President Trump's de-platforming from Twitter and Facebook earlier this month, in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riots, prematurely snatched away the bullhorn that helped spread that toxicity.

Now politicians around the world are grappling with how to facilitate more sustainable solutions to the spread of disinformation, hate speech and violence on social media platforms.

Across the Tasman, over 50 MPs from across the political spectrum have formed the Parliamentary Friends of Making Social Media Safe, which is a non-partisan group that will look at ways social media platforms can be held more responsible for the content that they publish and disseminate.

Parliamentary friendship groups are nothing new in Australian politics - they have existed for everything from basketball to gun control. But they serve to focus politicians on discussing issues that may lead to policy outcomes. As such, the forum is a step ahead of anything New Zealand politicians have done to consider the many issues recent events on the largest social media platforms have thrown up. 

The permanent suspension of Trump was a trigger point for the group's formation, but so too was an event closer to home - a tweet sent out by China's foreign ministry spokesman that showed a doctored image of an Australian SAS soldier slitting the throat of an Afghan child draped in an Australian flag.

A lack of consistency, transparency

The parliamentary friendship group is led by Labor MP Sharon Clayton and Nationals MP Anne Webster. One of the MP's joining the group is Australia's science minister Karen Andrews, who has spoken out against the use of social media platforms to spread pseudoscience about the Covid-19 pandemic.

"There have been many instances of comments that have been taken down from various platforms, but yet in some instances, these platforms are very quick to act when it seems as if the subject content is something that they don't personally agree with," she said last week. 

"That is unfair, it is inconsistent, and it lacks the transparency that we are looking for."

Webster for her part has been on the sharp end of a targeted online campaign. She won a defamation case against a conspiracy theorist who accused her of being "a member of a secretive paedophile network".

Former Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the internet had become a magnet for "idiots and conspiracists" allowing lies and disinformation to spread.

Others in the group are noted advocates of free speech, so getting agreement on policy measures that serve to make social media a safer environment while preserving existing rights will be easier said than done. 

But moves are already afoot in Australia to change the regulatory landscape governing social media. Just before Christmas, Australia's communications minister, cyber safety and the arts, Paul Fletcher, released a draft online safety bill proposing to give the e-safety commissioner powers to order the take-down of harmful content.

Blocks and fines

It would require Australian internet service providers, social media companies and other online platforms to remove severely harmful, abusive or bullying content within 24 hours or risk being blocked and fined A$555,000. The Australian Government is taking submissions on that draft bill through to February 14.

Defining what exactly is severely harmful, abusive or bullying content and how exactly the eSafety Commissioner would step in to force the likes of Twitter and Facebook to remove content or block accounts is still to be worked through.

But one thing is for sure, Australia goes into 2021 with a far more proactive approach to cleaning up the social media space than New Zealand does. 

The water is calm and warm, stingrays bask in the shallows and the beach resembles Bondi on a scorching Sydney day. There's hardly a spare patch of golden sand to throw your towel down on.

Kiwis have been making the most of their holidays, to the envy of northern hemisphere friends forced to endure the newsfeed photos of crowded bars and beaches, as they live with the surging virus. In Ireland where much of my extended family lives, the country's Covid Tracker app tells me that there were 3,955 cases of Covid-19 on January 14th and 28 deaths. That could be us.

The sense of nervousness that we have grown far too complacent about Covid-19 is growing.

"Stunned that not a single person going to the supermarket tonight was scanning the NZ COVID Tracer QR code. Not one," tweeted the Wellington-based Infometrics economist Brad Olsen yesterday. 

"I looked wildly out of place stopping to take 2 seconds to scan. Complacency has well and truly set in. Dangerous if there is an outbreak."

The plummeting use of the NZ COVID Tracer app for scanning into shops, restaurants and businesses will render digital contact tracing efforts ineffective, particularly if some of the new highly infectious variants of Covid-19 begin to circulate here.

"If any variants of the virus got out, never mind these more infectious ones, they would spread like wildfire," microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles warned this week.

As BusinessDesk pointed out this week, it's not just laziness - there are digital divide issues limiting compliance, which is hard to quantify.

What's the answer? A relentless and effective public health campaign is underway, but in the absence of community transmission, we have become jaded. We have all of the digital tools other countries are using - a functional QR code-based app and the Apple/Google Bluetooth contact tracing feature. Dr Michelle 'Nanogirl' Dickinson even coached iPhone users on how to boot into the NZ COVID Tracer app with the mere tap of a finger on the pack of the phone, giving the 2-second access Olsen speaks of.

There's only one other digital trick we could and should try - Bluetooth beacons. Placed in retail outlets, they would automatically detect smartphones that come into contact with them and have Bluetooth enabled. It would basically take the effort out of signing in as it would be done automatically by proximity to a Bluetooth beacon.

The technology is being trialled in New Zealand on a small scale. Paperkite, the company behind the Rippl contact tracing app, is experimenting with beacons. But the infrastructure requirements are daunting - each business would need beacons strategically located around their premises to get the required coverage with Bluetooth only accurate up to 10 metres or so at best.

The search is on for a more accurate and easy to deploy technology. At its Tokyo headquarters, TDK is trialling VENUE a contact tracing system based on the geomagnetic sensor found in smartphones and used for location-based services. The sensor gives a location accurate to within a couple of metres and would communicate this info anonymously to an app on the phone. It would remove the need for adding wireless infrastructure to premises. The drawback is that for it to work properly, it would need an indoor layout map to be surveyed for each premise.

When an infected person is identified, everyone who was close to them in a shop or restaurant could be traced.

There's a risk that automating even further the process of digital contact tracing will just entrench the complacency. But we need to be prepared for the virus to be part of life for a long time to come and deploy every possible tool in the arsenal, including Covid Card type devices where people don't have smartphones, to ensure contact tracing efforts are sustainable. 

Cup drama runneth over

In a week where Team New Zealand escaped damage and injury in a capsize of its 75-foot monohull boat on the Auckland harbour, another drama emerged off the water centred on software.

Dunedin company Animation Research, headed by former ITP president (2014 - 2016) Sir Ian Taylor, who was knighted in the New Year's Honours, is in a copyright dispute with America's Cup sailing legend Sir Russell Coutts over the graphics used to deliver official TV coverage of the racing.

The Coutts-led companies Oracle Racing and F50 League LLC, trading as SailGP, claim they own the rights to aspects of the clever augmented reality system Animation Research is using. Sir Ian argues that Animation Research developed the technology for the America's Cup as far back as 1992 and was blindsided by the copyright claim which arrived on the 23rd of December.

It's not a dispute about the technology underlying the system, but a few specific details around how the information is displayed on screen, with SailGP laying claim to the format of defining the course perimeter, displaying sponsors logos and indicating the distance between boats.

Sir Ian is one of our most respected technology leaders and Animation Research one of our most innovative companies, so it is disappointing to see this flare-up now. Sir Russell may have a valid claim to intellectual property, but also a vested interest - he's not involved in this America's Cup, but a rival yachting format where the LiveLine augmented reality system SailGP has developed will no doubt be deployed.

That two of our most prominent and respected Kiwis can't sort this out with a conversation says so much about the fractious and competitive nature of the America's Cup. Sir Ian's team worked hard this week to reformat the graphics, which will debut for racing this afternoon. Here's hoping that puts the issue to bed and allows us to focus on the action on the water rather than bitter recriminations on the sidelines.

Jack was right, sort of

There has been much debate about the de-platforming of President Trump from Twitter and Facebook in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol building, allegedly incited by a speech Trump gave which was backed up with tweets to his 88 million followers.

As I wrote on BusinessDesk this week, I think Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey did the right thing in permanently banning Trump from the platform. Faced with a difficult decision, he opted for an excess of caution, hoping to minimise the risk of further riots, violence and deaths.

But did he and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg make those calls to block Trump for the right reasons? A new Democratic president will be in the White House in less than a week. It's easy to be cynical and suggest the two billionaire tech executives are playing to the new master, looking to endear themselves President-elect Biden and Democratic lawmakers and soften any regulatory changes that are coming.

That may be the case, but ultimately, I accept the explanation for the move Dorsey tweeted this week. 

"We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety," he wrote 

"Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all."

But he and his fellow executives running social media networks can't continue to be responsible for making such editorial calls. The US needs a digital regulator where the "super-spreaders", those with massive social media followings and influence, are scrutinised by an independent regulator, who decides if and when they are deplatformed. It needs to be open and transparent and subject to appeal. But it needs to happen soon in the US and be mirrored around the world.

Dorsey's answer to the problem, funnily enough, doesn't involve regulation.

"We are trying to do our part by funding an initiative around an open decentralized standard for social media. Our goal is to be a client of that standard for the public conversation layer of the internet. We call it @bluesky"

How will that combat the influential spreading hate speech and inciting violence? It's not clear. It's a typically utopian and unrealistic concept from a Silicon Valley magnate. Other types of media are regulated and standards policed - why not social media?

The likes of Facebook and Twitter need to do more to police their platforms and do so transparently. But the time has come for independent regulatory oversight of them. Regulation won't be perfect, but it will be better than what we have now. The Democrats, if they are serious about changing the toxic nature of online discourse and its corrosive impact on democracy, need to take action.

Peter Griffin is filling in for Tech Blog editor Paul Brislen, who will return from a distant beach before the end of the month...hopefully

But as many have pointed out, our own Privacy Commissioner and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel among them, blocking Trump from tweeting to his 88 million followers and millions more on Facebook, which also disabled his account, may be populist, but is also deeply problematic.

The move is only likely to accelerate efforts to regulate social media platforms, taking control over sensitive editorial decisions out of the hands of the corporations and into some sort of regulatory agency or at least an independently appointed arbitrator - the equivalent of our Broadcasting Standards Authority.

A year ago, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey would have bristled at the prospect of losing some control of the content that features on their platforms. But faced with increasingly vexing editorial calls, Zuckerberg, in particular, told Congressional hearings last year that he welcomed stricter regulation, to combat the perception that the platform is inherently biased in its editorial decision making.

Arbitrary and cynical

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards, in a tweet, described Twitter's move to permanently block Trump as "arbitrary and cynical".

"We should not be abdicating responsibility for the tough policy decisions required, and delegating responsibility for our community standards to conflicted corporates," he wrote.

The infiltration of the Capitol building in Washington D.C. by Trump-supporting activists last week, preceded by Trump's inflammatory speech, which was carried on social media channels, put the Big Tech platforms in unchartered territory.

