tv Bloomberg Technology Bloomberg October 19, 2020 5:00pm-6:00pm EDT
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six russian intelligence officers are charged in paszek attacks. our u.s. -- in past tech attacks. our u.s. elections at risk? fake reviews are spiking. how the e-commerce giant is running damage control ahead of an unprecedented holiday season. stocks falling amid no stimulus plan on l. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell saying he would bring a vote to the floor tomorrow or wednesday. democratic new york senator chuck schumer says the republican plan is unacceptable with key parts of the economy slowing down and no end to the pandemic insight, what is investor appetite. all of that against the backdrop of these stimulus issues. not so good. abigail: so good, and not a great day for wall street either
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in anticipation of difficulties here. after the close, futures right now. it will be interesting to see right now if there is any reaction. the s&p 500 index in the premarket, up about half a percent. big tech getting hit even more. investors wanting out of those names such as apple, amazon, facebook. the vix, the nasdaq higher. amazon, we were talking about it last weekend. in a row.days a down week even though the nasdaq had closed up for rate fourth week in a row. perhaps suggesting some are a bit nervous with what the results are around the amazon prime day event last week. of course risk off tone relative to stocks. we have bonds also lower.
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there was not a haven bid. maybe not quite as risk off as the declines suggest. it is the worst day for the major averages in about three weeks. emily: it is a big earnings week results afterwith the bell, stocks falling after our a bit. ?hy a down day abigail: in terms of ibm, i think investors think they cannot get out of their own way. down just 0.8%. earlier, down 1.5%. revenues and earnings both alling in terms of growth on year-over-year basis. earnings down by even more, about 14% on a
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year-over-year basis. the guidance is lackluster. investors hoping that they will get it together, turn it around. report,k going into the this tells you the story. of still unable to get out its own way this last quarter. really no exception. they: we will be following spinoff they are working through. abigail, formuch, that round up. i want to stick with tech earnings now. netflix reports tomorrow. discuss, mark mahaney. netflix has been a pandemic winter but last quarter did not quite meet expectations. what are you expecting this people areven that watching netflix, given that many of them were several months
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ago? mark: you are right that this will be a high bar quarter for netflix. it is widely perceived as being a covid winter. the question is how much more sustainable these trends. million subsor 2.5 for this september quarter. right now, all-time highs. , a number that is almost double the guide. we think if they do that and they guide constructively for the fourth quarter. the other question that people , it is listening for pricing. worldwide price increase. we will see if they can announce
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one in the u.s.. our guess is that it will be eight 2021 event. -- it will be a 2021 event. emily: some of the moves the competition is making, i am thinking about disney, the restructuring to give streaming more of a priority. what does that mean for netflix? mark: i think that netflix is highly insulated. survey work we have done shows that increasing numbers of consumers do not just want to buy one streaming service. 50% want to buy three or more. what is replacing the cable bundle is the streaming bundle. netflix is almost certainly going to be one of those. it does not mean disney has to fall for netflix. i think both of these companies can continue to grow really well. the other thing to keep in mind, unfortunately, a lot of our
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entertainment options are off-line entertainment options. they are still limited. change --or theater theater chains open and close. some of the biggest hits of the year, new launches like the next james bond film come or pushed often next spring. continuing a tailwind to netflix as far as growing and retaining subs. emily: looking out at the earnings landscape, you cover facebook, you are looking at google. abigail mentioned, we have seen a huge run-up in these stocks. greater antitrust scrutiny. congress paving the way potentially for these companies. how big of an overhang is that? mark: i think if you focus on one big risk or opportunity for --s sector, the big risk
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facebook, paid $5 billion in fines related to regulatory issues. issue become a bipartisan . regulators, congressmen, the level of competitiveness. there is this belief despite this clear evidence, it is starting to take away from instagram's thunder. the regulatory risk is rising. it will probably not limit earnings. multiple,ly the pe not the e. one positive that facebook will participate in is the rise in social commerce. more and more people shopping on
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facebook. pinterest, instagram. facebook is a great derivative off the social commerce play. emily: speaking of e-commerce, what about amazon, another company that you cover?we are heading into an unprecedented season. we are covering the rise in fake reviews later this hour and how amazon is putting out the fires that are inevitably coming from increased demand. mark: amazon, they have probably been a company that has benefited most from covid. accelerating with amazon's ad revenue growth coming down. building all of that distribution capacity. a million square feet of
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distribution alone. commercial real estate has become less expensive because of covid unfortunately. amazon has won a couple of different ways. i think they will have more supply this fourth quarter. it will be a covid christmas but i think amazon will be a major beneficiary because of that. coming up in a matter of weeks to one of the most critical elections in our history. happened thiswhat time around really matter, given the overhang that facebook has been facing from 2018? has: although facebook played it down, the advertising going on, both of us live in california.
