Joe Biden has finally disclosed who is raising him big money just days before Election Day

Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Biden has been sharply breaking from precedent in his Democratic Party.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden finally disclosed the roster of his biggest fundraisers on Saturday, unveiling the names of the 820 people who have helped him build a big-money juggernaut.

The list includes Biden surrogates like former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA); Hollywood filmmakers like Lee Daniels and Jeffrey Katzenberg; Silicon Valley billionaires like Reid Hoffman and Ron Conway. The campaign did not specify how much these people raised for Biden efforts beyond that it was more than $100,000.

The release on a Saturday evening came at the last possible moment: Election Day is on Tuesday, and more than 90 million people have already voted, having done so without clarity on who his largest fundraisers are or what influence they may have had on his candidacy. Biden’s last-minute disclosure was a sharp departure from precedent in the Democratic Party, whose presidential candidates have regularly disclosed their so-called “bundlers” in a nod to transparency.

And that’s why campaign-finance reformers had grown concerned that Biden had not yet followed his predecessors Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s lead in releasing his bundlers for the general election.

Biden’s campaign had declined to answer inquiries about their bundlers until last week, when it told The New York Times that it would release their names by the end of October (which ended Saturday.) Both Obama and Clinton released updates on the list of people helping them raise big money at consistent intervals; Biden’s only prior update came on a Friday evening just after Christmas in 2019 during the Democratic primary with about 230 names, before his bundling operation beefed up in earnest.

“Congratulations on clearing an artificially low bar they set for themselves that defeats the entire purpose of transparency — allowing voters to know who is funding the campaigns asking for their support before casting their ballots,” said Tyson Brody, a Democratic operative who worked for Bernie Sanders and backs Biden, but is critical of the influence of large campaign contributors.

It makes strategic sense that the Biden campaign would not to draw attention to the bundlers who have helped him turn a lagging fundraising operation into a surprising powerhouse. Biden has worked to position himself as the candidate with the interest of the working and middle classes in mind, giving himself the nickname “Middle-Class Joe,” and casting the general election “as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue.”

And so, the Biden campaign has tried to draw focus to its small-dollar, online fundraising operation, rather than the celebrities, Silicon Valley billionaires, and Wall Street executives whose support undercuts some of the campaign’s messaging. That’s an especially important task for Biden given that many of these characters are prone to draw the scorn of the left, which is already skeptical of Biden and wants to see big campaign contributors play a smaller role in politics.

And the Trump campaign hasn’t been in much of a place to argue for transparency. Trump hasn’t released any information about his own bundlers at all.

So there’s been limited scrutiny. The upshot of that is that the 90 million people who have already cast ballots ended up voting with very limited information about the people who helped the campaigns raise the money that may have influenced those very votes.

The debate over bundler disclosure reflects a key campaign question of the Trump era: Should Trump’s own tactics set the standard for his Democratic rivals? Or should Democrats — who claim to prioritize reducing the role of money in politics — aspire to a higher, or at least the pre-Trump, standard?

Campaigns are only legally required to disclose bundlers who are registered lobbyists — everything else is voluntary. Trump and his most immediate GOP predecessor at the top of the ticket, Mitt Romney, declined to share any additional information. But prior to their campaigns, there had been a bipartisan tradition of at least offering some information in order to help voters understand who carried unofficial influence in their campaign; that was done by both John McCain and George W. Bush, who pioneered the modern bundling system and made being a bundler into something of a bragging right.

Bundlers do the often painstaking work of soliciting their networks for high-dollar campaign contributions: inviting their business associates to campaign events, making introductions to campaign staffers, and recruiting more bundlers to serve alongside them. Bundling can often end up be fiercely competitive, with campaigns closely tracking how much individuals have raised and bundlers sometimes finding themselves in competition for positions on leaderboards.

The Biden campaign has six levels of membership for its finance committee: ranging from a “Protector” who helps the campaign raise $50,000 to a “Biden Victory Partner” who brings home $2.5 million, according to a campaign document seen by Recode. Mementos that Biden has sent that top level of bundler include a gold-and-blue pin.

The Biden campaign sends out these buttons to the bundlers who have raised over $2.5 million for his bid.

A reminder of how the Joe Biden big-money machine works. pic.twitter.com/GRIYE0Otsl

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) October 26, 2020

Despite his preference to talk about his low-dollar fundraising operation, Biden has built an impressive big-money machine.

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Morning Brew, the business newsletter publisher for millennials, is in talks to sell itself to Business Insider

Morning Brew co-founders Alex Lieberman and Austin Reif | Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

A deal could value the 5-year-old company at more than $75 million

Two college students started Morning Brew five years ago. Now they’re in talks to sell their business newsletter company to Business Insider, according to sources familiar with the two companies.

It’s unclear how much Business Insider intends to pay for Morning Brew, which says it will turn a profit on revenues of $20 million this year. But people who have talked to the company’s founders believe they expect to sell it for more than $50 million, and possibly much more; the Wall Street Journal reports that the deal could be worth more than $75 milllion.

This is an interesting deal, if it gets completed. Business Insider is a digital publisher that got its start with a mix of high-volume clickbait and the occasional scoop, but has recently made a push into more sober journalism it wants to sell via subscriptions. Morning Brew is a business-focused publisher that reassembles news into bite-sized chunks for its millennial audience

You can imagine the logic behind this one: Business Insider gets a company with 2 million subscribers to its free newsletter, which it can try to convert into paying subscribers. And Morning Brews’ team of 50 people gets more resources to help it build out more iterations of its newsletter and other products, like a podcast arm.

A deal could be a huge windfall for Austin Rief and Alex Lieberman, Morning Brew’s co-founders, who started the company as undergrads at the University of Michigan. The two men said they’ve only raised $750,000 from friends and family over the course of the company’s history, which likely means they would keep the majority of the proceeds for themselves.

“I can’t confirm anything, but speaking hypothetically, we’d be happy to be in talks with them,” said Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget, via text message. “Alex and Austin are amazing entrepreneurs, and it’s a terrific company.”

The deal would also underscores the media industry’s current fascination with email newsletters, which are a very old distribution model that’s in favor once again.

For instance: Axios, the politics-focused startup that launched in 2017, is reportedly on track to do $58 million in revenue this year, largely on the backs of its popular newsletters. And Substack, a venture-backed company that helps individual writers launch and run their own newsletters, has generated a lot of media buzz, and has brought several high-profile writers into its stable. Two of them — Andrew Sullivan and Casey Newtown — used to work for Vox Media, which owns Recode.

Blodget founded Business Insider in 2007 by Henry Blodget, who had previously made a name for himself as Wall Street analyst during the dot com boom, but was later charged with securities fraud (Blodget settled with financial regulators without admitting or denying the charges). In 2015, he sold the company to German publisher Axel Springer in a deal that valued his company at more than $440 million. (Disclosure: I worked for Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider, a predecessor to Business Insider, and made money when he sold the company.)

In February, Axel Springer told investors that that Business Insider “expects significant growth in revenues,” and that in addition to ad revenues, its three-year-old subscription business would be a “key driver of revenue growth.” The company also said it would make make “extensive investments…especially in the areas of journalism and product & technology.”

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Facebook is banning political ads ... after the election

Television screens airing the first presidential debate at the Walters Sports Bar in Washington on September 29. | Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

The temporary ban doesn’t solve Facebook’s organic content problem or the problematic political ads appearing on its platform before voting.

