In a picturesque scene of decadent place settings and gold-accented tablecloths, President Donald Trump hosted his cadre of tech powerhouse CEOs and business tycoons at a lavish dinner honoring their donations to his White House ballroom — and among those in attendance, the Bay Area was abundantly represented. Late this summer, the president announced his plan […]
Tag: tech giants
No ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card for Google in Its Latest Monopoly Lawsuit
If you’re like me, you probably barely notice the advertisements for skin care products, niche kitchen appliances, and the latest pumpkin-flavored treat that fill the margins of nearly every website you visit. While we’re all familiar with the omnipresent digital pop-up ads on everything from cooking blogs to news sites, many internet users don’t understand […]
The Case for Breaking Up Big Tech
The Big, the Bad, the Un-American… In 2020, New York Times writer Kashmir Hill set out to answer a salient question: how dependent are we on Big Tech? Working with a technologist, Hill designed a virtual private network that blocked all internet addresses controlled by tech’s five largest companies: Amazon, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Meta, […]
Facebook: Myanmar’s Misinformation Megaphone
UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee, upon reporting about the Rohingya crisis last March, concluded, “Facebook has now turned into a beast.” Indeed it has. In Myanmar, what was once intended as a harmless social networking platform has warped into a powerful vessel for the government to target its citizens with inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda. In […]
Whole Foods in the Rust Belt
“Bright” is the word that might best describe the United States’ economic powerhouse: Silicon Valley. Yet while San Jose and Palo Alto sparkle in the political spotlight, Midwestern towns of Detroit and Dayton have been left in the dark. For the last two decades, while manufacturing towns in the Rust Belt have declined, Silicon Valley […]