The New Yorker Radio Hour - Will the Government Get Tough on Big Tech?

Episode Date: June 14, 2019

Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (which owns Google), and Facebook—known in the tech world as the Big Four—are among the largest and most profitable companies in the world, and they’ve been accustomed to the laxest of oversight from Washington. But the climate may have shifted in a significant way. The Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and the House Judiciary Committee are all investigating different aspects of the Big Four; Elizabeth Warren has made breaking up these companies a cornerstone of her Presidential campaign. Sue Halpern, a New Yorker contributor, sounds a cautious note about these developments. Current antitrust law doesn’t well fit the nature of these businesses, and breaking up the companies will not necessarily solve underlying issues, like the lack of privacy law. In a twist, Halpern says, the Big Four and now asking the federal government for more regulation—because, she explains to David Remnick, the companies’ lobbyists can sway Washington more easily than they can influence state governments like California, which just passed a rigorous data-privacy law similar to the European Union’s. “They’re being called to account, they have to do something,” she notes, “but they want to direct the conversation so that, ultimately, they still win.” Plus, we contemplate the dire prospect of Houston without air conditioning. Bryan Washington, a Houston native and a celebrated young fiction writer, introduces non-natives to a cherished local institution: the open-air bar and community space called an ice house.   New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. One thing is pretty clear in this world. If you can get Elizabeth Warren and Steve Bannon to agree on something, and the something is that you're doing a lousy job and you can't be trusted, that's kind of a feat. And that's where the big four tech companies are right now. Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. are among the biggest and most profitable companies in the world, and they've been accustomed to having their way in Washington for a very long time.

But maybe not anymore. The Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and Congress are all investigating the tech giants, and there's now talk that antitrust laws could be applied to break them up. Elizabeth Warren has actually made that a cornerstone of her campaign. They think they can run their business to just roll right over. every small business, every entrepreneur, every startup that might threaten their position. It is time to break up America's tech giants.

I asked Sue Halpern, who reports for us on technology and politics, whether Washington is finally changing its tune. Basically, we've got a situation in which the tech giants have done a number of things that are wrong and creepy, the last of which was the Nancy Pelosi fake video that made her look like a drunken fool. And then he had a press conference in the Rose Garden with all this short sort of visuals that obviously were planned long before I said most currently that he was engaged in a cover-up. And the response in that case of Facebook was, oh, sorry, let's move on. When the Pelosi video was not taken down, one of the things that Facebook said was, well, we don't

have a rule that says everything on our platform has to be true. And so there's been a lot of talk among constituents, among politicians that this has got to stop. Sue, what would have to happen for Congress to determine that these big tech companies are, in fact, huge monopolies or that they're acting anti-competitively? Well, that's actually, David, that's one of the problems, is the antitrust. laws that we have on the books are really not set up to deal with these companies, in part because antitrust is typically about pricing. It's typically about, you know, is someone controlling the market and making things, you know, cost a particular thing. And that's not what's happening here.

So that, I think one of the things they could possibly do is change the antitrust statutes. breaking them up doesn't solve the problem of privacy, and it doesn't solve the problem of data surveillance, and it doesn't solve the problem of propaganda. And those are some of the biggest issues, and those are some of the issues that are really, you know, driving a lot of people's disapproval of these companies. What was the turning point, do you think? In other words, for years and years, it seemed to me that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple were revered. Really revered for their imagination, the facility of these inventions, the way they seem to make life easier and more seamless and fluid, and then something happened. What was the turning point? I think the turning point was pretty recently, and I think it came with two things.

One was the 2016 presidential election where we saw platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram being used to project and inject propaganda into the country that was very divisive. I think people were very disturbed by the fact that there were possibilities of using tools on Facebook to suppress the African-American vote. And the second thing to sort of, you know, kick it down the road was Cambridge Analytica. when suddenly, you know, 87 million Facebook user profiles were being harvested, what Cambridge Analytica did was really not that much different than what the Obama campaign was doing in 2012 with, you know, data from the friends of users. But suddenly it was looked on as this very dark exercise, which it was.

Well, then why did the Obama campaign get away with it, as it were, and not the Trump campaign? Because I don't think people, first of all, I don't think anyone really knew about it. Second of all, the scale was much, much different. And third of all, they weren't doing it for the dark arts. They weren't doing it to try to suppress the vote. They were doing it to try to get people to get out to vote. So I think there wasn't a sense that, you know, something untoward was going on. You know, the surprising victory of Donald Trump led people to ask the question, what happened?