While Google, Facebook and Twitter had all previously flagged or blocked his tweets for containing disinformation, this was deemed a much more serious incident - allegedly glorifying violence and potentially inciting the Capitol riots that resulted in the deaths of five people.

Twitter and Facebook shares have both dipped significantly this week as the market anticipates swift regulatory action to bring social media platforms into line. Reducing those platforms autonomy to make editorial decision making could impact on the popularity of them and increase the compliance costs of policing new rules that may be imposed by the Biden administration and Democrat-controlled Congress.

Everyone acknowledges we need a new playbook of rules to deal with the increasingly polarised world of social media. The debate now begins in earnest over what regulatory structure will preserve the best of social media platforms while more effectively curtailing the dark elements. 

Who gets to decide?

As New York Times writer Shira Ovide puts it, "there has been lots of screaming about what these companies did, but I want us all to recognize that there are few easy choices here," she wrote. 

"Because at the root of these disputes are big and thorny questions: Is more speech better? And who gets to decide?"

Freedom of speech-loving Americans and their elected representatives will need to consider those questions carefully. The rest of the world will look in in fascination because the decisions that are made to regulate a tiny handful of powerful Big Tech platforms will have implications for all of us.

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is leading the lawsuit on behalf of his state and Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah and Idaho, all states with Republican prosecutors.

The states are seeking financial compensation, penalties, injunctions against Google's operations and, once again, "structural relief", suggesting a separation of parts of Google's business is seen as necessary.

The lawsuit follows a similar theme to the Department of Justice action launched in October, in that it paints a picture of Google as a competition-crushing behemoth. But whereas the DoJ case lasered in on Google's practice of paying billions of dollars to smartphone and web browser makers to ensure its apps and search engine get prominent position on their devices, the coalition of states goes right for Google's jugular.

Don't be evil? Yeah right, say attorneys general

"Google uses its powerful position on every side of the online display markets to unlawfully exclude competition. It also boldly claims that 'we'll never sell your personal information to anyone,' but its entire business model is targeted advertising-the purchase and sale of advertisements targeted to individual users based on their personal information," the lawsuit reads.

"From its earliest days, Google's carefully curated public reputation of 'don't be evil' has enabled it to act with wide latitude. That latitude is enhanced by the extreme opacity and complexity of digital advertising markets, which are at least as complex as the most sophisticated financial markets in the world.

The trouble really began, the suit alleges, in 2008 when Google acquired ad display platform DoubleClick and integrated it into its own advertising business. That gave Google the scale, reach and technology to dig its teeth into the digital ad market. But the suit alleges that Google then went further, rigging ad exchange bidding processes in its favour.

The suit also alleges a cosy and unlawful duopoly arrangement emerged between Google and Facebook, where the two conspired to manipulate online auctions and Google agreed not to go head to head with Facebook if it stayed out of areas of business it prioritised.

Google has reacted defiantly to the lawsuit:

"We've invested in state-of-the-art ad tech services that help businesses and benefit consumers. Digital ad prices have fallen over the last decade. Ad tech fees are falling too. Google's ad tech fees are lower than the industry average," a company spokesperson said.

What does it all mean?

The stakes are high for Google, which generates 80 per cent of its revenue from advertising. 

But Google is gearing up to fight this lawsuit and the DoJ's one too. Facebook is also readying its own legal defence against a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit filed last week that alleges its acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp gave it an unassailable lead in social media.

The legal teams of the two Big Tech companies will also be busy on the other side of the Atlantic, with the European Union proposing new legal bills this week which would give regulators new powers to police illegal content and anticompetitive behaviour on online platforms.

The proposals include multi-billion dollar fines for lack of compliance and while individual tech companies are not named, it is clear that the proposed laws are aimed squarely at the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

The UK, mired in efforts to complete its exit from the European Union and struggling to contain Covid-19, has said it will separately pursue similar new rules.

It all means that 2021 will be a record year for activity in competition law with the outcome of these legal actions having consequences for anyone who uses the internet anywhere in the world.

The Federal Trade Commission, in conjunction with 47 state attorneys general, are suing Facebook alleging anti-competitive practices. It follows the Department of Justice's lawsuit filed against Google in October which alleged that the search giant was using its market dominance to lock competitors out.

The approach taken by the regulators is different but they ultimately seek the same result - structural separation of these Big Tech companies to break their allegedly monopolistic practices. 

In the case of Facebook, the lawsuits centre on its acquisition strategy, which involved the company paying US$1 billion for photo-sharing app Instagram in 2011 and the 2014 purchase of WhatsApp for US$19.3 billion.

Divestiture of assets

Those acquisitions, the FTC suit claims (which is well-written and worth a read), were designed to eliminate threats to Facebook's power. Whether that was the intention or not, the purchases have certainly helped Facebook retain its position as the world's dominant social network - at least in the English-speaking world anyway, with over 3 billion users.

The FTC is seeking an injunction against Facebook that would include the "divestiture of assets, divestiture or reconstruction of businesses (including, but not limited to, Instagram and/or WhatsApp), and such other relief sufficient to restore the competition that would exist absent the conduct alleged".

Another arm of the case takes aim at Facebook's policies around controlling which third parties have access to the network via APIs (application programming interfaces).  

Facebook disclosed over a year ago that it was being investigated by the FTC. It also had to fork out US$5 billion in fines to the FTC and tighten its privacy policies as a result of privacy breaches in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

But that pay-out barely caused a ripple in the markets given Facebook's strong balance sheet and, yep, its market dominance. Fines aren't being demanded in this case, but a more structural solution aimed at getting to the heart of the perceived problem - Facebook's ability to crush any emerging competitors - or buy them outright.

Facebook for its part is considering the lawsuits and its next moves.  

"Years after the FTC cleared our acquisitions, the government now wants a do-over with no regard for the impact that precedent would have on the broader business community or the people who choose our products every day," the company posted on Twitter.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his executives do have a point. Where was the considered scrutiny of the acquisitions by the FTC nearly a decade ago when Instagram was on the block and especially four years later when Facebook paid its eye-watering sum for Whatsapp?

What it means for us

As with the Google lawsuit, which also takes place in the context of US anti-trust law, the Sherman Act, Facebook's case will be complicated, costly and drawn out over years. In the meantime, Facebook and its other messaging apps will likely continue to be used as normal, however, any plans Facebook still had to further integrate its messaging platforms will now surely be on hold.

The suit has major implications for how Facebook uses data in future, how it interacts with other companies seeking to access its network with software interfaces, and ultimately its future shape as an advertising platform for New Zealand businesses.

Big is not necessarily bad in competition law. The issue is whether being big gives Google and Facebook the power to stop anyone else competing against them. That's the crux of the matter and the tech landscape could alter significantly based on the lawusit outcomes.

Who's next?

The question now is who is next? Will Apple and Amazon also find themselves fighting sweeping antitrust action? 

Apple's Tim Cook clearly sees his company as standing apart from the others.

"Some people see Silicon Valley as monolithic," he told The Outside Podcast this week.

"And so in particular, the larger companies they sort of put in one bucket, if you will. Some of the big issues that are surrounding tech today are the lack of responsibility taken on a platform about what happens. We clearly take responsibility. We make tough decisions."

US regulators may well beg to differ. One thing is for sure, President Biden's first term in office is likely to also see exhausting legal action rolling on in the background as Big Tech fights a long-anticipated rearguard action.

Krebs was fired by President Trump, via Twitter, on November 17 after the government body he led, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, issued a statement rejecting Trump's claims that election ballot machines had manipulated the vote in Biden's favour.

Over the weekend, Krebs gave this first interview on being fired, to 60 Minutes, reflecting on going up against an administration that spread misinformation and outright lies to undermine the election result.

Krebs had ultimate responsibility for US Government efforts to secure critical infrastructure, including nuclear power plants and the entire federal and state election system. A life-long Republican, Krebs was appointed to head CISA in 2017 with the unanimous support of the US Senate after working on cybersecurity in the Bush administration and serving a stint as Microsoft's director of cybersecurity policy.

He told 60 Minutes that from the very start of his time at CISA, the agency's priority was to prevent efforts to hack election vote-counting machines.

The agency ran "countless gaming scenarios" to prepare their defences. So when Krebs and his team gathered at their command centre on election day to monitor the voting, it was no surprise that the day progressed as expected - with the election officials and the hardware they used doing their intended jobs.

"It was quiet," says Krebs. 

Chris Krebs (left) terminated for doing his job

No indication of hacking

"There was no indication or evidence that there was any sort of hacking or compromise of election systems."

Then the vote turned against Trump and he and his legal team put the misinformation machine into action. In a tweet, flagged for containing misinformation, President Trump claimed that vote-counting machines run by the Dominion Voting Systems company had "deleted 2.7 million Trump votes".

In a press conference on November 5th, Trump told reporters that "this is a case where they are trying to steal an election. They are trying to rig an election."

Krebs was incredulous. 

"The proof is in the ballots," he told 60 Minutes. 

"The recounts are consistent with the initial count. If there was an algorithm that was flipping votes, it didn't work."

He points to states like Georgia, which completed a hand recount of five million ballots, which confirmed the results recorded by the voting machines. 

"That gives you the ability to prove there was no malicious algorithm or hacked software that adjusted the tally of the vote," he says.

"That pretty thoroughly, in my opinion, debunks some of the sensationalist claims out there that there is some hacking of these election vendors and their software and their systems across the country," he adds.

John Poulos, the founder of Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems wrote a piece on Sunday in the Wall Street Journal calling the Trump legal team's claims of voter machine tampering "bizarre".

"There is no secret 'vote flipping' algorithm. Third-party test labs, chosen by the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission and accredited by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, perform complete source-code reviews on every federally certified tabulation system. States replicate this process for their own certification," he wrote. 

"These attacks undermine the tens of thousands of state and local officials who run our elections." he added. 

CISA: Most secure election - ever

CISA responded to the claims in its statement claiming the election was the "most secure in American history". In doing so, Krebs sealed his own fate, at odds with a president desperate to stay in power and willing to undermine the integrity of the country's electoral system to do so.

Krebs did the right thing and helped secure an election which saw a record turnout of voters. But he was immediately removed from his position.

"It's not how I wanted to go out," he says.

"The thing that upsets me about that is that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to my team. 

Last year I spoke to Krebs' predecessor, Greg Touhill, who served as President Obama's chief information security officer. Touhill abruptly left the CISO role in the US Government with the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House. Did he quit, unwilling to work for Trump?