Facebook is going to temporarily ban all political ads … but only after the 2020 election, a move that solves neither its organic content problem nor the problematic political ads appearing on its platform prior to voting.

On Wednesday, the social media giant announced that it will temporarily stop running social, electoral, and political ads in the United States after the polls close on Election Day, November 3. The measure is an effort “to reduce opportunities for confusion and abuse,” wrote Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, in a blog post announcing the decision. The company will notify advertisers once it lifts the policy post-election, but it didn’t indicate when that would be. In early September, Facebook said it would ban new political ads the week before the election, but ads that have already been in the mix prior to then will continue to appear in News Feeds.

Also on Wednesday, Facebook said it would ban and remove posts that seek to intimidate voters, including ones that encourage poll watching “when those calls used militarized language or suggest that the goal is to intimidate, exert control, or display power over election officials and voters.”

These announcements are the latest in a series of small, slow, and iterative measures Facebook has introduced in recent months related to US politics and elections. And while they’re better than doing nothing, they are also too little, too late.

There’s a lot a political ad ban doesn’t do — it doesn’t stop politicians from lying in ads in the days leading up to the election, and it doesn’t stop giving political campaigns the ability to hyper-target ads to tiny groups of voters with very specific messaging. (Microtargeting makes it super easy to precisely target negative and misleading ads to certain voters, and it makes it harder for opponents and other groups to know those ads are out there and counter them.) Plus, banning political ads after the election doesn’t solve the, you know, before-the-election problem.

Some political strategists also argue that clamping down on political ads online hurts small campaigns more than it does the big ones. Facebook ads are a lot less expensive to run than television commercials — which means campaigns with big budgets can go to TV, while campaigns with small budgets can’t.

Also: Ads are just a small part of the equation. Facebook’s role in presenting voters with political information, disinformation, and conspiracy theories stretches far beyond advertising, and focusing too much on advertising allows it and other tech platforms to avoid the bigger problem: organic content. That means the type of stuff that goes on the platform for free — such as a false story in 2016 claiming Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump, or an unsubstantiated claim made by the president about mail-in-voting over the summer.

Misleading and polarizing organic content spreads fast and far on the platform all the time because social media thrives on engagement, and what engages people is content that evokes strong emotions. A political campaign doesn’t need to pay for a political ad to spread lies claiming Elizabeth Warren wasn’t born in the US or Marco Rubio has six secret love children — they can just post it.

The dangerous, preposterous QAnon conspiracy movement, which has shifted from the fringes to the mainstream, is a perfect example of social media’s failures. It has flourished on places like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — not because of ads, but because of organic content. Facebook finally banned QAnon this week, but it has already reached far and wide on its platform, as Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary recently explained:

The theory continues to grow online, in both the number of followers and the strength of its political influence in the Republican Party. The growing political clout of the movement is especially worrisome for misinformation researchers who say QAnon is potentially becoming one of the largest networks of extremism in the United States. QAnon is gaining broad appeal not just with the extremely online, male-dominated, 4chan message board crowd, where QAnon was first born; it’s also increasingly popular with suburban moms and yoga-loving wellness gurus on Instagram and Twitter.

Misinformation about voter fraud and the election is spreading — and it’s not relying on paid ads to do it. While Facebook tries to catch misinformation and put warnings on it, falsities travel a lot faster than its content moderators. In a hypothetical post-election scenario where Joe Biden wins the election but President Trump refuses to concede or insists the election was rigged, he doesn’t need an ad to spread that sort of lie — again, he can just do it in a post. Facebook says it will attach an “informational label” to content seeking to delegitimize the outcome of the election. However, it seems unlikely it would take down such posts or outright fact-check them, given how reluctant it’s been to take such actions in the past.

Will it work? When I consider my own anecdotal experience, I doubt it. I spent hours browsing the Facebook pages of anti-maskers for a story over the summer and encountered multiple people who had such labels on content they shared. They just dismissed them by claiming Facebook was censoring them or hiding the truth. They had also often developed their beliefs because of content they saw on Facebook or other online platforms.

In a September 3 post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the 2020 election is “not going to be business as usual.” But the iterative measures Facebook has introduced so far seem to be exactly that — business as usual.

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The Big Tech antitrust report has one big conclusion: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are anti-competitive

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying in Congress in 2019 | Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

The report scrutinizes the ways that the four biggest tech companies have amassed enormous market power.

A long-awaited report from top Democratic Congressional lawmakers about the dominance of the four biggest tech giants had a clear message on Tuesday: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google engage in a range of anti-competitive behavior, and US antitrust laws need an overhaul to allow for more competition in the US internet economy.

“To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons,” the report’s introduction states.

The 400-plus page report, written by the majority staff of the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, is the result of a 16-month investigation into whether these corporate giants abuse their power, and whether the country’s antitrust laws need to be reworked to rein them in. The report released Tuesday cites numerous examples of each tech titan engaging in acts that the lawmakers believe have hurt innovation and impede competition. While the anti-competitive behaviors the report cites vary from company to company, they are all linked by the allegation that the four giants abuse their gatekeeper status in various internet industries to secure and grow their market power in those sectors and others.

So what’s the solution? The report from Democratic lawmakers recommends creating new laws that would potentially break up tech companies and make it harder for them to pursue acquisitions; it also calls for clarifying existing antitrust laws with the goal of making them easier to enforce, particularly for tech companies. For now, the report’s recommendations are only high-level guidance to Congress for potential future legislation; it won’t lead to immediate action against these companies.

The release of the report was complicated on Tuesday by news that the Republican lawmakers in the house antitrust committee refused at the last minute to sign the report with their Democratic colleagues. Instead, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) each plan to release their own reports. Buck’s report, a draft of which Politico published on Monday, largely agrees with the Democrat’s conclusion that the big four tech firms have amassed too much power. But he disagrees with Democrats on how to fix the problem: Instead of creating new laws, Buck’s memo calls on Congress to fund and empower regulatory agencies and government departments like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to go after Big Tech under existing laws. Jordan’s report hasn’t yet been released, but Reuters coverage indicates it will focus on so-far unproven claims of tech companies’ supposed anti-conservative bias, which he has shouted over his colleagues about in previous hearings.

These partisan divides are somewhat besides the point: Regardless of the specifics of how they advise to go after Big Tech, the fact that Republicans and Democrats agree that these companies pose a threat to the free market is significant.

“This is the first time since the 1970s that a congressional committee has devoted this kind of attention to dominant firms … and changing the structure of a major American industry,” former FTC Commissioner William Kovacic, who was appointed by George W. Bush, told Recode.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the key claims the report makes about each of the four major tech giants:

Amazon

With Amazon accounting for nearly 40 percent of all e-commerce sales in the US — making it more than seven times larger in this arena than No. 2 Walmart — the Democratic report argues that the tech giant has used its powerful position in anti-competitive ways. (The report also alleges that Amazon’s US e-commerce market share is closer to 50 percent or more in the US, rather than the near-40 percent figure commonly cited based on estimates from the research firm eMarketer). The report argues that the company unfairly gleans data and information from its third-party sellers that it uses to strengthen the retail side of its business, including by favoring its own product brands over those of competitors, giving this merchandise exclusive merchandising space on its virtual shelves, and prioritizing it in search results.

Another criticism is that Amazon can charge sellers ever-increasing fees because of its dominant position, and that most sellers and brands have practically no negotiating power because of their reliance on the Amazon sales channel. Amazon also penalizes sellers for selling their merchandise for lower prices on other retail sites.

