Category: Uncategorized
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21st century California workers need portable safety net
By Steven Hill, San Jose Mercury News, July 18, 2019
Allowing companies to eliminate worker benefits unleashes a race to the bottom
As Uber and Lyft scramble to find a profitable business model, it’s not surprising that they are opposing California Assembly Bill AB5. If this law goes into effect, it would force them to treat their California drivers as employees rather than as so-called “independent contractors.”…
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Beyond the valley of the gig economy
Interview with Steven Hill, 48 Hills, July 10, 2019
‘Raw Deal’ author Steven Hill on Uber tech, the perils of the “Californian Ideology,” and the twilight of the elites.
The overarching theme of this year’s LaborFest is “Labor On the Edge: Dystopia or a Future for Workers.”…
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Is Uber the Amazon — or the Enron — of the transportation industry?
By Steven Hill, Medium, May 9, 2019
Uber has been promoting itself in its pre-IPO roadshow as the “Amazon of transportation,” but the comparison is misleading. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is cleverly positioning his company so that it appears as more than just a taxi-like ride-hailing business, highlighting itself as an online platform that can connect users to a number of transportation-related side businesses.…
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Shared Responsibility: Better Than Single-Payer
By Steven Hill, The American Interest, March 25, 2019
Americans are going through another episodic bout of introspection regarding the nation’s floundering health care system. That volatility likely will increase as the 2020 presidential election season unfolds. At least six leading Democratic candidates for president are supporting a “Medicare for All” approach.…
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Gov. Newsom’s California data dividend idea is a dead end
By Steven Hill, San Jose Mercury News, March 7, 2019
Plan won’t benefit consumers or give them the privacy protections they deserve
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently proposed that consumers should “share in the wealth” generated from our data by companies like Facebook and Google. But his plan for a “data dividend” is the wrong approach.…
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Should Big Tech own our personal data?
By Steven Hill, Wired, February 13, 2019
Or should consumers sell their data — receive a “data dividend”?
FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND Google seem to take turns making the wrong kinds of headlines. Last month it was Google’s turn. The company was fined $57 million by a French regulatory agency, the first time a large Silicon Valley company has been penalized for violating the European Union’s new privacy rules known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).…
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Co-determination takes the spotlight in the US
By Steven Hill, Hans Böckler Stiftung, February 12, 2019
German-style codetermination gains ground in the US, pushed forward by presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren. Will Trump’s America take a page from Europe’s “social capitalism”?
Over the past year in the United States, German-style codetermination has moved closer to center stage in the national debate over inequality and worker’s rights.…
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WA Post: How to rein in Big Tech
By Steven Hill, Washington Post, January 7, 2019
Self-regulation by Internet-based companies clearly has not worked. The best way to harness our digital future is to use technology itself to apply established business principles for regulating Big Tech.
Every month, new controversies emerge regarding Facebook, Google, Twitter and other Internet-based companies.…
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Will Germany’s plan for AI make it a leader? Or will it divide Europe?
By Steven Hill, Ethics of Algorithms-Bertelsmann Stiftung, November 16, 2018
Why Germany needs to focus on AI that benefits humanity
After a long period of planning and incubation, the German government recently agreed on its new strategy for Artificial Intelligence (AI) development. The plan certainly includes a number of forward-looking steps, but it is also deeply flawed, and for two reasons: First, like the EU’s AI plan, the German plan tries too hard to copy the Silicon Valley model, which neither the EU nor Germany can replicate.…
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The “Uber Way” of precarious work
By Steven Hill, Hans Böckler Stiftung, October 16, 2018
Think Uber is gone from Germany? Think again. It never really left, and now it is pushing to expand operations. That would be a mistake.
Recently I was on a Berlin radio show with several taxi drivers and small taxi owners, including the head of the Berliner Taxi-Innung and the co-founder of Taxi Deutschland.…
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Trump Overseeing an All Out, Under-the-Radar Attack on Workers
By Steven Hill, In These Times, August 17, 2018
Amidst headlines about porn stars and bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it can be hard to track the many ways the Trump administration is hurting workers in the United States. The Supreme Court’s Janus ruling that struck a blow to unions’ ability to collect membership dues held a brief spotlight in the national news churn.…
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Uber and Airbnb’s overdue comeuppance in NY City: Better late than never
By Steven Hill, New York Daily News, August 13, 2018
New York City’s new regulations for the popular services Uber and Airbnb are way overdue. These so-called “sharing economy” companies broke on the scene about a decade ago, claiming they were good for consumers and provided flexible employment in a down economy.…
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The distributed workforce: what will jobs of the future look like?
