algorithm but there is the acceptable use policy. >> that that algorithm determines is to show that in for blood dash individual what is most relevant that is constantly evolving taking a and a lot of factors. i don't view that facebook would you that it is its responsibility to determine what the people ought to see. >> going into my oath as a law professor that would be the fallout if there is a video from the islamic state that other users are subscribing that they want to see you then have reserved the right? >> how often do we show lot.

is the case that the spread has community standards his and into to chairman what can receive it on the site. we do have strict -- those that have a seafood content we call direct harm purpose of the is directly inciting violence that is precluded. >> what i hear you say is if it does not meet the standards it is not that it gets pushed down is just:. >> it violates community standards to incite violence then it will be precluded from being on our side to reinforce that that in most instances we do not go out

to police that we wait for one of our users to report. >> you would not use that the algorithm only block it or not. >> yes. >> got it. >> and now you talk about a worldwide phenomenon. >> we are a global service and we have to abide by the laws in which we operate. in addition to community standards basically we will respond to demands from government if they conform to the laws of that country. we will not typically take something off of the sites but we may blot kit in the jurisdiction of the area. >> not exactly analogous with google and the european

portals? >> we will see a message that says not available. >> one of the things we have done is to publish transparency reports the purpose of which is to share with the users the number of circumstances in which the government asks them to take something down the people they use the service understand the way their government insist that content is precluded to be seen. >> can i jump in? i work for the u.s. government. [laughter] i worked at the state department now as one year

ago then out of the white house. the president was elected 2008 but i have had this question in for a few years a and in dyewood called the great planet to be a nowise house and the issue develop once the eugenic companies started in someone who'd spent time with internet advocacy is said they have never seen before the headsets in this time restage but it occurred to me that the large but for those who have no idea where

it was before but it's the you could advocate for fox - - policy positions. >> yes. yes. yes. >> even though they say they'll is look to the customer first put to be on the receiving side it is remarkable to be to see that power the larger internet companies have. >> is there a question? >> as the people who make those decisions when they talk about transparency to we want to tell people to express their views? had to evaluate your responsibility with advocacy or do you steer clear? >> i felt we had someone

here? there on the second panel. a campaign manager from reddit. >> we representing internet companies and if you are watching in 2025 we're also doing strong policy. [laughter] that is interesting question because looks through the political lines with the issues and if you are a senator from a baedeker cultural state in you may not have facebook or google but all of europe is they just care about trip advisor

or google or facebook yet they care what happens and that is we will see for the other issues when they see a threat to the services to there using and the platform so she has a letter signed by of the company's or something and the president of the dominican dash and that has staged a whole place of cruel to divert to the users there and in the fee is there is incredible competition sarah is but just where they say you need to care about this but competition on the internet

of lake would never is interesting to use zoar responsive and a lot of them say. >> that up on that tried to sing'' is the next issue as you love be directly? is a government surveillance? touche he said is something that users care and though andrew lees though leaders eyes shining a light to nine different practices in but we have show leadership on. >> yes. >>, will just give the institutional perspective on

a capacity. i am with backlash vetted then new organization inside of the american foundation looking at building the next platforms for public problem solving for our work with congress. [laughter] here we go so it is not that awful. [laughter] is in old jalopy with the hood up trying to drive on the modern highway one thing i am and then to turn into a conversation. >> but what's would you ask?

>> that you invest in a new kind the the new kinds of knowledge programs to be enabled by a technology so which is not crowded searcy or show afs sarah face but for evidence we will of not having a legislature that makes policy based on the best knowledge available. >> to unpack that. the big data revolution is able to be used to produce evidence. if you mean by that things too big a headache in those

seven areas will get to the you see that half years hit are looked at a. >> on the last five years and was on the hill for 10 and we did not even have screens for basic technological level except a committee hearing so what if we created a web who hurts

your head to of the there is all kinds of ways to enable. >> if i put the word no into this sentence it will tell me about the change. >> is very important to say that right now because congress has a huge dated quality problem. para o moon mitt the of of any of it and if they said a committee chair will listen

but this community pisces answer the first half hour ahead but averages about their friends here in a and a second timid do you have a view if there is the way to have new. . .

i am curious, are they pretty much seized of the issue? >> right now it is in the forefront. the fundamental partnership. the companies fighting government surveillance want to do it themselves. google is saying it is our job, go away. yes, there are -- we need to get to the.where the users found -- want business models that don't have surveillance. doctor geltz surpasses search engine traffic. before that there is not policy.

>> policy trumps technology. >> let me ask healthier. tell us where you are from. given this sort of posture of the company you are working with how much do these issues of surveillance whether in relation to the government, trying to figure out what sort of requests they would make. [laughter] and maybe the corporate surveillance side and singularly striking. how much are you concerned about privacy in the commerce. >> so we are an online marketplace.

for us the government surveillance issue is not as you implied as much of an issue that we just don't have government knocking on our door that often, which is great. on the user privacy piece is an effort of building. is that creepy for me? it is important for us because we no we use the data we collect about our users in a way that they -- that would lose trust with our consumer base and they we will go somewhere else. we police ourselves, i guess >> i met a guy whose job was to taste bacon all day long.

you know, at some some.he would go, it is best before today. you know that policy. maybe i should put it out some of the other companies, a voluntary question before i call upon someone how broken if at all, is the model of data gathering and usage that in many ways drives the free internet may be less of the transactional internet, but the free information that someone has to pay for advertising has a storied history. is this model needing to be adjusted or is there something fundamentally

wrong with that. >> ultimately i would say at least at this.it is one in 14. i do not think that it is broken. i will put that out there. yelp yelp is a platform that connects people to local businesses. whether whether it be a restaurant or dry cleaner or ever you want to find out the best of whatever in your location go and look at other user views and content >> how does yelp make money? >> through advertising. we do it -- basically we get businesses to add packages. searching for a dry cleaner a restaurant. >> you have two lists.

which ratchet do everything we can to eliminate. at the same time that is how we make our revenue, through that manner. from from our sense it is not necessarily about collecting a ton of information about the user. in in essence it is simple to set up a yelp account. >> is the data you are collecting the targeting happens quite naturally. >> from our standpoint you want to be able to tell the business about who is going

there. it is a matter of how many people might be going to that page. >> the demographics you could give them. >> sure, things along those lines. generally speaking they have put out various metrics saying that the vast majority of users are college graduates most in the 25 to 50 range and make over x amount a year. generally speaking we have been able to show that within a week you are on a yelp because you want to buy something and spend money. metrics that we can take to business owners to say, here is why you should get advertising on our platform. >> let me ask you from the.of view of your company basically plus one or a difference.

