Antitrust, Competition Law, Consumer Protection
Big Data, Cybersecurity, the Digital Economy, and Privacy
Companies, Corporate Governance, & Regulation
Techno-optimism for 2022
The 2021 tech that impressed us the most
The state of AI in 2021
Bernard Marr’s 7 biggest consumer technology trends in 2022
A Normie’s Guide to Becoming a Crypto Person or how to (cautiously and sceptically) fall down the rabbit hole
How one-click shopping is creating Amazon warehouse towns
European Commission package to improve working conditions in digital labour platforms
Big Tech’s flagships are leaking
China has been trying to build out a local supply chain for semiconductors—its biggest import item. Despite billions of dollars of government support (pdf, p. 9) later, China’s chip processing ability is still at least a decade behind the most advanced players. And some of its possible semiconductor champions are already failing
Tech literacy is important for everyone, not just kids
Crisis mode on! Discovery of major software vulnerability unleashes race to patch it
DeepMind, the Alphabet–owned AI research company, published three research papers about this year’s most hotly debated AI tool: large language models. These models are typically trained on an enormous amount of text and underpin services from Big Tech companies like Google to start-ups like Grammarly
2021 has been a bucketful of new tech words that don't make sense, like NFT. Here's an explanation for all of them.
One expensive typo! Bored Ape' NFT worth $284,495 accidentally sells for just $2,844
Speaking of NFTs, many old brands like Budweiser and Nike are launching NFTs. These early steps into crypto by established corporations are clearly experiments to see what works and resonates with consumers, and there is no doubt that many will be chalked up as failures
Web3, tech's latest buzzword criticised by Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey as well as venture capital firms' involvement in building the next new internet. In return, Marc Andreessen blocks Dorsey…on Twitter. And Musk says metaverse isn’t ‘compelling’ and Web3 ‘more marketing than reality’
Last Telegram update of 2021 brings some highly anticipated features. The messaging app picks up iMessage-style reactions and a new formatting to hide spoilers.
Apple once seemed unbeatable in Washington. Here’s how small app developers and companies like Tile, Spotify, Tile, and Epic have helped change that. Dutch watchdog says that Apple's App Store broke competition laws. Nonetheless, it moves closer to a $3 trillion valuation
The EU gave Microsoft unconditional antitrust approval for its $16 billion bid for AI and speech tech company, Nuance.
We need antitrust laws to limit America's food monopolies
Why the mid-20th century was not the GOLDEN AGE OF ANTIRUST
Italy fines Amazon record $1.3 bn for abuse of market dominance. The fine is the latest blow against Big Tech ‘self-preferencing’
Italy’s Google and Apple decisions: regulatory paternalism and overenforcement
Competition Espresso with Tommaso Valletti [video recording]
UK regulator says Google and Apple have 'vice-like' grip on consumers
Dirk Auer on merger control’s misaligned incentives
U.K.'s Facebook order – Meta and Giphy deal is ‘the first unwinding of a big tech deal in CMA history’ – and could chill tech acquisitions. The CMA shows a more assertive posture in blocking Facebook purchase of Giphy
Mandatory interoperability is not a ‘super tool’ for platform competition
China to tighten antitrust legal enforcement, says new antitrust bureau head
The inflation-fighting Bill, an overwhelmingly bipartisan effort would finally crack down on the ocean shipping cartel
Ford fined $53k in Australia by the ACCC after spending $4.5 million to fix misleading Mustang Mach 1 brochure
Towards a more complete understanding of market power and consumer harm in antitrust law [related PAPER]
How the U.S. is taking cues from Europe on tech policy. Europe's tech regulation influence on the U.S. marks a notable shift in the setting of global standards as international lawmakers continue to scrutinise Big Tech
[PAPER] Algorithmic and human collusion
[PAPER] Regulating big tech: From competition policy to sector regulation?
[PAPER] Towards efficient information sharing in network markets
Arts, Entertainment, Music
Every December, Spotify sends each of its 365 million users a recap of their year on the platform called Spotify Wrapped. Interviews with extreme power users on how to spend 432,870 minutes on Spotify in a year
The 50 best movie soundtracks of the past 50 years. From the iconic closing notes of ‘The Breakfast Club’ to the era-encapsulating mix of ‘Dazed and Confused’ to the work of the Purple One himself, these are the best mixes of cinema and sound since 1971
What song are you listening to?
