Labor

The Content Creators Coalition (c3), which advocates on behalf of musicians, is launching an ad campaign against YouTube and its parent company Google, accusing them of exploiting artists. The group unveiled a pair of video ads on Oct 25 that call out YouTube for undermining musicians’ control over their content and cutting into their ad revenue streams.

“Google’s YouTube has shortchanged artists while earning billions of dollars off our music,” said Melvin Gibbs, an accomplished bassist and the president of c3. “Artists know YouTube can do better. So, rather than hiding behind outdated laws, YouTube and Google should work to give artists more control over our music and pay music creators fairly when our songs are played on their platform.” The group wants Congress to update the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which it believes places too much of a burden on content creators to police the internet for copyright infringements while letting internet platforms off the hook.

[Commentary] Some sectors have learned to exploit the explosive possibilities of digital tools, while others by and large have not. I call this the “information gap.” The upshot is that information technologies have not lost their power and can in fact lead to a productivity resurgence. These results reinforce our hypothesis that a more rapid diffusion of information technology into the physical industries, such as healthcare, education, transportation, manufacturing, and energy, could substantially boost innovation and incomes in these sectors.

Cloud computing and 5G wireless networks are thus foundational platforms to increase economic opportunity to more people in more places.

[Bret Swanson is concurrently president of Entropy Economics LLC.]

With nearly half a million computing jobs going unfilled this year, according to Code.org, everyone from Google to the White House is eager to emphasize tech training. It's offered in the name of closing the so-called “skills gap,” and giving a more diverse set of people, beyond Silicon Valley and New York City, a crack at lucrative careers in tech. But Hopeworks’ founders and staff recognized nearly two decades ago that propelling people into the tech workforce from communities like Camden (NJ), notorious for its high rates of poverty and crime, requires a lot more than just teaching them to code.

The American Psychological Association recognizes that poverty and exposure to violence at a young age can be linked to post traumatic stress disorder in young adults. So Hopeworks' leaders believe that to prepare their students for work, teaching them social and emotional coping skills is at least as important as teaching them Javascript.

Nearly two dozen major companies in technology and other industries are planning to launch a coalition to demand legislation that would allow young, illegal immigrants a path to permanent residency.

The Coalition for the American Dream intends to ask Congress to pass bipartisan legislation in 2017 that would allow these immigrants, often referred to as “Dreamers,” to continue working in the United States, the documents said. Alphabet's Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Facebook, Intel, Uber, IBM, Marriott International Inc and other top U.S. companies are listed as members.

Few things unite a Republican stalwart like Sen Roy Blunt (R-MO) and a Democratic firebrand like Sen Claire McCaskill (D-MO). But the prospect of a political win prompted the two Sens to put aside their differences this week — and practically plead with Amazon to plop its new headquarters in their shared home state of Missouri. In doing so, the duo joined a growing group of federal lawmakers — from Pennsylvania to Texas — who are actively angling for the e-commerce giant’s second corporate outpost, dubbed HQ2.

The new hub could generate 50,000 new jobs and $5 billion in fresh Amazon investment wherever it ultimately lands, at least in the company’s eyes. For members of Congress, though, this sort of race to capture corporate cash and attention always presents an immense contradiction. Enticing new jobs and dollars sometimes means that lawmakers must woo the very businesses that they’re supposed to be regulating with a far more objective eye. And they face a special challenge when it comes to Amazon, a tech behemoth that has long faced criticism for its hyperaggressive tactics as it conquers new industries, from entertainment to cloud computing to smart-home devices.

Facebook is looking to hire people who have national security clearances, a move the company thinks is necessary to prevent foreign powers from manipulating future elections through its social network, apparently. Workers with such clearance can access information classified by the US government. Facebook plans to use these people -- and their ability to receive government information about potential threats -- to search more proactively for questionable social media campaigns ahead of elections, apparently. Job candidates like this are often former government and intelligence officials or contractors. The status can carry over to private-sector jobs, as long as the position still requires access to sensitive information. Previously granted clearances become inactive when intelligence workers leave government employment, but they can be reactivated on Facebook’s behalf, the person said.

The New York Times presented new social media guidelines for its reporters in a memo that includes a warning to "not express partisan opinions" or "promote political views," among other rules. "In social media posts, our journalists must not express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts The Times’s journalistic reputation,” reads the memo from executive editor Dean Baquet. “Our journalists should be especially mindful of appearing to take sides on issues that The Times is seeking to cover objectively," he wrote.

"We consider all social media activity by our journalists to come under this policy. While you may think that your Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram, Snapchat or other social media accounts are private zones, separate from your role at The Times, in fact everything we post or 'like' online is to some degree public. And everything we do in public is likely to be associated with The Times," the memo warns.

Google will invest $1 billion over the next five years in nonprofit organizations helping people adjust to the changing nature of work, the largest philanthropic pledge to date from the Internet giant. The announcement of the national digital skills initiative, made by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in Pittsburgh (PA), is a tacit acknowledgment from one of the world's most valuable companies that it bears some responsibility for rapid advances in technology that are radically reshaping industries and eliminating jobs in the US and around the world. Pichai's pitstop in an old industrial hub that has reinvented itself as a technology and robotics center is the first on a "Grow with Google Tour." The tour that will crisscross the country will work with libraries and community organizations to provide career advice and training.

Women in the US are substantially more likely than men to say gender discrimination is a major problem in the technology industry, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in July and August. The survey comes amid public debate about underrepresentation and treatment of women – as well as racial and ethnic minorities – in the industry.

Critics of Silicon Valley have cited high-profile cases as evidence that the industry has fostered a hostile workplace culture. For their part, tech companies point to their commitment to increasing workforce diversity, even as some employees claim the industry is increasingly hostile to white males. The new survey finds that roughly three-quarters of Americans (73%) say discrimination against women is a problem in the tech industry, with 37% citing it as a major problem and an equal share citing it as a minor one. But 44% of women say it is a major problem, compared with just 29% of men. And roughly a third of men (32%) say discrimination against women is not a problem, compared with 17% of women. Younger women are more likely than older women to view gender discrimination as a major problem in the tech industry. About half (49%) of women younger than 50 say this, compared with 39% of women 50 and older.

There is a small but growing band of Silicon Valley heretics who complain about the rise of the so-called “attention economy”: an internet shaped around the demands of an advertising economy. These refuseniks are rarely founders or chief executives, who have little incentive to deviate from the mantra that their companies are making the world a better place. Instead, they tend to have worked a rung or two down the corporate ladder: designers, engineers and product managers who, like Rosenstein, several years ago put in place the building blocks of a digital world from which they are now trying to disentangle themselves.

There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. But those concerns are trivial compared with the devastating impact upon the political system that some of Rosenstein’s peers believe can be attributed to the rise of social media and the attention-based market that drives it. Drawing a straight line between addiction to social media and political earthquakes like Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, they contend that digital forces have completely upended the political system and, left unchecked, could even render democracy as we know it obsolete.