>> thank you. good morning. i am the head of global public policy for aol which was and is an online media company that has reinvented itself many times and was and is a lot of things. we make we make our money primarily from advertising, and i would add to what was said we talk a lot about privacy. joel talked about transparency in terms of government requests. transparency transparency for users is the way that we get there trust. we try to make things easy to read, people options. >> the privacy policy. >> much shorter as of september 15. >> a provocative answer. [laughter] all of the fat has been removed. >> what we try to do is make it pretty clear.

i read through privacy policies, and we all try to do the same thing give people information about the type of data we collect and use. one thing that is it important consideration is the way we distinguish between personally identifiable information that says i am michael beckerman and live in washington dc and i am a user who lives in washington dc who searches golf equipment type thing. and we use the latter and an aggregate form. if i were a use personal to target michael beckerman for an ad based upon the millions of impressions that we need to serve advertisers it would not be a successful strategy. aggregating the information being talked about and user behavior is something that a

lot of companies around the table to but something we try to do in a reasonable way is give transparency to users and choices about whether or not they want to be targeted. data collection and targeting and there is always a balance between privacy. >> let me stop you their. it sounds enthusiastic, basically. let's see if we can make it a viral sensation. same idea. >> sure. we are a company that provides -- trying to meet user's daily habit weather, finance, sports, e-mail.

+1 absolutely to the comments already said the other thing you are starting to see a lot of an issue that most if not all companies around this table deal with everyday. if users do not trust us they are not going to continue to use our service. they are always trying to ensure that users will be comfortable. one of the things companies are doing is starting to not necessarily compete on privacy but she privacy as a way to differentiate product and talk to users about privacy more directly. one of the things you see a lot of his contextual privacy notices and trying to make sure that you are seeing what is happening. when you're interacting with an advertisement you will see privacy notices about the kind of data in forming

the advertisement, news that is specifically or sports teams on our sports website, your favorite football team, maybe the redskins there we will be away for you to understand why you are getting that information versus others. that is one area where you are seeing development and trying to make communication more clear. >> the.about competition. conducting that here as well to what extent if i am i am just the average internet user might something i am doing implicated something i see on aol? are there ways in which the information about the facilitated advertising is moving or it is basically

stovepipe? >> there are circumstances where the information is being used on other sites. that sort of mapping that happens is at least for yahoo always disclosed the partners we work with and have relationships. really advertising. handling relationships with third parties. >> do you see anything coming down the pike? is this pretty stable?

>> i don't think the jalopy is chasing us. it is being integrated. whether or not that will lead to legislation i'm not sure. but but the dialogue in the conversation and oversight is important and you are seeing companies work together. it is certainly an issue we are focused on.

>> we will see this change from posit as a person interface and living into what i call i call the pigpen world in which you as a person with your device carry around all your data and all around you seeking data about you and for you. >> what you are saying is the authority to release it may be much more interactive rather than a one time. somebody is wanting to no ask right now. >> i walk into a starbucks. they know who i am what i walk in. here is your coffee that you like, todd. it is already prepared for you. >> let's just check in with

at sea. no coffee for you. we will get over that. a lamp post a block away. >> they will say there is a starbucks right here. here. is it time for you have your starbucks? it will ask you at 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon i want to search for a a location to go to are you going home? so i think we are moving whether delivery or not not, we we will all end up carrying our data all around us. [laughter] >> i agree. >> being chased by a jalopy.

>> something i would add it may be creepy, but i would love that if every time i walked i walked in my cup of coffee was ready and i did not have to wait in line. >> in the future people are just killing in and grabbing stuff. and i guess we can put an rfid chip on it. it just adds up your stuff. you could grab buckets of money at the base. click may want to try that.

quex's piece back to the generational shift and societal tolerance for those kinds of issues. the "washington post" said one. there were several others. by and large users get creeped out by that and deemphasize. >> you are suggesting that it is generational. getting people grabbing their coffees. >> as a society of old and young people get more used to things i do believe things like that make today sound creepy. >> we are talking a lot at this.about the melding of

physical infrastructure and the internet and walking down the street of the city. i cannot help but think of wanting to turn. tell us where you are from and tom us how much of your day today is about keeping the trains running on time on the desktops of the employees of the city versus thinking about what role the right be in public infrastructure to support the kind of vision. >> sure. the chief information officer for the city of austin, formerly a small colony of puritans. [laughter] now the hub of the regional economy. economy. so it is an interesting question and certainly much of my job consists of making sure the trains run computers work. we are often where the rubber meets the road with

julie on on some of the more innovative technologies being developed when it comes to transportation, lodging. we have very legitimate public policy interest at play. while we are less in the realm of privacy and intermediary liability we have to think about things like public safety liability and protection of landlords and individuals who are participating in these new and innovative services. the challenge the challenge we run into and the shift that is happening going from a place of in many municipalities being reflexive to technology to one where we actually have an obligation to try to

support the innovation economy, work with companies doing innovative things and find ways to meet public policy needs and objectives in a practical sense. there are not necessarily great models that address those challenges. struggling to work with companies that are stakeholders to make sure we are developing policies that are smart. getting internet available to everyone. how much would something like a net neutrality be something in which something like the city of boston would have a stake have a view on net neutrality.

>> boston does have a view on net neutrality. we looked at it from different angles. be able to thrive and have the internet. we look at it as a question of equity and ensuring our citizens have a rearview access to affordable broadband as being a court equity issue within our cities and something we have oversight into and how we think about policy. for us to make sure that when the citizen goes online whether accessing educational information working on -- looking for

job opportunities, trying to start a business they have the connectivity that they need to be able to do that. >> is there a hunger to produce municipal fiber? >> every resident of boston has access to affordable high-speed broadband internet. i i don't think we have figured out the right answer for that. certainly there is not a lot of great options for now. we are looking at ways to encourage. >> weigh in on the net neutrality front. >> i want to go back to the first question that you asked in regards to internet

and technology adoption. to take the general premise and flip it around the internet helps governments do their jobs better. talking about it earlier, but we have tremendous amounts of data that we continue to get on a daily basis. i think that one of the things that a lot of our companies do already is figure out ways to package data that can be helpful. >> various government instrumentalities. >> you can basically go on yelp and rate anything. >> how much are you worried? [laughter]

>> parking clerk's office is not faring so well. >> something that could be done. >> think anyone is going for a good time. it is certainly in terms of how we do service delivery thinking a lot about how we use data that we collect and more strategic ways how we use it to set targets, create accountability and transparency. we are interested in data sets and how we can interact with them in an effective way. more thinking about delivering good services and hold ourselves accountable.