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for prop 22,g ads the major ridesharing initiative. congressional senatorial campaigns in newsfeed. it is still a small percentage of their revenue but every little bit helps. on the negative side, there is andrly a lot of scrutiny facebook about the elections. clear result and there is not evidence of the misuse of the facebook platform to skew the use one way or -- to facebook's credit, they did react with a spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to build up the security of their platform, trying to stop the site from
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orng misappropriated exploited again. and no in fact happens news happens in terms of facebook and its impact over the election, you will see the multiple go up. emily: that is a boldly optimistic prediction. we hope you are right. electionnt to have an that does not get undermined and has integrity. so we will see. i will have to bring you back and call you on that coming either way. mark mahaney, always good to have you with us. coming up, the hackers allegedly responsible for knocking out ukraine's power grid interfering in france's election, and disrupting the pyeongchang winter olympics have been charged by the u.s. more on that story next.
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>> today, the u.s. justice department announced that they were establishing -- attacks carried out from 2016-2019 carried out allegedly by russia's military intelligence unit, both current and former. these attacks range from targeting the french election, the winter liv-ex, knocking out ukraine's power grid, and these attacks that spread malware tound the globe and led millions of dollars in damages. broader national security policy in enhancing u.s. national security and cyber space. isly: my first thought clearly, hack threats from rush are alive and well. about thebe worried
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election coming up in a number of weeks? >> they said that this indictment was not particularly send a message to russia before the election. the u.s. should be assured that there will be an election where the vote count has integrity and americans will be able to have their votes counted. connectionsear between this indictment and the election. the russian military intelligence group named in this indictment has also carried out hacks on the 2016 election. one of the people the defendant named has previously been indicted by the u.s. and part of the indictments related to the hacks. we heard from microsoft that attackers associated with this
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unit were caught sending officialsmails to related to the election. details about what russia could be up to, trying to understand russia's tactics. emily: the bottom line is that the threat on this upcoming election is very much alive. >> in terms of what we see, yes. we have heard the intelligence havenity say that -- we seen evidence from the private sector that this military intelligence unit is associated with individuals who have -- vulnerable targets. and we heard from facebook and twitter officials that russian troll farms from last election have been active in this
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the company is already valued at over $67 billion. a $282 a buy rating at million price target. how does snowflake make good on this more than 100% run-up on day one? >> how does a company trading at 40 times revenue make money for investors? they have to do a lot better than people expect. a great example of this happening is if you look back at zuma. inn i initiated on zoom 2019, it looked like it was trading at about five times revenue. we thought they would do about 700 million in revenue this year. instead, they will do about $2.5 billion. it turns out they were trading at 10 times.
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it is the bottom line. these companies coming out of the ipo need to do a lot better than people think they will. emily: the run-up is warranted then, in your view? pat: in this case, i think it is. first of all, snowflake is taking a totally different approach to the whole database industry. secondly, it is not like you have to guess how big this market is. $8 billion market that is ripe to be disrupted. the players in the space are sold oracle, ibm -- are so old. oracle, ibm. at the end of the day, with the software companies, you are really betting on management. emily: what if we all go back to work in six months and this remote work phase is behind us?
