status of many of these companies is bad for competition bad for the consumer and even for freedom of speech no doubt silicon valley is lowering of. cross talking big tech i'm joined by my guest bill new in london he is a privacy campaigner and c.e.o. of the cyber crisis from the crisis team in dallas we have he's a wealthy advisor is well as a managing partner and a chap with investments and in seabeck we cross to geoffrey carr he is the author of inside cyber warfare mapping the cyber underworld and founder of 30 up a video streaming platform right gentlemen cross-talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciate let me go to bill in london bill is it time to break up companies like google and facebook and we can talk about what should be done if they are maybe they should become public utilities go ahead bill in london there's been very left little appetite in the polls for

breaking up these come these companies indeed there's been very good less appetite for challenging them in any way because the enormously lucrative in terms of the lobbying that they do know obviously they have a very strong position in the market i think what we've seen very recently with some of the scandals around privacy that these companies are now vulnerable and possibly their future is in play ok the same question to you because we do have 80 and we have standard oil we have microsoft i mean there are precedents out there there are ways about doing this here to create more competition that's what we need more competition and more privacy ok and a little bit more tolerance of people like me conservatives go ahead well and i am one of those those conservatives as well and the problem has really come because of the privacy issue and because of you know what some people say some political leanings but i love competition but you know on the flipside facebook competed one google competed. one and now we're going to come in and say you know you did too

well so we're going to raise you abbott and i don't like it i don't either but i'll take a lot of my devices are commercial but buying the competition to destroy competition is not good business practices and you know that ok we saw that with these other big standard and i got to say you know they were told by their competition and they destroy it ok all right jeffrey the same question to you time to break these up you know i'm i'm in favor of google mostly because of the privacy issue google has more group it has more data people than the n.s.a. . than any government agency ever dreamed of. it has tracks you across every platform. is ubiquitous browser therefore if you are fewer any company anywhere in the world you need to have a presence on chrome which grew our hands and the only area that google really suffers from is in telephones but nevertheless you load

a google app on your telephone that of course we all do because we all like to use g. mail or watch you tube then they're on the phone as well so this is a completely unbalanced scenario that needs to be to grow get up as soon as possible and. let's go back to bill in london bill you know we have the we have the situation of 18 t. when they created they the baby bells ok and they competed against each other and they were actually at one point allowed to merge ok after they had been broken up and i want to speak to an issue that i'm sure ad will bring up but i'm going to mention it now the current owners of this let's say facebook and google they would have shares in these broken up companies i mean if you look at rockefeller when standard oil was broken up he became even more rich because he had shares in all of these companies that were competing against each other and creating the best product for the best price for the consumer that is a possible way bill go ahead. i'm not sure that we're going to be doing any of

these actions for the benefits of the major shareholders in some of these companies the main consideration is going to be what does this mean for the consumer and for competition in the markets and that has to be the main consideration that we focus on we need to remember that there have been a number of already inquiries both in the e.u. and in the u.s. into their practices by some of these companies and also into the sort of level of competition and these companies have become very effective in terms of their ability to lobby for their own causes and in order to frustrate some of the actions that might have been taken against them so far they've survived with nothing more than the old find here all there and we need to understand exactly what the purpose of any action on the antitrust front is at this purpose in this moment in time and how far we're going to take it i'm not sure that there is. all of the right rushing of fists and gnashing of teeth that the amount of power that they have and the actions they've taken of the council are pretty purposely i'm not sure there's

actually a concerted and really well identified set of actions that we want to take against these companies at this moment insulin ok you know but you had you know just. when it was really leaked by the wall street journal i suppose it was an intentional leak that google was going to be investigated for antitrust its shares dropped 6 percent and they're scared of this big time ok though they have they bankroll a lot of people in washington you know they really they stuff a lot of pockets there but there is a growing concern i wouldn't say bipartisan because there's no such thing as bipartisanship in the u.s. right now but i voice is on both sides are beginning to say that we need to take a look into this for all the reasons that you gentlemen have already mentioned go ahead and write i mean i think all of us agree the privacy issue is the big deal here you know for good about the political leanings but the privacy issue but you know jeff is saying we need to break it up because of the privacy issue i think is being released. short sighted jeff because they have they do so many other things

just look at all the other companies and different you know products that they sell google specifically look at all the things that google does they're not number one in everything they're competing they're winning they're developing better products and everybody else needs to get on board and start competing against them and peter i didn't say that we wanted to you know bankroll of the companies we just need competition just like the gold state warriors right now they're the best team in the league do we have to break them up because they're winning so well of course not and i don't think it's a very good start harris and it's not a here's a good example peter go ahead i just want to make this point amazon amazon is doing a great job but guess what wal-mart's now coming on board costco is coming on board and they're going to compete that's what we want competition gets us a better product at lower prices ok well let me go to jeff and see back here but you know when you look at companies the size of facebook and google the cost of entry is extremely high now if you were to break up these companies like in just search indie e-mail and other products that they have so much control over that

