tv Best of Bloomberg Technology Bloomberg January 21, 2018 1:00pm-2:00pm EST
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♪ selina: i'm selina wang in for emily chang, and this is the "best of bloomberg technology." coming up, big tex back on capitol hill and this time, it , is all about fighting online extreme wisdom -- online extremism. amazon's list of where it will build its headquarters. with thousands of jobs and billions of dollars at stake, we will catch you up on the details. apple brings home hundreds of
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billions of dollars in overseas cash to the u.s. we have the stories. now to our lead. amazon has narrowed the field for hq2, its second proposed headquarters in the u.s. 20 cities made the cut. among them, new york, boston, chicago, miami, and austin. the project is expected to cost $5 billion and create 50,000 jobs. we caught up with our reporter for amazon along with a ceo. >> i wouldn't read too much into the three areas around washington, d.c., because amazon is likely targeting labor pools, and those very often cross geographic lines. even though that could simply be amazon focusing on that general area, but it has to negotiate with different political groups because of geographic boundaries.
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>> i know your intel has been digging into the tech hubs in the country. what did you find? did many of them line up with what amazon has released? >> we looked at a lot of our data, which we have on almost half a billion people in terms of their skills and capabilities. what you find is that a lot of the bigger cities like new york and los angeles tend to have the most candidates to pull from him -- from. but when you look at the list, you have proximity to universities. pittsburgh being proximate to carnegie mellon. if you're looking for technology talent that would be a factor. , selina: what is the process to narrow it down? >> what they are thinking about is what will happen in the next 10, 20, 30 years. where do people want to live? they will factor in public transportation, cost of living. i think it breaks down to
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talent. can they find enough talent in that location? do people want to live there? selina: what characteristics do you think amazon is looking for? we have a city ranging from new york to even suburbs like montgomery county. >> i think the main thing a size of labor pool and the type of talent. amazon churns through people. typically people have three years or so at amazon. if you're talking about 50,000 employees, you have to take into account attrition for that. selina: spencer makes a great what will it take to attract point. people to the city they choose and where are they going to come from? will they be silicon valley transplants organically grown? , >> this is why education and the university system are so important. you have so many people growing up in other parts of the country. when they look at cost of living
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and their hometown, they would love to stay if there were enough jobs. people move because their hometown does not have enough economic opportunities. they will be able to keep the talent there versus watching the talent leave and go to other places. one other factor is amazon's focus on a diverse workforce. if you think about where they might be greater pools of diverse candidates, that might be a factor. selina: amazon has received huge tax breaks to build its delivery and warehouse systems across the country. what benefits do expect them to -- do you expect them to get for this new headquarters? spencer: if you think about the warehouse jobs, those are generally lower skilled and lower paying. it is going to be easier for politicians trying to justify even better deals.
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this is huge. 50,000 jobs, total compensation including benefits and the $100,000 range. these are a big economic impact. whatever you saw for the warehouses you can expect to see , that and more so for the headquarters operation, which is trained professionals earning good salaries and buying homes and a good economic ripple effect. selina: speaking of the economic impact, amazon has completely transformed seattle, brought great economic wealth as well as strains on the infrastructure. what do you think this means for the chosen city? jon: i think it is huge. not only do you have the commitment amazon has made them a 50,000 jobs, but it is the follow-up effect. amazon will base their headquarters there. you will bring other companies, other innovation. it may be more appealing now to live there, go to school there.
