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Big Tech

No Tech For Apartheid

September 14, 2022 Mackenzie Dolan and Dave Welsh, Workers World. , , , ,
Tech workers held actions in multiple cities Sept. 8, demanding Big Tech drop its Project Nimbus contract with the apartheid police state of Israel. Project Nimbus is a $1.2 billion-dollar contract Amazon and Google have with the Israeli government and military for “cloud computing” that aids in surveillance and persecution of the Palestinian people through artificial intelligence. Actions were held in Seattle, New York City, San Francisco and Durham, North Carolina. In Seattle, activists spoke about reasons why workers will not support the Zionist project and oppose the cooperation of Israeli forces with the Seattle Police Department. The Palestinian people face untold horrors of oppression by the Israeli government.

Court Rejects Google’s Attempt to Dismiss Rumble’s Antitrust Lawsuit

July 31, 2022 Glenn Greenwald. , , , ,
California - A federal district court in California on Friday denied Google's motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the Silicon Valley giant is violating federal antitrust laws by preventing fair competition against its YouTube video platform. The lawsuit against Google, which has owned YouTube since its 2006 purchase for $1.65 billion, was brought in early 2021 by Rumble, the free speech competitor to YouTube. Its central claim is that Google's abuse of its monopolistic stranglehold on search engines to destroy all competitors to its various other platforms is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which makes it unlawful to “monopolize, or attempt to monopolize…any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.”

Three Examples Of Large Tech Co-ops

June 6, 2022 Leo Sammallahti, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
The most valuable companies in the stock market today can be found in the technology sector. The first publicly traded company in history to reach a $1 trillion valuation was Apple in 2018. While it took the company more than 40 years to reach that milestone, less than four years later its valuation has increased by a further two trillion, reaching another record breaking $3 trillion. The “trillion dollar club” has also since expanded to include three more companies - all of them in the technology sector. However, the markets appear to be falling out of love with the big tech . Earlier in 2022 Facebook lost $230bn in value in the biggest one-day stock plunge in history. It has since been overshadowed by several similar collapses that have (as of today) erased more than $2.6 trillion from the value of the five largest tech companies since the start of the year.

No Such Thing As Dissent In The Age Of Big Tech

May 8, 2022 Robert Scheer, Scheer Post. , , ,
“Scheer Intelligence” has been reporting on the rise of censorship in the internet age in a number of ways since the podcast was started in 2015. Now host Robert Scheer is concerned that, under the cloak of the Ukraine conflict, all forms of alternative media on the internet could soon be eliminated. Examples already abound: archival videos of Chris Hedges’ RT show “On Contact” were taken down from YouTube; social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have been shutting down any posts that challenge mainstream narratives on the Ukraine conflict;  Google AdSense recently informed publishers, including MintPress News, that, “Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war,” lumping any pieces that question the NATO narrative on Ukraine into the content it described; and now, both MintPress News and Consortium News, two longstanding independent media websites founded by veteran journalists, have been banned from taking donations via PayPal.

Apple Retail Workers At The Grand Central Store Are Trying To Unionize

April 21, 2022 Amanda Silberling, Portside. , , , ,
New York City, New York - From Activision to Amazon, historic union elections are changing the way that Americans think about work. Now, Apple is the next tech giant to reckon with an employee-driven labor movement. Calling themselves the Fruit Stand Workers United (FSWU), employees at Apple’s Grand Central Terminal retail location launched a website designed to educate their fellow workers about why they want to unionize their store. “Year over year, the cost of living in New York City has not kept pace with our wages,” the FSWU’s mission statement reads. “Meanwhile, Apple has grown to be the most valuable company in the world. Why should its retail workers live precariously?” The collective will be affiliated with Workers United, the same group that has helped over 20 Starbucks locations form unions since December.

Digital Ecosocialism: Breaking The Power Of Big Tech

April 18, 2022 Michael Kwet, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
In the space of a few years, the debate on how to rein in Big Tech has become mainstream, discussed across the political spectrum. Yet, so far the proposals to regulate largely fail to address the capitalist, imperialist and environmental dimensions of digital power, which together are deepening global inequality and pushing the planet closer to collapse. We urgently need to build a ecosocialist digital ecosystem, but what would that look like and how can we get there? This essay aims to highlight some of the core elements of a digital socialist agenda — a Digital Tech Deal (DTD) — centered on principles of anti-imperialism, class abolition, reparations and degrowth that can transition us to a 21st century socialist economy.

‘Massachusetts Is Not For Sale’ Campaign

February 27, 2022 Massachusetts Is Not For Sale. , , ,
Massachusetts - As the organized opposition to the “Big Tech loophole law” ballot initiative grows in Massachusetts, a number of key consumer, community, and civil rights groups have joined with workers’ rights advocates to announce their commitment of activating and growing the coalition opposing that initiative under a new name: Massachusetts is not for Sale. The new Massachusetts is not for Sale name also reflects the concerns shared by coalition members regarding the record-shattering infusions of cash that Big Tech employers are pumping into the coffers of the corporate-funded committee advocating for the passage of the Big Tech loophole law both at the State House and as a November 2022 ballot question.