"Cybersecurity is a non-political issue and so am I," Touhill told me.

"I have served every president of the United States since Jimmy Carter, but our officers take an oath to the constitution, not to a person. I left the campsite a lot better than I found it, but there's still a lot of work to be done."

Krebs' Republican leanings didn't do him any favours in the end as he chose to do his job rather than enable one of the most cynical efforts to manipulate an election, one that came not from foreign actors, but from the White House itself.

"I did it right, we did it right," says Krebs. 

"It was a secure election."

According to the data from Atlas VPN, 38% of gamers have been "hacked at least once" while playing computer games.

While trolling is not uncommon in online games - trolling was reported by 64% of gamers - bullying and hate speech was reported by 57% and unwanted sexual contact by 40%. More than one third (34%) also reported personal information being revealled online during game play.

This culture of toxicity has led to many gamers preferring to focus on solo play rather than mulitplayer games and reducing that is seen as the best way to get more players into shared game experiences.

None of this appears to have dampened player expectations or demand for online gaming. More than 900 million users play regularly around the world with more casual gamers playing on mobile devices. The global spend on games has passed the US$150 billion mark and is expected to hit US$200 billion by 2023.

Atlas suggests limiting the amount of private information users share online, installing multi-factor authentication and only downloading games from reputable sources.

The full report from Atlas VPN can be found here.

Microsoft-owned Github has also restored the code of a project, YouTube-dl, which it had removed from its vast online code repository, after receiving a take-down order from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

That body has in the past been very active in pursuing internet pirates using file-sharing systems to download albums and songs. But last month it turned its attention to the developers of YouTube-dl, complaining that the popular software that was first developed in 2006, not long after YouTube's creation, facilitates piracy by allowing people to download Youtube videos for offline viewing.

That functionality is, officially anyway, a feature available only to YouTube Premium users - as a subscriber, I use it all the time to save videos for later to watch without consuming mobile data.

But is an unofficial tool allowing YouTube users to do the same thing a breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which "criminalises production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works"?

Actually, no circumvention

Github initially thought so. On receiving the RIAA's complaint, alleging a breach of section 2101 of the Act, it removed the code. But then it received a letter from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointing out that YouTube-dl "does not violate section 1201 of the DMCA because it does not "circumvent" any technical protection measures on YouTube videos".

While the RIAA claimed the software managed to unencrypt a video file on YouTube, breaking the website's digital rights management, it wasn't the case at all.

"Youtube-dl stands in place of a Web browser and performs a similar function with respect to user-uploaded videos," wrote Mitchell L. Stoltz, Senior Staff Attorney at the EFF. 

"Importantly, Youtube-dl does not decrypt video streams that are encrypted with commercial DRM technologies, such as Widevine, that are used by subscription video sites, such as Netflix," he added.

What had really got the RIAA hot under the collar was some references in the software code's documentation to copyrighted songs. But Youtube-dl only allows streaming of a few seconds of each song to verify that the software is working. It didn't contain full copies of the songs. 

The EFF also made the argument that, like with the Bittorrent file-sharing software, Youtube-dl has numerous legitimate uses.

Legitimate uses

"It is used by journalists and human rights organisations to save eyewitness videos, by educators to save videos for classroom use, by YouTubers to save backup copies of their own uploaded videos, and by users worldwide to watch videos on hardware that can't run a standard web browser, or to watch videos in their full resolution over slow or unreliable Internet connections."

Github has reflected on the incident and undertaken to make some changes, the creation of the US$1 million legal fund being the most significant. It will also be more circumspect about future copyright infringement claims, requiring that they be subject to a technical and legal review before code is removed from Github. 

If a dispute drags on, the code will remain in place until it is resolved and developers will be given the opportunity to amend it before takedown.

The RIAA hasn't responded to Github's reversal yet, but open source developers have applauded Github's stance. 

New Zealand's own Copyright Act is in the midst of a review kicked off in 2018 and which could see some potential changes to clarify where technology can play a legitimate role, such as in bypassing geoblocking measures on DVDs. Format shifting and time-shifting may also get some attention.

China just held its equivalent, Singles Day, which sees the likes of Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo and other big retailers sharply discount millions of products. Once again the sales fest has outstripped Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. 

Alibaba set a record with US$56 billion in sales in 24 hours - and it is continuing the sale for an additional day, so will add billions more. Hundreds of millions of Chinese, as well as buyers from all over the world shop on the Chinese equivalent of Amazon and eBay and the high sales volume suggest the pandemic hasn't dented consumer appetite.

That trend is reflected in the most recent GST receipts for New Zealand, which showed businesses paid nearly $1.2 billion more to IRD in GST in the first seven months of the year, compared to the same period in 2019.

While China largely has coronavirus under control, a lack of international travel was always anticipated to boost sales through the e-tailing giants, which have been attracting more big-name Western brands to the country via online stores.

Alibaba rival JD.com reported over US$11 billion in sales in the same 24 hour period. The brief sales frenzy is seen as increasingly important in attracting new customers, who are lured in with big discounts and then converted to repeat customers through loyalty schemes, app sign-ups and integration into China's social media networks including WeChat (the Facebook equivalent) and Weibo (Twitter's opposite).

Beijing gets tough

But banking all that cash has failed to disguise the fact that China's internet sector is facing the prospect of anti-trust action similar in nature to what the US Department of Justice launched last month against its own internet giant Google.

In fact, Chinese tech giants have collectively shed US$290 billion in market value over the last 48 hours after the Chinese Government announced regulations designed to curb the monopolistic power of a handful of massive tech companies.

China's antitrust regulator has sought feedback on a plan to build a framework preventing anti-competitive practices such as "colluding on sharing sensitive consumer data, alliances that squeeze out smaller rivals and subsidizing services at below cost to eliminate competitors", Bloomberg reported.

The Government also intends to tighten up on the Variable Interest Entity scheme, which is how Chinese companies attract foreign investment or lists overseas. A rule change would require companies to now apply for specific operating approval.

Meanwhile, New Zealand exporters see the big Chinese e-tailers as an attractive route to market as digital trade becomes increasingly important during the pandemic. But while Kiwis are able to buy products from the likes of Alibaba, Singles Day doesn't register much excitement outside of China. 

The IRD said this week that the Government was on track to rake in $100 million in GST through the "Amazon tax". It is applied to goods worth less than $1,000  and sold by foreign retailers turning over sales to New Zealanders of more than $60,000 a year.

We may not have a definitive answer on the US election outcome for days, particularly if Donald Trump follows through on his threats to mobilise hundreds of lawyers to legally challenge voting ballot returns around the country.

But when it comes to technology and the digital economy, so much of which is influenced by large US tech companies and the digital platforms they control, the themes for the next four years are already emerging and the make-up of the US Senate as well as who claims the White House will be crucial.

Breaking up Big Tech

While President Trump has been busy cutting regulatory red tape since entering the White House in 2017 and largely maintained the light-handed regulation of the tech sector, the worm started to turn on Big Tech in the last two year of his first term.

Last month the US Department of Justice kicked off a major antitrust lawsuit against Google, which it accused of illegally monopolising the market for online search and advertising. That lawsuit could take years to play out and if successful may force a separation of parts of Google and a change in its business practices, such as paying billions of dollars to hardware makers like Apple to make the Google search engine the default on their devices. 

But even broader antitrust action against the other major digital platform companies - Facebook, Amazon and Apple, could be on the cards under Joe Biden and particularly if Democratic lawmakers claim a majority in the Senate. Democrats led the publication of a major 449-page report last month by House of Representatives congressional subcommittee looking at the impact of Big Tech's monopoly power on the digital economy.

It suggests sweeping changes including "structural separations and prohibitions of certain dominant platforms from operating in adjacent lines of business". In real terms that could see Facebook forced to divest Instagram or Amazon required to either host third party sellers in its giant online store or sell products himself, but not both.

Bottom line: While Democrats and Republicans alike have been talking up antitrust action against Big Tech, the threat of substantive action that could change how these major online platforms operate is greater with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. 

Social media clampdown

No one in US politics appears to be happy with how the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube handle political content. There is discontent, particularly among Democrats, with the level of misinformation and hate speech allowed to circulate on these platforms and which some claim helped propel Trump into the White House in 2016.

The political argument has centred on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which affords protections to internet companies who host content generated by users. Democrats have pushed for reform of the legislation to make tech companies legally responsible for the content that they publish and distribute. That call has been echoed both by Joe Biden and President Trump. The latter furiously responded to Twitter fact-checking his tweets in May by issuing an executive order to rewrite Section 230. 

Tech companies hate that idea as they would then be liable for the billions of messages they publish daily. But there is a lot of rhetoric here and plenty of self-interest - Trump continued to blast social media platforms for suppressing conservative content in the run-up to election day. Biden was outraged that other posts critical of him and the Democrats were allowed to stand.

Again, Congress is all over the issue with red and blue politicians rightly pointing out the need for some systematic change to tackle the spread of misinformation.

Bottom line: Trump and Biden would both lead a push for tighter regulation of social media platforms though Democrats would likely seek to go further. The tech sector favours self-regulation, but even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has called for lawmakers to give more guidance to ease the tensions over content moderation. 

Data privacy

The US has no overarching data privacy protection to mirror the likes of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. Some see that as integral to the excesses of Big Tech, with companies able to gather large amounts of customer data and use it for broad-ranging purposes.

In general terms, Biden and the Democrats are in favour of better privacy protection for consumers while Trump is ambivalent about it, or in some cases, has even pushed for privacy in the digital realm to be eroded. He famously pushed back privacy laws allowing internet providers to collect more data from their customers.

He has also threatened to force tech companies to build back doors into their encryption system to allow law enforcement agencies easier access to data in the interests of fighting terrorism. Still, many of the more hawisk Democrats mirror that view and former president Barack Obama urged the tech sector to build a system allowing authorities into encrypted systems. That hasn't come to pass, but pressure to do so will escalate in the near term.

Bottom line: Biden and the Democrats are more like to push through data privacy reform for consumers but national security and anti-terrorism priorities will likely see both sides united on a desire for backdoors into the tech sector's encryption systems.

The US-China tech war

Trump's trade war with China featured a high-tech component as he crimped Chinese 5G mobile equipment maker Huawei's global ambitions. He banned US companies from doing business with Huawei and asked Five Eyes intelligence partners, including New Zealand, to freeze the company out of 5G network builds around the world.