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it is huge. this is why have seen so many mayors go to great lengths to try to attract amazon. they recognize there are not 100 amazon's and the world. -- in the world. selina: that was a ceo and spencer sofer. facebook had a lot of thing on capitol hill this past wednesday, but our next guest thinks it still has much more to come clean about. that is up next. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. you can listen on the bloomberg radio app, bloomberg.com, and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪
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this is in response to regulatory health concerns about fatigue and exhaustion. it will require drivers to take a six hour break if they worked for 10 consecutive hours. to enforce this compliance, workers will be prevented from logging into the app during rest periods. meantime, ford is warning profits will fall this year as ceo jim hackett spends heavily to catch up with rivals to bring electric vehicles to market. wall street had been expecting a drop, but the company's guidance is worse than what analysts were anticipating. the automaker kicked off a detroit auto show by pledging to invest $11 billion to bring 40 electric five vehicles to the market by 2022. representatives from facebook, youtube, and twitter were on capitol hill this week, but this time to testify about how they are fighting online extremism. they appeared along with a former fbi agent before the senate commerce committee, and they were pressed again on a lot of the same topics that came up during last year's hearings on russian interference in the u.s. presidential election, but
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perhaps the most dire warning came from a senator from montana. >> this is a really important issue. from a terrorist standpoint, from all of the questions that were asked before, but our democracy is at risk. we have got to figure out how to get this done and get it done right and get it done quickly. or we may not have a democracy to have you guys up to hear you are. -- here you out. selina: in response, facebook touted the media giants efforts. >> we now have more than 7500 people who are working to review terror content and other potential violations. we have 180 people who are focused specifically on countering terrorism. selina: facebook's efforts against online extremism aren't the only things the company is having to defend lately. the very nature of the company is being questioned. our next guest called them a
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"living, breathing, crime scene for what happened in the 2016 election." called theeen closest thing silicon valley has had to the -- to a conscience. >> they have unleashed pandora's box. they have 5 million advertisers cycling through the network every single day. there is no way to check how the advertisers get matched to each individual user. there is billions of channel on the new tv and there is no way to be accountable to all of that complexity. the have unleashed this civilization scale mind control machine. as roger likes to say 2 billion people use facebook. that is more than the followers of christianity. 1.5 billion people use youtube, that's more than followers of islam. these products have daily influence over that many people. >> it is massive. what do you think of the changes
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facebook recently announced? about focusing more on friends and content from family as opposed to news? tristan: it is a step in the right direction. mark zuckerberg titled his post as we are embracing time well spent as the future of the direction of the company. that concept came from myself and my colleague. we have been incubating the concept of calling out the problems of a time spaced economy. it is great they are embracing the concept, but the challenge is it goes against the advertising-based business model. you can't ask somebody who's entire stock price is codependent on telling wall street that we have this many minutes of people day. it is simple multiplication. if they are going to say we are going to cut down on how much time people spend, they can do a tiny bit, but not that much. are they willing to examine the business model? emily: you called facebook a
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living, breathing crime scene for what happened in the election. that is a bold claim. what do you mean? tristan: no one actually has access to what happened in the election. only facebook has that data. now the question becomes can we , trust facebook with telling us the truth? if you look back at what they have said since literally a year ago when mark zuckerberg said it's a crazy idea that fake news had any impact on the election and then continuing to withhold and delay and differ the release of information. first it was $100,000 in ads, then a lot of researchers did lots of background research, finding that the russia campaign influenced 150 million people, and facebook did not admit that until the day of the november 1 hearing. if they are telling us to trust them to self regulate, they have not earned our trust. in that way, it's a living, breathing, crime scene. emily: you first started drawing
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attention to this when you were at google. you worked there from 2012 two 2016. 2016. what were you raising alarm bells about and what was the response? tristan: what i said in 2013 was, i was a product manager feeling frustrated. i didn't think we were taking our responsibility seriously. i made a presentation that said never before in history have 50 engineers, 20 to 30 years old living in san francisco influenced what one billion people are thinking and doing with their time and their attention, and we have enabled this channel that is exploiting people's cognitive biases. we are exploiting peoples psychology. we at google and other large technology companies have a moral responsibility in addressing this problem. the presentation with viral. -- went viral. it spread to 20,000 people. it became the number one mean in the internal culture tracking system. i ended up working on this topic
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ever since 2013. this was way before fake news and the election and everything else. it was an awareness that these technology companies have a larger influence on culture, elections, children's development than almost any other actor. how do we start to have that conversation and ethically be careful about how we are steering to billing people's thoughts? emily: how did larry respond? tristan: across the company, there is a real seriousness and taking to heart the message. google is really an ethical company. the elephant in the room is a business model. the advertising-based business model means all of these attention-based companies, youtube, snapchat, twitter, facebook are all in the business , of capturing people's attention. youtube's goal is how do we get billions of hours watching on this product for as long as possible? emily: did he share your views
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or sympathize with them? tristan: i don't recall specifically. the conversation mike to get -- the conversation likes to get avoided, because it is uncomfortable to look at. startedme web browser to know how much time people were spending on the web versus in app. as soon as you measure it, they try to maximize how much time they are spending. you manage what you measure. what do we actually care about? should these products be designed for addiction, which is what they are designed for now? it has health consequences for children. emily: what are those consequences? -- there isn't a lot of research on how tech impacts children. shockingly. given that there is so much concern about it. we actually don't know. tristan: there is a great article that got a lot of traction.