By Steven Hill, Hans Böckler Stiftung, July 2018
What will the future of work look like? Will the robots take over our jobs? Will increasing numbers of workers toil in gig jobs, or in solo self-employment, scrambling for a living? Or will more workers enjoy the flexibility of part-time employment, protected by a portable safety net without sacrificing income and security?…
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SF Examiner: A plan for SF’s new mayor London Breed
By Steven Hill, San Francisco Examiner, June 20, 2018
San Francisco’s new mayor-elect, London Breed, has lifted many hopes and expectations but her challenges are formidable. As a journalist, I spend a lot of time in Europe, and recently I was a fellow at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) for several months.…
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Interview: Medicine digital, and EU policy on artificial intelligence
Interview with Steven Hill, ARD’s “Europa Magazin,” May 27, 2018
Medicine digital, and EU policy on artificial intelligence.
Interview with San Francisco-based tech journalist (author of “The Start-up Illusion”) by German public media company ARD.
Link to interview here (Hill interview begins at the 2:37 point).… -
Why we need a CERN for AI
By Steven Hill, Ethics of Algorithms-Bertelsmann Stiftung, May 22, 2018
The late visionary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking was not only a leading scientist in the study of black holes, quantum mechanics and cosmology, he also professed strong views about artificial intelligence (AI). AI, he warned, could be “the best, or the worst thing,ever to happen to humanity.…
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Handelsblatt: Den Tech-Riesen müssen die digitalen Zügel angelegt werden
By Steven Hill, Handelsblatt, May 11, 2018
Wir können nicht darauf hoffen, bis sich die Internet-Monopolisten selbst regulieren. Stattdessen brauchen wir eine Renationalisierung des Internets.
Immer wieder aufs Neue erleben wir Kontroversen um Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter und andere Silicon-Valley-Unternehmen.
Der Chor der Kritiker und die Zahl der Anklagepunkte, die sich gegen diese „Plattform-Monopolisten“ im Internet ins Feld führen lassen, werden immer größer: Monetarisierung persönlicher Daten, Beeinflussung von Wahlen, Verbreitung von Fake News, Ausschalten der Konkurrenz durch das Einverleiben von Start-ups und Förderung von Internetsucht durch „psychografisches Targeting“, das sich gezielt an emotional verwundbare Nutzer richtet.…
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Interview: “Digital Licenses and Digital Borders”
Interview with Steven Hill, re:publica 18, May 4, 2018
Shifted News: Interview at re:publica 18 conference, Berlin, Germany
“Digital Licenses and Digital Borders,” link to interview here.…
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Keynote lecture: “Who will control Big Data, the currency of the digital age?”
Lecture by Steven Hill, re:publica 18, May 3, 2018
re:publica conference – Festival for the Digital Society, Berlin
Steven Hill keynote speech, “Who will control Big Data, the currency of the digital age?”…
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Keynote lecture: “Reining in Facebook and the Platform Economy”
Lecture by Steven Hill, Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), April 24, 2018
Keynote lecture, “Reining in Facebook and the Platform Economy”, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB)
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To Tame the Tech Giants, We Need to Secure Our Digital Borders
By Steven Hill, Washington Monthly, April 15, 2018
The government must force platforms like Facebook and Google to obey the terms of new, digital licenses—or get kicked out of the U.S. market.
In a sign of the times, investor George Soros devoted the bulk of his hour-long speech this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to excoriating Facebook and Google.… -
NY Times: New Leadership Has Not Changed Uber
by Steven Hill, New York Times, March 26, 2018
The recent killing of a pedestrian by a self-driving Uber vehicle is the source of the latest negative headlines about this company. But there’s a much deeper problem. While the leadership has changed — Dara Khosrowshahi replaced Uber’s co-founder Travis Kalanick as chief executive last August after a series of scandals — the company itself has not evolved.…
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Ridesharing Versus Public Transit
By Steven Hill, American Prospect, March 27, 2018
How Uber and Lyft tend to widen disparities of race and class in urban transportation systems
Many working people rely on public transportation to get to their jobs. Mass transit choices have often been entangled with racial politics as well. So not surprisingly, issues of race and class are reflected in the Uber-ization of our city streets.…
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Handelsblatt: Ubers neues Fahrdienstmodell sollte reguliert werden
by Steven Hill, Handelsblatt, March 23, 2018
Ubers neues Fahrdienstmodell hat zwar das Potenzial, vorhandene Verkehrsoptionen auf positive Weise zu ergänzen. Doch ohne Regulierung wirkt es zerstörerisch.
Der neue Uber-Chef Dara Khosrowshahi ist zurzeit als „Botschafter des guten Willens“ weltweit unterwegs und präsentiert das neue, das freundlichere und sanftere Gesicht des Unternehmens.…
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Losing money rapidly, how long can Uber last?
By Steven Hill, Salon, January 14, 2018
ber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has a lot on his plate, trying to recover from a hellish year for the popular ride-sharing service. So he doesn’t need the crippling legal blow that the European Union just dealt to Uber’s global ambition to be the leading taxi-ish service for the digital age.…