China has responded by urging its tech companies to become fully self-sufficient and the likes of Huawei are accelerating development in areas they've previously relied on US help, such as mobile phone computer chips. Dozens of other Chinese tech companies are on a US trade blacklist, but manufacturing of iPhones and many other US-designed devices continues uninterrupted.

The antipathy towards China has also extended to Trump threatening to shutdown the US arm of Chinese social media company TikTok and to ban the app from the US completely. That fight is currently going through the courts and it isn't all going Trump's way.

Bottom line: With China-US relations showing no sign of warming up, its likely the tech war is likely to accelerate with Trump back in the White House. Biden and Democrats would pursue a less adversarial approach to trade.

The tech workforce

Silicon Valley's success is in large part down to the foreign talent that has flooded into its research and development labs and start-ups over the decades. But to the dismay of the industry, 

President Trump has moved to limit the number of H-1B visas on offer to tech workers, reducing the international flow of workers into the tech sector.

Biden wants to reverse that, expanding the number of visas on offer and revise the green card system to make it fairer to workers.

While Trump's domestic tech skills efforts have focused on beefing up US cybersecurity capabilities and efforts in areas of emerging technology, Democrats skew towards developing a more diverse workforce and getting the disadvantaged into highly skilled jobs.

Bottom line: Trump's anti-immigration stance would continue to limit the tech sector's efforts to recruit the best talent from around the world. With the Democrats in power, the US is more likely to return to its more open and welcoming approach.

Before Google we had AltaVista, a search engine in the crudest of senses. It would search for the words you were looking for and would return a bajillion hits for anything remotely interesting.

There were all like that - just a hosepipe of madness spraying answers at you.

Then there was Dogpile, a search engine that combined FOUR search engines and gave you quadruple the results for even less accuracy.

Then there was all the advertising packed onto the page - you didn't know where to look, what to click, it was a nightmare.

Then Google arrived and it was clean and simple and the first result was usually the right one. They even had a box you could click on "feeling lucky" and it worked! This was a revolution.

Then Google started doing other things. Email and a browser and a bunch of cool stuff like maps and it was all free and better than the paid stuff you got from other providers.

These were the halcyon days because Google was taking it to The Man, in this case mostly Microsoft, and was winning. It's motto was: "Don't be evil" and we all laughed like loons because they could never be evil, right?

Right?

Companies are companies and we tend to forget that today's villains were often yesterday's heroes. Microsoft had freed us from the tyranny of IBM's control. It had introduced the home PC and built an empire on happy users jumping in with both feet.

But then the wheel turned and the brand stopped being the challenger and became the incumbent and Google came along and challenged everything (yay!) and Microsoft was the villain.

This happens all the time of course. Vodafone beat Telecom in the mobile market by being cool, but then became uncool and 2Degrees took up the mantle. Nokia was the hero device, then Blackberry beat it into a bloody mess and Apple came along and swept all before it, but then Android came along… you see how this goes.

Today it's Google's turn in the sinbin with the US Department of Justice accusing the tech giant of abusing its monopoly powers in search (where it has a more-than 90% user rate) and so it will be regulated. Somehow.

We've been here before - you'll remember the way the DOJ curtailed Microsoft's ambitions with a swift and decisive case that made sure we couldn't bundle the browser with the operating system. Yeah. That showed them. It only took a dozen years, legal fees equivalent to three solid gold globes the size of the moon and resulted in absolutely no change to the industry whatsoever.

And now they're at it again with pretty much the same game plan.

Governments really struggle to understand how to regulate tech companies. They think the power is in the bundle - and it is, to a degree - but it's not the core power of the tech giant. That power is in the way users of all stripes actually like a monopoly.

Think about when you're selling something. You go where the biggest market is - in New Zealand that's TradeMe but pretty much everywhere else it's eBay. We had eBay in New Zealand but TradeMe had already reached the tipping point where so many users were happy with it they didn't need an alternative, so eBay never took off here.

When you're buying something you go where the most sellers are - Alibaba or Amazon. Again, here we have two monopolies in their own geography offering limited options to us Kiwis, so there's a bit of room for a tussle but not much. And companies like Mighty Ape are doing very well in many market segments.

It's the same for search or for mobile devices or for social media pages. Think about Facebook, or Apple, Amazon, or Google and they each have their core base service offering that brings in enough cash they can attack markets that are adjacent to their own by offering a free alternative or by buying up the smaller players. But the power they have isn't in that conglomeration so much as it is in that initial monopoly.

So Google may well have a stranglehold on search, but forcing the company to pay a fine (even a big one) or perhaps even sell off a division like YouTube (which isn't even on the cards here) won't do a thing to the core offering. Regulation like this just does not work.

That's why I worry when politicians start talking about regulating social media. Breaking Facebook up into its component parts - Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp - will not slow the company down at all.

A better approach to regulating tech is to insist they pay tax where they operate, insist they have a transparent appeals process, insist they allow competitors access to the app stores or to their messaging platform, insist they abide by community standards we get a say in.

That way we might actually effect change. But of course, that takes time and nuance and doesn't win elections quite so visibly so I don't think we'll see that any time soon.

And of course if there's an alternative solution out there we can always Google it.

With shades of the DOJ vs Microsoft case of 1998, the action centres around whether Google has a monopoly on search capability and whether it abuses that position of power.

"Google is the gateway to the internet and a search advertising behemoth," says US Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen in the New Zealand Herald. "It has maintained its monopoly power through exclusionary practices that are harmful to competition."

When the DOJ took on Microsoft more than 20 years ago the case centred around Microsoft's inclusion of its web browser Internet Explorer as part of its operating system. The case was finally settled in 2001, ratified in 2004 and expired in 2007 and resulted in very little change in the way Microsoft worked - the suspicion is that this case also has little hope of changing anything about the way Google operates.

The DOJ is not calling for any specific remedies at this point - there is no call to break Alphabet up or to change the way Google itself operates. That may change as the case progresses, but for now this is widely seen more as a political move than a regulatory one.

US President Donald Trump has long accused Google of bias, claiming it promotes liberal content over conservative. Coming as it does only two weeks out from the presidential election, this show of strength might have more to do with vote winning than anything else - something that may play to Google's advantage if the election does not go Trump's way.

"Their economic growth policy takes a leaf out of the Singapore playbook, with a focus on industry transformation," NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller wrote in an update to members yesterday.

"Labour's return to Government is good news for tech."

While Labour was criticised for a general dearth of significant new policy announcements during its campaign for re-election, Muller points out that economic development minister Phil Twyford in July refocused the Government's industry policy to prioritise a handful of sectors, including digital tech, as a response to Covid-19.

Twyford signalled a focus on "a narrower set of sectors (digital tech, advanced manufacturing and parts of food and fibre) that are well-positioned for and will benefit from a high-intensity and high-investment approach where we consider a sector could become a highly productive and internationally competitive cluster of businesses."  

"Helping these sectors transform will be key priorities for the Economic Development portfolio," he added. 

Who will lead tech?

With a cabinet reshuffle likely before the end of the year, Twyford's role as economic development minister is up in the air, as is that of Kris Faafoi, who with responsibility for government digital services and broadcasting, communications and digital media is the closest thing we have to the type of technology minister the National Party was proposing to install.

But whoever has influence over the tech sector - and Dr Megan Woods with responsibility for research, science and innovation has her hands on important funding and policy levers too, it seems unlikely there will be any major surprises for the tech sector one way or other as the new Government gets down to work.

In June, as we huddled in lockdown, I compared and contrasted the approaches of New Zealand and Singapore when it came to leveraging tech to meet the challenges thrown up by Covid-19. Singapore was doing more and spending more then.

While Twyford's updated plan to boost the role of digital technologies is to be welcomed by all, it is vague as to what that might involve.

"Our digital sector is strongly internationally oriented and is already providing strong productive growth, high-wage employment and the emergence of large firms," Twyford noted in July.

"Though we have enjoyed success in this area, there are more opportunities to develop and scale-up export-focused businesses."

Indeed there are. How we best go about that in the context of the pandemic is still to be articulated. The one concrete area of tech-related work and budget allocation touched on in the paper is for building capacity to use Industry 4.0 technologies with a view to boosting productivity in high-value manufacturing.  That received a "fiscally neutral swap from capital to operating funding of $600,000".

The key area of development outlined by Twyford that has implications for the tech sector is Digital Technology Industry Transformation Plan (ITP), which has given us the best shot at developing some strategic thinking for the future of the tech sector. IT Professionals is taking the lead on the Skills workstream of that plan.

Transformation plan

Other ITPs have been kicked off for priority sectors, including food and fibres, advanced manufacturing and transport and logistics.

"Development is well underway with collaborative workstreams digging into changes in the education pathways to accelerate the development of local skills, changes in Government procurement approaches to stimulate the local tech sector, a deep dive into tech export successes and the development and activation of a strong tech story for New Zealand," Muller wrote yesterday.

"There is also work being done on the development of a national AI strategy and data-driven innovation. Work on the advanced manufacturing ITP has also started and this should be beneficial to the high-tech manufacturing and biotechnology parts of the tech sector," he added.

So there is plenty going on, even if there's precious little resource earmarked for investment in the sector at this point. 

As Tech Blog editor Paul Brislen pointed out yesterday, "left to our own devices, the tech sector is growing at about 10% year on year. Imagine what it could do with a bit more support from the policymakers?"

That support, in the form of policy and investment, will certainly need to come further down the line to realise the ambitions of a plan for transformation.

That's right, never mind your cruise missiles, fissile materials or landmines, I broke the Wassenaar Arrangement, the "first global multilateral arrangement on export controls for conventional weapons and sensitive dual-use goods and technologies" and I did it by copying a bunch of encryption code I didn't understand and emailing to myself via a US server.

The late 1990s were a crazy time. The internet was taking off, tech companies were making so much money they'd actually fly journalists around the world (business class no less) to ask them awkward questions at press conferences, and the US was busy making it illegal to take your PlayStation 2 across the border with you because it was deemed to be a munition.

Hardware and software had developed to such a point that a games console and a page of code sent by email into the US and then back out were considered weapon strength.

Computers and software were slowly being identified as problem areas for the police and other law enforcement organisations and after the US Congress decided not to extend police powers in this area, the law enforcement community took it upon itself to get organised.