They really mastered the tools that Facebook had put out there. And they weren't put out there exclusively for the Trump campaign. They were put out there for anybody. How do you go about even remotely going against the problem of privacy? So the privacy that none of us really have. Yeah. So one of the issues here is that there are really no laws that protect our data and protect us from the acquisition of our data and the sale of our data and the use of our data

in these advertising platforms, which is what Facebook and Google really are. So we could follow the lead of Europe and start legislating privacy laws that cover these things. And that's happening to an extent in the states. And that's what's been really interesting to watch. So, UC California has a pretty stringent privacy law that's about to go into effect or might have already gone into effect that pretty much follows the GDPR. The GDPR being the European law and data privacy. Yeah. And one of the things that's been really interesting to watch is the extent to which the big tech companies are now calling for regulation, but they're calling for federal regulation because they're looking at the states and they're getting worried that the states are going to do.

do things that are much more stringent than anything that they and their lobbyists can get the federal government to do. So it's a very interesting moment where you see these tech giants coming back and saying, oh, no, no, we really want to be regulated. But the fact is they want to write the regulations. Well, ultimately in Washington, is there real support for the kind of European laws that they have on privacy? There's probably not a lot of support for the more stringent controls that they have. Why? What's the downside? Well, the downside is that there's a kind of longstanding, deep-seated allergy to regulation.

I mean, we get that definitely from the right and from the left, or, you know, let's say from the Republicans, there's the anti-regulatory sensibility. And from the Democrats, they've always looked at with that kind of starry-eyed, you know, these are our children kind of sensibility. Not just our children, but our big contributors. Well, I was going to go there. Yes, absolutely. So for the longest time, they were getting a lot of money from the tech companies from Silicon Valley. How freaked out or not are these tech companies about the hearings in Congress this week? Are they seeing this as an existential threat to their companies? Or are they so well defended by lawyers and lobbyists and the rest that they're pretty confident they'll survive it.

I think both. I mean, I think that the reason why they're so well defended by their lawyers and they do have lots and lots of antitrust lawyers in their companies. And, you know, they're looking at this as a moment in which they're being called to account. They have to do something. But they want to direct the conversation. They want to direct how it goes so that ultimately they still win. Well, there were hearings in the House earlier this week, and lawmakers started examining the power of Amazon and Apple and alphabet, which is Google's parent, and Facebook. So what's changed politically that made investigations possible? Just one outrage after another? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it's been very, very clear that the regulatory agencies that are

overseeing the tech companies aren't overseeing the tech companies. The FTC has, has been unbelievably toothless in its regulation of tech. I mean, look at what happened with Facebook. In 2011, it had them signed a consent degree that basically Facebook said, yep, we have been taking data from people who don't know that we're taking it, but we're not going to do it again. And then they did it again. They did it in such a huge big way.

We found out about Cambridge Analytica, and that's just, you know, one thing that they did. And now, you know, what is it, eight years later, they're finally getting around to talking about fining Facebook. That is a very, very slow wheel of justice. And so there's a desire on the part of legislators to try to figure out whether or not they can do something legislatively. And that really does remain to be seen. But finally, who are the people in government who can have the biggest impact on big tech? Is it the FTC, is it the Justice Department, a certain House committee, or is it the presidential candidates? Good question. I think that, you know, one of the things that we know is that their antitrust can come from either the FTC or from the Department of Justice.

You know, what can the presidential candidates do? And obviously, all they can do is talk. But one of the things that happens when they talk, when Elizabeth Warren talks about breaking up big tax, she automatically puts the tech companies on the defensive and then they have to come up with a rationale for why they shouldn't be. And then we have a conversation. And I think, you know, that's the beginning of any of this, is to have this in the public domain because it's not going to happen if we just, you know, say, oh, well, you know, they're too big, you know, they're too big,

not only to fail, they're too big to succeed. And then we just move on. Sue Halpern is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. Now summer is here, although in Houston, Texas, it's been well into the 90s for weeks. Right now it's a little bit past six and it is sufficiently swampy, yeah, and it's pretty disgusting outside, actually. But I think that's just what we've got to work with until July-ish, and then it only gets to, swampier and then it'll disappear around November.

Brian Washington is a Houston native and a writer of short stories. His debut collection of stories is set among Houston's hustlers and drug dealers, and it's gotten great reviews. We published his short story called Waugh in The New Yorker in 2018. When Brian Washington got back from his book tour recently, he took us to one of his favorite places, the West Alabama Ice House. And the truth is, if you don't know what an ice house is, you, probably don't live in Houston.

