♪ tonight on "kqed newsroom," california's top law enforsment officialeeks to block the merger of two wireless providers as the government investigates the dominance of big tech companies. also we'll talk with a ceo whose digital academy has revolutionized online education for kids and life long learners. and we'll hear how an innovative l is pioneering new ways to improhe health and well-being of teens and young adults. hello, welcome to "kqed newsroom." i'm thuy vu. we begin with the growing battles of tech against n governmet. california attorney general becerra isng le an effort to block the telecom giants

t-mobile and sprint and they said it would hurt the consumers special for those in loca income and minorities.t it would cu the wireless providers from four to three and meanwhile, the number of antitrust invests against google, facebook and apple and amazon are growing. here tdiscuss are law professor kathlyn sandoval and satech editor andfrancisco bureau chief, jeremy owens. nice to have both of you. >> thanks forg me. >> on the proposed merger of sprint andle t-mo there are ten states led by new york and california it.g suit to block professor sandoval, you're a former commissioner of the california public utilities commission. what are your concerns about the proposed merger and how would it affect consumers? >> right. i'm not -- thank you so much for invitatio i'm an antitrust law professor. so both as a former regulator and as an antitrust professor, o

coup things jumped out at me. first of all, the complaint alleges that t-mobile and sprint ready have over half of the market share in both los angeles and new york city. in thend firstsecond largest markets in america they have over half of the market share. >> it is huge. >> it is huge and there are a number of markets where they have very large market shares. and as you mentioned especially these are both marketed as value ands so they have been especially important for lower income consumers for value conscious consumers because they compete on price. so theoncern is that as you have two head toc head petitors who already have huge portions of the market, who compete on price, if they merge which they're going to lessen ncentives or exemptions from data caps that are important for people to be able to watch content like yours or to be able to watch content like some of my videos that i use for my law classes.

>> and jeremy, sprint and t-mobile didge to a set of concessions, they agree not rsising prices for three y and improving the broadband service especially in rural areas andhis seemed to satify the fcc chair ajit pai. why does becerra feel differently though? >> this i one area that you can come down on either side. these guys cnnot compete against at&t and verizon very well on their own. those are two cpanies with so uch behind them. and in terms of other things they can offer consumers deals they can make with other sorvices beyond wireless and telecom. if you want to look at what they're competing against, putting them together makes a stronger competitor against the two stronger competitors that are already there. these twoy, well, compete against each other if we combine them we're not getting that competition and that's a proble so i can see both sides of this from a consumer point of view.'s that ther a reason to like it, there's a reason not to like

it. so it's not a very easy issue. >> well, what the telecom companies say they need to invest in the 5g technology and to ward off cpetitions from chinese companies. is that a legitimate ergument? >> s a way we look at this through the antitrust lens and regulatory lens. through the antitrust lenshe concentration is already incredibly high. and it makes it way higher. so in tms of antitrust analysis by the books this is presumptively anti-competitive. and so what they need to do is actually show that there are enough of what we call merger specific benefbs so that the efits outweigh the harms and the concern is that especially in places like los angeles and new yoin as well a places like el centro and, you utow, throughere the companies have large market shares that their promises of for example low pries for three years, three years expires pretty soon.

my law schools will graduate in three years. >> you don't know what will happen after three years with the prices. jeremy, what is interesng out all of this is if you look at europe it's been so much more aggressn cracking down on tech companies and issuing major fines. why s is it -- why is much more aggressive than the u.s. and how has that approach helped the consumers in europe in which these other tech companies compete like googlr example? >> you have to ask u.s. politicians why the eu has been tougher on these tech companies than others than they have. and i think that's a really strong question to ask as we roll into the 2020 elections is why have we allowed europe to take that claim of we are the ones establishing rules.th have been able to pass data privacy regulations that the u.s. is trying to get to. >> and huge fines. >> and huge fines and the u.s. is saying that europe is doing it. in fact, donald trump said, europe is going afterit.

why are we following europe? these are our cpanies. this should be our issue. but because we have been slow on it, because we have been looking ve other issues we fallen behind. now we're getting there, but we thke so long to do eveg. will the tech market still be the same when we do? there are some real problems tarting this late. >> i think the difference is really a jurisprudence and not simply a political difference. the major difference is in the united states in moder to have opoly power, tat's no magic number but we're generally looking for certainly somebody who has over 90% of the market share in the relevant market and that's a whole debate about how do you define the relevant ke m for example, is it all advertising or online advertising? is it is a segment of online advertising? >> none of companies seem to have 90% market share. >> right. is 80% enough for monopoly