Amazon released a company blog post in response to Tuesday’s report, calling it “flawed thinking” that Amazon is engaging in anti-competitive business practices, and that antitrust regulatory action “would have the primary effect of forcing millions of independent retailers out of online stores.”

“All large organizations attract the attention of regulators, and we welcome that scrutiny. But large companies are not dominant by definition, and the presumption that success can only be the result of anti-competitive behavior is simply wrong,” reads the post.

Facebook

The report from Democrats argues that Facebook has expanded its monopolistic power in the social media industry by using a “copy, acquire, kill” strategy against its competitors and by unfairly hurting rival companies like Instagram (which the company purchased in 2012).

Specifically, the report argues that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram was a blatant attempt to “neutralize a nascent competitive threat.” The report alleges that after Facebook bought Instagram, it intentionally stymied the photo-sharing app’s success so that it wouldn’t compete with Facebook internally.

The report cites a slew of internal emails, memos, and testimony from senior-level Facebook employees, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, which support the argument that Facebook crushed Instagram by exerting monopoly power.

In one email, Zuckerberg told Facebook’s former CTO that “ that he had “been thinking about ... how much [Facebook] should be willing to pay to acquire mobile app companies like Instagram ... that are building networks that are competitive with our own.” The report argues this proves that Zuckerberg had anti-competitive interests from the beginning.

The report also cites a former senior-level Instagram employee who told Congress that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg oversaw “brutal infighting between Instagram and Facebook” after the acquisition, with Zuckerberg slowing down Instagram’s natural growth to benefit Facebook proper. The Instagram whistleblower went so far as to call it “collusion, but within an internal monopoly. … It’s unclear to me why this should not be illegal.”

As part of their investigation, the subcommittee found an internal Facebook document called “The Cunningham Memo,” written in 2018 by Thomas Cunningham, a senior data scientist and economist at Facebook, which allegedly shows that Facebook has knowingly “tipped” its company toward becoming a monopoly, acknowledging that social media apps have tipping points where “either everyone uses them, or no-one uses them,” according to the memo. This memo was a key part of Zuckerberg’s acquisition strategy ahead of the Instagram purchase, according to internal documents and an interview the subcommittee conducted with a former Facebook employee involved with the project.

In a statement to Recode on Tuesday, Christopher Sgro, a spokesperson for Facebook, disagreed with the report’s conclusions. “Facebook is an American success story. We compete with a wide variety of services with millions, even billions, of people using them. Acquisitions are part of every industry, and just one way we innovate new technologies to deliver more value to people. Instagram and WhatsApp have reached new heights of success because Facebook has invested billions in those businesses. A strongly competitive landscape existed at the time of both acquisitions and exists today. Regulators thoroughly reviewed each deal and rightly did not see any reason to stop them at the time,” Sgro wrote.

Google

The Democrats’ report argues that Google has a monopoly in the online search and marketing industry, creating an “ecosystem of interlocking monopolies” — which it has maintained through anti-competitive practices in two key ways.

The first is by launching an “aggressive campaign to undermine” what the report calls “vertical search providers” — which are search engines for specific topics, such as Yelp for restaurants, or Expedia for travel. The report says Google uses its dominance to “boost Google’s own inferior” content over some of these other companies’ content in its search results.

The second major way, that Google has demonstrated anti-competitive behavior, the report argues, is through “a series of anti competitive contracts” that pushed people to rely on Google search when using phones with the Android operating system (Google purchased Android in 2005).

“Documents show that Google required smartphone manufacturers to pre-install and give default status to Google’s own apps,” the report states.

Unsurprisingly, Google told Recode it disagreed with Tuesday’s reports, saying that they “feature outdated and inaccurate allegations from commercial rivals about Search and other services.

Americans simply don’t want Congress to break Google’s products or harm the free services they use every day,” read a statement in part from Julie McAlister, a spokesperson for Google.

Apple

According to the Democrats’ report on Tuesday, Apple exerts monopoly power through its oversight of software that’s downloaded on half of all mobile phones in the US. That’s a direct reference to Apple’s App Store — if you have an iPhone, you can only use apps that you download from the company’s tightly controlled Store. The subcommittee staff investigating Apple say in the report that the company has exploited its dominance to exclude some rivals from its store, unfairly favor its own apps, and charge fees that some app developers told the subcommittee are “exorbitantly high.”

Such a battle between Apple and developers over in-app fees exploded into public spotlight earlier this year when the maker of Fortnite, Epic Games, told its users they could buy the game’s virtual currency directly from Epic rather than through the Apple iOS version of the app. The reason? Epic wanted to avoid the 30 percent fee Apple charges for such in-app purchases. Dueling lawsuits ensued, and Apple even banned the game from the App Store. This is just one example of many cases like this that the report cites.

Apple, of course, refuted the conclusions in Tuesday’s report, telling Recode in a statement, “Our company does not have a dominant market share in any category where we do business. ... Last year in the United States alone, the App Store facilitated $138 billion in commerce with over 85% of that amount accruing solely to third-party developers. Apple’s commission rates are firmly in the mainstream of those charged by other app stores and gaming marketplaces.”

So what’s next?

Depending on the results of the November election, Democrats may not need Republicans’ support on antitrust legislation — if Democrats sweep Congress and win the White House. (The latest polls show Democrats and Biden currently have an edge, but poll-based predictions are far from certain.)

If Biden does win the presidency, “this [report] is a roadmap for how you would tackle this under a President Joe Biden … administration,” a staff member for a Democratic member of the subcommittee told Recode.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), a member of the subcommittee, told Recode in an interview on Tuesday, “I do anticipate...that we will have signed pieces of legislation pass the House of Representatives next year.” The bi-partisan subcommittee will meet later this year to debate and potentially amend the report.

And Tuesday’s congressional reports are just the beginning of upcoming antitrust regulatory proceedings against Big Tech. The Department of Justice is imminently expected to file a lawsuit against Google for anti-competitive business practices, which several state attorney generals may sign on to. Separately, the FTC is also investigating the business practices of the tech giants over antitrust concerns.

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Google and Facebook hate a proposed privacy law. News publishers should embrace it.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress in 2018. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

California voters get a chance to shape internet privacy rules for the rest of the country in November.

While most of America is focused on the presidential vote, Californians have another important decision to make at the polls this November. They’re being asked to approve what will likely become the internet privacy law for the United States.

Proposition 24, also known as the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020 (CPRA), is supposed to expand a landmark California privacy law that passed two years ago; there’s a good chance Californians will approve this one, too. It’s framed as legislation that will better protect their privacy — in particular, sensitive data such as Social Security numbers, race, religion, and health information.

And while the proposed law technically governs the use and sale of data for Californians, California has an enormous impact on the tech industry, which means CPRA will become the de facto law for all of the US.

Which should sound like a good thing for most people. Among other impacts of the proposed law, it makes a point of protecting young people by mandating triple fines for infringements against consumers under age 16. It will allow consumers to restrict the use of geolocation data by third parties, effectively ending practices like sending targeted ads to people who’ve visited a rehab center or a cancer clinic. And it will fund the creation of an agency to protect consumer privacy.

For news publishers, though, any new data regulation can create problems, and news publishers already have plenty of well-documented problems. But I think the proposed enhancements will actually help the news industry.

Fighting the Google/Facebook duopoly

From targeted advertising to personalization, data does a lot of work online. Unfortunately, two companies dominate data collection and therefore digital advertising. One big question about any privacy laws is whether they actually create more advantages for Google and Facebook instead of leveling the playing field for smaller competitors.

