization action brought by the government since the Microsoft case in the late ‘90s,” said Bill Baer, a former chief of the Justice Department’s antitrust division. “It’s significant in that the government believes that a highly successful tech platform has engaged in conduct that maintains its monopoly power unlawfully, and as a result injures consumers and competition.”
Google and its allies will likely criticize the suit as being politically motivated. The Trump administration has attacked Google, which owns YouTube, and other online platform companies, as being slanted against conservative views.
The lawsuit will likely outlast the Trump administration itself. The government’s case against Microsoft took more than a decade to settle.
While it is possible that a new Democratic administration would review the strategy behind the case, some experts said it was unlikely that it would be withdrawn under new leadership.U.S. v. GoogleRead more about the legal battle that has been brewing for more than a year.
Nguyen Khac Lich, deputy director of the Information Safety Department under the Ministry of Information and Communication, talks to VietNamNet about measures to prevent spam messages and unwanted advertising.
Nguyen Khac Lich, deputy director of the Information Safety Department. Photo: VNN
What are the new points contained in Decree 91/2020 regarding all forms of advertising via telecommunications, including SMS, email and calls?
Decree 91/2020 was issued in August 2020 to govern all forms of advertising via telecommunications such as SMS, email and phone calls. The decree introduces a wide range of new restrictions on telemarketing and corresponding sections. Any texts, emails or phone calls that are not compliant with the requirements will be deemed spam.
Under the decree, telemarketers are not permitted to make any calls before obtaining the prior consent of the targeted consumers.
Nhiều công ty lớn có chức năng quản lý, tư vấn về nội dung cho các YouTuber ở Việt Nam. Đây là đầu mối để các cơ quan hữu trách xử lý các video vi phạm.
Chiều 10/9, Sở Thông tin và Truyền thông tỉnh Bắc Giang ra quyết định xử phạt Nguyễn Văn Hưng, chủ kênh YouTube Hưng Vlog 7,5 triệu đồng vì vi phạm các quy định về trách nhiệm sử dụng dịch vụ mạng xã hội.
Chưa đầy một tháng bị phạt, Hưng Vlog lại tiếp tục đăng video nhảm nhí lên một kênh YouTube khác.
Deborah Elms
A Vietnamese man plays game on a mobile phone. Photo by Shutterstock/Tuan Hung.Vietnam has the highest number of adult gamers in the world in 2020, according to a recently released global consumer survey by German data portal Statista.