power? maybe. is 50% enough for monopoly power? whereas in europe the legal standard is dominance. you can have 35%, maybe even 30% markethare and havena market doe in europe. this is -- >> lower threshold. >> yes. yes. so this is a legal difference and this is why europe was able to reach things like the fine they did against google. because their legal standard is different. >> yeah, they put three fines against google. the android fine they levied would certainly not happen here. >> let me ask you something about on a related front. lots of anti-competitive talk around the big tech companies, like google, apple. facebook and amazon. the justice committee is looking at antitrust complaints against the t ompanies. whind of potential regulations are they looking at? itey seems like alk a lot

about it, but nothing really happens. years on the inquiries probably and absolutely nothing might happen. right? i don't think they're going to be able to bring charges. i doo t think there's going be an antitrust trial for any of the companies but what might happen is what happened with they eventually settled with microsoft but in the time that they fought mi years in the late 90s and 2000s it gave breath to yahoo and the younger services that microsoft may have tried to strangle but they had to deal with the government and that gavehem the breath to get through. >> what about breaking up the presidential candidates like warren is calling for that. >> you can answer this, katherine, to gohe after companies yes i would love to see youtube have a spotlight shownn it becau alphabet hides it under google and says it's advertising. no, google is one of the most important things and kids are addicted to youtube.

we need more light shown on that. we need to know more about that property but google just hides it within everything else. >> youur put yaw lessons on youtube when there's a power outage or another situation where you can't actually teach them in class. >> yeah. so last year when we had the terrible fires and the campfire, and we all hadb ter pollution in the bay area santa clara university the president closed it because the air pollution was so bad. and s i was able to use youtube and to upload on -- you can do a private outube channel to upload videos for my class. and you deliver the content.s absolutely important for educational content. >> let me ask you about the privacy issues as well. because our lawmakers are missing the mark when they othl target tech companies because phone companies have lots of data on where you have been, what you have been doing. so if they're just focused on facebook for example with stricter laws or on youtube with stricter laws, but aren't phone

companies what does thatmean? >> i think that's a real problem. so i worked for the fcc as a regulator, i directed their department there. i teach communications law. and i don't have a facebook accoun o t i can't escape my internet service provider, my internet service provider can sell my data including my location data, then that would be a huge loophole if you only privacy protection on facebook or amazon or some of -- ultimately what are the apps that ride on the platforms. so that's why it's important to also look at what the internet service providers are doing when we look at pritcy because lly they have arguably far more data than any one of these other companies do. >> don't see any legal mechanism for them saying you have to break up. >> so katherine s there a legal mechanism where they can break up the companies? >> meeting the legal standard iy tough becauu have to define the relevant market.

you have to find that there is monopoly power and there's abuse and monopoly power or they could ge the laws and look at whether or not a shift in the law is me important -- is more appropriate for the shi in technology. >> and as you pointed out that monopoly standard is very high. thank you. professor katherine sandoval and thank you both. >> thank you. now to education. today, practically anyone can o hopine to get help mastering an a academic subject and this is one of the pioneers. it uses technology to make a availableee education to anyone, everywhere. each month 18 million people visit the site t toe free courses in 40 languages on subjects ranging from algebra to rld history. last june they included free test help for the law school entrance exam and joining me now

is the ceo and founder of cannes academy. >> good to be here. >> first, i would like to ask you about the nationwide college cheating stand scandal. because a coach was the first to be sentenced, he avoided prison time. he was ordered to spend six ment and home confi that was far lighter than the 13 months that the prosecutors had sough what do you make of the whole scandal? >> well, it's unfortunate, but in some ways i have to look at the silver lining of the dark cloud. it does put a lht on how much inequity there's been around the process and how strange process it's been. and so the scandal has a lot ofr extreme behavthat i think all of are shocked to know it was going on. but i think there's a lot of other area n the gray area here people hire consultants to help their kids write essays. at the end of the day, the children should be themselves and should represent themselves autheoically in order for it

really be a level playing field. >> but it also ignited a national conversation the s.a.t. test and whether we should have it at all. because there are some -- you know, inequities baked into that process. the cannes ademy offers a prep course. what do you think about it? >> my view on testing is there's nothing inherently good or evil about a test. it's a matter of how it is used. if someone uses an s.a.t. score tefbe the ing number of who they are, then that is a very bad use of an s.a.t. but if it's used a dimension -- you look at wholistically, the student grades, a extracurric essays they write it could be interesting for folks to look at and the value itrovides to colleges -- i'm not an adssions officer d i talk to a lot of them. but kids go to high schools around the world and they might -- athat's rigorous place so if they have a high gp i can