>> professor at george washington university. in thinking about the question were government can break the internet, the answer is no. it is already broken and has been for quite some time. my computer and website is treated equally was true up until about 2,007. >> now amazon writes a check or builds its own delivery network. >> now the vast majority of web traffic never touches the public background. instead of having to go through the regional networks and up through the

main national fiber network sent back down and all the way back taking dozens of hops along the way when i request a video or do a search it is just a few hops instead of using the backbone as a direct fiber connection. the reason this is happening is because we are all very very sensitive to tiny slowdowns in latency. it is now the basic structure. so is this something of which policymakers should be seized. >> i think that they are concerned less about bandwidth, which is mostly what has been talked about and much more about latency.

there is the single best established fact about web traffic higher latency waiting at a fraction of a second longer between when you click that button in the page loads it is impossible to build an online audience without having a blazingly fast site. google has spent billions of dollars to be a quarter of a second faster. the the concern is not so much youtube or netflix. the concern is that if comcast is in a situation a situation of being able to force everyone else to pay for latency that is not just about google or netflix but every single site. >> we hear that. where do you park that concern? wake up. you need to do x, or is it something for which you want to invoke the industry? where do we take that concern?

>> it has to be a concern both in the corporate boardroom, federal communications commission, federal trade commission and the halls of congress. >> but they are all listening. what do you want them to do. >> the most important principle is making sure people and small carriers and especially small information content providers do not have to pay to have the same latency that amazon or google does. the kind of net neutrality regime but focused much more on latency than bandwidth so making sure that if i have my own upstart bookshop online that it runs roughly as fast as amazon. is there anything you would ask of the supernatural

entities, internet governance entities such as they are? >> i am not sure this is an issue, but it is something that should be paid attention to. because there is no competition for truly high-speed internet you really do have -- what comcast is explicitly trying to do is become a market the ability to say, well you know nice website shame if it ran half a second slower than everyone else's. >> the mafia metaphor. [laughter] we do not have one. but let me ask among the barons that have the billions to not have this be a problem are you guys

basically sitting pretty, or are you concerned about the future of the infrastructure that delivers bits between you and your customers? >> of course we are concerned about it. my guess is most companies around the table are concerned about it and have broadly taken the position that it is something that the fcc needs to address. i agree that latency is a huge issue particularly in the developed world where most people have access and now wanted as fast as possible. in other parts of the world it is not the issue. only one third has connection. the bigger connection is to

get to that first step, access, to get them online at all which is something we are focused on. >> how do you think through the quite natural possibility that when you get them online in the mode this is we will give you facebook, facebook wikipedia, a few other things that we curate. anything else let's wait until you can pay for it. how do you think through that form of a non- neutral network providing at no cost? how do you think through what that would look like back. >> that thing. >> about 85 percent of the people in the world live within wireless coverage but only about one third of the world's online. there is a huge delta that needs to be and can be

filled. it filled. it is not an infrastructure problem but an awareness problem. it is a cost problem. they just cannot afford data one of the things we have in cooperation with governments and other companies operators, websites figure out business models and ways to address both the awareness and cost issue by providing some free basic services. about a month ago and application was rolled out which provides a suite of basic services. yes, facebook is all there, but so is wikipedia and the number of maternal health organizations. >> the curated stuff i was referring to. >> and things that are extraordinarily important to get to people in that country. we will see how it works.

so far there is interest and a way to start addressing the access problem. we think that is a good thing. >> interesting to see. the path from no internet as a path ultimately maybe to a neutral matt. >> there are issues we are properly focused on in the united states and other areas that we will at some. be important. you have got to get them online and see the value of connection and connectivity. >> i am the last person on earth who will defend comcast. the greater part of the decade.

it is not a public resource. they are entitled to make money. they have to respond to the marketplace. i will voice a bigger concern. to have people not able to get to certain sites. out of the industry i am frightened about the implications. we spend a half-hour on privacy. no one mentioned the cable industry.

this new generation of set-top boxes are capable of obtaining and keeping and using all of this private information. >> yes, i mean, if you have a new generation set-top box they no every show you watched every second of the day. >> a a question there, many people would be saying television, cable what the hell is a set-top box or is it the name of the game for a company like comcast is ultimately specialized services for which broadband -- >> they make more money on it. the strength of the programming companies like my former company, espn. margins have gone down, but that that is how they started. the potential of what the

boxes can do, both good and bad something we need more discussion of. >> we are almost out of time. i time. i want to give the handful of people a moment to say something. together we have not spoken bring us and for landing. is there something we have missed or anything we have covered for which there is something vital you wish to add? >> i come at it from a news a news media perspective and echo some of matt's concerns. it remains the case that media organizations no matter how maligned they are provided huge amount of severity important information. i do fear that a lot -- in a

metered internet situation and non- neutrality situation that we could lose a great deal of that important information. >> is there anything that you would ask of government? subsidy, write us a check like the national endowment for journalism? >> you know, public spectrum for the public good. maybe a big media merger tax we have thrown around the idea of nonprofit fast planes or some version of that. >> c-span. latency on the agriculture committee. >> i really should not be saying this. >> the director of the media politics and public policy. a couple of things during the news today that bear on

this, the lawsuit against yelp and san francisco that charged effectively that yelp was shaking down advertisers and threatening them with lower rankings. >> ready to make an apology. >> that was totally thrown out. they said that they did not do it. the court the court said it does not matter whether you did it or not. you can do it. >> another panel coming up. we would never do that. something that would outlaw a privacy policy.

>> as i understand this decision basically that is the argument. >> a company can make it so that they are suable. >> just to be clear, from clear from yelp there has never been any amount of money that a business can pay. >> if i had a small tablet of wet cement and the stylist would yelp be willing to write in a way a way that the lawyers to make binding a commitment through 2025? >> it has always been our commitment. >> every day the farmer comes to the chicken and feeds it. >> get to the.of addressing whether or not. >> promising that it we will

resemble the past and that was. >> generally speaking most companies have an eight those they are founded on and follow. you know but it is something to consider. the beginning of the panel. when my kid rid of stuff, but we are not messing with the feed. a commitment of some kind in the future. those that those that might be interesting to think about to bridge the gap. >> even though they would not do it i am not accusing anyone they would argue for their right to do it because

they have first amendment rights. that is the way that they interpret them and is something that we will be a real issue. >> establishing a reputational take on something. it is a way of saying come at us public if we let you down even in ways which are not legally cognizant. >> that would be the theory. given the plethora of ways to look at this issue, the right to do what you want is an interesting question. >> thank you for that intervention. wonderful. let me turn to you. i just want to say a knew startup civic and political engagement. as you are aware save government.