Tech Workers, Bigger Than Big Tech

November 28, 2021 J S Tan, Progressive International. , , ,
Tech companies are the new empires of today: Alphabet annual revenue surpassed Hungary’s GDP, Facebook employs over 15000 content moderators around the world, and Microsoft has built datavcenters in nearly every corner of our planet. Yet we continue to be sold the myth that the workers of the tech industry, which spans every corner of the globe, have nothing to do with each other. To hold these tech companies accountable, tech workers in the United States have begun to organize. “Help us be Alphabet’s conscience”, proclaimed the recently-formed Alphabet Workers Union, a minority union composed of full-time employees, temporary employees, vendors, and contractors at Google’s parent company.

Eric Schmidt Cashes In On Artificial Intelligence Arms Race

September 23, 2021 Dan Cohen, Mintpress News. , , ,
Mountain View, California - The United States is leading a new artificial intelligence arms race that could spell the end of humanity. Back in 2014, a few years before he died, Stephen Hawking warned us about artificial intelligence: The primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have, have proved very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Once humans develop artificial intelligence, it would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.” Today, artificial intelligence, or AI, is the centerpiece of the U.S. empire’s plan to maintain global dominance. AI is essentially computer super-intelligence that does what human brains can not. Exponential technological advances have rendered our human brains, constrained by the slow process of biological evolution, inferior to modern supercomputers.

Carpenters’ Union Halts Work On Amazon, Microsoft, Google And Facebook Expansions

September 21, 2021 Mike Lewis, GeekWire. , , ,
Construction work on several major tech company expansion projects, including those by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook, slowed to a crawl today as the region largest carpenters’ union halted work over a wage dispute. At 6 a.m. Thursday, 2,000 Northwest Carpenter Union members walked off the job and began picketing at four major job sites, including Microsoft expansions in Redmond and Sammamish; Google and Amazon projects in Bellevue Plaza, and Facebook’s Building X in Redmond. Evelyn Shapiro, the union’s executive secretary-treasurer, said the affected sites were not randomly chosen. In the push for better wages and benefits, the union looked at companies “that are making billions,” she said. Specifically, the union is striking against the contractor consortium, the Associated General Contractors, and not the tech companies themselves.

Scheer Intelligence: What Has Silicon Valley Done To Our Food?

June 25, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , , , ,
Companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have started to become household names, producing meat substitutes that taste as close to meat as their scientists have been able to engineer. In the midst of a climate crisis that threatens our very existence, plenty of scientists have been recommending that we all look for ways to cut down on our meat intake because cows produce large amounts of methane that has a significant negative environmental impact. Eating animal products also brings up animal rights questions. One of the main selling points of these Silicon Valley companies is essentially that we can save the planet and eat ethically without sacrificing taste. Yet, there is a key question few people seem to be asking about these new products: Are these meat substitutes good for our health?

Scheer Intelligence: Has Silicon Valley Made It Impossible For Us To Listen?

June 11, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
At a time in which distractions seem to multiply by the second thanks to the omnipresence of screens and social media, and COVID-19 pandemic has isolated us further, we’re all having a hard time truly listening to one another and connecting. Silicon Valley veteran Ximena Vengoechea wants to change that with her new book “Listen Like You Mean It.” On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” host Robert Scheer speaks to the User Experience designer about her work at Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, and the role tech companies have had on our ability to listen to one another. “I think some of how we lost [our ability to listen] has been the sort of moment that we’re in, which is this culturally, politically divided moment, this technologically accelerated moment,” says Vengoechea...

Tech Giants Face Rising pressure from shareholder activists

May 27, 2021 Rebecca Klar, The Hill. , , ,
Activist shareholders are pushing for the proposals to be adopted during this week’s annual meetings, the first to be held after a year that’s included nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol and challenging working conditions for many on-site workers in the tech industry.

Biden Continues Conflict With China Through The Quad

March 19, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Asia Times. , , ,
On March 12, the heads of government of four countries, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, and US President Joe Biden, met for a virtual meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, better known as the Quad. Modi’s opening remarks illustrate the emptiness of the public agenda; he called the Quad “a force for global good” with no details beyond a list of areas of collaboration (“vaccines, climate change and emerging technologies”). There was no direct mention of China during the meeting. In the details relating to the launching of “an ambitious new joint partnership that is going to boost vaccine manufacturing,” a more disturbing agenda reveals itself

Antitrust Is Back In The United States

March 14, 2021 Eric Posner, Public Syndicate. , , ,
Chicago – President Joe Biden is signaling that his administration will get tough on monopoly. With the appointments of Columbia University law professors Timothy Wu to the White House National Economic Council and Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), he has selected two well-known proponents of breaking up the Big Tech monopolies. Moreover, these appointments come on the heels of a major antitrust reform bill that Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced in the US Senate last month. Klobuchar’s bill aims to bolster antitrust enforcement in a number of ways. It would increase funding for the FTC and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, establish new bureaucratic offices to investigate and monitor antitrust compliance and market conditions, slap new civil penalties on violators, and expose firms to liability for anticompetitive business practices that currently fall through the cracks.
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