would create an enormous amount of competition and what you know was innovation is well innovation companies of this size do not they stop innovating ok they prefer the profits and not innovation that's bad for consumers go ahead jeff. yeah the other error besides privacy is who controls search so and search is really the biggest the biggest issue here and so if you are a competing company and hoping that your win when somebody is looking for a widget that you are the going to be on the 1st pages it's impossible you can't you don't google doesn't share the secret of their algorithm there's a huge scale market out there or search engine optimization to try to get companies on to the 1st age or opt into the top. and there's no way to do that because google doesn't share that information and because google wants to have its own information

at the time for example travel so google is getting into the travel business and when any time you do a search it's going to give you google will put right at the top it's own travel findings for best results cheapest fares something that you know many of these troubled companies are trying to do exactly pete but just go to safeway so go ahead and jump it just like when i go to safeway i'm going to get a safeway razor. ok but really i'm going to show where they're going to you know and i'm not always so hang on guys well you know obviously google is going to support its own products let me go to bill right now and it will punish any kind of competition that it sees as a i mean you can't have it both ways saying that you're you're a search for the entire internet and then say we're going to punish these people who reward these people are going to go to bill on that any longer yeah but let me go to already seen let me go to bill who had been saying fines leveled against

google in the e.u. for competitive prices and the fact that we're now looking at a full on t. trust hearing is a sign that the actual regulation going regulation has failed we should be keeping our head of the game here in order to stay on top of these companies to ensure that they're not deploying anti competitive tactics if we going down the line of an antitrust suit it means that a lot of the preventive regulation has failed maybe we should be investing more some of the fines that have been raised in the post investing that in better regulation in results is for some of the regulators so that we can head off some of these problems ahead of the game rather than waiting intel a company has acquired that much power and that much reach that we need to sell thinking about antitrust measures and even if we are going to go down the antitrust route this isn't a simplistic exercise i mean we've seen that the microsoft one was overturned on appeal and cold and therefore it's not straightforward and even though the ones

that were taken across the industry in the pulse and the baby bells these 2 years to take a few years i mean yeah they can tell you take a decade ok jeffrey and you see big back you want to jump in go ahead jeff. that's not a fair comparison to say that say we will sell its own brand of razor because we're not talking about when it comes to the internet it would be the example would be driving street to get to the safeway store along. that street's not owned by safeway the error that i'm being is owned by say for the landscape that exists in the digital world it's pretty much by google in the west that's a true danger but the only true in the us and in the google on the internet you can go to get out of bounds you have so angry internet go ahead so general google you know when he wants on the on the internet jeffrey go ahead and you can go ahead and

get it out to the guy twenty's 32nd stand before we go to the break ed it's called the it's called the ya it i mean there's other search engines out there you don't have to just go to google i mean you certainly don't have to go just google what i think it's a perfect paris and you drive down the road you see a safeway grocery store you go inside you go to get a razor instead of getting them to let their shopping safeway razors down your throat the terrible analogy but you know what i mean you know they're trying to get you to buy say cheese razors. not just the leaders in search they're also the leaders in so many other areas from e-mail to advertising and a whole lot of different areas do we need a single right gentlemen we have to jump in here we have to go to a hard break and after that break we'll continue our discussion on big tech stayed with r.t. . 1

what is the call and the question is magic internet money the new type of digital currency the centralized digital scarcity chancellor. of 2nd or bank that's called the genesis blog for reason pickling a civil disobedience a source of optimism because i can't control my own financial death any it's just a new way of coming to consensus it's a game changer in the human history this is columbus discovering the new world then . paradigm shifting technology that transforms economics and finance in a heartbeat the apollo 11 landing on to the max and stacey. the swarms of them so moon. who was before. much of those who heard the preview or. seen him we. were going to.

move. move. move show you just look beautiful little. good looker good. move slow most of these girls will give you films good goof. to go to shows so look i do the same you want me to show the story to go. to startups to. get to meet until it was the middle of the mist they'd say look it is it's. your stash them understand just leave them mashed on the truck stop the president and please control this morning until. those we have producers to produce for to snoop to come up when you will because

that is the girls are with you sir your supporters to your machine station shooting star you should book door for the one who's doing. this in petersburg international economic forum is a unique event in today's business world. over the last 21 years the forum has become a leading global platform for discussing they keep economic issues facing. russia emerging markets and the world thousands of business community members attend the forum to address today's vital issues. or just national forum coverage on r.t. . welcome back to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter bell to remind you we're discussing big tech.