the eyes of the world. >> thank you. [laughter] >> the total spirit of the startup is represented here as well. you are going to get the last words. >> i will preserve the balance of my time for subsequent session. >> everyone please join me in thanking all panels. [applause] we stand adjourned until 11:00 a.m. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> welcome back. i am on the faculty teaching my first class this

semester as soon as we wrap this up. i thought the title of this part of the program is called your next big start up idea. the goal is to get into discussion about what it means for newer companies and startups ways it can constrain and encourage newer companies entering the space. before we do that we had a compelling comment. he mentioned that the san francisco court judgment on throwing out the yelp case. >> and they are related.

the other one was from china the leading financial news organization has been charged with extorting money from prospective advertisers or clients are businesses in order to prevent or publish certain stories. in in other words the idea is that they were extorting money and cooking their report which is illegal. this is a funky kind of gray area because it is true news organizations all over the country have been seeking advertising. you may not extort, threatened the issue.

there are laws that put limits on what news organizations can do in terms of there own reports. the penalty defamation that does damage something you can make a claim about. as i understand the attitude about data and the information they gather there is an argument constantly being made effectively that they have first amendment rights to do what they want. it was a matter of saying, we're not going to do this but that is something that they reserve the right to say and there is as far as

i know no case law that we will put constraints on that however, if you are looking at yelp and google and other entities that are publishing after a fashion information that could potentially do damage and they are going to find themselves, i would think in the realm of libel i think the whole question really is where is the control of this vast amount of data going to reside? and i think that the web world will resist anything that puts constraints. i do not know whether that we will stick. >> two questions i open to the room.

one is about the goal of the first amendment and the issues around speech and regulation. many of the companies do operate essentially in the public sphere and there are considerations. the second is added at the end some concern about resistance to regulation in the industry. >> i don't know if that is the core problem. >> the not so enviable task of following. i will fall into the same rules. briefly at the beginning. >> it seems to me you are going about first amendment issues and legal issues.

the most disturbing thing expressing bias not lying about people but what you decide to cover and not to cover and could have a huge impact on businesses and individuals based upon whether or not he showed something online. one of the things i worry about is that facebook google, facebook google or any number of services could disadvantage groups. they could advantage accompanied by showing more data related to that company and less related to someone else. that is the kind of thing that i think is much more concerning. >> i i take your., but i think that the fact is that as these -- as the power of

these websites is consolidated and they grow unlike the boston globe where you can go somewhere else but if you are a business impacted financially by where you live in the advertising driven rankings and basically has the right to put you anywhere you want. that is not the way that they do business and there is not a viable alternative. this is an area i don't know they have been given them by the court. it is also true that they

are now clearly capable of doing significant financial damage. >> first amendment rights responsibilities and considerations. >> to an extent. , arbitrarily. second there are a lot of alternatives. traffic will traffic will go to the sites that are most useful to the user's or do other searches. i'm going to be in boston. productive in that kind of forum and people use other sites. >> the question of whether or not someone is publishing

something else but what the individual publishes publishers and whether it can be quantified and proved. if they are claiming first amendment protections than that goes with the territory as well and i wonder how it we will sort itself out. >> just introduced something. i sent you a reference. the first is i love the boston globe. i find it extraordinary that in the internet era the most important impact has been the democratization in the ability of individuals the towels i grew up in the globe and the "herald." now on the internet everyone

has a voice on facebook yahoo, any number of distribution mechanisms. facebook at least in its algorithm the most interesting and useful. if we fail people we will stop coming. the second.is relevant to the topic of startups this issue of liability protection for internet companies showing user generated content is the most single important protection. i think it is a great.you

brought up to start the conversation and you cannot overstate how important that is to the success of not just the companies around the table but the ones were thinking of how they we will reach their audience in the first place. if they we will be subject to lawsuit then they we will not be created or 60. >> i want to take that as an opportunity to shift our discussion. we are joined by a number of folks. i was in germany on monday. i woke up tuesday morning and discovered that it was now illegal. and looking at how that is played out in the united states it seems like it is happening on the basis of a municipality to municipality

different municipalities and states taking different approaches for regulatory perspective, and i am wondering about that in the context of if we should have a broader question. or is there some advantage to a piecemeal approach? this is an issue i think almost every company is facing. the public service very interested in your thoughts as well. >> a little closer. >> the german court ruled they did not have the proper permits to operate in the country.

since then sign up some gone up 550 percent. the upside is people vote with their wallets. we are hopeful for a good resolution. as far as whether one solution for an individualized solution, it depends upon the country. we have jurisdictions that we work well with good relations with some states. it is a good regulation something we work under. tough to get in there. it is just going to depend upon the jurisdiction. i think my colleagues that

run all over the country dealing with these a lot of times local governments from it comes to this it is something that they have traditionally dulworth. offering that kind of service. we ought to work with them to come up with a local solution. >> sure. hi. i would like to make an important. for the most part sharing economy companies are dealing with regulations that have absolutely nothing to do with the internet. air being the all of the regulatory issues have to do with the laws people who rent out their homes after

comply with which has nothing to do with the internet. it simply enable them to do that activity more people to do it more occasionally than ever before. land use in our case is regulated at the local level, and there is no way around that. land-use laws have good reasons to resist. they protect things that we rely on. so it makes it more complicated to advocate on behalf of our house but i would echo the perspective that we have to work collaboratively to figure it out and hopefully come up with solutions that might be applicable to thousands around the world. >> anyone else want to comment? >> i agree wholeheartedly.

as we have these patchwork regulations across the country we are dealing with laws written farm for anything like what we operate was even contemplated in some cases dating back to the 18 hundreds. but but we provide is the opportunity to move into a new generation. we come in work collaboratively collaboratively with cities, mayors, state legislatures, governors offices for the most part this is a localized issue. in order to help them how to address mobility. ..

it's very encouraging to hear the sharing economy companies around the table talk about collaboration with local government. i work for the city of austin and we're trying to craft appropriate regulations that both address the public policy needs we have as well as ensure these kinds kinds of new and inmotivatetive services can deliver benefits to citizens. the challenge that i think we

face is often that there are -- we have to look at these problems not only from the question of, here's a new service, such as maybe being used by -- initially by a small slays of the population that has certain self-regulating characteristics to it. when you think about a regulatory regime that will apply not only to what exists today but with what comes after it. how these individual services revolve, what new services are created in the same space. so they're there needs to be an opened-minedness on the part of local governments and also a measure of caution that says what works for transportation company x may actually turn out to not be sufficiently protective of the public interests when it comes to transportation company y that starts up next week. so, i think that's the balance we have but we certainly found that most of the companies in the space have been very open to working with us at the local level and it's a dialogue that the city of austin at least is very open to having.

