Tag: Big Tech

  • Helping gig workers help themselves

    By Steven Hill,  Hans Böckler Stiftung, April 11, 2022

    From new technologies to new organizing methods, tools and training for gig workers: Support is starting to emerge. Will it help? Will organized labor in the US pitch in?

    Gig workers emerged from an economy flattened by the contraction of 2008-9, which saw massive layoffs and a growing reserve labor pool.…

  • A Facelift for Facebook

    By Steven Hill, Project Syndicate, October 8, 2021

    The free market has never been a free-for-all, yet tech companies have long operated with few constraints on their business models. Perhaps the latest Facebook scandal will finally provide the impetus governments need to take effective action – beginning with the implementation of digital operating permits.

  • World Wide Weapon

    by Steven Hill, American Purpose, May 10, 2021

    Review of Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing
    by Chris Bail (Princeton University Press, 240 pp., $24.95)

    An author writing a political nonfiction book has to try to see into the future. From finished manuscript to bookstore delivery can easily take two years.…

  • Reining in Facebook and Google: A Common Transatlantic Project

    By Steven Hill and Stephan Richter, The Globalist, April 7, 2021

    Big Tech media present a serious challenge for Western democracies. Tackling them is a worthy mission for the Biden Administration and the EU to work on jointly.

    In recent weeks, two remarkable developments took place affecting Big Tech media.…

  • The Real Battle Between Big Tech and the Free Press Is Just Beginning

    By Steven Hill, Zocalo Public Square, April 1, 2021

    From Australia to Maryland, the news industry is in a fight for Its life against Facebook and Google

    From Australia to Maryland, the free press is waging a battle for survival against Facebook and Google. Besides being gushing firehoses of COVID disinformation and QAnon conspiracies, Google and Facebook have been dangerously undermining the financial stability of media outlets all over the world.…

  • Europe’s Digital Fix Is Already Broken

    by Steven Hill, Project Syndicate, March 25, 2021

    After unveiling two new digital regulations to much fanfare last year, the European Commission already needs to go back to the drawing board. Big Tech’s latest scandals have made clear that the only workable governance model for the digital economy is one that treats the leading platforms as utilities.

  • Big Tech vs the Free Press

    By Steven Hill, International Politics and Society, March 18, 2021

    Beyond censorship, Big Tech’s capture of digital ad revenue poses a major threat to the free press. But it could now face a united transatlantic front

    At the end of February 2021, two remarkable developments took place. First, Facebook and Google were trying to bully Australia over a new law requiring the Big Tech platforms to share digital advertising revenues with Australian media companies.…

  • How we can tame the wild west of Big Tech media?

    By Steven Hill, Mercury News, Jan 27, 2021

    Why do so many people, including both former President Donald Trump and new President Joe Biden, keep talking about getting rid of an obscure law called Section 230?

    The short answer is that Section 230, part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, is the legal underpinning for one of the largest and most consequential experiments in American history.…

  • How to deal with the social media monster

    by Steven Hill, Salon, Jan 16, 2021

    The beautiful dream of an open and free internet, serving as a global agora of unlimited free speech to provide for more popular participation in U.S. democracy, just crashed and burned one more time. 

    The gripping images of a mob ransacking the U.S.…