ok i want to go back to bill in london you know i usually don't cite democrats like elizabeth warren but i will this program here a liberal democrat is that she's proposed a bill that would limit the ability of acquisitions by some of these really huge companies like it's a huge billions billions and billions i don't remember the number exactly but i mean basically saying that you know they're big enough not to and then they should be crowding out the field and should allow more competition and more people to enter the marketplace is that one way instead of breaking up these companies bill is to limit their ability to for huge acquisitions i think we need to look at all of the requisitions not just the huge ones i think we need to have a really healthy market of startups possibly potential future challenges in the market if these companies are able to buy up all the potential competitors which

they do when trade use all that well which. is a bad thing and that people are already saying that they facebook's acquisition of what's out was questionable and many people in hindsight think it was a bad move we want to prevent that type of acquisition in the future we want to limit the amount to which these companies can actually influence the competitive market by actually hoovering up smaller potential competitors ok and i know you disagree go ahead. i completely disagree i mean look i'm all about competition but if a company becomes so big and so good we were going to punish them for that no make others better help others help and that just you know help them but can't you see right i can't. see how you can square the circle these are they're inherently anti-competitive when they get to this size and mass ok there and they go to an authentic will to competition i don't see how you can see that in the market

completely market by providing a better serve i see that we would encourage companies to our provide a better service and when they try to do that but do not buy what's up in order to take out a competitor in the markets and in order to reduce the level of options to people that is not what we're looking for well i'm very happy for facebook to create innovations of their own but not to take out competitors and to narrow the market in order to gain a broader. control of the market ok all right i had to change gears here let me change at the same time that i had to add go ahead go ahead. go ahead i just just in our in our country we want less government less government allows freedom flexibility and the more government you bring in the worse it's going to be for us here ok well i'm a inspirit i agree with you but the government should serve the people here bill maybe just turn them into public utilities that's been you know bandied about for

the last few years here i mean i i'm kind of split on that because if it's going to be a public utility then who's going to be running the public utility and it'll get to the point of censorship that i want to mention after this point here so public utility bill. public utilities aren't always famed for their innovation and therefore a good calling would be supportive of moving in that particular direction but of course if we're going to levy large fines for areas where they have either breached previously laura where they've been anti competitive we need to channel some of the fines back into the regulators so that we can have effective regulations of well resourced regulator to ensure that there is not market abuse i'm all for innovation but it will starting to see market abuse by companies that are using their position in the market to stifle competition or to alter the playing field in their favor the that isn't the type of innovation or competition that we want to see a reply to that. well i mean i agree with just about everything you just said i

mean i i do love competition i do understand how big they are i just don't want the government in elizabeth warren dictating how things are going to run in a free market. the issue. of censorship by these companies i mean the there is no doubt that these large companies are very liberal in their politics and we have been able to see behind the curtain when it came to the 2016 election the kind of the thumb that they were putting on the scale or attempting to do that and i resent that bill as a conservative in public life i really resent the a little with my facebook page i have a channel on on you tube they fiddle with that is well and i never told why they just intervene and do it never an explanation they deem monetise things without an explanation here i don't think that what they're doing is they're pushing their values on the users ok that's and i didn't sign up for that and they never told me

they were going to do that so i resent that and i think it's a violation of freedom of speech at least as a as an american the 1st amendment go ahead bill. i think we what we need to see here was a level of transparency and openness and the rights of the p.l.o. and some of the actions they take there is something called shadow banning which is a tactic that they employed in order to reduce the impact on the visibility of certain players in the markets now this is being used against both people on the left and on the right and people of any kind of extreme opinion but unfortunately at this moment in time some of the social media companies don't even have a shadow of those as well seen and understood and on top of that they act as judge jury and executioner and if the process for the shadow banking and other such tactics was more open if there was an appeals process if you knew exact. what the rules were that you had to abide by and they were far more open about this then

i think that would be less issues with people either on the right or on the left or of any type of opinion who feel frustrated by the level of power the social media companies have at this moment in time as judge jury and executioner behind the sets of a bleak and possibly misunderstood or totally i'll pay rules they themselves given their senate all done in a secret court has said we're ok you don't know what's going on you're never you're never given an explanation here and i mean i delve into this issue here because i didn't can and i'm convinced and you know i want to work for more against people on the conservative side than on the liberal side when i see all of this hate speech and i'm not a particularly big fan of donald trump ok and not at all but they hate speech protected against him and they no one touches them on twitter ok i mean it's so one sided it's so we have to critical if you can you should apply it across the board

to everyone they should tell us what quote unquote the rules are because they don't go ahead ed. i mean i'll give you a great example that i go to my g. mail and i look at junk ok i'll go there and see what was listed as junk according to g. mail and it is the blaze it is the daily caller at fox news breitbart they have decided that that was all junk and it didn't make it into my inbox even though i signed up for these different newsletters and so on anything that is conservative that is obviously conservative g.-mail puts it in junk and everybody who has a g. mail account just go and look and see exactly what is being thrown in there you'd be blown away at what they're what they're doing. you know and if you were to give advice on how to deal with these big companies and all of the issues that we have mentioned on this program what would be the 1st thing you would suggest go ahead.