Thus, the International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar (ILETS) was born, and New Zealand was a partner in the group. The aim was to encourage policy makers to understand that computers were the next battle ground for law enforcement and that resources were needed to stop the cyber-criminals. New tools, more money, better training and some tweaks to legislation would be needed.

But how to get these tweaks? Easy - wait for the next big international story and pin it on technology. Whether it was terrorism or financial crime or some other horror, it would provide the catalyst needed.

Not long after, a group of radicals hijacked a series of aircraft and slammed them into the United States triggering at least one war and a series of rapidly introduced laws that gave police more powers to demand access to computer systems.

In New Zealand this was a hasty amendment to the Crimes Act that said if the police seized your computer for whatever reason you would have to decrypt its contents.

Think about that for a moment.

If you're served a search warrant, your job is to step aside and let the constabulary search your premises. If they fail to find your secret stash of whatever, that's not your fault.

But if it's your computer, you have to provide the keys to unlock the stash or face prison. Even if your stash is perfectly innocent or empty - no key, no freedom.

Since then, the authorities have managed to introduce several more acts both locally and internationally in this space. In New Zealand alone we've seen the revamping of the legislation governing our signals intelligence branch, the GCSB, to allow for spying in New Zealand. We've seen the Telecommunications (Interception, Capability and Security) Act give power of veto over commercial decisions to the government. Now we're seeing calls for the breaking of end-to-end encryption because apparently bad people do bad things online and the authorities struggle to catch them.

The cynic in me says governments always want to expand their power base into new areas. I can think of quite a few I'd like government to flex its muscles in, but the world of encryption isn't one of them, not this way, because I really don't think the government of New Zealand understands what it's signing up for with this call.

It's not going to stop bad guys using encryption. How could it? There are plenty of people working on breaking encryption all the time, and they're like to carry on. But it will mean what encryption we have can never be anything but deeply flawed.

We use encryption for a lot of things. Every website you visit is secured. Your online television channel is secured (lest someone steal the copyright material). Your online banking, your online shopping, your online transactions with your government, your music, your legal documents, your work files, even your cat videos - all secured and all at risk because someone thinks it's too hard to deal with secure messaging so better if nobody has it.

But come on, you say. This is the government. They'll be careful. They won't tip the boat over just to hear the splash. They'll do what it takes to keep the secret of the back door access secure, so not just anyone can use it. Right?

Well, it didn't work so well last time round when the NSA discovered a sneaky way into Microsoft's empire and kept it secret. Or when its suite of backdoor tools were released into the wild by a grumpy former employee.

And it's not as if we have a stunning track record of keeping things secret when we do want them to be secured. The number of mega-breaches is now so high I don't bother reporting on them unless over 100 million accounts are involved. They're just too commonplace.

Now imagine you're in a world where encryption is outlawed not only by the Five Eyes nations but also by China. By Iran. By the EU. How then would you communicate securely or trust your online resources at all?

It wasn't that long ago the US spied on EU bidding for an airplane contract because of course in the US aircraft are seen as being of national interest. Now imagine what the Russians or Uzbekistan regimes are interested in.

But above all else - while it's a daft idea, while it opens up cans of worms and makes life even more difficult online - it's also hypocrisy at its finest. Because the Five Eyes nations are all cheerfully throwing Chinese equipment maker Huawei under the bus for potentially doing exactly what they're proposing to do.

It's not so good when it's on the other foot, eh?

The countries - led by the US but including the UK, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand - have joined with India and Japan in issuing a statement calling for legal access to otherwise secured content.

Australia has taken a lead in this by already introducing legislation that requires software providers to hand over content when asked - to the dismay of companies like WhatsApp, Apple and other messaging platforms which neither have nor want access to content being shared by their users.

In the past the argument in favour of such access has always been based on terrorist activity. Indeed, since the September 11 attacks in the US, the tussle between tech and law enforcement has been growing ever more fierce. The Boston bombing, in particular, is held up as an example of big tech refusing to abide by law enforcement requirements to allow access to messages and other forms of content.

This time round, however, it is child abuse which is being held up as the reason behind the need, according to the statement.

"In 2018, Facebook Messenger was responsible for nearly 12 million of the 18.4 million worldwide reports of CSAM [child sexual abuse material to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)]. These reports risk disappearing if end-to-end encryption is implemented by default, since current tools used to detect CSAM [child sexual abuse material] do not work in end-to-end encrypted environments," says the report.

It isn't clear how the tech giants are supposed to provide such backdoor access - the Australian legislation simply requires that it be done - but the tech companies are again pointing out that breaking end-to-end encryption is a bad idea as it allows other non-authorised users access and leads to a lack of trust in existing encrypted services which include everything from messaging to email to watching television and ecommerce.

One such effort will launch early next year in the form of a technology platform that will let businesses pay each other for goods and services, with the transactions taking place using digital currency and underpinned by blockchain-based distributed ledger technology.

PowerFinance, the Auckland fintech start-up behind the scheme, plans to start with a small number of large companies that make large transactions between them, chief executive Dave Corbett, told Interest.co.nz.

Smart money

He describes the "PowerDollar" as 'smart money'.

"Unlike today's traditional New Zealand currency, the built-in technology and compliance knows who is holding it, where it has been, where it is going and what contracts and regulations apply to its use, which helps prevent money laundering and fraud."

So far, so familiar. But the PowerDollar is also pegged to the value of the New Zealand dollar and is backed by real NZ dollars that are held as part of the IRD's tax pooling system as prepaid tax. This is money belonging to private companies and held by the government rather than being directly underpinned by our central bank as an official digital currency.

It is a rather novel approach and has led PowerFinance to lay claim to a world-first "sovereign backed digital currency". Still, the Inland Revenue Department was eager to point out this week that it hasn't partnered with PowerFinance and that they didn't consider the digital currency to be 'sovereign-backed'.

Dollar for dollar

PowerFinance, which plans to apply for a banking licence with the Reserve Bank, touts all the expected benefits of a blockchain-based currency system when it comes to verifying identity, recording transactions and employing smart contracts. 

But in real terms, those "Power Dollars" will also be used by companies to transact with customers. Payments for goods and services will be made and finance offered, with loans also repaid via the platform. Everything will happen in Power Dollars.

"Our purpose is enabling local businesses to offer financial services with lower costs, greater transparency and the ability to enhance both customer experience and revenue," says Corbett.

PowerFinance is backed by British financial venture capital company Centrality Ventures as well as local investors. 

Digital yuan

Meanwhile, China is forging ahead with its digital version of the yuan, which is indeed an official central bank digital currency. 

China's central bank claims that 1.1 billion yuan (US$162 million) worth of digital currency has been processed in pilot transactions that cover everything from bill payments, transport and government services.

The pilot had seen 113,300 personal digital wallets and about 8,800 corporate digital wallets opened. For years, China has led in digital payment technologies and sees digital currency as a way to streamline its massive financial system while stamping down on corruption and tax evasion. 

The World Federation of Advertisers wants Facebook to require advertisers pass proof of identity checks so fraudulent advertisers can be challenged legally. Currently anyone with a Facebook account can advertise on the site and there are a number of fake ads, ads for scams and other products or services which may or may not be legal in various territories.

The news comes as Facebook begins sponsorship of a NetSafe campaign designed to warn against the dangers of fake news on social media.

Facebook is funding the bulk of the campaign which aims to "Demystify fake news" and while the site specifically references COVID-19 related disinformation, it attempts to teach users about how to spot fake content of all types.

However, Facebook founder and majority shareholder Mark Zuckerberg also says the company won't be removing any anti-vaccine posts because there may be legitimate problems with a vaccine. In a rare interview, Zuckerberg is quoted as saying "If someone is pointing out a case where a vaccine caused harm or that they're worried about it - you know, that's a difficult thing to say from my perspective that you shouldn't be allowed to express at all."

But there's one user group that always gets the worst of it when it comes to vile abuse on social media platforms - women. 

Microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles, who has served an incredibly valuable public service role with her science communication through the pandemic, described the abuse she has received online in a recent documentary, Siouxsie and the Virus. 

She has been belittled, her qualifications questioned, her hair and weight fixated upon. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the trolling and abuse are even more personal and even threatening.

What's the answer to toxic social media culture? A team of scientists at Queensland University of Technology think technology could play a bigger role in tackling the fire hose of Tweets and posts flowing onto the web 24-7.

Filtering the filth

Associate Professor Richi Nayak, Professor Nicolas Suzor and research fellow Dr Md Abul Bashar, have developed an algorithm they claim can filter millions of Twitter messages to detect misogynistic content.

"At the moment, the onus is on the user to report abuse they receive. We hope our machine-learning solution can be adopted by social media platforms to automatically identify and report this content to protect women and other user groups online," says Professor Nayak.

Accurately flagging abusive tweets, particularly those including threats of harm or sexual violence, could reduce harm online. But could it be trusted not to identify and flag legitimate content that happens to mention or discuss the issue of abuse itself?

"The key challenge in misogynistic tweet detection is understanding the context of a tweet. The complex and noisy nature of tweets makes it difficult," adds Nayak.

The research team mined a dataset of one million tweets and then refined these by searching for those containing one of three abusive keywords - whore, slut, and rape. Using a deep learning algorithm, Short-Term Memory with Transfer Learning, they started with a base dictionary and built up the system's vocabulary. 

The team trained the algorithm as it went, the machine "learning and developing its contextual semantic understanding over time," says Nayak. 

That human input allowed the algorithm to become able to differentiate between abuse, sarcasm and friendly use of aggressive terminology.

The nuances of meaning

"Take the phrase 'get back to the kitchen' as an example - devoid of context of structural inequality, a machine's literal interpretation could miss the misogynistic meaning," says Nayak.

"But seen with the understanding of what constitutes abusive or misogynistic language, it can be identified as a misogynistic tweet."

"Or take a tweet like 'STFU BITCH! DON'T YOU DARE INSULT KEEMSTAR OR I'LL KILL YOU'. Distinguishing this, without context, from a misogynistic and abusive threat is incredibly difficult for a machine to do," Nayak adds.

Ultimately, the researchers, who refined down those one million tweets to 5,000 that were characterised as misogynistic were able to come up with an algorithm that identifies such content with 75 per cent accuracy.

Reducing harm

The team describe the work as "labour intensive", but say the algorithm could be used by the big social media platforms, including Twitter as a more effective way to stop abusive content from doing harm on their platforms. 

Essentially, women wouldn't even see the bulk of misogynistic and threatening tweets because they would be quickly identified and blocked.