Netflix drops prices in India. It has struggled to gain traction with highly price-conscious Indian consumers
13 favourite television shows of 2021
The Matrix Resurrections Review: The Wachowskis were the true oracles, warning about the dangers of trusting tech 22 years ago. With the latest sequel, Lana is back with another harbinger
Music sales this year. Adele had a good 2021 selling 1.4m copies of her new album “30”, but this was less than the 8m copies of her 2015 album. Taylor Swift dropped multiple albums this year on the way to a cumulative 4m copies sold. Amazingly, Fleetwood Mac sold nearly 1m copies including of their 1977 album, Rumours!
Big Data, Cybersecurity, the Digital Economy, and Privacy
Crypto executives were supposed to discuss fraud and manipulation. Instead, members of Congress grilled them about the waning global dominance of the U.S. dollar
50,000 Facebook users may have been targeted by private surveillance
2021 was the year cybersecurity became everyone's problem
Machine learning and the challenge of predicting fake news
The internet runs on free open-source software. Who pays to fix it? Volunteer-run projects like Log4J keep the internet running. The result is unsustainable burnout, and a national security risk when they go wrong
Open-source intelligence challenges state monopolies on information. Academics, activists, and amateurs are making imaginative use of powerful tools
Public agencies are buying up AI-driven hiring tools and “Bossware”
The popular family safety app Life360 is selling precise location data on its tens of millions of users to a multibillion-dollar industry that buys, packages, and sells people’s movements
Good Data Matters: how much of the global economy are we missing?
[PAPER] Is digital financial inclusion unlocking growth?
The best political economy books of 2021
Apple came within reach of a $3 trillion market capitalisation on 13 Dec., a marker no publicly traded company has ever touched before. A few factors have helped Apple weather pandemic uncertainties, including a wave of new products and consistent cash flow. Even as fears around the omicron variant shook the market in late November, Apple was able to—and investors bet will continue to—hold strong.
à 200%: Percentage Apple shares are up from the start of the pandemic
à 22,000%: Percentage Apple shares have returned since 1990
à 28%: Percentage that return is equivalent to per year
Apple’s competitors aren’t far behind the $3 trillion mark, though. Microsoft is a close second in market capitalisation, even surpassing Apple for a time in October
Punishing success is bad regulatory policy
Regulate, break up, open up: how to fix Facebook in 2022
Business, Economics, Management, Leadership
The World Inequality Lab recently released the 2022 World Inequality Report, a 230-page collection of data and analysis on wealth, income, gender, and environmental inequality around the globe. The Report says the richest own more than 75% of global wealth. The poorest own 2%. Over the past two decades, the income gap between the top 10% and bottom 50% has nearly doubled. India’s very unequal – top 1% own 33% of the country's wealth. Three big takeaways from the Report: (i) Global wealth inequality translates into global pollution inequality, (ii) Global gender pay equity hasn’t progressed much in decades, and (iii) Nations are getting richer, but governments are getting poorer
Lifting the lid on global inequality. The reality captured by the World Inequality Report 2022 reflects human choices, which means that it can be changed by making other choices.
Investing in the next generation of transportation infrastructure
G-7 Finance Chiefs plan to discuss inflation as prices soar. Inflation hit a 10-year high in the UK in October. In November, the euro zone saw the highest inflation since the common currency was introduced, while in the US inflation grew at the fastest pace since 1982. The traditional tools for taming prices may not be enough this time: raising interest rates will do little to fix supply chain issues. Despite the pandemic recession, many Americans have cash to spend thanks to government stimulus payments, but they can’t readily find what they want to buy on store shelves because covid-19 has backed up manufacturing and shipping. It doesn’t help that they’re mostly buying goods, not services, which has further burdened supply chains
World economy to top $100 trillion in 2022 for first time
What Is the Consumer Price Index?