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have smartphones destroyed a generation, is the article. it talks about many of the cultural and social impacts on how addiction to smartphones have changed our relationship, changed children's relationship and children's dynamics. when are they having sex, when are they going out? people are more isolated, more depressed. snapchat puts the number of days in a row that you sent a message as a kid to all of your friends. the number is a manipulative design technique to keep kids on the hook, to keep the ball getting tossed back-and-forth everyday. if they stop throwing the ball back-and-forth, they lose the number. kids start defining the currency of their friendship based on whether they are sending this empty message back-and-forth. snapchat, that is the number one way for teenagers in the united states to communicate. you have teenagers out there feeling empty messages back and forth. is this designed to help us or addict us? emily: you mentioned the article in the atlantic. i remember reading that. there really was no stand taken.
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it is fairly neutral. in part, i think, because we don't have a lot of the answers. tristan: i think what we can know is the motivations. if you look at what are thousands of engineers at facebook go to work to do everyday? do thousands of people wake up and say, how can we strengthen the public square? no. thousands of people go to work to drive up one number, which is how much our people engaging with an increasing the time they spend on these services. i want to live in a world where the tech industry is actually about helping humanity. there is a lot of ways they can do that. we started this nonprofit that is about changing and realigning technology with human values and what technology is supposed to be for. why would we not have it that way? emily: have you heard from facebook, mark, cheryl, or google? tristan: i have had lots of conversations. these people in the industry are my friends.
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my friends started instagram. i think there is a reluctance to admit the extent and scope of the problem and that the business model is the problem. there is a lot of good intentions, but until we get clear that the business model of advertising is fundamentally misaligned with democracy, if the business model, i have to capture your attention, that means it is better for me to give you things to agree with what you are thinking than show you things that you disagree. emily: the subscription model for facebook eliminates these conflicts? tristan: certainly it changes , who the customer is. if all of us are paying for the product, then you have thousands of engineers who go to work every day, and who are they working for? they are working for us, for the people who pay. emily: what about the people who can't afford the subscription? tristan: that's right. they will say, do you want to introduce inequality in the system to where only some people can afford to pay?
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the challenges the advertising business model has indebted us to cultural externality. we have to ask, how much do those actually cost us? how much does it cost us in terms of extra data plan usage? is a free business model really free when you add up the costs? half of the stuff we download is probably adds. if you cut that out, we would save a lot of money as consumers. we have to figure out, what are we willing to pay for? selina: that was tristan harris. former design person at google. coming up, a cryptocurrency crutch. bitcoin falls below $10,000. and, as the bubble burst? all episodes of bloomberg technology are live streaming on twitter. check us out. this is bloomberg. ♪
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♪ selina: bitcoin continued its tumble at the start of the year, falling below $10,000 this week after hitting a record high a month ago. the selloff brings more trauma could digital coin market that has lost more than $300 billion in value and just four days. it comes after a rally that push to bitcoin higher by 1400% last year. emily chang caught up with a partner at blockchain capital to discuss. >> there is a couple different ways to frame this. the market is down 50% from its all-time highs, and another way to frame it is it is up 1000% over the past year. when we talk about a correction, all we have done is gone back to the all-time highs we set six weeks ago. it hasn't been much of a correction yet. at least not in comparison to historical corrections. emily: i want you to take a look at our chart, which shows our perspective on bitcoin.