We’ve seen this happen before. In Europe, which began enforcing a new privacy law in May 2018, big tech companies have been able to effectively neuter the law by implementing half-measures and exploiting loopholes while enforcement lags.

The good news for consumers and news publishers alike is that CPRA seeks to close any loopholes in the previous privacy law the state passed two years ago.

For starters, the law is supposed to more clearly limit data collection and use for third parties — companies you don’t expect to get access to your data when you visit a news site — while allowing publishers to continue to use data they generate on their own sites.

That makes sense. As we have noted for years, consumers generally expect an app or website to collect data about them to help improve the service, recognize them as return visitors, or to recommend content. But they don’t expect unknown third parties to collect data about them to build profiles and serve targeted advertising on unrelated sites or apps.

That unbridled data surveillance by some big tech companies outside of their own user-facing services — that is, Google and Facebook’s ability to track you even when you’re not on their properties — has undermined consumer trust in the entire digital economy. Giving consumers the ability to control their own data should help restore some of that trust.

Privacy and subscriptions can work together

News publishers are also increasingly interested in trying to sell subscriptions instead of relying on digital ads. CPRA can help there by letting publishers offer subscriptions to consumers who opt out of having their data shared with other parties.

Some CPRA critics think this provision puts a price on “privacy.” I would argue that it gives news publishers the flexibility to decide on their own business model, and gives consumers an opportunity to understand how content gets funded. If they do not find it compelling enough, they are likely to seek out a competitive news service elsewhere. News publishers feel this tension every day. That’s why I think they will see healthy competition for consumers at various price points.

Third parties and liability

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, the CPRA closes loopholes that could be exploited by big tech platforms. One aspect of this is what we’re calling “the switch language,” which clearly aligns the obligations of third parties to serve the interests of consumers. It notes that when a consumer exercises their opt-out rights and a publisher passes their choice along to all the companies with which it works (third parties), those companies must stop reusing that consumer’s data for any other purpose. This essentially forces those companies to revert to the role of a service provider. The “switch language” also prevents any wiggle room by not allowing contracts to override this requirement. As publishers experienced in Europe, platforms like Google and Facebook often use their unbalanced negotiating leverage to force publishers to sign over these data rights, so this section is hugely important for individual publishers that do not have the leverage to force Google or Facebook to stop mining data off their properties.

Finally, CPRA clarifies that publishers are not responsible for third parties that violate the previous section as long as they do not have actual knowledge of the violation. Taken together, these provisions reflect a thoughtful understanding of how data flows in the digital economy. They also put the onus squarely on big tech companies to tailor their data collection practices in accordance with consumer preferences.

Privacy laws are imperfect yet unavoidable

CPRA isn’t perfect, but it’s well-intentioned. And while you might hear tech giants warning that it will hurt publishers, you should consider the source of those warnings, and the motivations behind them.

Consumer expectations are evolving; policy, and our industry, must follow. Yes, there may be some short-term problems as advertisers get used to working with less data and lower the price for the ads they buy. But those playing the long game will be prepared for a world where more value is placed on publishers’ direct relationships — and consumer trust.

Jason Kint is the chief executive of Digital Content Next, a trade association that represents digital content companies, including Vox Media.

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Amazon employees fear HR is targeting minority and activism groups in email monitoring program

Amazon employees participating in the Global Climate Strike in Seattle, Washington in September 2020 | Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images

Some workers are raising concerns in light of larger tensions over labor organizing.

Some Amazon employees are furious after they discovered the company’s HR department appears to be quietly monitoring a subset of listservs dedicated to employees who are minorities and those who are involved in activism.

Earlier this week, a group of Amazon employees discovered that an email alias affiliated with Amazon’s HR team had subscribed to 78 listservs at Amazon, the majority of which are related to underrepresented employees and employee activism issues, such as climate change, Black employee networking, and Muslim employees. Amazon has thousands of internal emailing lists where employees discuss common interests and projects, so the dozens of listservs that the alias was subscribed to are a small subset of the total groups that exist.

Amazon denies that its HR teams were tracking emails to monitor organizing, and told Recode that it subscribed to the groups to monitor employee feedback on company culture.

Some of the listservs that Amazon HR appears to be monitoring have been used for employee organizing around controversial issues at the company in recent months, such as Amazon warehouse worker rights, corporate carbon emissions, and military technology. Others are less political, such as groups for women in engineering and employees who are parents.

Recode spoke with six Amazon employees who said they’re alarmed by the email monitoring when they consider how Amazon has been increasingly cracking down on worker organizing. These employees spoke on the condition of anonymity because of Amazon’s policies against speaking to the press without management’s approval.

They told Recode that dozens of other colleagues have also posted messages on Amazon’s internal forums expressing concern about the monitoring, and many more are likely also upset but too scared to speak out publicly.

“Most people would just read and go quiet,” said one employee. “It doesn’t seem smart to engage when we’re being told that we are being tracked.”

Just last month, Bloomberg News reported that Amazon had posted a job listing (which it later removed) for analysts to research “labor organizing threats against the company.”

“If this is what it looks like ... then this is a specific targeting of non-white male groups as potential threats to be observed,” said one employee. “It means that the people responsible for that at Amazon believe that women and people of color are suspicious and threats to the company.”

After discovering the alias, an Amazon employee sent a message to all 78 listservs informing them that the company seemed to be watching their activities. Vice first reported on an Amazon employee warning their colleagues about the monitoring.

“Good day! If you are a moderator or a user of this list, please note that it is being explicitly watched,” started the email. It goes on to state, “Without editorialising (sic), it is difficult to read this project and its initial posting date without also considering the context of the recent job posting for which Amazon has come under fire.” (That’s a reference to the “labor organizing threats” analyst position.)

The email noted that while the Muslim employee listserv was on the list of groups that HR was watching, the Christian one was not.

Amazon spokesperson Jaci Anderson said the practice was intended to gather employee feedback to help improve company practices, and that Amazon does not link feedback from the emails to individual employees. She added that the company chooses which listservs to monitor based on the size and level of activity of the employee group, and for no other reason.

“We continually work to improve the Amazon employee experience, and with hundreds of thousands of employees located around the world, we use several methods to gather feedback at scale,” Amazon spokesperson Jaci Anderson said in a statement. “The anonymized feedback that is sometimes shared from these open email forums has helped us improve our employee benefits, further strengthen our COVID-19 procedures, and improve the overall Amazon employee experience.”

One of the Amazon employees who appears to be linked to the email alias is a data analyst in the employee relations division of HR. And because some employee relations roles at Amazon involve mitigating the risk of unionization in its massive warehouse network, this detail has fueled corporate employees’ concerns about the listserv monitoring.

According to documents reviewed by Recode, the email account subscribed to these groups also appears to be linked to a larger data visualization project run by Amazon’s employee relations team called “SPOC” (geoSPatial Operating Console) which involves monitoring threats to Amazon’s operations — including unionization. Anderson, the Amazon spokesperson, said the program monitors all types of external activity that impacts the safety and well-being of its employees, from weather events to power outages, and is not intended to favor or target one type of external threat over another.

Shortly after an Amazon employee emailed documents about the broader SPOC monitoring project to dozens of employee listservs, those documents were deleted from Amazon’s internal network that’s broadly available to employees.

In April, Business Insider reported that Amazon was tracking Whole Foods’ workers unionization efforts in a geographic heat map. And Recode has previously reported how as far back as the early 2000s, Amazon has previously tracked worker organizing at its warehouses before using excel to make heat maps.