>> adam conor i work at brigade, new civic engagement startup, and prior to that i work at facebook. i think these examples of collaboration with government at the local levels is encouraging because in my experience particularly having worked with the federal and larger state governments to take a step back when startups or internet companies try to use this technology when federal agencies, for instance were first interested in using facebook, a co lap operation is not -- collaboration is not the word i would use. these are the things you have to do to let the government use your free service. they cost you time and lawyer money. make changes they do arbitrary things just to give the pleasure of the government use your service for free and it wasn't necessarily a collaboration and they were really good peep inside a lot of structures making one of them working hard to push this forward. i go to a meeting and ten government lawyers would sit down and say here's the 32 thing

you have to change in order for us to use your free spirit and why won't you work with government. there's about burden on startups for these collaborations. so we say is there any world in which you might think about changing your policies or talking about modernization, and they say oh, no we're not going to change anything on our end. what is nice about hearing about the local model, i think it hopefully -- i know maybe people in government are doing good work but there needs to be responsiveness and chance modernize certain things as well. we need government to allow agencies and others to use that and that's another part of the conversation. whether we're talking about congress, talking about federal or state or others, if we want to benefit these new technologies we need also make sure the internal rules governing governance are being considered to modernize them. it's an unfair burden that we were able to take on because at the time we were facebook had the ability even though we were muff smaller, but a lot of other one or two-person governments

that government may benefit from using may -- i think that's a tremendous loss for everyone. >> todd cohen from ebay. i appreciate what my colleagues from uber and air b & b lyft and potential regulation of their services and the need to collaborate at the local level, and i wholeheartedly endorse them to do that. also with the reality that there are very entrenched economic interests that have every desire to put startups like that out of business and they work actively and have political power and engage in many ways the worst type of regulatory models the -- we want to have a level playing field is the classic example. then therefore we should have these unnecessary burdens placed

upon new entrants that have nothing whatsoever to do with the service that is underlying that and i'm pleased to see what the german people are responding, and signing up at 592% increases because it is actually what people want, and i would just make sure that as many of these companies i advocate you try to get in early and inoculate yourself and try to make sure that you find the regulators that are not only captive but that understand what is going on because what happens in the end is, it's an example of fraternity hazing. we got hazed when we joined the fraternity. you're going to get aheadded when you want to join the fraternity. so i appreciate everyone has the right attitude of, we want to collaborate and work with government, but let's be very clear, there are a lot of people that want to stop these services and will spend energy and effort and political power to harm these businesses. >> actually that's a great point

in the context of if we're talking on this panel about startups and why internet policy matters to startups and we're thinking about every -- really every company in the room is frankly pretty young compared with some of the much more established industries, your frequently dealing with on policy and regulation, and there seems to me there's two challenges, one is a challenge of ent.ed industries trying to protect their turf from challenges frequently from unexpected quarters. another might actually be just a generational gap among decisionmakers. on monday when i was in germany, was meeting with a group of very senior german officials, who had no idea what uber was and they wanted me to sew it to them on my phone. and this goes a little bit to adam's comment about the

challenges faced in dealing with these institutions. i wonder what are the right strategies or what did some of the experiences been around dealing with government institutions that are -- may have generational gap in understanding some of these issues and experiencing them coupled with some organizations companies, like comcast, been in the industry decades long hoyt for the -- history for the industry there and what kind of environment that creates for shaping public policy. >> i thought -- sorry adam with google. thought todd's comments were right on. if you're only playing what i would consider the inside game with policymakers there's a good good chance that new are companies and newer industries are going to lose, simply on the

basis of old are industries having been there longer. not just the taxicab industry or the hotel industry but the content industry the telecommunications firms. these are companies that are -- many of whom or regulated. they've been players before, policymakers for a long time. i do think that one of the tooled that is effective here and has been effective is showing policymakers when they are out of tune when consumers. the battle that was referenced earlier is the quintessential example here. that issue was proceeding as an inside game debate and it wasn't until it became an outside game with consumers weighing in that policymakers put the brakes on what they were doing. unfortunately i think that tactic is probably going to have to be used but i will say in

the wake of pipa policymakers in the u.s. are extremely cautious about legislation becoming the next pupa-sopa. they don't want to be the recipient of thousands of phone calls, saying that they're on the wrong side of something. i think there are going to need to be moments of things todd reverendded, where newer companies confront policymakers with saying, look, it's us that is on the side of consumers. and i think one of the scariest things a policymaker can encounter they're not on the side of the consumers and they often switch sides very quickly to avoid that situation. most long-serving policymakers are not going to last very long if they're completely in a sustained way out of touch what if their voters want. >> if i could just add on to that. i'm trying find it in my e-mail

but it's not working. i seem to remember getting an e-mail from uber-maybe a year and a half two years ago about the challenges they were having in d.c., and i thought that was just remarkable. i don't want to say it didn't happen. i wanted to look it up. i seem to remember this happening. they were actually going to customers to say this is your community, and then you look at what i think was a terrific decision to hire david plus. that is a tactic he is very familiar with, and so to my earlier point, as companies start want -- >> what do you mean that's a tactic he is familiar with. what tactic? >> grassroots organizing using technology to play an outside game. and so have companies start engaging in these debates and realize an inside strategy is maybe not sufficient and playing the out game. it is just really mind-boggling to me the amount of power that these candidate that have these large membership lists have when they decide something is important to their corporate

interests now. they can call them user interests but it's a corporate interest and they can use the lists to advocate for the interests. it's not good 0 or bad just a new political dynamic. >> i'd just like to add something wick. i agree with the importance of grassroots organizing and advocacy, but a unique challenge to startups regarding that is turkly ones that are far smaller than those of us at this table. they don't have enough people to do grassroots advocacy on their behalf. i think education is also really important, and air b & b has invested a lot in sharing -- studying and sharing information about the impact this activity has to disspell a lot of the misinformation out there and educate policymaker sod they're not rely 0 an anecdote from nephew but on data about who all of the citizens in their city -- what they're doing and again that's a challenge for startups

who maybe don't have the capability or the scale to share that kind of information and data will policymakers so that they can make informed decisions. >> i just wanted to jump on that point about the power that companies have to mobilized their user bases itch think it's actually more a way of keeping companies hospital about what issues they take on -- companies honest about what issues they take on. our people aren't going to follow us unless they understand how the positions taken have a direct impact on them. for example, we have been doing a ton around net neutrality late lay because our user community cared about it a lot and they're worried that slow beyond of internet speeds will have a direct and negative impact on their small businesses so they're crafting pel lows that say, protect an open internet and doing stuff like that which is great and also makes us feel very confident that when we mobilize our users next week to contact congress about this