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you see the run-up. you also see the fall. where do you think this is going? are we coming back to earth, is this reality? spencer: there is two different sides to the story. there is the bitcoin side. if we think about what is going on in the market, it makes sense in the context of there was a lot of activity leading up to the launch of these derivatives and futures products that to the institutionalization of bitcoin. i think that was a seldom news kind of event. some of those speculators that piled in beforehand exited their positions, driving price lower. some people were expecting these institutions to enter the market. and come bulging out of the gate. in reality, institutions moving years, not weeks or days. i still think that story will materialize, but it might take a couple months. emily: do you think we are in a bitcoin bubble or a bitcoin bubble is popping right now? spencer: i don't think we are in a bitcoin bubble over the next three years. if price goes lower, we will call it a bubble.
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we will look at the all-time highs and we will look at it being lower, and we will say it was a bubble. if we look and we see it higher three years from now, we would say it isn't much of a bubble. emily: how is this impacting the investing landscape? what is coming across your desk? is it changing your level of enthusiasm? spencer: we are a venture firm. we have long duration in all of our positions. it is not affecting us a lot. we can be patient. we had taken money off the table and we are holding dry powder. as the market goes down, we can buy back into the positions we like and cheaper prices. we will do that when the time is right. emily: what kind of positions do you like right now? what are you optimistic about? spencer: whenever the market goes down, i certainly i like bitcoin. it is the most resilient of the cryptocurrencies out there. it doesn't rotate all the way back. a lot of it stays trapped in the ecosystem. while most investors consider it
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to be far out in the risk spectrum, within the crypto community, this is viewed as the safe haven. emily: what about the smaller assets? what are you most excited about? what is the next big going? --bitcoin question mark bitcoin? spencer: some of the assets could have a lot farther to go down. how do we explain those kind of valuations and price moves? emily: you can't. spencer: i think we can. early stage investing has been romanticized a lot over the last couple decades. people hear about these stories about being a seat investor in uber. that is an opportunity not a lot of investors have had access to. these ico's have created an opportunity for retail investors to participate. how do they react? they were like kids in a candy store. a lot of those people are learning the hard lesson that with first aid investing, failure rates are high. we are seeing the flipside of that coin. emily: are you waking up every morning, checking the price?
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is it volatile? spencer: it is. we are watching it. we are not so emotionally tied to it, because we are long-term investors. the date today moves don't matter that much. emily: this is a big move in a matter of weeks. spencer: it is. it is healthy for the ecosystem. if and that is what we are seeing here. a lot of people rushed in over the past three months, because they thought there was easy money in this market, free money. they underestimated the risk involved. this is a healthy reminder about the level of risk involved in these markets. selina: that was spencer bogart. coming up, apple plans to bring back billions. the details on the repatriated cash, up next. plus, a new report describes hazardous working conditions at an apple supplier in china. we will head to asia to dig into the latest. this is bloomberg. ♪
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♪ selina: welcome back to the "best of bloomberg technology." i'm selina wang in for emily chang. apple will return hundreds of billions of dollars in overseas cash to the u.s. in a statement, the company said it will pay $38 billion in repatriation tax. apple plans on investing in tens of billions. it will give its employees a $2500 bonus after the new tax law. emily chang caught up with alex webb. aex: they spent the money on new campus will be for support. they already have one in austin.
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emily: how many jobs might that create? alex: it would create 3000 jobs. that is good news from a political perspective, but given they have 84,000 already, it is a big bum. -- bump. that is over five years. emily: what else does this mean? alex: if you look at the numbers, the big number they want everybody to talk about is they will spend 350 billion dollars in the u.s. over the next five years. the odds are they were going to , spend that much already. the new deal is $30 billion spent in the u.s. if you subtract that from a $252 billion i have offshore, they still have a huge pile of cash, and that is what shareholders will be excited about in terms of buybacks and dividends. emily: what happens to the rest of that cash that remains overseas? alex: there are three ways they can you use it. buybacks, shareholder returns, m&a, and repayment of debt. they have over $100 billion in
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debt. does apple have a track record on spending money on m&a? i think the expectation is a lot of this money goes to shareholders. emily: what is the m&a strategy? we know the biggest company they have ever bought was beat. we have seen them make moves in music streaming. they bought shipment -- shazam. we think they are leaning towards making more acquisitions. if so, what kind? alex: i did a piece about this a while ago. they are risk-averse. they looked at people like microsoft. they did a massive deal to acquire nokia years ago. apple has a sense of we have got a lot of money. we can use that to spend on r&d. maybe the things they are interested in, the content, and semiconductors, chips. we know they tried to. they expressed interest in acquiring imagination technologies.