“It’s disappointing but not surprising,” said one Amazon engineering manager about HR tracking listserv emails and broader anti-unionization monitoring efforts. “We are working in corporate America at one of the largest and most technically advanced companies in the world. Always assume big brother is watching.”

This employee said they wish the company was as employee-obsessed as it is customer-obsessed, but also acknowledged that the company “overall takes care of their [corporate] employees very well.”

Amazon has faced growing tensions within both its corporate and blue-collar workforces in recent years. Tensions peaked during the Covid-19 pandemic as many of its warehouse workers complained about working conditions and pay — and some started nascent talks about unionization. The company came under serious scrutiny when it fired Christian Smalls, a former Staten Island warehouse worker who was organizing his colleagues for safer working conditions at the beginning of the pandemic, and after a report emerged that a top Amazon lawyer called Smalls, who is Black, “not smart, or articulate” in an executive meeting. Amazon said it fired Smalls for violating social distancing rules.

The Smalls case, among other factors, prompted many of the companies’ tech employees to advocate for greater workplace protections for Amazon warehouse and delivery workers. The company responded by providing some incremental benefits, such as temporarily raising pay for fulfillment center employees and offering more time off. At the same time, Amazon also fired several corporate employees leading internal activism efforts, who had organized their tech colleagues in solidarity with Smalls and other warehouse workers.

“After firing a number of employees organizing for better COVID-19 protections, and getting caught calling a Black organizer ‘not articulate,’ it seems like Bezos decided it was time to form an internal anti-worker police force to frighten employees into shutting up,” one Amazon software engineer told Recode. “That open feeling I had as a tech worker able to freely discuss ideas with coworkers has vanished so fast it’s made my head spin. There’s a real culture shift happening, and it sucks.”

In the months since Smalls’ firing, Amazon employee activism has quieted down, at least publicly. But workers’ fears about the company targeting and monitoring minority and activist employees show that tensions still run deep at the company, and if anything, its workers’ trust in their employer continues to erode.

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Walmart+ will finally launch in September. Can it compete with Amazon Prime?

The Walmart+ membership program launches September 15. Can it offer an alternative to Amazon Prime? | Walmart

One Walmart executive says the new program is “the ultimate life hack”

Walmart’s much-anticipated membership program, Walmart+, will finally launch nationwide September 15, the company announced today, about six months after the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the retailer to delay its original timing. The brick-and-mortar retail giant needs the program to be successful to stop top-spending customers from fleeing to Amazon Prime.

Walmart+ will cost $98 a year, or $12.95 a month, and focus mainly on unlimited delivery of groceries and other general merchandise from Walmart stores that will be delivered as soon as the same day they are ordered. Members also get fuel discounts at Walmart gas stations and those of partners, as well as access to “Scan & Go” technology which allows shoppers to use smartphones to scan goods at Walmart stores and exit without stopping to pay a cashier. The company says it will add more perks in the future. Recode previously reported these may include a branded credit card, early availability on product deals, and potentially access to a popular streaming video service.

Walmart wants the membership program to be “the ultimate life hack” for customers, Walmart Chief Customer Officer Janey Whiteside told Recode in an interview on Monday, arguing that its perks will save customers both time and money.

At the same time, Walmart+ will undoubtedly attract comparisons to Amazon’s Prime program, the ultra popular delivery and entertainment membership program that boasts more than 150 million members worldwide and has developed into a retail industry wrecking ball since its launch in 2005. Amazon Prime includes express delivery of millions of products (including groceries), video streaming of a large library of TV shows and movies, music streaming, and other perks. It now costs $119 a year, and Prime customers spend more and shop more frequently than non-Prime members.

And, most importantly for Walmart, more than half of Walmart’s top-spending families are now Prime members, as Recode previously reported. Which begs the question: Will they really subscribe to both membership programs?

When asked about comparisons to Prime on Monday, Whiteside told Recode that “we didn’t necessarily launch Walmart+ to compete with anything else.” And that answer makes sense; the head-to-head comparison between the services does not look great for Walmart when considering online customers who value the widest selection of goods or the longest list of perks.

In addition to the unlimited delivery perk — which is basically just a rebrand of Walmart’s existing Delivery Unlimited membership — Walmart+ only features two other benefits at launch. One is fuel discounts of up to 5 cents per gallon at Walmart, Murphy USA, and Murphy Express gas stations (Sam’s Club gas stations are slated to be included soon). The other perk is access to Walmart’s “Scan & Go” technology for in-store shopping, which allows shoppers to scan items with their phone, scan their phone at a self-checkout kiosk, and walk out of the store without stopping to pay. Walmart briefly tested, but discontinued the tool, two years ago. Walmart’s bet is that the mix of online, in-store, and on-the-go perks, like fuel discounts, will carry unique appeal. Whiteside said that “deepening a relationship further will mean we will get an even greater share of wallet from those customers.” Of course, some Walmart shoppers will also value the $21 difference between the annual fee of Walmart+ and Amazon Prime.

Amazon has made moves in recent years for Prime to appeal to households with less disposable income that historically have favored shopping at Walmart. Amazon added a monthly payment option for Prime fees in 2016, a 45 percent Prime fee discount for those on government assistance in 2017, and most recently, ways for Prime customers to pay for orders with cash. By early 2017, Amazon Prime membership growth was strongest in the US for households making less than $50,000 a year, according to a study by Robert W. Baird & Co.

The success of Walmart+ will likely hinge on how many customers are attracted to the core grocery delivery component of it. While Walmart’s overall grocery business is larger than Amazon’s and its prices are often cheaper, one fear is that top Walmart customers could eventually turn to Amazon for groceries as they get sucked further into the Prime suite of perks. Sources previously told Recode that some Walmart execs believe that top-spending Walmart families that subscribe to Amazon Prime will still be attracted to Walmart+ because its fresh grocery prices are often lower than those Amazon offers.

In the past, some Walmart executives have opposed a paid membership program, seeing Walmart’s competitive advantage as giving shoppers everyday low prices without the need to splurge on a membership fee. Whiteside promised that the low prices will remain even for those who don’t splurge for the bonus services.

“In no way does this membership program take anything away from customer who don’t choose to, or can’t afford to, engage with this,” he said.

On the company’s earnings call earlier this month, CEO Doug McMillon stressed the flexibility of Walmart’s customer offerings.

“We’re going to have multiple ways to serve them, and those families will decide in that moment how they want to shop,” McMillon said. “And sometimes they’ll be in the store, and sometimes they’ll do pickup, and sometimes they’ll do delivery, and many of them will buy a membership, and when they do they’ll get benefits from that.”

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Facebook banned violent militia groups. We still found plenty of them on its platform.

Protesters belonging to a group that calls itself the Three Percenters attend an alt-right rally on August 17, 2019 in Portland, Oregon. | Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

The company removed at least four of these groups and pages after Recode flagged them for posts about shooting BLM protestors.

Just last week, Facebook finally banned militia groups and pages that advocate for violence on its platform. But Recode’s quick Facebook search for “militia” groups and pages on Friday surfaced over a dozen results for national and local militia groups, most of them private, with many of them openly calling for violence against protesters.

Two of these groups that Recode accessed had a combined 25,000 members and included posts where members encouraged and celebrated shooting people involved in recent Black Lives Matter protests. Some groups did not contain “militia” in the title but still encouraged members to take up arms. One page, called the “The III% Organization,” contained overtly racist and violent posts, such as a meme comparing BLM protesters to dogs and joking about running them over with a car.