that they have our back and we're not diverging from the interests of our community itch think that's probably true for all the companies around the table. >> thank you. just the first sort of premise that is important to recognize in this whole conversation is that there's really no advertising model for democracy. there's not a way to sustain public purpose in a civic space with an advertising model. it's never been that way. and we have to figure out what is a sustainable business plan in civic engagement data in general. this is a big conversation that is starting to happen. the other thing is that our institutions have to be technology include self-dermatology some extent. we have to give them capacity and one of the ways to do this is by giving places like congress staff. why don't we have fell lows, a code for america for the legislative branch where we re-invent land grant knowledge

for the public interests. what members of congress don't often have is basic situational awareness. once they have the technological process competence in my view as a national security staff in congress, the more complexity migrates to the military services, this is a classic explanation of what happened with the nsa. when you give the technical competence and the rewards of public service to the defense department in this case, a lot of responsibilities that are too hard for the civilians are just going to go there and they've had the computer scientists and had the situational awareness tools for decades now. there are probably a couple hundred -- probably a couple hundred trifellows inside congress. if you need foreign policy expertise, you ask for a military fellow. the state department maybe had two dozen. the other problem inside congress is it's working at 60%

of 1979 levels of staff. meanwhile, almost 50% of house staff has been moved into the district, so it's in the states. unless we create some kind of a high quality decision support system for our legislative branch, in the states it's not going to appear and it's going to continue to look sort of like this prooperate tear information cartell -- proprietary information cartell, which is what congress looks like. i say this with a great deal of love for his institution. but it needs this kind of institutional empathy right now. so glad you're hearing but a the executive branch has been the focus of attention, but it's running into a wall right now when it comes to legislative branch capacity for even understanding these problems. you sit -- when you're working on the hill you ask the person sitting next to you. it could be nuclear

nonproliferation and could be technical i.t. questions. we have to somehow provide them people. >> nick do you want to jump in there? >> i think there's tremendous potential to bring entrepreneurs and innovators into government and that what wear doing with the presidential innovation fellows program, what we are doing with the u.s. digital services. that really important as we think about modernizing our government's services. the reason that's relevant to internet entrepreneurs and startups is government can be a platform to quote tim o'reilly, and we are opening up data as fuel for private sector innovation. so that's something -- one of many things the presidential innovations fellows work on. >> one of the challenges for the public policy space in the internet age is that in the private sector is through startups, the disruption of all

business modeled that can be re-invent it because of new technology in government particular through federal government particularly an institution like congress you won't see the level of disruption at the same pace. so it manifested itself, in my view, with things live seven percent approval rate examination those approval ratings that persist through a pelosi majority and a republican majority. different ideologies. so it's not a ideological rejection. it's a process rejection and that's an extremely important issue for our country, and programs like this and others 18f, serve as models, the united kingdom has done exciting work modernizing legislative activity. i'd say the challenge for the broader technology community is a certain point -- how to regulate uber-with you live your existence in a motorcade. we need legislators

institutions and executive leaders to be connected with the reality of life in our society and i think it's a natural process. we have been through it before with the rise of television and the rise of radio and other things. i think we'll get there. if i can pivot slightly to the startup and regulations. i think one thing that its remarkable before the technology industry as a whole-at least right now and through the last several decades, it is unique in the sense it typically protects disruption of itself. in a way that most other industries don't do. and as the technology begins to impact more and more sectors in our society, you see this regulatory response, not as a way of serving public interest necessarily but as a weapon to protect the status quo. i think it's -- the technology industry needs to keep the public on its side as sort of a primary objective because without that it will never be able to defeat those static interests. so you think about things like

self-driving cars, which are -- i think in my opinion a net good for society on a variety of levels. but how is that going to impact the insurance industry and the transportation industry and the taxi industry and the trucking industry and all these other industries and a massive regulatory fight, and one of dozens of examples you can see companies around the room deal with on a daily basis itch don't see the technology industry as being able to succeed unless they very cognitively protect the interests of their users so they can leverage that in a modern kind of corporate grassroots organizing. >> so, i would just build on that and say, i think that there is tremendous opportunity for engaged partnership between the technology industry and the startup community and government itself. chris alluded to this a little but the talking about the ways in which, for example service like lyft could share transportation data with

their -- with the cities in which they operate perhaps help the city improve overall service delivery. we have done some ferments in boston -- we built some products in boston during this session i gotta a notice that the broken glass i reported on the sidewalk by my house using our city app this morning had been cleaned up by our public works department. a few hours every reported it. that's about changing people's expectations of government, not just picking up glass. it's about recognizing that people expect a standard that is defined in large part by what the technology industry has created. and so what i would ask is somebody in government to people who work in the technology industry, as reach out to us and look for ways to partner with us because we have service delivery not onlyon obligations but a desire to up our game and be able to match the expectations people have. and instead of thinking about it as how do we avoid this regulation or how do we get an opening to do this kind of service, if you think about where the mutual benefit lies,

there are a lot of opportunities for everybody to come out of this delivering a great product for their customers, whether they be citizens or paying customers on the other end of a product. >> you can expect me to ask questions because i don't know anything. i hear lately a lot of people talking bat libertarian moment in politics. i don't know if it's true or not. i wanted to ask if maybe the rise of internet startups wouldn't to an extent drive senate you look at uber in lyft and the pressure it puts on government to reduce their regulations of the way they regulate transportation services, and i look at this and think, are we going to have to go through there is with every new enter nate based idea, where whole new areas of regulation will have to be rethought and won't that lead to a general push continue creasingly deregulate sectored of the economy to make it easier for small companies to start up to make it easier for people to use

the internet to disintermediate traditional industries? are we going to start seeing political for your do that or an ad hoc case-by-case basis, some new company comes along and we have to rethink that one sector. >> i've seth from trip adviser. to answer your question, think what you may see is consumer appetite to have -- and a willingness to have more experimentation or more laissez-faire attitude about -- flip key, trip adviser company here in boston -- the bumping up against old regulations that have existed for health safety and welfare, and we're supportive of those, against new technology, and mollie talks about, being able to aggregate and bryan talks about get 50:00:00 people to sign up. that power and being able to do that has not existed up to now. vote that's an amazing opportunity for an entrepreneur to find a market demand that is