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there is kind of this wondering when it is safe to go back if companies are going to be changing their tune. >> i don't know about you. i am pretty zoomed out. enabledanies that have zoom, slack,e, so and the security companies that securelped keep everyone as they are working from home, cloud flare, those stocks will probably get hit. then you have to start thinking about the day two stocks. the companies that have not benefited as much that should be able to come back to life. there are no particular benefits
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of snowflake in terms of people working from home. emily: what are the other companies that you are watching that you think will see the extreme benefits of this and lasting benefits to boot? pat: one of my favorites here is doc you sign -- docusign. i am looking for someone who has benefited from everyone working from home and yet where those benefits won't go away. n, atu think about docusig first it was a way to make it so that you could get work done from home more easily, you don't have to get a contract and sign it. realizing,e started when we go back to work, this is a way to keep things safer at work because we don't have to hand each other pens.
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signing, iove to docu- don't see it going back to the old way. headwinds? are the what are the risks things don't stick? for mye p issues universe right now, for the software industry, the fact that is trading company at 19 times revenue. that is an all-time high. just as a reminder come in april, that number was eight. we have gone from eight to 19 times. part of the reason is that it has been perceived as a safe place to be. if growth slows, that multiple will compress a lot and enterprises don't know what is going on with the election and will go on with spending next
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emily: welcome back to bloomberg technology. withe is tapping law firms antitrust as it prepares to fight monopoly abuse lawsuit in the works by the doj, which are shipping up to become possibly the biggest antitrust case since microsoft in 1998. joining us is our bloomberg news antitrust reporter. david, we have been waiting for this for weeks. when is this happening and how big will it be? david: yeah, you are right. this is the case that everyone has -- in washington seems to think is happening any day now
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and we have been saying that for a number of weeks. i do think this is the week that will be filed by the just ice department. as you say at the top, it is really kind of a watershed techt for antitrust and because the last major monopoly case was 20 years ago in the microsoft case. u.s., since that, in the that has been a different story in the eu, but in the u.s., antitrust have been pretty much hands off when it comes to big tech companies. they have gotten a lot of criticism for that. so this is really a complete reversal of that approach. we're also coming up on a major election. there could be a changeover in
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who is running the justice department. with the election or a change in power have an impact on this? david: yeah, i think that is an interesting question because, of course, we are two weeks or so away from the election, and even if this case is filed tomorrow, it's not going to go to trial for quite some time. maybe a year from now. action in the of courts that have to happen before we get to that point. if there is a change in administration, then it would be that -- a biden administration that would take over the case, and presumably, they would. i think on of the big question marks around biden is his approach to antitrust, how much of a priority it will be. it certainly consumes a lot of
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energy and tech policy at the moment. if he wins, it will be his administration's responsibility to take this complaint that is filed and get it over the finish line. emily: interesting. as we have been speaking, the vice president mike pence has been on foxbusiness talking about this. he says the administration will not allow big tech "to block the truth." that gives some position on where this administration stands. david, i know you will follow that story. as soon as that breaks, we will have it for you. shares of the fuel-cell truck start up nikola rising at the start of trading today after jp morgan set a strategic partnership with gm is still likely to go ahead. the original deal was for gm to build a futuristic, hydrogen