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there are certain moves they have made to indicate that is an area of interest. emily: how does this position apple with respect to the wider climate and what is happening with the administration? alex: there has not been any response from trump just yet. i'm sure he will jump on this as a way of underscoring what he has posited, his huge campaign pledge to bring jobs back to the u.s. --le employees millions 700,000 people, at least, in china. the fact they are bringing jobs here is the kind of platform in the political ledger book. selina: that was alex webb. one of apple's are just chinese -- largest chinese suppliers is getting slammed for harsh working conditions. the company is under scrutiny after a rights group found violations on its factory floors. bloomberg's managing editor peter bolster him's joined us
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from tokyo with the latest. peter: it is important to note there is a report out from china labor watch. in addition, we sent bloomberg news reporters to the factory to interview workers ahead of this report. they described harsh conditions they are working under. they talk about standing for up to 10 hours straight in hot factory conditions come as they work on these iphone casings. with loud noises. sometimes they say they don't have the proper equipment, including masks and gloves, in some cases earplugs. they talk about the difficulties there. they also talk about, they say there are hundreds of workers in this factory and the door only opens 12 inches, which makes it difficult to get in and out quickly. our reporter was able to visit their dorms to see living conditions, which were difficult. they are very cramped. many workers cramped into small rooms. no showers, no hot water. it is a difficult situation for
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these workers. they talked about how they have asked for some of these protections and haven't been able to get them. when it comes to safety training, they say they are supposed to be getting 24 hours of training before they begin working at the factory. in some cases, they are forced to sign off on the paperwork before they finished training. in some cases, getting only an hour of training. emily: the door only opens 12 inches. how do these kinds of descriptions compared to what we have heard about apple suppliers in the past, which hasn't always been the most glowing reviews, the conditions? peter: that's right. to be fair, apple has worked hard at addressing these kinds of labor issues in its supply chain. in 2010, there was a rash of suicides at the primary partner for making the iphone.
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apple took actions to address that. han high set up counseling services for some of these workers. they provided 24-hour hotlines to be able to call in any issues. they set up nets around factories to stop some of these suicides. they have worked hard at this. apple has begun putting out annual supplier reports, talking about their responsibilities. last year, they did more audits than ever before. they went out to the factories and did complete site audits. they did more than 700 of those. it is important to note, that is part of the business model. emily: apple gets a lot of attention, but what do we know about how these conditions compare to suppliers for other electronics companies? peter: it is an ongoing issue in china. as mentioned, apple and its supply chain have been working
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hard at trying to address these issues and make the conditions better for their workers. the ongoing challenge throughout china is they take on this high-tech manufacturing. these are considered some of the best jobs in the country. the wages may not sound much. in this case, workers were making a little bit more than $600 a month, which works out to a little bit more than two dollars an hour. in china, that is a reasonably healthy wage. it may sound low compared to a $1000 iphone, but it is relatively healthy. selina: bloomberg's peter elstrom there. coming up, the battle to save net neutrality. we will talk to one of the state attorney general's leading that effort. plus, uber board member arianna huffington. what she has to say about a potential uber ipo. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪
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selina: a story we are watching surveymonkey is said to be , accelerating conversations with bankers to go public later this year. the company is expected to be closely watching how other tech companies sure the market. other sources added that surveymonkey is considering making a last-minute bolt on acquisition of another company to enhance its value. a group of 22 state attorney generals and public interest groups are suing the fcc over its net neutrality decision. this is the latest motion in the ongoing battle over the future of the internet. vonnie quinn spoke with one of the attorney general's leading the fight against the fcc. >> it is the beginning of what i hope is a fight we can win, because if we can't, then that means a lot of people in this country will no longer have
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access to that internet the way they have expected it. we all want the freedom to choose. if you get rid of net neutrality, all of a sudden you go towards a system where the haves will have it all. those who are hard-working will get little. what about thee: executive order? is that taking this out of detail a little bit? >> it won't work. why would a company invest in a rural area where you can't make that -- where you can't make that much money? that is why you need to have net neutrality, so there is no gaming of the system by the providers of the service. think in terms of water or education, electricity, we don't tell companies that get to dispense water or electricity or the places they get to provide education for our kids, you decide where you want to go based on money. we know where they will go,