pent up by the populace. as that proliferates and people start doing it and adopting it i think we have seen in many different instances, whether it's the companies we named or stub hub, with ticket regulations, all these things over the past ten years, a little bit of a hey, easy on the tiller, let's kind of see how this place out, is one of the things that local government can do because i do think there's a tremendous opportunity in the 35,000 municipalities that air b & b is or lyft and uber-will be a flip key off to test and learn and understand. part of we do as a technology company is it rate and you have an amazing lab around the world to be able to see what works and what doesn't work. i think that can actually be applied also to the federal government, and what you're talking about with congress. i think how boston implements

technology and use it on a -- and taking the best from what boston can do or new york city or chicago and then seeing what works. i don't know if it's going to happen on a top-down approach but the taking the best of the best is something we could reasonably look forward to. >> juliet, and then margaret and then adam. >> i just wanted to come back to the questions that matt raised around disruptive technologies and in particular to think about technological unemployment. and just talk a little bit about the economic context in which all of this is happening. partly because i think the sharing economy companies particularly but tech companies in general as well claim a lot of public good effects and if we think about the massive employment destroying capabilities of these

technologies d -- that's the flip side 0 efficiency. you have to own that part of disruptive as well ask then ask the question, what about technological unemployment? something that came up yesterday in the evening discussion texas and wasn't dressed well issue don't think it's true that new jobs are created, but if you think about the whole picture of economic analysis, and you look at the last -- the previous two centuries and how technological unemployment got absorbed it was in two ways. number one was growth so you had very rapidly growing economies. and number two massive reductions in hours of work. we went from average hours of work being 3,000 hours of work in the late 19th century, down to under 2000. so neither of those -- in the united states, neither of those conditions is really operative at the moment went have slow growth.

we are a mature economy. just came out with a new report about all of the member economies. we are facing a future of low gdp growth rates over next couple of decades. and we have big barriers to the reduction of hours in the united states and i don't think we can just assume we'll be able to absorb. if this sector wants to be able to not only sort of promote gains in the narrow but also have the whole thing work out in way that yields public good we have to think about the larger labor market policies. >> i think this is -- some of this is the way we want to look at a market in action. i think there's -- if you're looking at is as something

finite and we maxed out what we're capable of doing, this is a bigger problem. if you look at is as the pie is so much bigger than we realize. an example, our chicago team reported back that last year in 2013 they added 25,000 rides to the economy in chicago. not they took 25,000 from cabs, not we had 25,000 out of x amount. on top of what was already existing the year before there were 25,000 more ride with uber in the market andly t in the market. the potential and deplanned there is for all these services and that gets to the answer seth gave. the demand has always been out there for the stuff but now we have the technology to actually meet that demanded, and that changes the entire economic makeup. we're on the cusp of an economic sea change here and the way our economy works, there's a time l where there's a s'mores buggy on the road next to a car and people got around both ways and the world is changing that way

and technology is allowing that change to happen, and i think these are valid concerns but i think as that growth potential there is for the solutions to be there, too, but if you stifle that growth just out of fear we don't know the answer, then you're stuck. you're literally stuck and never moving forward. >> we do have janet yellen trying to encourage the idea among economist and employers that increased wages are actually a good sign for economic growth. and i also think about the point made about using your customers mobilizing them to help affect policy change, but that can work both ways, too. that can lead to the people who use platforms for income and employment to effectively unionize, maybe the nontraditional sense demand increased wages or increased

benefits. >> i think we're -- margaret? >> i was going to make a point three points back. >> i was just going to briefly say -- i have -- i couldn't resist. there was a recent -- a couple of years ago a story about -- in fact lots of stories about the minimum page and these people were stuck in these jobs, and the growing protests they're launching and you find yourself cheering and sympathizing but the very technology we're talking about are going to make it virtually impossible for these protests to pay off in the long run. you already have things like fastfood restaurants moving to kiosks and tablets and what you're going to see is the problem of these wages remaining utterly stagnant for a large segment of the american population and a lot of the technology we're talking about right here are indeed part of the problem and nobody has quite figured out how to work around that yet, and i don't think there's an easy answer at all.

>> but they are the answer. the technologies are the answer. that's the point i was trying to make. i was in san francisco and i took a ride to where i was going and the woman who picked me up, her husband came home from work, had the car during the day, came home from work and she would go during rush hour while he was home with the kids. she wasn't working full-time as an uber drift. she had the lyft app on when i was in, and people use both, whichever one they can -- the lyft ride pops first they do that. it's creating opportunities. instead of saying i ought to be making more money at the fastfood restaurant, it's goaling you an opportunity to supplement your lifestyle in a way that is more convenient for you. the opportunities is here. this isn't something that is holding people back. >> an opportunity to work three jobs instead of two. >> but it is offering a certain amount of flex exhibit may mean that the work force has to change and people's expectations

of the work force changes. it may be that you have a small business that you're running on ebay to make things or sell things while you're also producing articles that run on the yahoo developer network and doing multiple thinged and allow you to be a stay-at-home mom and work out of your house. i the think there are problems with the transition period from sort of the everyone goes to work from 9:00 to 5:00 and has one job and stays there for 15 years, to this sort of an economy, but i do think -- i agree with brian that there are -- as there are certainly concerns and problems with it, there areles a lot of opportunities and i don't think we know yet where all the opportunities will arise. generally the technology and the platforms we all use create opportunities, and i think that also the case in our sort of lobbying and policy-setting. one of the things that's been

really fun about working for yahoo! is there's an opportunity to education lawmakers about policy issues they never thought about, technologies they never used. so you're often timed fighting an entrenched industry you're also not set into any one policy answer. you could have three different policy answers that might work for the industry and you get to sit down and sort of have that conversation with lawmakers, you get to sit down and talk to them about what are your concerns, your concerns, how to make that work and there isn't one necessarily right answer but there's a huge opportunity to do a lot and i think part of it is bringing the consumers along and making sure they're part of the dialogue and that's what your starting to see in terms of effective advocacy by this industry. >> we have juliet david, and then matthew. >> i think we can't argue this on the basis of anecdote. there is little doubt that these technologies have enormous labor

displacing impact. that's why people like them. that's the power of them. that's all the efficiency being claimed. and it's not to say that uber won't create more rides but i think there are really two big questions, number one is, what is the aggregate rate of growth? that absolute absolutely central for how much of the displaced labor can be employed. and we can't forget that every additional percentage point of gdp growth puts a certain amount of co2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and it's a very close relationship and we are coming close to the point where we're going to have those kinds of caps. and so that's a whole other new kind of constraint on this thinking about what is going on at the level of the nation as a whole and the globe as a whole, and second is what is happening to hours of work, because if you don't have reductions in hours of work, you can't absorb