know what it means. for other places i don't know how hard it is to t achieve things so things like the s.a.t. give a signal -- not a perfect signal. no assessment -- in fact no dimension, none of the things are perfect but in aggregate they could help indicate what a student -- how ready they might be. >> all right. let's talk more specifically about the a have more than 100 million usage worldwide and that's an astonishing number. congratulations on lots of companies offer online ols and where doou fit into that? >> well, we started off as a nonprofit because there's lot of things that for profits can do well. but there's certain parts of our edfe where there's market failure andation is one of them. where the buyers, the , beneficiarill different people. there are certain values that we have, hey, if someone wants to learn something there shoulonbe no fricor them to do it. they shouldn't have to get out the credit card. >> be more democratic, avaible

to veryone? >> we made that a hundred years ago by introducing frepass public education. can we e ower anyone andy it's something like s.a.t. we hope to level the playing field and the law schooled a administrations test. just yore work from pre-k up to college, one, for people to learn, to have access and th then prove wha know to the world. i see that as the core role. that's why you see so many users coming to it. >> what do you see as the biggest problems in education in the way it's taught today? >> we are trying to tackle two head on. well, there are more, but there are social and wealth issues but one big issue is access. even in the united states, the majority of minority majority schools, they don't offer thin that we would take for granted for your or my children, like an

algebra ii class or biology class. and even in rural areas there's not someone who can teach a proper algebra class. so you have the access issue. not just access to something th xt's called clabut is a world class level. then the other is traditional schools have been built on a fixed pace model. this is a compromise that had to be made to practically educate most folks but as you get moved into the model, even though gaps are identified then build on top of the gaps and eventually kids hit wall 70% of kids who go to community college in america have to take remedial th. which is a euphemism for sixth or seventhh. grade ma >> so you call it the swiss cheese model. there are all the little holes and ass personal pn of you is to try to build a customized learning model. you have a with the northwest evaluation ti assoc. tell us what you hope to accomplish through that. >> the newa a is not household

name for a lot of people watching this. but if they talked to their school or their kids, they're probably taking this assessment. 25% of all kids in grades 3 through 8 ke this three times a year. it's called an interim assessment to just understand wherehey are and how much they're growing relative to their peers. what we saws. in ourt. world now that the p sat which is taken by the kids in america it's a practice for entry into the cannes academy. so the other assessment map growt assessment now when the students take that in the past the test is like, okay, you grew by this much or you didn't, what do you dow with that? so teachers haveu asked can we have an actionable path based on this? what we ha a launched issoon as they take that test the next day the teachers are able to give personalized learning planning on cannes academy. we call it the p accelerator and then the principal, the district and the teachers can understand how that work is driving growth on the map. >> and i want to also ask you

about charter schools because there's a lot of push back against charter schools for not only public schoolteachers but from politicians.ga like governon newsom, he wants them more isaccountable. there a role for charter schools here? >> i think theres a role for anyone helping the students which is moving the dial. >> how do you think they're doing right now? >>ls think charter schre almost like any other -- i'm not an expert at charter schools but my view is i have seen traditional public schools that are doing amazingth gs. i actually think the majority of them -- sometimes the lens goes on some of the places they're struggling but the majority of schools are doing really good wor the same thing is the charter. there are some charters that are excellent work and there are some like yeah -- so i generally in any industry in any space i always like more transparency and accountability. that's a good thing. i don't think tere is anything

particularly negative or positive about charters in general. there are specific cases in either case. >> then 20conds if you can, the current generation of young people, they grow up with mobile phones, facebook and do you think their attention spans are shorter? how do you address that? >> that's true but i think theip tations are now different. and the good thing is we can now give thingso them in a more -- but there are research studily we have a ten minute attention span. i don't want to blame the millennials. >> that's the challenge. all right, founder of the cannes academy, so good to haveu here. turning now to health. hope lab is a san fransco based nonprofit that's using technology and scientific research to improve the lives oe ns and young adults. one of their creations is the computer generated chat program to ease stress and anxiety experienced by young cancer survivors. it was created mothan a decade agopthat's hed those

with cancer stick to theirtm treat plans and they're workin on an app to tackle loneliness among college students, two-thirds who reported feeling lonely in the past year. joining me now is the research director at hope lab, danielle ramo. >> thank you. i'm happy to be here. >> well, hope l has an interesting model where it ha tackles healthenges facing teens and young adults, whether it's loneliness or recovering from cancer. can you walk us through that? >> sure. it helpseople with a whole host of mental and physical problems but weon't know how translate that to the digital. environme so at hope lab we pair behavioral science and human n centered deso help change their lives and feel meaningful and engaging. specifically to gen-z today.