"This modelling could also be expanded upon and used in other contexts in the future, such as identifying racism, homophobia, or abuse toward people with disabilities," says Nayek.

"Our end goal is to take the model to social media platforms and trial it in place. If we can make identifying and removing this content easier, that can help create a safer online space for all users."

If you need help or want to discuss abusive behaviour, contact:

Safe to Talk - 0800 044 334 or text 4334

Te Ohaakii A Hine - 0800 883 300

Rape Prevention Education - 09 360 4001

If it is an emergency dial 111

"Hey @NZXGroup your ugly Wellington ticker is borked," wrote Twitter user Oliver. 

"My camera can't capture how rapidly and brightly it is strobing. Maybe time to retire it?"

But the NZX had bigger issues to deal with than a borked sign as the country's stock exchange was knocked offline thanks to a distributed denial-of-service attack. The stock exchange is considered critical infrastructure, the lifeblood of capitalism. That may explain the attack.

The DDOS method of taking down a website or online service is rather quaint in today's cyber-attack landscape where ransomware attacks are favoured as a method of extracting money from companies and individuals willing to pay to retrieve their data or get their services back online.

Denial of service is the hallmark of the shadowy hacker collective Anonymous, which in its manifesto declares that "greed and materialism is evil".

Harnessing the botnet

It has targeted financial institutions before, as well as government agencies, though has been less active in recent years. That's maybe down to the fact that cybercrime task forces are becoming more effective at tracking down hackers, who are facing serious jail time for their hacking. Last year a hacker was sentenced to ten years in prison in the US for running DDOS attacks against, of all things, a children's hospital, in 2014.

That attack, dubbed #OpJustina was apparently in protest at the hospital misdiagnosing a young girl's medical condition which had led to the girl being separated from her parents. 

There's no suggestion Anonymous is behind the outages at the NZX, which were finally resolved yesterday. But the NZX and the government may never actually figure out where it came from.

"Attackers normally infect large numbers of 'innocent' computers with malware, turning them into 'bots' that can be instructed to keep trying to access the affected site," says AUT computer science expert, Professor Dave Parry, of the botnets that are usually harnassed to launch DDOS attacks.

"It's like large numbers of people all shouting at you at once - you can't distinguish the real messages from the false ones."

Yesterday, the NZX IT team was scrambling to shut down the botnet attack. Parry says there are two main ways to do that. If you know where the majority of the traffic is originating from, you can try and get the owners of those devices to update their security and patches and delete the malware.

But that takes time when dealing with offshore parties. More likely, the NZX would have focused on blocking IP addresses of the bot machines using a firewall.

"Spark will be looking at network traffic to identify sources and block them," says Parry. 

"Sophisticated attackers will be changing the IP addresses of the attacking computers, potentially via Virtual Private Network software, turning them on and off and also adding new ones."

Covid's influence

The NZX is considered critical infrastructure, so the GCSB and the Computer Emergency Taskforce (CERT) have taken an interest in the attack. The government has invested in the National Cyber Security Centre to "supply advanced cyber threat detection and disruption capabilities developed through the CORTEX initiative".

But ultimately, each private organisation is responsible for its own cybersecurity. The NZX has faced technical outages that have disrupted trading before. But the latest one has led many to raise questions about the exchange's ability to fend off attacks, given it is such a prime target.

 Unfortunately, the pandemic has increased the likelihood of DDOS attacks, says Parry.

"The skills and software to do this are widely available and the disruption of Covid and people working from home all over the world potentially with lower security on their computers means that these attacks are easier than usual."

Communications and digital media and government digital services minister Kris Faafoi said last night that cyber experts had told him the attack was unlikely launched by a state actor. But the reality is that it is sometimes impossible to know.

"Recently, Australia has pointed the finger at the Chinese government for similar attacks; the Chinese government has strongly denied this," Parry points out. 

"As yet, there is no evidence that this attack is by an overseas government. Criminal gangs, especially if they are based in poorly-regulated countries, can use these attacks to demand ransoms."

For now, he says, its a good reminded to stay vigilant on cybersecurity, particularly if you run a critical real-time service like a stock exchange.

"This is not an issue around New Zealand computers being vulnerable to security breaches, but it is worth checking that anti-virus and security patches are up to date, and that people running websites, etc. notify their ISP if there is unusual activity."

Their bank account numbers. Their health ID number. Their IRD or credit card or login details for that insurance or savings account.

Yet we have to share this data with the agencies with whom we engage and quite often it's they who hold all the chips.

Try telling your bank that you're migrating, or your insurance company and you'll find they're simply unwilling to let go quite that easily. The only operation more difficult to leave is of course the gym, but that's another story.

I applied for a mortgage a few years ago (I know, a rash move but with children and a wife it seemed appropriate). I was with one particular bank who'd always been good to deal with so I thought great, they'd love to lend me hundreds of thousands of dollars. They already know all there is to know about me so I'll start with them because it will be easiest.

Reader, it was not.

They wanted me to fill in forms containing a lot of information they already had. They knew my name, my date of birth, my address. They knew how much money I earned and how long I'd lived at my current address, yet they wanted me to fill it all out again. Why? Nobody could tell me. Just because.

Well, if I was going to do that, I'd go to market and see who else wanted to chain me to them for the next 30 years. It turns out a lot of banks want that, and so I quickly had three players on the table: One was my existing bank - holding out a sheaf of forms. The second was a bank with a branch conveniently within walking distance who would buy me a coffee. The third was a bank who agreed to send someone round to my house to do all the paperwork.

This was such an important life decision I based it almost entirely on who was easiest to deal with. Not the best price, not the legal contract, not the banks' credit ratings, but on how hard they made it for me to deal with them. I went with the bank that came to me and did all the paperwork.

I have not regretted that process in the years since.

Dealing with bureaucracy can be a nightmare, and I'm not just talking about the spelling. Yet this is our data, we own it, it's about us, so we should own it.

Most companies might disagree but a new discussion paper from the government is seeking input into a code that would allow just that - it's the introduction of a Consumer Data Right (CDR) code that would enshrine that ownership with the user, not with the organisation.

This is important because as we move through life two things happen. Firstly, we interact with a lot of organisations that like to keep our data for themselves and that list is growing all the time, and secondly we want to change providers easily and readily without all the hassle.

Remember the good old days when telcos wouldn't let you keep your number as you swapped providers? That simple act of migration (churn, as they call it) was blocked for many by the logistical nightmare of having to update all your records to reflect the new number. Even when one telco offered to pay to have business cards reprinted it really only scratched the surface of the problem. Everyone's got that one contact who won't update their records and in those days the number was the only way people had to get hold of you, short of walking round to your house and banging on the door. It's hard to explain to kids who've grown up with apps and over the top providers about what a hurdle that was, but it really was a game changer when number portability was introduced.

Now imagine being able to change credit card providers or banks and not have to do the dance of a thousand websites as you update everything. Imagine just being able to contact your new bank and say "I give you authority" and they do all the hard work.

That's what the new discussion document is all about but I think it should go further. Do I get to keep my bank account number? Why not! What about the problems inherent in making sure my pay still goes into the right account if the bank no longer has visibility of my details? Not my problem - we have computers to handle all of that.

And let's take it further - I want to migrate all my data from one social media platform to another. Again, that's a monumental task but in the future we will need to consider how best to handle this kind of thing.

Ensuring the user is the owner of the content also means those who get it wrong when it comes to handling or protecting that data can be taken to task. Currently our Privacy Act has no provision for CDR but we have a new Act that comes into effect in December. Sadly, it too does not have any provision for this, but it's yet another reminder that our new privacy laws are already out of step with the world in which they're used so we might want to update them properly in the next year or two.

The provision of strong CDR is good for privacy, it's good for consumer peace of mind and it's good for competition. Just look at the telco market which is now far more vibrant and active than it was when we were artificially locked in. The telcos have to compete on service, not just on how difficult it is to leave them. Let's see what we can do with banks and insurers as well.

First the company put its hand up to buy Chinese social media maverick TikTok, joining the feeding sharks circling the beleaguered company after the US president effectively outlawed its activities in the United States, and now it's taken a swing at Google's mobile operating system, claiming the company tracks users movements "even if ­location history settings are turned off and the incognito privacy feature is turned on".

The US president has given TikTok's owners 90 days to sell its US operation or cease trading in the US (although his legal ability to do so remains sketchy) and the company has been courted by a number of high profile entities including apparent front-runner Microsoft. 

But now with Oracle swinging into action it's like to devolve into bickering about the real value of the company with estimates ranging from US$20-50 billion for the American operation alone.

Oracle is offering to take all the non-Asian assets off TikTok's owners' hands, which would include US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand users in the mix. The users themselves, naturally, get no say in any of this and don't get paid for the content they produce but that's a discussion for another time.

Meanwhile, Oracle's second front with Google has come as the Australian competition watchdog bares its teeth claiming Google misled users and continued to track them even after "Location History" was turned off on their devices. Oracle is still pursuing Google through the courts claiming Google infringed on its legal ownership of Java by copying some 11,000 lines of code.

While yachting tactics may not help Oracle owner Larry Ellison too much in this case, clearly the America's Cup legal wrangles on bygone years are providing a template for his commercial interests as well.

"The way Aussies use Google is at risk", the pop-up informed users with an intriguing "learn more" icon taking you to an open letter outlining Google's dissatisfaction with a new mandatory code that requires it to share a portion of its advertising revenue with Australian media organisations and newspapers.

Penned by the managing director of Google Australia, the letter doesn't actually mention the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's draft mandatory code's aim of having digital platforms share some ad revenue with media outlets, but instead suggests a law change will see Google's users' data placed in the hands of those media companies. 

"Under this law, Google has to tell news media businesses "how they can gain access" to data about your use of our products," writes Silva. 

"There's no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses."

The end of free?

Silva ominously wrote the new law would "put free services at risk", suggesting that Google search and Youtube, fabulously profitable advertising-supported platforms, might only be available to those with a subscription fee.

The ACCC was quick to hit back yesterday, with Chairman Rod Sims issuing a statement saying that the open letter from Google contained "misinformation".

"Google will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so," he wrote.

"The draft code will allow Australian news businesses to negotiate for fair payment for their journalists' work that is included on Google services."

This mandatory code, which is open for consultation until August 28, is primarily about forcing large digital platforms to share some of the revenue they derive from displaying media content on their websites, with the companies that generated the content.