Workplace diversity isn’t just about equality – it’s a competitive advantage
Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony, renowned experts in cognitive biases and decision making, explain how noise clouds organisations’ judgements, and what to do about it. This is also in a book, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
And a lot of noise erupted because of Better.Com’s CEO, Vishal Garg, firing 900 people on a Zoom call this month [more on him here]. He is taking time off as the board of directors reportedly said the company is conducting a leadership assessment
Which confirms that soft stuff is the hard stuff: leaders must show vulnerability in uncertain times
David Schonthal on getting people to agree to new ideas by overcoming four frictions
Burying the laissez-faire zombie. The long-standing dichotomy between the state and the market is misleading and poses a major obstacle to understanding and addressing today’s policy challenges
Details on this year’s Nobel Prize in economics, here
Open your strategy-making process when disruptions are coming from all directions
What are OKRs? Objectives and Key Results explained
Invite Only! Why is the U.S. holding a Summit for Democracy? Joshua Kurlantzick on an American strategy for “defending against authoritarianism.” “Democracy needs champions,” U.S. President Joe Biden said as he welcomed leaders from more than 100 countries to his two-day virtual Summit for Democracy. China responds with its paper, Democracy That Works, trolling the summit with Harry Potter jokes. The Russian and Chinese Ambassadors to the US write a joint essay saying that Biden’s summit “will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world”
An interactive map of UNESCO’s world heritage sites
One year on, most voters say Brexit has gone badly
Why Africa feels let down by India’s largest Covid-19 vaccine maker and Pfizer data shows that its COVID-19 pill is effective against severe disease
The falafel debate has turned into a verifiable food fight. Israelis who argue falafel is their own face strong objections from Egyptians, Palestinians and Lebanese, who themselves claim to be the sole owners of these fried chickpea balls
Goodbye, Nutella. World's hazelnut supply faces climate threat
First zero-waste chocolate lets you eat guilt-free [from 2020, but I just came across this]
The World’s Top 10 most spoken languages and this is the language each country wants to learn the most
English may be the world’s ruling lingua franca, but it is up against an evolutionary process that could take things in different directions. Will it survive the long haul?
Some of our most common, ingrained expressions have damaging effects on millions of people – and many of us don't know we're hurting others when we speak
Study finds that brain surgeons and rocket scientists no brighter than the rest of us but more adept at certain types of tasks. More on Health Day
Daniel Kahneman’s favourite approach for making better decisions
Making your phone’s screen Extra Dim
Abigail Shrier: “What I told the students of Princeton. Show some self-respect and reclaim your freedom”
Same as the Old Boss. Why are elected authoritarians losing public support? Steven Levitsky on how voter frustration is turning against them
Elon Musk is Time’s Person of the Year, saying the maker of both electric vehicles and rockets represents a “massive shift in our society.” And he was on Saturday Night Live. He faces a $15 billion tax bill, the real reason he’s selling stock
Space cadets Branson and Bezos scoop the 2021 shamelessness prize
“The wisest advice I ever got was to ‘live like a student,’” says Mark Cuban. “That served me a long, long time.”
Nasa’s new administrator, former astronaut Bill Nelson, discusses the space race with China, UFOs, billionaire ‘astronauts’ and building a ‘mission control’ for climate change
Israeli 'psychic' Uri Geller still baffling fans at 75
Greetings from Meta! The born-again tech giant would like a word.
How will the Metaverse affect productivity? Mark Zuckerberg envisions a kind of virtual world of science fiction novels. How long it will take for this "Metaverse" to meaningfully change how people work and live?
As Facebook plans the Metaverse, it struggles to combat harassment in VR. And it, or rather Meta, is testing a way to do more with less. Despite the constant deluge of content flowing into Facebook and Instagram, Meta has struggled to get enough data to train AI to spot harmful content, so it’s banking on an emerging approach
Facebook's crises reach new heights in 2021. A trove of leaked internal documents damages the company's already battered reputation
Facebook lost a bunch of talent in 2021 — here are the most notable departures
Gaming the system goes on! Political advertisers skirted Facebook’s rules in 2020 — and got away with it. A new study shows that most of the time Facebook made an enforcement decision on a political ad after it ran, it’s made the wrong call
Americans widely distrust Facebook, TikTok and Instagram with their data, poll finds. Pulled between not trusting some tech companies and still wanting to use their products, people look to government regulation, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
4 lessons this Google VP learned about inclusivity in 2021: ‘We must own our blind spots’
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