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powered pickup truck for nikola but the deal has been in doubt since the short seller report after the deal was announced. joining us to discuss is ed ludlow who has been following this story. the fraud allegations made by the short seller pretty extreme and through the g.m. partnership into question. what is the latest we know about g.m.'s intentions to move forward? ed: they said on friday, the talks continue. nikola say the talks are continuing. they wouldn't give me any more details other than to say the badger is at the center of the talks. when the deal was first announced in september, the biggest surprise was the deal went beyond this proposed pickup truck and it's all general motors provide the fuel-cell technology for the core of nikola's businesses which are hydrogen powered semi-trucks which it planned to build in its own factory in arizona. that is the core of how nikola
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plans to make money. we've moved on, it has gone beyond the idea of a pickup truck. nikola has always said without an automotive partner, it would not build a pickup truck anyway. if they fail to close this deal with g.m., it could further impact the credibility after two difficult months for the company because gm has this global manufacturing experience, global command of the supply chain and wall street saw it is a real plus towards nikola achieving its core aim which is hydrogen powered fuel trucks. the ceo toldaid, you last week he has a plan if the g.m. deal does not close. what is that plan? ed: nikola has had a co-agreement since 2017 which included the development of fuel-cell technology. in the coexisting prototypes, they used a fuel-cell. in europe, the debut trust they
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plan to build next year in germany is a factory powered semi-trucks which is in a joint venture with cnh industrial units. they have the pieces in place to move forward with the core of their business which is first to build a factory electric semi-truck in europe and later, once it is built, build a fuel-cell truck. if the deal with gm does not close, they have a backup. what sources have told me is internally, the fuel-cell technology is seen as more mature and the preference is there going forward. ed ludlow, thank you so much for that update. we will stay tuned for more developments. coming up, botched ballots. the 2020 presidential election may not yield a clear winner either election night. remind you of anything? we will talk about 2000, al gore-george bush.
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emily: the u.s. handling of the pandemic is one of the major issues going into the presidential election, but the candidates could not be more opposite in their approaches to addressing it. president trump recently complained dr. fauci, in a call to his campaign staff, same people are tired of hearing from him. vice president joe biden has called trump the anti-science candidate.
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francine lacqua got a picture of just how many cases have been rising across the u.s. with joshua sharfstein, johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health vice dean. >> there are so many cases in the midwest in critical battleground states. wisconsin and michigan, the numbers are surging so i think it is on everyone's mind whether they are connecting it to the election or not and health care is important because the trump administration is in court trying to undo the affordable care act which supports the health care of millions of americans. it has really been on the mind of many voters. francine: if somebody comes up to you and says i'm fed up with the lockdowns, the restrictions -- it does seem like there is restriction fatigue across the world -- what are the figures and numbers you remind them of? dr. sharfstein: well, first of all, i would point out at least in the u.s., there are not lockdowns in the moment. people are not recommending lockdowns.
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they are recommending reasonable steps and vigilance. not pretending the virus is not here. haveind them that 216,000 already died in the united states and it is not hard at all to imagine another 215,000 dyinghat another if we decide we will let everyone get the virus which seems to be some people's strategy, but really is a strategy of giving up. francine: what do we know about the pfizer vaccine? it seems like they would actually be ready to start for an application in november. november as a couple of weeks away. ideaharfstein: we have no because they have not reported the studies yet. i think what they are saying is they will have the first read of the studies with including data on safety sometime in november. i certainly hope it is positive, that it looks good, and the fda would look at it carefully, convene an advisory committee, and we can all look at the data.