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where there is money. they will leave everyone else behind. think in terms of old mill services. in the rural areas, there would be no mail service. vonnie: what can you do more than this lawsuit to try to fight this rollback of net neutrality? for example, is impossible to -- is it impossible to take a case against an internet service provider that my be discriminating by providing a lower speed service to some of its customers? can you do that? >> we can continue to enforce state laws. we can make sure a company is not discriminating against communities. we can work with our state legislator and governor to make sure we passed whatever laws we can in our state to make sure we have a robust regime of protections for consumers. we are moving in all of those fronts, because this is about not only providing people with choice and freedom to choose, but it is also about keeping california's economy moving
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forward. we are the sixth largest economy in the world. why would we want anyone to disrupt that? vonnie: who has been a bigger opponent of the policies, the entertainment or tech industry? >> both. they both understand the consequences of not having that access for consumers. if the choice is made by those who have money, who wield power, then those in the middle, the middle class are the biggest losers. because they don't have the financial leverage to try to attract the business their way. they will be left with crumbs. you will have different voices -- choices in the types of media you can look at or watch. kids, can you imagine your kids if they use the internet to , do their homework, there will be kids who have access to everything they need on the internet to do good work and excel at school.
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there will be vast numbers of kids whose parents can't afford that and they will be behind. ,vonnie: are you in conversation with any internet service providers in the state of california? have you notified them this will be the action you will be taking? >> i have been working with a number of service providers and those in the internet community overall for the last year i have been attorney general. because california has been moving to try to do what it can to make sure we can move forward protecting our consumers before this action by the fcc. we will continue the conversation, because we want our internet service providers to drive. -- to thrive. california is the innovator when it comes to the united states of america. we want companies to locate in california. we want them to know the innovation occurs here. we are ground zero for innovation. we want people to know we want to do it for everyone. selina: that was xavier becerra, attorney general of california.
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it is not just attorney general's taking action against the fcc decision, several consumer protection groups like free press and public knowledges are also taking legislative action. as well as the company mozilla. emily chang spoke with the chief business for mozilla, dan l dixon. emily chang spoke with a guest. >> the notion is protecting the open internet as a global resource, accessible to all. we would like to reinstate those open internet principles. principles that we have all worked and lived anderson's the conception of the internet. and to get that so we can get all of us as consumers to get this global resource available to us. emily: others have complained about the rules being rolled back. in some ways, it's a wonder we haven't seen stronger action from some of the tech giants. netflix saying net neutrality is still important but not their priority. what do you make of that? >> i don't know if that was taken out of context, but the
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notion is, i think most of the tech companies support through alliances. that is why it was important for us to make a statement in this as a petitioner so we can help control litigation. we really wanted to be a party here. emily: you say ending net neutrality could end the internet as we know it. why would that be such a bad thing? the internet isn't perfect. denelle: the internet isn't perfect, but it is -- the notion of the internet and the way it was set up is that we all had access to whatever information we want. i don't want to be alarmist, but think about a world, about politics. what if an isp believed a certain way and they blocked all content regarding the other side of that issue so no one could get access to it? it could impact not just the way people think, but it could impact democracy, the way the global world sees the u.s. as well. this is an issue, and the internet is an issue that no one country should regulate. certainly, no private entities should determine what content you get access to.
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emily: how should we watch this play out? what art next steps? -- are next steps? denelle: the litigation will continue. we have to see how that plays out. this is a longer process when you are in litigation. the have seen lots of legislation action right now. we could see legislators writing legislation to be able to formally codifying the open internet principles. emily: are you speaking to other organizations that are considering filing lawsuits? denelle: we have spoken to lots of colleagues that believe strongly in this and have already joined this. there is a lot of folks out there that care about this issue and they are going to fight. emily: that was the chief legal officer for mozilla. still ahead, we catch up with global ceo and uber board member arianna huffington. , what she has to say about uber's current ipo plans and the me too movement.