The ACCC estimates that Google and Facebook alone generated A$6 billion between them in revenue in Australia and control the majority of the digital advertising market. The situation is no different in New Zealand, where media outlets fight it out for a shrinking share of the ad market not dominated by Facebook and Google.

But would the mandatory code force Google to hand over more information about its users to media outlets?

The short answer, as Sims, maintains, is no. But the code does require digital platforms, for the first time, to supply media companies, "a list and explanation of the data that the digital platform service collects (whether or not it shares the data with the registered news business) about the registered news business' users through their engagement with covered news content made available by the digital platform service".

In other words, Google and Facebook will be obliged to let media outlets know what type of information it is gleaning from the media outlets' viewers and readers congregating on their platforms. That seems fair enough.

List and explain

Other provisions of the code similarly request Google and Facebook to "list and explain" the type of information they gather and from what services. That addresses a longstanding bugbear of media outlets, which is that they have no idea how Google and Facebook gather and use data collected on news consumers on their platforms. Other provisions in the code require the digital platforms to explain the seemingly random algorithm changes they make, without notice, that play havoc with media outlets' efforts to reach their customers via third-party platforms.

It doesn't suggest the digital platforms will be forced to hand over more data on users' activities, but to explain how they are using the data they are currently collecting. 

"Google's letter is straight out of the monopoly 101 playbook trying to mislead and frighten Australians to protect their position as the gateway to the internet," the chief executive of Free TV Australia, Bridget Fair, told the Guardian.

"We've seen this kind of tactic before from big businesses trying to stop regulators from evening up the playing field so that they can hold on to excessive profits. Hopefully, they will not succeed."

The letter certainly shows that Google is prepared to fight hard to avoid having to strike fair revenue-sharing deals with media outlets. The mandatory code will be introduced into parliament after the end of the consultation period, so may well be passed into law this year.

Media in turmoil

It has, naturally enough, been enthusiastically received by the Aussie media industry, which hit with declining ad revenue as a result of Covid-19 has had to lay off hundreds of staff, shut some publications and stop physical production of many others.

On this side of the Tasman, Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Minister, Kris Faafoi hinted earlier in the year when launching a $50 million support package for our own Covid-hit media, that the government would be carefully examining the Australian code. The Government has previously done very little work in the regulatory space to address the market power of digital platforms.

A second media package is in the works, but looks likely now to be revealed before the election on October 17. Media leaders here are pushing for a similar approach to Australia's, with the large digital platforms required to start sharing ad revenue. In the meantime, the country's largest news website, Stuff, has taken a proactive measure - it hasn't shared a story on Facebook since July 6 as it tries to go cold turkey on the social platform that supplies it a lot of web traffic, but which has simultaneously cannibalised the ad revenue that media companies rely on to stay in business.

A brief search of Facebook from a New Zealand account brings up two denial groups in the top five recommended groups, with the number one page proclaiming "This is a group to discuss the lies that have been told over 80 years and the injustice that has been thrust upon the Germanic people".

Once a Facebook user has visited such a page the social media giant automatically recommends other similar content. Facebook remains reluctant to tackle Holocaust denial pages despite saying it is doing more to tackle hate speech online.

In the UK Sunday publication The Observer, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue's senior research manager, Jacob Davey is quoted as saying, "Facebook's decision to allow Holocaust denial content to remain on its platform is framed under the guise of protecting legitimate historical debate, but this misses the reason why people engage in Holocaust denial in the first place.

"Denial of the Holocaust is a deliberate tool used to delegitimise the suffering of the Jewish people and perpetuate long-standing antisemitic tropes, and when people explicitly do this it should be seen as an act of hatred," he said.

Facebook, and other social media companies, maintain they are not the publishers of such content but merely a platform that allows the content producers to self-publish. However, as these companies move away from simply allowing users to publish content and more towards a curated feed, this argument is starting to wear thin around the world.

Hamish Grant-Fargie, Policy Director in MBIE's Commerce, Consumers and Communications branch, says establishing a consumer data right could deliver a range of benefits for both consumers and businesses.

"Creating a system whereby people consent to sharing their data with trusted third parties in a safe and secure way would provide consumers with access to a wider range of products and services.

"We are considering options for creating a consumer data right, which would give individuals and businesses greater choice and control over the large volumes of data held about them by companies like banks and utilities. This would mean people can manage their finances more easily, compare products or services across multiple providers, and seamlessly switch between different providers without losing their data."

As businesses hold increasingly large volumes of data about consumers, the opportunities associated with using data more innovatively are potentially significant, Mr Grant-Fargie says.

"Giving consumers greater access to how their data is used will facilitate innovation and competition. One such area is in payment systems. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a sharp increase in the volume of business conducted online or via contactless card payments. A consumer data right could pave the way for new and innovative ways of making payments that can reduce the costs for businesses and consumers, while building the digital economy and enabling sectors such as fintech to thrive." 

The consultation asks whether a consumer data right is needed in New Zealand, and if so how it should be designed to ensure that consumer data is handled safely and securely. Mr Grant-Fargie says it's vital that data can only be shared with the consumer's informed consent and in a way that is safe and secure. "An accreditation regime that ensures data holders have robust protections in place is a likely cornerstone of a consumer data right. We're seeking feedback on the best ways to protect consumer data while still allowing consumers to benefit from their data."

The consultation is open until 5 October 2020.

Read the discussion document and provide feedback.

The Commerce Commission has released two reviews into an October 2019 security incident and accepts all findings and recommendations.

But one company and one executive, Apple and Tim Cook, appear to have fared worse than the others as rivals and customers pore over the testimony. 

Apple's App Store, the gateway to iOS devices for around 1.7 million apps, has been a huge success for Apple, increasingly delivering revenue in the form of 'services' as sales of its iconic iPhone range slow.

Apple is estimated to have generated gross sales of US$50 billion from the App Store last year. If the App Store itself was a company, it would rank 64th in the Fortune 500. Apple argues that with app developers claiming 70 per cent of revenue from sales through the App Store and Apple claiming 30 per cent, it has enabled a thriving ecosystem of app development - everything from games to productivity tools.

Developer frustrations

But developers are increasingly frustrated with Apple. Among their complaints is that the company's policy of taking a cut of subscription revenue through iOS apps (30 per cent in the first year, then 15 per cent each year thereafter), is an unreasonable clipping of the ticket. 

In June, European Union officials opened a formal antitrust investigation of Apple, over complaints about Apple's commission structure and the company's ability to gather data on each app used on its devices giving it a competitive advantage when it comes to touting its own apps. 

That followed complaints from the likes of streaming music provider Spotify, which has year urged an EU investigation as it faced growing competition from Apple's own streaming music service, Apple Music.

Another frustration is that App Store users have to use Apple's own Apple Pay system for in-app purchases which attracts a commission. That requirement drove Spotify to instead push customers to its own website to pay their subscription, avoiding what it calls the 'Apple tax' but making the process more awkward for new subscribers.

While Apple claims its commission is necessary to support the operation of the App Store, it is also open to criticism that it doesn't treat all app developers fairly. 

The US antitrust subcommittee last week revealed correspondence between Cook and Amazon's Jeff Bezos that showed Cook offering more favourable terms than usual to get Amazon's Prime TV streaming app into the App Store and onto Apple devices.

It showed that Apple would waive the 30 per cent commission on in-app revenue for the first year, charging 15 per cent, and would share with Amazon meta-data from Apple's Siri and Spotlight search tools.

The deal, struck before Apple launched its own Apple TV streaming video service, shows how eager Apple was to secure streaming video services for the App Store. But it is unlikely that smaller players would have received such favourable terms, despite Apple's 'one rule for all' claims.

Other developers have railed against Apple for blocking their apps. The tensions typically relate to how data is gathered and used by third-party iOS apps and attempts to bypass Apple's in-app purchase system.

Apps blocked

Following the hearing, David Heinemeier Hansson, the co-founder and CEO of Basecamp, which makes business productivity software, tweeted that Cook's testimony "on the hook for perjury".

That followed a fight with Apple, which initially blocked an update to its paid email app Hey, because it didn't use Apple's payment system. A handful of app developers who make apps designed to let parents monitor and control their children's smartphone usage have also complained about having their apps blocked.

Apple claims security and privacy, an issue that is likely to flare up again as the core iOS system driving Apple devices introduces tighter security features, particularly for third-party apps.

With so much money at stake, not only for Apple, but thousands of app developers, even the pro-Apple camp is calling for reform of the App Store model.

An app ombudsman

"Years ago, Steve Jobs made the point that the goal of selling digital music wasn't to eradicate piracy, but to compete with it. To make it easy for people to do the right thing and pay for their media instead of stealing it," wrote MacWorld's Dan Moren following the hearing.

"That served Apple well at the time, but having attained a lofty position in the market, the company seems to have forgotten that precept."

He suggested that what Apple "desperately needs" is an ombudsman to advocate for developers and more transparency around decision making related to apps.

US lawmakers will no doubt be watching progress on the EU antitrust investigation of Apple closely as they decide if and when to launch their own investigations of Big Tech companies. One thing is for sure - the treatment of developers in the App Store looks to be a continuing bone of contention and focus of regulatory attention.

As it happened, the billionaire tech CEOs who dialled it to face a grilling by the US Congress antitrust subcommittee representatives over aspects of their vast businesses connected via Webex instead. 

It's a product made by Cisco, a true blue American company. Patriotism indeed emerged as a theme, with at least one tech executive portraying his company's strength as being good for America and republican politicians probing the tech players' relationships with China.

Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai and Cook. The four leaders of the tech world, who control companies collectively worth trillions of dollars, gave earnest and subdued responses to a litany of questions spanning everything from anti-competitive behaviour to bias on the platforms to inadequacies in their efforts to identify and remove harmful content and concerns that China is stealing intellectual property from them.

Compared to when Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Capitol Hill, in April 2018, to try and explain his way out of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, the politicians were better briefed and less prone to embarrassing themselves.

But this hearing lacked the focus, spanning a range of complex issues that were impossible to properly address in short testimony responses. The hearing has however crystalised the main concerns Democrats and Republicans have when it comes to the influence of the four Big Tech companies in the lives of billions of people.

Those concerns break down into a handful of key categories:

The competition killers

Each executive faced accusations of this in various guises. Tim Cook spent a lot of his testimony defending Apple's policies for how it determines who can put apps in its App Store and how it controls access to iOS devices. 

"We run the app store to help developers not hurt them," he told the lawmakers. 

"We would never steal somebody's IP."