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if that happens, we will have at least one vaccine, which is great, and there will be other studies to get more. emily: joshua sharfstein there, of johns hopkins. the year was 2000. a notable time in history. celebrations marking the end of a millennium. the dot-com bubble finally bursting and the concorde made its last flight. for those that remember, we also saw a highly contested u.s. election during a time when donald trump was still a reality tv start, bush v. gore was making headlines in a race that was ultimately decided by the u.s. supreme court. are there lessons to be learned? what types of similarities are we seeing 20 years later? into new documentary dives the events that shaped american politics two decades ago. joining us from miami, the director of the film, billy
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corbin. thank you for joining us. i am old enough to remember the trauma of 2000 and you want people who were younger than me to get it. you live in florida, you know how critical the state is. every election year, it is a question. what is the sentiment there now and do you have any concern that we could see some sort of a repeat? billy: thanks for having me, emily. certainly. i think the question is, this year, how many riots will we see across the country? how many floridas circa 2000 might there be across the country? close elections can be stolen. florida is one of those states where elections always seems to be decided somewhere in the margins. there's definitely that concern. emily: in a way, the uncertainty of florida has been a constant. what is new and different in 2020 is social media, and that has dramatically changed the
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election landscape, the campaigning landscape. talk to us about what happened then is relevant to today, in today's world, given how much technology has changed. billy: i think for better or worse, we are seeing social media being used to mobilize. mobilize on the right for the so-called maga regattas we see. the boats supporting trump and pence in florida. we are discovering this almost silent majority in the hispanic community. the traditionally conservative cuban-american voters. third and fourth generation cuban-americans who have sort of suffered in silence at the dinner table and the multigenerational families. were not radicalized, but rather out on their own making their own decisions, and they are mobilizing in the biden movement. much more diverse hispanic population in miami-dade. many argentinians, venezuelans,
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colombians. it is interesting how that dynamic in the conventional wisdom is being revealed by social media. emily: you said in the documentary, it was a backstory of elian gonzalez and the backlash of the protests after that. we are obviously in a different world, though many of the issues are the same. i wonder if you see the pandemic at all as a sort of parallel in that it has a brutally politicized some of the president's comments about dr. fauci today, just an example of that. do you see any parallels? billy: the mower significant parallels, as observed in the documentary, republicans learned early on they could wreck allies the cuba issue through the -- radicalized the cuba issue through the "c" word, communist. that seems to be the greatest parallel. the demagoguery, and the attempt to manipulate gullible voters into believing false labels such
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as communist and socialist. certainly, you are seeing a lot of people down here kind of pivot on this issue of the pandemic. florida is quickly becoming one of the hardest hit areas, ranking very high now in positive tests. miami has been ground zero for much of this. i think you are starting to see people finally take into consideration not just demagoguery, but perhaps their own personal health. people who were on the fence are now -- i think they are not being persuaded by president trump's argument that biden is going to listen to the scientists, and thus makes him less qualified to be president of the united states. emily: would you go so far as to d,y that the other "c" wor the coronavirus has been weaponized in this election? billy: i think so. i think regrettably so. it would have been nice to see this as a galvanizing moment for the president, as we saw george
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w. bush post 9/11. to really bring the country together over a common enemy and a common threat, and we would all work together to defeat and to basically make a healthier community for ourselves, our families and neighbors. unfortunately, he went the other way with it. i think that is not playing well on the ground here in florida. emily: now, you explore the revenge vote sentiment in florida. i'd love if you could explain that and tell us whether you think we are going to see a big revenge vote turnout in this election. billy: yes. vote whiched revenge really came as a result of what you mentioned earlier, the elian gonzalez saga in miami-dade. cuban-american voters really turned away, who actually supported the clinton-gore ticket, really turned against not really al gore, per se, who had already separated from the administration and supported
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gonzalez staying in the u.s. cuban-americans, particularly the exiled community wanted to punish the democrats, particularly clinton and reno. the way they could do that was vicariously through the gore ticket. support not 50% of the that he and clinton got four years earlier. when you are realized the election all came down to 537 votes in florida, obviously, that difference was a deciding factor. i don't know that you are seeing that so much as we talked earlier about the demagoguery. really weaponizing the word communist and socialist to falsely label the other side. i don't know that is working as effectively as they hope it will. emily: now, just to refresh the minds of the folks who are younger than you and i, you have some networks calling gore winning florida first. then, bush was awarded florida by fox news.