After Recode flagged seven of these groups and pages to Facebook, the company took down four of them for violating its policies, and said it independently took down another.

Militia groups that organize on Facebook are under particular scrutiny this week after a 17-year-old who is a self-identified militia member was arrested on suspicion of killing two people protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In the aftermath of that shooting, Facebook has faced sharp criticism, including from its own employees, for initially failing to remove a Kenosha militia page despite prior complaints from at least two Facebook users about the group inciting violence. The company eventually took the page and an associated event down, but only after suspected shooter Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly killed two protesters and injured another on Tuesday night. Facebook said Rittenhouse was not a member of the Kenosha militia page in question.

Many civil rights groups leaders, employees, and politicians have long accused the company of not doing enough to stop the spread of violent rhetoric on its platform.

The social media giant’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a company meeting Thursday that the initial decision to not take down the Kenosha militia group’s page was a mistake, according to internal remarks first reported by BuzzFeed News, which the company later posted publicly. Zuckerberg said the company is working to take down any posts praising the alleged shooter, and that it’s all part of Facebook’s recently expanded policy against dangerous groups and threats.

While the militia groups Recode found on Friday represented a small fraction of Facebook’s some 2.7 billion users, their continued presence on the platform despite its new policies signals how big of a challenge it is for Facebook to stop people from using its platform to organize violence and amplify hate speech. While Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms have adopted stricter guidelines over the years around violent speech, they’ve struggled to catch harmful content in real-time, while balancing concerns about limiting free speech online with strict enforcement.

“The continued presence of these militia Facebook groups and the concerning content that they contain represent multiple layers of failure on the part of Facebook to adhere to its own policies that it repeatedly pushes in press releases and statements to media,” said Katie Paul, director of tech watchdog group Tech Transparency Project, which has been researching some of these militia groups.

A spokesperson for Facebook issued the following statement to Recode, in part: “The shootings in Kenosha have been painful for everyone, especially our black community. Mark addressed this at yesterday’s weekly company Q&A ... We launched [the dangerous individuals and organizations] policy last week and we’re still scaling up our enforcement of it by a team of specialists on our Dangerous Organizations team.”

Under pressure, Facebook recently expanded its policies against violent individuals and organizations to restrict the influence of domestic militia groups and conspiracy groups like QAnon. While Facebook doesn’t have a blanket ban on militia groups which don’t overtly call for violence, it removed hundreds of them last week for advocating for violence, and says it is continuing to take down groups and pages which do so.

The militia Facebook groups and pages Recode reviewed on Friday advocate for US citizens to take up arms to counter what they describe as worsening lawlessness in the country, with many members aggrieved by property damage that’s occurred during protests for racial justice in cities across the US. While many of the protests across the United States in recent months have been peaceful, there has been significant damage to buildings in some areas, such as Minnesota, where insurance claims have been filed for tens of millions of dollars. The Kenosha protest shooting demonstrates how militia attempts to guard buildings from such damage can result in escalating conflict — and ultimately, lives lost.

One private Facebook group called “United States Militia” had over 12,000 members and was active on Facebook until Recode flagged it to Facebook on Friday afternoon. Its description stated, in part, “Citizens are the militia” and that “we the people” “prepare for the worst and rejoice on the best...with the blood of patriot’s [sic] and tyrants…” Recode reviewed comments from within the private group from screenshots provided by the Tech Transparency Project.

In response to one “United States Militia” member post about people setting fire to a car dealership during protests this week, one user responded that self-designated “patriots” should “shoot first and ask questions later.” Another posted in response, “Time for shoot to kill these asswipes!”

In another Facebook page called “Virginia Militia,” which had over 13,000 members until it disappeared from Facebook on Friday afternoon, over a hundred users commented in support of alleged shooter Rittenhouse, arguing his violence was justified. This was a clear violation of Facebook’s stance against any praise of the suspected shooter.

One commenter went so far as to advise other members to evade law enforcement if they are involved in a similar shooting. “I believe we should all take this as a sign,” wrote the user. “If you’re forced into a shootout, and you survive. Do not wait for police, do not turn yourself in. Grab your survival bag and go ghost. Get in contact with a trusted patriot and hide out.” Sixteen members of the group reacted with a thumbs up.

Recode also found several other groups and pages on Facebook that organize members for coordinated armed action, but that omit the word “militia” in their names or descriptions.

One such page was called the “The III% Organization” — a reference to the far-right “3 percenters” movement, which advocates for armed militia to promote gun ownership rights and resistance to the US federal government in local affairs. This page also disappeared after Recode flagged it to Facebook.

A user in the group posted a meme on Wednesday, the morning after two protesters were killed in Kenosha, showing a man standing next to his car, with his hand over his chest and looking visibly relieved, with the caption, 
“When you think you ran over a dog but it was just a few BLM & Antifa Rioters.”

These groups are organizing and spreading their calls to violence in an increasingly polarized political atmosphere. In recent days, major right-wing media figures like Ann Coulter and Fox News host Tucker Carlson have attempted to justify vigilante violence at protests.

Twitter took down a tweet from Coulter saying she wanted the suspected Kenosha shooter to be president after individuals and groups like civil rights groups Color of Change raised concerns about its glorification of a suspected killer.

At the same time, some conservative politicians have been sharply criticized for seemingly threatening state-sponsored violence against civil rights protesters since the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor protests began earlier this year.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has accused President Trump of rooting for violence at recent protests around racial justice in the US. In May, Trump posted on social media that “when the looting starts...the shooting starts,” about protests in Minnesota against the police killing of George Floyd. In June, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) published a deeply controversial column in the New York Times that the paper eventually said “should not have been published;” it was titled “Send in The Troops” and advocated for bringing military forces to protests.

The proliferation of militia groups and violent, partisan rhetoric isn’t just happening on Facebook, and it’s not even necessarily originating there — it’s a complex problem that involves elected officials and right wing media figures, too. But even if militia groups aren’t contained to Facebook, the platform is making it possible for members to amplify their views. The groups and pages that Facebook only took down after Recode flagged them are a signal that the company has a major challenge ahead if it intends to effectively enforce its new policies prohibiting the propagation of violent views on its platform.

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Facebook initially failed to remove a Kenosha militia page despite complaints

Armed civilians on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests against the police shooting of Jacob Blake. | Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Once again, the company is facing criticism for letting people incite violence on its platform.

Facebook didn’t take heed when its users sounded the alarm about a militia group issuing a “call to arms” on its platform. That call to arms came before the violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday night, which left two people dead and one injured, according to a new report. A man who has been arrested as a suspect in the shooting reportedly self-identified as a militia member, though he was not a follower of the Facebook page users had flagged.

Before the shooting, at least two Facebook users flagged a page called “Kenosha Guard” for inciting violence, according to The Verge. But the company told users that the page did not meet the company’s criteria for removal. On Wednesday morning, after violence at the protests already broke out — and armed militia groups took to the streets — Facebook ended up taking down the page for violating its policies on dangerous groups.

Just last week, Facebook expanded its Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy to include domestic militia groups that encourage violence. But in spite of those recent efforts, it seems that some of the content and groups the company has deemed dangerous under this new policy are still slipping through the cracks.

Facebook told Recode that it may have rejected users’ requests to take down the Kenosha Guard militia page because those requests weren’t initially routed to the right team. Once Facebook’s newly formed specialized team working on identifying dangerous militia groups looked at the group, the company said it took the page and a corresponding event down.