Sundar Pichai was accused of using Google's powerful search engine to favour its own products. 

Amazon's Jeff Bezos was told it had created an "innovation kill zone" by using proprietary from businesses hosted on its Amazon Web services platform to launch competing services. Zuckerberg was grilled on Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp which were portrayed as cementing Facebook's dominance in social media.

The accusation: The big four are so powerful they are able to buy up potential competitors, they stifle innovation by freezing out rivals and use their access to masses of data to gain a competitive edge.

They are just too big

Apple's App Store is just too dominant, a monopoly on access to the iPhone. Amazon controls over 50 per cent of the US e-commerce market and Google's digital ad business has a similar dominance in the ad market. 

Facebook has the power to influence billions of people and hasn't taken its responsibilities to prevent the spread of information seriously enough, with damaging implications for democracy.

The accusation: This is the crux of the antitrust hearing - lax regulation and a hands-off approach to oversight has led to the emergence of a handful of massively powerful companies that now have unassailable leads over their rivals. They are like the oil barons of the early 20th century.

They are not politically neutral

This was a theme of Republican members of the committee in particular. They zeroed in on Zuckerberg, complaining that Facebook has been biased against content from conservative groups and commentators. That's despite the fact that evidence shows that conservative groups and personalities have a larger share of voice on Facebook than, say, Twitter.

"Big tech is out to get conservatives," said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. "If it doesn't end, there have to be consequences."

Pichai was grilled about a high level discussion among Google executives following the 2016 presidential election, a video recording of which was leaked to Breitbart. It showed Google co-founder Sergei Brin commenting that "most people here are pretty upset and pretty sad," about the election result. But has Google used its platforms to thwart the Trump agenda? There was little in the way of compelling evidence to suggest so. 

"Can you assure us that you're not going to tailor or configure your platform to help Joe Biden?" Jordan asked Pichai.

The newly-promoted Alphabet CEO said Google's goal was to remain neutral.

The accusation: These powerful companies and their key executives use their power to advance their ideology which has a toxic effect on democracy.

They aren't socially responsible

This was really aimed at Facebook with the committee members wading into the debate over what the social media platform is doing to moderate content. 

"I believe strongly in free expression," Zuckerberg told the politicians. 

"I am very worried about some of the forces of illiberalism I see in this country that is pressing against free expression."

In a rare show of disunity Bezos lobbed a grenade at Zuckerberg:

"Social media is a nuance destruction machine," he said from his Amazon office. "I don't think that is helpful for a democracy."

The hearing didn't go into the intricacies of content moderation or policies relating to preventing hate speech from spreading, but it was clear that this issue is intertwined with the commercial power the big tech companies have to influence opinion and public discourse with platforms used by billions of people.

The accusation: Big Tech favours profit over social good and is asleep at the wheel when it comes to addressing some of the toxic aspects of human nature manifesting itself on social media platforms.

The Democrats will regulate

The hearing clearly saw lawmakers pulling in different directions over the hotbed issues, but united in their dissatisfaction with the big four tech companies.

It was clear that should Joe Biden be elected president in November, Big Tech companies face regulation and potentially the forced break-up of some of their operations.

There is less of a threat of that with Republicans who nevertheless seek reform, primarily to address bias they claim threatens democracy and to shore up the role of the tech sector in advancing America's agenda.

No fireworks then, no devastating blows on the CEOs, no major gaffes from the politicians, just a sense that the US has a mammoth task ahead of it addressing these issues in a deeply divided country.

Currently, major brands are boycotting Facebook as an advertising platform, withholding tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising in a show of solidarity against the social media giant as it refuses to rein in some of its users excesses.

More than 400 major brands have decided not to advertise on Facebook for the next 30 days, and the announcement sent a shockwave through the Facebook shareprice, knocking more than 8% off the price and creating a flurry of excitement in investment circles.

Of course, major brands currently have every reason to reduce their spending and a month without Facebook advertising is probably something they're keen to do anyway, given the retail market's collapse during the COVID outbreak, but it's the thought that counts and this one has raised eyebrows.

However, the share price has recovered and is slightly higher than it was before the boycott began which suggests investors are not too worried by a month of reduced income.

And why would they be? Facebook dominates the online advertising market and with its sub-brand Instagram has moved quickly and effectively into mobile advertising in a way most other players could only dream of. With these two behemoths in play, Facebook effectively controls a large portion of the global advertising spend and a month that's a bit quiet will do nothing to dent the company's coffers, especially if the revolt only lasts a month.

Advertisers have struggled with Facebook since it first appeared and offered tremendous granularity and the ability to micro-manage campaigns down to the single user level. Micro targeting advertising, coupled with low costs per user and a dashboard that showed exactly how long users spend looking at material and what they do before and after they visit a brand's content was held up as a tremendous carrot for those with money to spend. Whether it was true or not (and there remains a lot of doubt about Facebook's data) didn't really matter - advertisers have ditched traditional media like a hot potato in favour of the online world, whether they like it or not.

But it's not just the advertisers who are angry at the company. Users have long called for reform, demanding Facebook introduce better controls so they can avoid extremist content, so online trolls can be brought into line or banned from sites, so that reports of illegal or objectionable activity can be readily reported and acted on. Facebook has declined to do anything that would interfere with the reach of it coveted algorithm which leads users down the rabbit hole of ever more extreme content.

Of course, Facebook users aren't the real customers, the advertisers are and the only real power the users have is to stay or go. Many left, but with over 2.6 billion regular users, it would take a colossal act to upset Facebook. Something like an entire country rejecting Facebook and cutting ties with the company altogether might do it, but again it might not.

And in the year since the Christchurch mosque attacks were broadcast live, a year in which Facebook resisted all calls for reform, offering up public relations actions instead, the users and advertisers have been joined by a third very powerful group - the investors. Lead by New Zealand's Super fund, the investor groups have banded together to demand time with the social media players to put their case for reform. With a combined investment fund spend of $7.5 trillion even Facebook will have to listen but so far results have been few and far between.

Even Facebook staff have boycotted the company with a number of high profile resignations and staff walk outs expressing outrage at the way Facebook has changed the rules to allow and enable extremist content to flourish.

Facebook, and in particular its majority shareholder, founder Mark Zuckerberg, seems to be running out of friends, but with the revenue stream and market dominance that Facebook has, it seems increasing the number of friends it has is not high on its bucket list.

That leaves only one avenue and that's political regulation, and here we see action on a number of fronts and in a number of areas growing by the day.

It's not just a matter of market dominance that would require Facebook to be broken up. It's not just about changing laws regarding safe harbour provisions for social media companies that provide a platform for hate speech and extremist content. It's not even about regulating the way Facebook moves its money about and pays tax - and it's not about upholding local laws in local jurisdictions (something Facebook does when it has to, as in Germany with neo-Nazi symbolism or everywhere that copyright lawyers operate). But when you combine all of these areas and more - including privacy laws that explicitly hold Facebook to account - we are starting to see a groundswell of support for the kind of regulation that could very well call Facebook to heel.

Facebook says it doesn't profit from hate, yet time and again has been found to make money from the most heinous of content. Facebook argues that it operates in a world of free speech, that it isn't a publisher, just a neutral platform and that it does what it can to provide a safe and friendly environment for its users. But Facebook really misses the point - some would say deliberately - and despite helping Donald Trump get elected, despite helping anti-European politicians fight to move the UK out of the European Union, despite helping civil wars and ethnic cleansing, despite all of that and more, Facebook still believes it doesn't have a case to answer.

Facebook could get out from under this. It could institute new tools to enable users to report abuse and it could act on those reports. It could ensure data is secured safely and abide by the laws of the countries in which it operates. It could accept its role as publisher and actively police its own content and it could pay tax in the country where the transactions take place rather than the tax haven model it currently holds dear to its heart.

It could do all these things but it won't because it doesn't feel it has to. If we want it to change we'll have to keep up the boycotts, the walk outs, the account closures and the calls for regulation and eventually Facebook will face the wrath of all its stakeholders in an ever growing number of jurisdictions around the world.

Assuming of course that it doesn't decide it is above all of us, for ever more.

The bill was introduced by Minister for Internal Affairs, Tracey Martin, and follows a number of attempts over the years to introduce legislation requiring ISPs to manage the content being accessed by the nation's users. 

In 1994 National MP Trevor Rogers introduced a Private Member's Bill titled the "Technology and Crimes Reform Bill" but it was not enacted. A subsequent select committee hearing proposed a voluntary code be introduced but that also failed to gain traction.

One exception is the Digital Child Exploitation Filter introduced in 2010 as a voluntary mechanism designed to block the worst excesses of child sexual abuse content. It has largely been adopted by New Zealand's ISPs and is run by the Department of Internal Affairs which employs a manual process with content reviewers who verify whether content breaches the law or not.

Now this latest attempt has also fallen by the wayside and the minister is "extremely disappointed".

The plan included requiring users to "opt out" of any filtering system and that in turn would require some form of age-verification mechanism. In the UK a similar proposal was met with scorn from all sides relating to the "porn licence" that would be required. It was dropped as a piece of legislation in 2017.

Martin will continue work on another bill relating to the publication of extremist content. In the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque killings a number of ISPs actively blocked access to video content relating to the murders, however all expressed their unwillingness to take on the role of overseer of content permanently. 

That legislation is expected to be introduced later this year.

In keeping with the New Zealand Electoral Act, Facebook will require parties disclose who paid for ads and provide contact details of those placing the ads.

The edict extends to those not directly connected with political parties that may advertise on election issues such as social spending, for example.

In New Zealand the Electoral Act does already requires those who advertise to carry a promoter statement so this move by Facebook simply brings it into line with New Zealand law, however it is the first time the platform has required New Zealand political entities abide by its transparency policy and follows evidence of extensive interference in other national elections around the world.

Particularly of interest to observers of election advertising will be micro-targeted advertisements that use social media platforms to pinpoint advertising to particular demographics and which flaunt the laws regarding spending limits. This tactic was used in Australian politics in recent years and has lead to a number of calls for political advertising to be banned on social media platforms.

This year's election will be somewhat unusual following, as it does, the COVID-19 outbreak. While New Zealand appears to be relatively free of the virus, the Electoral Commission is ensuring New Zealand voters can do so remotely using postal ballots, and also providing a longer voting period than normal to allow for social distancing.

Unfortunately there is one victim of this year's outbreak. Polling station staff will not be issuing "I voted" stickers this year.