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other stages started calling bush the winner. you had an apparent concession speech by gore. a retraction of that speech. 537 becameg votes, the issue. ultimately, it was decided by the supreme court. senator ted cruz just introduced a measure to keep nine justices on the supreme court. these issues are very, very much still at play. what do you think this takes are in this particular election, given this particular flavor of the politicians and the politics involved today? billy: i think it's not a coincidence we are about to see three supreme court justices, all of whom took a very active role in the 2000 florida recount in the bush v. gore supreme court case on the side of the republicans, the george w. bush legal team. i don't think that is an accident. again, close elections can be
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stolen, as we have heard said. repeatedly. i think the republicans are counting on that. as we learned in 2000, people our age, this was the generation of 2000 where you could see the faultlines start to split and crack. it is a fault line that gets further apart and extends all the way to this day about lack of trust in our institution. the idea that there are rules and that there are checks and balances that prevent certain miscarriages of justice and that keep democracy on track. what we learned in 2000, that is not necessarily the case. the supreme court could very well say what we need to do is stop the counting of democratic ballots and more importantly throw some of them away, which is exactly what they did. they not only stopped the recount, but they throughout legal ballots. they threw them out in the trashcan and decided the election for the republicans they thought 537 votes in
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florida. emily: we have already heard about problems with mail-in ballots. there was the issue with mail-in voting ballots in new york today, giving voters even more distrust in the process. there are potential problems in pennsylvania. given everything you learned in this film, what did you think the government should be doing to protect the sanctity, the integrity of the voting process? billy: statistically speaking, those issues are infinitesimal. the problem comes in when you have a state like florida where those statistical anomalies will actually make the difference in the outcome of the entire election. it's unfathomable. trump won in 2017 with 77,000 votes in three states. that is nothing compared to 537 votes in one state. what people need to consider doing, and perhaps this is where
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the president and i agree, is consider early voting in person. in florida, it just started today. 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. seven days a week all the way through the sunday before election day. and it's advisable. you can go to any location. bring your own pen if you feel safer. wear ppe. that is what i plan on doing. making sure that my signature is as close as it was 20 plus years ago when i first signed my voter registration card. i think that is the best bet. most importantly, keeping those safe becauses that is where we are concerned of seeing issues which we saw in fort lauderdale. but also possible shows of intimidation. emily: it is a riveting film. i highly recommend folks check it out especially ahead of the election now just a couple of weeks away. billy corben, director of hbo's
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new documentary. the film debuts this wednesday on hbo and hbo max. all right, amazon's listings often have hundreds or thousands of reviews. but as more shoppers stay at home and turned to the online marketplace for their needs, bogus reviews are on the rise. we are going to talk about efforts to control those right now. here with usabel lee talk about holiday shopping and the rise of fake reviews. tell us what is happening. >> hi, emily. what we have seen in the study is that fake reviews are on the rise. fakespot, a website that analyzes fake reviews, the founder said he saw this leading up to black friday or christmas. if you are wondering why, there are a couple of reasons. first, the rise in fake reviews
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corresponded with the online millions of shoppers avoiding the virus, especially during the height of the pandemic, around march, april, may. most americans were just home. the founder said that a lot of the products that had fake reviews were pandemic related products. this included hand sanitizers, masks and other protective equipment. that is the first reason. the second reason is due to some of the features that amazon itself has rolled out -- so, what i reported on is a feature called one tap review. with this let's users review one to five stars without cominm entating. you leave your profile information and a timestamp. now there is no identifying detail. now it is more difficult to discern which of these are real
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or not. an amazon, i spoke to vice president last week who is across some of these things that i asked him about fake reviews. he said they are working very hard to prevent these things proactively, to prevent this kind of fraud. what is amazon telling you about what they are doing about this? isabelle: amazon really stands by its own system. one hasold me that no access to its data. companies,s these the two sources i have for this study, that these are bad actors. it is doing all they can to invest significant resources to protect the integrity of the reviews. amazon also defended the review, saying it has helped customers. it has been nice. and what i spoke to the amazon spokeswoman, she said they don't
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see a noticeable spike. last quick question is how can we as customers detect fake reviews? knowing they are on there even if the company is trying to stop it. isabelle: what i always try to tell people -- i think of my mom who is not a tech savvy person. when you read reviews, click on the profile of the reviewer. if you see that the person reviewed around 10 products today and has been reviewing 10 products for the past 10 days, you might want to rethink if this is a real reviewer not. website.at, then their you could easily copy and paste the link and put it on their website, download an app or download google chrome. ifly: some good tips there, you have extra time when you are shopping on amazon. i know a lot of us rely on
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