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♪ selina: a chinese video site backed by tencent is trying to raise money. that is according to people familiar with the matter that say that it is targeting $1 billion of financing as it expands its video streaming service to south east asia. it is in a similar vein to instagram and periscope. bloomberg sources are careful to note that no final agreement have been reached and the details of the deal could still change. arianna huffington launched an app available to those with the samsung note eight. the app hopes to offer ways to connect more deeply with yourself and others. emily chang sat down with huffington and we asked why we
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needed an apt to set boundaries. >> you would have thought we wouldn't need an app, but with so much writing over the last few months over how addictive technology has become and how deliberate that addiction is, how social media companies use algorithms, machine learning to use likes and social feedback loops and dopamine hits to keep us hooked. the app is like a coach, a guide, to help us recalibrate our relationship with our phone. the two most important features are first, it is bidirectional, so if you are in drive mode because you are having dinner with your family and a text you, -- and i text you i will get a , text back that says emily is in a thrive mode until such and such a time. it lets your friends know you're
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not ignoring them but in thrive mode. it will help change the culture. it will help change the cultural expectations. right now, the expectation is that we are to be always on, need to respond to text immediately. the second feature is a dashboard that gives you a mirror of your social media consumption. emily: you have a partnership with samsung. when is it coming to the iphone and what is the strategy for broader use? arianna: it will come to the iphone in the next six months. we are developing it now. we have a partnership with samsung both for the app, now available on the galaxy note eight, but also we launched together a dedicated section on thrive global culture humanity and technology, which is all about this inflection point in our time. it has become a big issue in silicon valley and beyond about what is technology doing to us. emily: how much responsibility do you think platforms like
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facebook, bear, and companies like apple bear for tech addiction. arianna: apple and facebook are different. if you sell hardware, you still have some responsibility to have features that can protect come especially children, from abuse of the phone. if you are a social media company, and as you know, in the attention economy, social media companies are deliberately mining more and more of our attention, because that is how they increase revenue and profits. that is where it is important for social media companies to put the public interest ahead of revenue, which may seem like an impossible task, but we now know that unless they do that, the backlash is going to keep growing. emily: are there other changes you see a company like facebook should be making? arianna: i think basically
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looking at what is the impact of constantly pushing notifications? i don't know about you, but i have shut off all notifications except from friends. i don't want to know everybody who likes a photo. i love instagram. i love these social media apps, but i also set clear limits to how much i use them and clear limits to how much i allow notifications, alerts, etc. to be disturbing my life. my ability to connect with my friends, colleagues, ability to do deep work. or simply to unplug and recharge. emily: you remain in a major role in the uber board. now that the softbank deal is done, what shape would you say the company is in under dara's leadership? when will they be appointing a board chair? will the company be ready for an ipo chair next year?
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arianna: i think the company is in a strong position. the softbank deal is incredibly important. uber now has on its board the ceo of the vision fund. that led the new funding. what is so important is that softbank is at the center of the ride-hailing industry globally. it's so great for uber to have softbank as a major investor. the cultural values have been revamped. tremendous progress in the last few months. he has hired a new coo, new general counsel. there is an interview in process for a new chairman. i think everything is on track. emily: do you think an ipo could happen as early as next year? arianna: already, they have said the ipo is an 2019. there is nothing that has happened that would change that.
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emily: you mentioned the new general counsel. tony west. how is he doing so far? do you think uber will continue to be dogged by these justice department investigations? how long will this cloud be hanging over the company? arianna: i don't think it's a cloud hanging anything over the company. i think it is bringing everything to the surface to be dealt with. at the same time, the company is doing great things. it is not as if these issues of what happened in the past are dominating everything. the company is growing, bringing in new measures, investment, bringing in great leadership talent. i think what happening on the legal front is necessary in order to deal with these problems, but it is not consuming.
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selina: that was arianna huffington. that does it for this edition of the "best of bloomberg technology." we will bring you the latest in tech throughout the week. you can tune in each day at 5:00 p.m. in new york and 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. all episodes are livestreaming on twitter. check us out at technology weekdays. that is all for now. this is bloomberg. ♪
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