Facebook also said the shooting suspect, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, was not a member of the Kenosha Guard Facebook page or invited to the associated event. The company says it has removed Rittenhouse’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram.

“At this time, we have not found evidence on Facebook that suggests the shooter followed the Kenosha Guard Page or that he was invited on the Event Page they organized,” said a spokesperson for Facebook. “However, the Kenosha Guard Page and their Event Page violated our new policy addressing militia organizations and have been removed on that basis.”

Regardless of Facebook’s eventual removal of the militia group, some groups are criticizing the company for not taking action sooner — saying the situation is part of a larger pattern of not responding quickly enough to calls to violence on its platform.

“This crisis of hate-fueled violence requires immediate, drastic action from Facebook and all other platforms on which these groups gather,” said Rashad Robinson, president of the civil rights group Color of Change, in a statement to Recode. “Facebook’s superficial policy changes mean nothing when they aren’t enforced.”

This week, demonstrators in Kenosha have taken to the streets to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who witnesses at the scene said was unarmed and was simply trying to break up a dispute. Tensions have increased at these protests as armed militia who say they support the police have showed up to counter protesters.

Facebook has struggled many times in recent years with how to deal with extremists and other groups associated with violence, who often use its platform to organize and build out their groups.

Back in 2017, Facebook was criticized for letting the white supremacist Unite the Right Rally, which resulted in three deaths and dozens of injuries, keep its event page online for a month before it was taken down the day before the event. More recently, members of the far-right Boogaloo movement have attempted to organize violent insurrections against members of the US government on Facebook, such as plotting the murder of a federal agent in Oakland, California.

In the past few months, Facebook has expanded its policies to restrict dangerous groups even if they are not overt terrorist organizations, including domestic militias, members of the Boogaloo movement, and supporters of the conspiracy theory QAnon.

But Facebook’s delay in taking down the Kenosha Guard page shows that enforcing its new policies will be complicated and imperfect — after all, these groups have built themselves in part by using its platform.

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Trump just embraced followers of the violent QAnon conspiracy movement

Trump said in a press briefing Wednesday that he “appreciates” the support of followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Rather than denouncing conspiracy theorists who the FBI links to domestic terrorism, Trump said he appreciates their support.

President Donald Trump for the first time embraced the growing conspiracy movement QAnon, despite its followers having been identified as a potential domestic terrorism threat by the FBI and linked to numerous acts of violence.

In a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Trump told a reporter, “I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate.”

Born in 2017 on the internet forum 4Chan, QAnon is a collection of blatantly false conspiracy theories that push the idea that a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles secretly run the world, including a “deep state” of officials within the US government who are said to be plotting against Trump.

In the past few weeks, QAnon has been accelerating its years-long shift into the political mainstream. Last week, congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene won the Republican nomination for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, making her the first open QAnon supporter to likely be elected into the House of Representatives this fall. Several other QAnon supporters are also running as Republican candidates across the US. Now, Trump’s comments — whether they were a serious signal of his potential belief in QAnon or just his usual pandering to any enthusiastic base of supporters — are lending the troubling group more legitimacy.

When the reporter followed up to ask Trump if he backs QAnon’s conspiracy theory that he is “secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles,” Trump replied:

“Well, I haven’t heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?” He continued, “If I help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it, and I will put myself out there.”

In May 2019, the FBI identified QAnon as a potential domestic terrorism threat. Some QAnon followers have committed acts of violence inspired by their beliefs, including attempted arson and blocking a bridge with a homemade armored vehicle full of weapons. Although it appears that only a minority of QAnon believers so far have engaged in violence in support of the movement, many experts have expressed concern about how its conspiracy theories can quickly radicalize its followers.

In the past few years, QAnon has gained significant traction on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, where its claims have been shared with millions of people, according to an internal Facebook investigation. Although some of these major social media platforms have recently tried to limit QAnon’s spread (on Wednesday, Facebook said it took down nearly 800 Facebook QAnon Groups), the conspiracy theory has already amassed influence in the political and cultural sphere.

While Trump has promoted posts from QAnon followers in the past on social media, his remarks on Wednesday were the first time he has directly said something positive about the group. Rather than denouncing QAnon’s links to senseless violence, Trump seemed to welcome his role as the messiah of a movement. His comments demonstrate how QAnon has expanded beyond being a fringe conspiracy theory promoted in dark corners of the internet to become part of mainstream political discourse.

While a few Republican senators have openly denounced QAnon, they’ve been the exception so far in their party. Most Republican political leaders have either stayed quiet or showed support for Greene and other QAnon-supporting political candidates.

Trump’s comments on Wednesday have extended a more official welcome to QAnon’s followers into the Republican Party.

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Kamala Harris is the choice Joe Biden needed to win over Silicon Valley

Kamala Harris, left, has had a close relationships with Sheryl Sandberg, right. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The California senator has glad-handed with tech elites for decades.

For months, Silicon Valley hasn’t been quite sure what to make of Joe Biden.

But Kamala Harris? That’s a candidate the industry can get behind.

Biden’s selection of Harris — who has glad-handed with San Francisco elites for decades — as his choice for vice president is likely to usher in Silicon Valley excitement and money galore in a way that other running mates would not. For a top-of-the-ticket that has struggled until recently to excite the wealthiest and most powerful tech moguls, Harris will bring super-fans from the billionaire class that will super-charge Democrats’ coffers, especially over the next few days. Even though it makes Biden more dependent on these big donors.

And on policy, the selection of the California senator offers some reassurance to the tech industry that has nervously watched the rise of the party’s far-left. Biden has not made tech issues a priority during the campaign, which has created uncertainty about how seriously his administration would pursue regulation or even a breakup of tech giants. With Harris — a policy pragmatist who enjoys close relationships with many leading tech executives — Biden sends another signal that his administration will not veer toward the policies pushed by those like Elizabeth Warren, a vice-presidential short-lister that he didn’t choose who wants to break up Big Tech.

Cooper Teboe, a top Democratic fundraiser in Silicon Valley, said about one-third of major West Coast donors that he’s spoken to have been waiting to see who Biden would choose as vice president before deciding whether to invest tens of thousands of dollars into Democrats this cycle. Should Biden have chosen Warren, for instance, tech donors might’ve had concerns.

“She is the safest pick for the donor community,” Teboe said of Harris. “She will be the pick that the California, Silicon Valley donor community — who are worried about things like tech and repatriation and taxes and so on and so forth — she is the pick that they will be happiest with.”

“She is the pick that they will be happiest with.”

Harris’ ties to this power set will be highlighted in just a few days’ time when she headlines a high-dollar fundraiser with a Bay Area fundraising group, Electing Women Bay Area, according to an invitation seen by Recode.

Harris’s special touch with the ultra-rich has been integral to her political ascent in San Francisco, where she first served for district attorney before her statewide wins as Attorney General and US Senator. Harris was a regular presence on the city’s cocktail circuit and has been profiled in society pages ever since her 30’s. Her campaigns were funded by the old-money families that predated the modern tech boom.

When that boom did arrive, Harris capitalized and built an orbit of new-money fans that she will further bring into the Biden fold. Her biggest donors over the last two decades reads like a who’s who list of tech moguls: Salesforce founder Marc Benioff has told Recode that Harris “one of the highest integrity people I have ever met.” Early Facebook president Sean Parker invited Harris to his wedding. Fundraisers for her presidential bid included billionaire Democratic power brokers like Reid Hoffman and John Doerr.