I think the idea of an ice house is really debatable, and I think the only consistency with everyone's definitions is that there really is no one true definition of what an ice house is. Some folks would argue that it has to have been a place that literally sold ice at some point in time. Some people could argue that an ice house of signifier is shitty parking to sort of accentuate the fact that it's a community hub, and people from the community will walk over and just hang out.

some people would argue that an ice house had to have originally served as a sort of convenience store because that's how many ice houses started out and that they sold ice, you know, they sold milk, they sold bread, because it was a place that could keep those things cool. I think it's literally different from a regular bar in that swathes of it are outside and swathes of it are populated by benches. And the ice house doesn't sell liquor either. They sell beer, they sell cider, they sell water. They sell sodas, but they don't sell hard liquors.

This is not something that they do. So if you were walking from off the road, like you're just walking to the ice house from off the street, you're going to run right into some benches. You might stub your toe on one of them as you head your way to the bar, and if you turn in the corner, there's a bit of an awning with a series of TVs

or most folks are watching whatever basketball game. Right now it's the playoffs. They're just so inconsistent, getting them to show up. I know that one chicken truck was very inconsistent, But it's summertime now, we need to get a go. You know I want to eat. Well, I think the concept of the ice house started in the late 1800s, because you had these ships that were coming down from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico,

and they would stop over in Galveston, and that's where they would unload and sell the ice that they had left over. And in the years since, at least, West Alabama Ice House has trend. Like, there's a tamale guy right there. Like, he's selling, like, fucking tamales. So that's maybe an allusion to the different kind of things that you could buy in a space like this. Tamales. Tamales. I'm stilling tamale guys. Tamales. I first started coming to the Ice House because it was a meeting place or a sort of nexus point.

Because the first time I was hanging out in Montrose, I had never been in this neighborhood before. So I was just still exploring it mostly just like gay clubs and gay bars around the area. And it was a great place to meet people because everyone knew where it was. It served as a sort of landmark, so you could pregame and get a beer or whatever for significantly cheaper than you would at whatever bar or club that you were going to and then just go off and enjoy your evening. So it served as a sort of introduction to the neighborhood in this part of town for me, and it's sort of remained in my life since then. How are you doing? How are you? Pretty good.

Yeah, can I get a Bohemia and then can we also get a Topo Chico? But I've had, like, not great experiences in ice houses as well. you know, I've gotten kicked out of this particular ice house, like twice. The first time that I got kicked out, I was just hanging out with some friends, and we were sitting next to a table, and there was, like, this group of, like, burly or white guys, and they were talking very loud, and one of them was pretty virulently homophobic, which now I've sort of, now I would not have the reaction that I did then,

but as someone who had just, like, come out a few years ago, I hadn't been, I hadn't had too many contacts with, like, blatant open homophobia. So I picked a fight, and it was like, I say kicked out, but that's a bit of a euphemism. It's not like it's a movie where we were literally thrown out. But, you know, the bartender came over and they, like, shoot us out. And, like, that was my end of, you know, the end of my relationship with the ice house for a few months or, you know, a little while. The other time I broke up with someone. But, yeah, we had a pretty significant argument being, you know, right before, right before we were asked politely to leave.

Yeah. I'm not a DJ though. Yasha, what do you want to hear? I'd say these days I'm here about once or twice a week, and if I'm here on a weekend, let's say, then I'm probably working on something. So I'll have my laptop and I'll just edit whatever I need to edit or just work on emails or whatever for a few hours, and then inevitably I'll end up people watching

and just sort of jelling in with the ice house itself, whatever the vibe is of that particular day. There have been times where I've been here and there have been like wedding parties, let's say, and they've asked me to like sit with them. Like they might have too much beer or they might have too much food. And you end up talking to people and you get swept up and whatever the excitement is. It's a space where I've just like lived here, you know, sort of run through the spectrum of emotions. And I can't think of too many places outside of like an actual home or an actual workplace where that would be the case.

Brian Washington at the West Alabama Ice House in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston. I'm David Remnick, and thanks for joining me today. I just want to mention that if you missed our program last week, I'd love it if you would give it a listen. Masha Gessen joined me to put 50 years of gay rights since the Stonewall uprising into proper context. And I'm really proud of what we put together. You can find the New Yorker Radio Hour, anywhere you get your podcasts, or on the web at New Yorkerradio.org.

Thanks, and have a great week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. This episode was produced with help from Trent Williamson, Ed Haver, Caroline Lester, Melissa Lecase, Alicia Allen, Gwendolyn Pointer, Mung Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.

Thank you.