that was that a girl wants to build and i think i said the line i think we need we need troubles and we need to understand what the process is behind any kind of bonds or any kind of sanctions they take we need an appeals process we need a level of transparency in the process from end to end this moment in time it simply isn't transparent and there are people on the left or on the right you may argue that their own being unfairly treated but the thing is we don't know how they're being treated and the act of shadow boxing or other different tactics they use they don't even admit that they're doing the let alone provide you with an appeals process that you can actually take your case forward and i'll give the case against them we need fall more transparent operation of any kind of tactic of this current by any of the social media films you know and you've said on this program just a few minutes ago that you don't like government getting involved in the affairs of individuals lives in and i understand where you're coming from very well but what is replacing government and even more powerful than government are these companies

they are the ones that are shaping values their marketing values are saying what is good what is bad and i find it very offensive and very good all the time by their choice of values saying that we're the way i should live in the way i should think and if i don't think the way they do that i can't use these services or all be shadow band as it's been mentioned here on this program here i mean what business do they have forming values for a society they're just businesses they're supposed to be intermediaries for the rest of us to do what we want to do in life go ahead. peter i'm living that you know in many different places in my life and you know what they write they're all basically writing the same stuff there's about 95 percent of the media is going to write the same stuff and don't think for a moment facebook twitter and google to some degree or publishers they you know when they put their thumb on the scale they become publishers they're not unbiased platform and when they do that they are. actually influencing or trying to

influence what we think and who are these people you know that this could be 2327 year old kids who never knew anything other than liberal economics well they were understand how the world works in some cases so i don't want them forming those because i have my kids who are very influential influenced by you know what media they go to constantly cosily sign them up for conservative newsletters and they keep canceling them and i'm like you know guys you gotta listen of the stuff you've got to read the you know the right information you can just sit there and listen to the morning brew and hope that's going to be your new source. bill you know facebook is outsourced a lot of its privacy issues and fake news issues to the atlantic council and the atlantic council is a very pro-war it is the spokes group for nato and you know it seems to me that facebook is this absolving of itself of any kind of responsibility it's actually given it out to

a very biased political organisation so they can keep their hands clean saying well we didn't have anything to do with it but they've got outsourced it to an intensely partisan group of people again which i feel in my personal life using social media go ahead bill i think that's perceived bias in almost every aspect of the way that anything is regulated and i don't think that the way that facebook or any of the other social media channels have tried to do it themselves or have outsourced any of this is ever going to be perfect and i don't think the governments are going to be perfect themselves i think there was a real irony here in the u.k. when the government issued and on line holmes paper talking about how it would sanction people for publishing material content that was perceived as being harmful and the very same week that was a u.k. citizen who went to the middle east and was arrested for an instant she made a fairly innocuous comment about one of her exes paul knows you are bright. being

arrested for what in the middle east was posed as a full and insightful comment there and i don't think we're ever going to see any sort of unified opinion but you know what i agree i'm going to run out of time here but i don't think you're being tech companies telling us what our values should be that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks to my guests in london dallas and in seabeck and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t. see you next time and remember girls. the project was good if you you've done your bit. you need to do the people with.

the suv cheaper suv in the. government. should leave a more to do with. this to. do the no close to you you presume this loop. you most fear of him he used to do it can both of those sonia. continue going to steamboat mean even the very least you kind of treat. your group who treats your eyes. as you move to you or you more you would almost to go. through them doing. some. of the most in the way of.

some wise man once said currency wars lead to trade wars late the hot more so we've had currency wars that's been going on now for 10 years 15 years or like particularly with china you know they artificially keep their currency low export their way into becoming a large economy and now this is led to trade wars. now pretty much declaring secession from the global economy as we go to neo mercantile ism age of globalization and monetarism and dollars ation is over. the globe we've got a few little hot spots there encroaching hot war scenario is upon us. nobody could see coming that false confessions would be that in the spot relational form for conviction if you look at any interrogation out there what you'll see is threat promise threat promise threat lie a lie

a lie the process of interrogation is designed to put people in just that frame of mind make the most comfortable makes them want to get out and don't take no for an answer don't accept their denials she said if i were to. send a statement that i would be home by that time the next day there's a culture on accountability and police officers know that they can engage in misconduct that has nothing to do with solving a crime. the russian and chinese presidents hail is unprecedented the current state of relations between that country says she jinping begins a state visit to moscow.