>> why is it promoting on the young chilen, and not the her issues like bullying and obesity? >> well, we started off as a mission to support young people who had a key problem with sticking to chemotherapy, medication it's really tough tyke a pill that has extreme side effec ever single day. that's what's needed to undergo chemotherapy. there was a real need there to support something that was affecting deeply the lives of young people. now, we're focused more broadly on mental health as well as other physical health conditions that are really undersupported by otherps in the market. mental health is unprecedentedly problematic among young people compared to older adults or other guerations of people. >> it is such a big issue and one of the groups hope lab has been working with since the launch nearly 20 years ago is the cancer survivors, you have

talkut that. and your latest work involves a computer generated chat program and how does that work? >> well, we generated viv abot with the idea that particular risky time foreens who have undergone cancer treatment. as they come back into the world after the treatment. they're at risk for depression,y anx even suicide. because coming back to the community is not as eaas they would hope or they might expect. so viv veabot de positive psychology skills things like xpressing gratitude, mindfulness. looking at the positive side of situaions. all delivered through facebook messenger in a bot format. a text program. we work witheen cancer survivors to put content in there that would be meaningful to the population we aimo serve and we have finished data collection on a randomized clinical trial that shows that engaging with viv abot is supporting anxiety reduction among young people after cancera

ent. >> how do you get a chatbot to sound like a teen or something that young people would want to engage with?e >> we went dly to the y cancer survivors themselves. our model at hope lab is to cocreate all the products with th t young people we ai serve so we invited those who had cancer to come to the office, spend a day with us, recording video, sharing their lived experience. and reading andin sou content for how they talk about cancer. how they talk about coming back into t world. w they talk about anxiety and depression and all of that directly liv within the bot. >> you know, with all this work that you do and then eecially a lot of work you do with generation z, the young adults who were born between the mid 90s and early 2000s what are the misperceptions that people have? with. >> i work at the intersection of digital and emental health and there are some real problems with expernces o mental

health among gen-z today. it is highers than in previ generations and a misconception that social medialy is entito blame for that. we conducted a national survey at hope lab last yeh over 1,400 young adults where we found of course that social media is quite widely used almost entirely ubiquitous among gen-z but you can address the problems like depressionnd anxiety directly using technology. so wouldn't say it's necessarily only the cause of the problem but also really can be part of the solution. >> on the one hand, you're eing an increase, right, in some of the anxiety a emotional problems that they're experiencing but you're saying that social media isn't entirely to blame. so then what is the cause of this increase in what they're feeling? >> i wish i could ecve you a dsimple answer to that. i spend my career studying things like that.

there's no doubt that information that is negati and that can be associated with depression and suicidality, things like bullying is perpetuated over social media. but i wouldn't say it's ctharly a caus we know. there are certainly in someays people are more aware of mental health problems. parents are more aware of autism and adhd. some of the mental health problems that we have seen before are quite similar than they were in the past. depression, anxiety. but awareness is one thing and we're focused on trying to make a real clear impact. of what are your current projects -- one your current projects is building an app to help first year college students overcome lonelined. you wohink that college offers lots of opportunities to have social unteraction. an pledge for fraternities, sororities, dorm life. you think they're feeli so lonely? >> actually, college students are also unprecedentedly lonely in the united states today and in the past two weeks a thi of

college students say they felt very lonely. two-thirds say theyer felt lonely in the past year. and we think it might be in part because they have unrealistic expectations of what the college experience will be like. theymhink they'll meet the best friends of their life and everything they have heardb t college that will happen. so our app is helping people to develop the skills to actually meet their social goals when college isn't necessarily the experience that they expected once they get there. >> so then what skills or exercises do you encourage college students to engage ito help them ease the loneliness? f >> we have created a set social challenges and that is going out into the world and trying to support making social connections. something -- things like dare to leave y dr dare roomr open for a week or walk down the campus, look five people in the eye and say hello. but we also have the internal piece, that part that makes it sier forthem to process if

things don't go as well. so asking them things l what would you tell a friend if they tried something and it didn't work out? >> thank you so much for being here. >> thank you. my pleasure. and that is our show for tonight. but before we go, we'd like to mark the passing of a beloved friend and colleae linda keyny. she worked here for more than 40 years in multiple roles including as a assistant director on our show. and other productions. she was also the chair of the national emmy awards committee and had served as president of the san francisco northern cafornia chapter of t national academy of television arts and sciences. we will forever miss her generosity, her warmth and remarkable dedication to her craft.

captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, june 16: massive protests in hont kong ue over an unpopular extradition bill. making the case for a nutrition revolution.si and, in ouature segment: weighing the costs and benefits of opportunity zones. next on pbs newshour weekend. s pbs newshour weekendde possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. g. barbara hope zuckerb