Chris Lehane, a longtime adviser to Bay Area donors, recalled Harris as a “workhorse” when it came to making fundraising calls during her first run for California attorney general in 2009.

“She’d work the whole list,” he said, “and then ask for more names.”

One particularly close bond for Harris has been with Democratic mega-donor Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire philanthropist and the wife of the late Steve Jobs. When Powell Jobs appeared on stage to speak at the annual Code Conference in 2017, she brought Harris along with her.

“I thought you would find it more interesting,” than having just herself, Powell Jobs remarked on stage. On Tuesday, she tweeted that Biden had “made a great choice!”

But all these ties will prove double-edged in a Democratic Party that has grown concerned about the wealth accumulated by these billionaires and their political influence. The same goes for their tech companies, which are now the subject of antitrust scrutiny and a broader rethink of Silicon Valley’s corporate power.

Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley investor who has expressed concerns about Biden listening too much to tech billionaires, said Harris could pull off a “Nixon-to-China moment.” In other words, only someone like her could push through certain regulations, because of her credibility with the tech community.

“As senator from California, Kamala Harris was understandably aligned with Big Tech,” said McNamee. “As vice president, she has an opportunity to stand up for all Americans.”

Some activists are concerned that her personal ties to tech companies will temper serious regulations. Harris’ campaign manager for her first race for district attorney, for instance, now runs the California state policy shop at Google. And Tony West, her brother-in-law, with whom she is close, is the general counsel of Uber, where her niece worked until recently.

Harris also has connections at Facebook, a company at the burning core of Democrats’ ire these days. Harris — who served as California’s top law enforcement official — has enjoyed a particularly cozy relationship with Facebook no. 2 Sheryl Sandberg over the years, helping Sandberg market her book “Lean In.” Sandberg also sent her a congratulatory note when she won her Senate seat in 2016, as The Huffington Post detailed.

Sandberg hadn’t publicly said anything of significance about Biden this cycle. But then on Tuesday, Sandberg took to Instagram to note the historic selection of Harris as the first Black woman on a major ticket (although the longtime Democrat didn’t explicitly endorse Biden-Harris).

All of this leaves people wondering if Harris will be tough — or easy — on companies like Facebook if she becomes vice president.

Harris strongly pressed Mark Zuckerberg when he appeared before Congress. But she has equivocated when asked during her own bid how she would handle antitrust matters. She has dodged when asked point-blank whether the tech giants should be broken up.

“The tech companies have got to be regulated in a way that we can ensure and the American consumer can be certain that their privacy is not being compromised,” she told the New York Times.

She also tried at one point to get tough on Twitter, calling on founder Jack Dorsey to ban Trump from the platform. That didn’t go anywhere — and Harris dropped out thereafter.

Now, she has another shot at reining in Silicon Valley, if she wants to take it.

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The TikTok drama shines a spotlight on the rare tech investor who is backing Trump

Doug Leone and his wife have donated $400,000 to boost Trump. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Doug Leone, who has backed both TikTok and Trump, could be the bridge between the two.

The ultimate fate of TikTok could be shaped in part by the efforts of one billionaire tech investor who has earned the distinction of being a particularly rare type of Silicon Valley unicorn: a major donor to Donald Trump.

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of the hit video sharing app, is in a boxing match with the Trump administration, which has threatened to ban it from the United States next month. But TikTok has an investor who looms large in the drama because of his personal ties and access to the White House.

Doug Leone, one of the leaders of one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated firms, Sequoia Capital, and his wife together have given about $400,000 over the last two years to Trump’s campaign and affiliated groups such as the Republican National Committee and a pro-Trump super PAC. That makes the Leones two of the very biggest donors to Trump in Silicon Valley, where business leaders have almost entirely run away from publicly backing the President.

Now, the links between Leone and Trump may shape the ending of one of the most complex business and geopolitical stories of 2020. Leone has told “people he could use his influence with Trump to help the company,” the Washington Post reported this weekend. Leone planned to reach out to Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner, two top Trump aides who have both been integral to Trump fundraising efforts, “to see what it would take to save TikTok,” the Wall Street Journal added.

The stories show how cultivating ties with the White House can pay dividends, even if the donations were not born from a premeditated lobbying push.

Leone declined to comment. Trump’s campaign didn’t return a request for comment.

TikTok and Microsoft — the company that is seeking to purchase it and circumvent a threatened ban of the app — both have built-out Washington operations with professionals that twist arms for a living. After all, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke with Trump directly about the potential deal. But one hallmark of Trump’s Washington has been that convincing the administration to take a certain action can be a highly irregular process, driven by personal relationships and access to Trump advisers, both formal and informal. Plus, Trump has displayed a well-documented obsession with whether someone has shown loyalty to his “team” or not.

Leone, a longtime Republican, reportedly has that access. And while Trump might not know Leone well enough to pick him out of a lineup, suffice it to say that not every Silicon Valley venture capitalist can jawbone the Secretary of the Treasury or the president’s son-in-law to help a portfolio company.

It’s still unclear whether Leone’s outreach has actually accomplished anything. And there’s no evidence that Leone only gets an audience because of a few hundred thousand bucks in donations. To be sure, Sequoia’s global managing partner is a prominent business leader in his own right. Precisely why someone gets a call returned — Is it the donations? His stature? A little bit of both? — is impossible to know.

Leone is an exception in tech. The liberal tech industry has been fighting with Trump since his first day on issues like immigration. In fact, Leone’s co-leader at Sequoia for a long time, Michael Moritz, this cycle has given millions to boost Democrats. Silicon Valley has made supporting Trump something of a scarlet letter, so much so that even the few leaders who do back him now feel pressure to do so quietly. That’s what makes Leone’s public donations unusual, especially in the image-conscious world of venture capital.

When Recode wrote last year about the Leones’ gifts to Trump — then measuring only about $100,000 — some leading voices in tech spoke to the liability that the donations could pose to Sequoia, even though it is generally regarded as the highest-performing investing firm in Silicon Valley.

Swati Mylavarapu, a former venture capitalist who is now a top Silicon Valley Democratic fundraiser, put it this way on Sunday:

Hi every entrepreneur who wants to raise money from Sequoia.

You get to make a choice.

Do your investors reflect your and your company's values? https://t.co/0POQLyx6oV

— Swati Mylavarapu (@Swatipedia) August 10, 2020

That liability remains very real. But what the news over the weekend makes clear is that there is an upside — less-obvious, to be sure — that complements it. One of Sequoia’s most lucrative investments is in ByteDance, with Sequoia’s stake said to be worth as much as $15 billion. And while the gifts from Leone have been made in a personal capacity and officially have nothing to do with Sequoia, his firm could benefit from the personal donations if they help maintain the value of TikTok.

The few other Silicon Valley marquee names who have supported Trump have reaped some rewards. Peter Thiel, who braved significant blowback to give over $1 million to boost Trump during his 2016 run, has stocked the administration with his allies and former aides. Larry Ellison, who hosted a fundraiser that brought $7 million to Trump’s coffers earlier this year, has pressed Trump to publicly push hydroxychloroquine, an experimental drug treatment for the coronavirus that Ellison favors.

Leone is a much lower-profile billionaire than those two titans. Some Trump fundraisers outside of Silicon Valley say they haven’t even heard of him.

But with this much money on the line — and this much international intrigue at play — having him on TikTok’s side can only help.

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