Facebook is in the News Again, And It Is Not Looking Good

Your daily roundup of stuff we’re reading

Well, my experiment with my morning read seemed to elicit a positive response, so I’m continuing it for Friday. However, I noticed that the links don’t resolve in that elegant, Medium-y way in any number of browsers and contexts, which is annoying. Half the reason I started doing this was how easy Medium made it to create a decent-looking media object. Alas, it’s only certain it will look decent if you’re reading it natively on the Medium app, or directly on the Medium site. If you’re reading it in a wrapper, which is how a lot of folks read things these days (from a link in email, for example), it may look awful. The URLs are just…URLs, and not trim little boxes with headlines and art. Sorry about that. We are aware of the problem, and our best people are on it.

But to the news:

The cover story for the week’s Economist focuses on China’s great leap. I’ve had some interesting conversations about this, many are “shorting China” because it’s moving too fast and its top down approach to economics likely won’t scale. But others are convinced China has it figured out. Money quote: “China is not the first country to industrialize, but none has ever made the leap so rapidly and on such a monumental scale. Little more than a decade ago Chinese boom towns churned out zips, socks and cigarette lighters. Today the country is at the global frontier of new technology in everything from mobile payments to driverless cars.”

Well, happy first day back from “paternity leave,” Mark! His video announcing this decision, which you can watch here, drew some thoughtful comments from folks you’ve most likely heard of. Worth checking out. Money quote, a comment from Om Malik: “This is a great update, but let me ask you and Sheryl Sandberg — for a company that has touted micro-targeting as a core competency and as a way to separate yourself from the other advertising giant, how is that you folks had not foreseen any of this?” See also this pieceby Kevin Roose in the NYT.

Opinion | The Coming War on Business

His third insight was that politics was no longer about left versus right. Instead, a series of smaller conflicts …

I’m not a Brooks fanboy, but I didn’t know anything about the fellow Brooks profiles, Sam Francis, noted “paleo conservative.” I feel smarter now, and Brooks conclusion, that the next political campaign will target big tech and corporate America as the villain, sounds utterly realistic. Money quote: “As the tech behemoths intrude more deeply into daily life and our very minds, they will become a defining issue in American politics. It wouldn’t surprise me if a new demagogue emerged, one that is even more pure Francis.”

Well, there we go. The world’s two most powerful entities: Voracious corporations and big-ass city states, at each other’s throats once again. I find it somehow comforting to think that a city can give a free market badass like Uber the middle finger (I suppose, given it’s London, it’s the V sign). Money quote: “London is one of Uber’s largest and most lucrative markets, with 40,000 drivers and 3.5 million people who use the app once every 90 days. The broadside is a striking pushback against the free-wheeling business practices that contributed to the ouster of former chief executive officer Travis Kalanik.”

This story has been building for years, but Axios is right to point out it’s a reach. More likely there’ll be regulations that force less drastic measures. Money quote: “Utility-style regulation of online platforms isn’t possible without an act of Congress designating the service as a common carrier — and lawmakers don’t appear interested in going down that path. Currently no regulatory agency has jurisdiction to fully regulate online platforms the way, for example, the FCC regulates the phone industry.”

And finally…because it’s Friday…let’s put all this Trump news cycle insanity into a nice chart, shall we?

Happy weekend, everyone!

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