technological unemployment it just look throughout history. so it's not to say that we shouldn't have the new technologies or we should somehow stop this. it's to say, we got to think about their introduction in a bigger framework than just the local regulations around taxis. it's also about the income distribution and labor market policy and climate policy and all of those things. we need look at the big picture, and to make sure that we are aware -- where are the gains going to raise this point and sort of -- that may not just be the -- up one particular internet company may not want to get engaged in that but the community as a whole has to. precisely because of all those backlash issues. >> david matthew. >> i do think of david seemon

with sales force. this is providing software as a service. there's a valid point that when you have rapid technology change you have rapid employment displacement. i think one of the places where this needs to be re-evaluated very hard is in the educational front. this country has very much ignored stem education, science, technology engineering and math, for most of a generation. and we have yet to really try to take advantage of the technology. you have seen a little bit of it but in terms of stem education for people who are being displaced so they can get new jobs in this new economy that are valuable, the idea of sending people out to community college, which by the way community colleges are very valuable, but it's a relatively expensive way to re-educate somebody when you have the internet. and it creates all sorts of problems. how to get their daycare taken care of when they have no income

and have to go someplace. so i think all these needs to be taken advantage of it and kind of goes back to an earlier part of the problem, which is policymakers tend to get stuck in a certain way of thinking whenever their perspective is, and you have this real dichotomy of the 20 somethings the people doing a lot of the work for the policymaker but the policy decisionmaker is somebody who looks like me who typically very entrenched in a certain way of doing things because that's the way they've been doing things for two generations. >> so matt in terms of policymakers are the single biggest thing that policymakers don't get is the difference in economics between a brand new niche and a niche that even just three or four years old. what we have seen over and over again, with the internet and all kinds of new digital media space, these spaces lock in pretty quickly.

and that is especially doubly, triply true, with sharing economy niches, which are essentially just market makers. we have 300 year plus of experience of market making niches that become very quickly natural monopolies and that should make us even nor concerned about sort of this re-distribution of market power. because if i want to drive a car for a living very soon -- how many-sharing companies are going survive? i would bet a month's sally not three. probably not even two -- a month's salary not three probably not even two. so this very quickly becomes an issue where the economic concentration becomes self-sustainingsustaining and where it's very difficult for individuals to bargain on their own with these entrenched firms. >> even if two or three ride-sharing companies exist there may be dozens of limo

companies and taxi companies that they have relayed. there's still a consolidation in the market so to speak. >> by the time you're down to two, as with traditional auction houses, it's very easy for them to collude. you don't have to do an illegal conspiracy to make sure that you're offering the same sorts of deals to people who want to sell their artwork. >> althea, did you want -- >> i just wanted to jump on the sort of point about educating the work force say that i think that it's true that these technologies are both disrupting the labor market and creating new opportunities. we found that 42% of our sells sold for the first time so that half of our folks who wouldn't have started businesses otherwise. but i think it's more than sort of the stem education, which is

important but build fewer jobs i think, than sort of building out some of the work-around entrepreneurship and preparing folks for the new and changing economy, chris not the result of technology alone. the economy has been changing for a long time towards more flexible work self-employment, all of these things, and how do we help prepare sort of the workers that have been displaced for that new world outfield informal entrepreneurship that is a big question that doesn't fall just to the tech companies but policymakers more broadly. >> just have to say something about the stem comment because right down the street, at harvard law you have mr. tiedle bermuda who came out with a book saying that doesn't exist and america hat plenty of stem educated workers and this so-called panic about the shortage of stem workers are a

extra traditional cycle that happens -- most famously in the '50s after sputnik and you look at employment rates and waning rates and people have technical training, that are doesn't seem to be a problem here because wages have been relatively stagnant even for them. so the idea we can educate our way out by teaching everybody math is highly questionable and we need to look at that, too. >> what's the relationship between the stem education and some of the concerns in the tech industry about immigration? we're right here in a moment where we're -- the president is considering executive action on immigration if congress doesn't act. that seems to be politically charged. may not happen. and we have had forward.u.s. trying to take a very active role to push some movement on the immigration front. anybody want to comment on immigration and the role that is taking in this? >> a scam to keep wages low?

>> sure. >> so, my ceo, mark zuckerberg at facebook, has taken a very active role trying to push for comprehensive immigration reform over the last year plus. there's many components of comprehensive immigration reform. the ones you're specifically focused on related to stem have to do with what i think most of the companies who operate in this space do perceive as a shortfall of the types of highly skilled, trained engineers, computer scientist who can produce at the level that is required to remain globally competitive. i think most of the companies around here will be interested in reading the work of professor but they know they're another

able to find from the u.s. trained work force of u.s. born people a sufficient number of the skilled engineers they need to keep these companies growing and innovating and competing. so that's where immigration reform on the high skill side comes in. we have at facebook -- we probably get about 50% other a year of the h1b the temporary visas for high-skilled workers. people that we have given job offers to, many of whom have been educated in u.s. universities but are foreign-born. we get 50% in the lottery. a year. people who we have given job offers to. now, as a global company, if we can't bring those people to the united states to work with our engineers in california, we're probably still going to give them a job. we're just going to put it

someplace else, and that's not good for the united states and that's not good for our economy and for building and maintaining the kind of centers of excellence we 1/2 silicon valley and in austin and boston and other places and that we want to maintain just taking facebook as an example, but i think it's true for a lot of these companies around the table. we got close to 80% of our work force in the united states, and about 85% of our users outside the united states. that's the kind of structure that i think we want to maintain. we want u.s. based companies growing jobs here and serving the world. so i think it's the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform are looking dim, i would say, in the current congress. president is considering take something executive action. we're hopeful that to the extent he does that, he tries to address all aspects of the problem, both the current undocumented situation and the shortage of high-skilled workers.

>> laurel? >> i heard just that this whole issue of immigration and what facebook has been up to is a -- makes the case for the tech community to get more invested in long-term policy conversations and we have a humanitarian disaster on the border right now with a bunch of seven-year-olds coming and it's part of a much bigger systemic problem where issues like governance and state failure are counterterrorism issues. it's getting wrapped up in that. dhs and the military all are calling this under the headline of resilience. you're going to see more and more definitions of resilience and mass population movements are part of it. and unless this community, again, like takes on this whole civic problem-solving of complex sorting and filtering of the challenges we're facing as a global society i would argue, i

think it's going to be hard to get out of the box and can't just be about h1b visas for your company. i was really surprised honestly someone who has been working in d.c. for the last 14 years, is that most notable thing about the forward.u.s. was that one of the firsting it das was take out ad buys on environmental issues. d.c. really is -- aid kind of like a city that is a junior high. and there's -- a high school. there's the jobs the homecoming queens, the in other -- the nerds, the geeks. problem