*By Michael Teich*
Democrats led by Senator Mark Warner are stepping up the charge against big tech, but they may not accomplish anything unless the party makes major gains in the midterm elections, according to Axios reporter David McCabe.
Disinformation and privacy concerns on social media platforms have become a major concern of many lawmakers after Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election was uncovered.
"It's not hugely surprising to see Democrats engaging on the disinformation piece because of the concerns about 2016," McCabe said Tuesday in an interview with Cheddar.
Facebook has spent nearly two years working to counter political misinformation campaigns on its platform. The company announced Tuesday it found and removed 32 pages and accounts linked to an influence campaign on Facebook and Instagram. Warner said in a statement Tuesday that "the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation."
Before Facebook's announcement, McCabe had obtained Warner's policy papers, which propose 20 ways to address disinformation online, protect user privacy, and encourage greater competition.
McCabe said he's skeptical that Warner's proposals can be enacted in the near-term. Despite a growing tech-lash and heightened concerns over data privacy that resulted from Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, the issues are not priorities for Democrats or Republicans.
"Going into midterms, this hasn’t proven to be a big election issue," McCabe said before Facebook's latest revelation.
If Democrats can shift party control of Congress in November, they may be able to get enough momentum behind Warner's ideas, said McCabe. But even if they do well in midterms, the Democrats will have to go up against big tech's robust lobbying efforts. McCabe said the Democrats' intentions, as outlined by Warner, may prompt tech companies to spend even more on lobbying lawmakers in Washington.
In September, legislators will question social media executives including Twitter's Jack Dorsey in order to evaluate how government regulations might prevent the spread of misinformation and propaganda on social platforms.
For more on this, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/mark-warners-uphill-battle-against-big-tech).
Warren Bravo thinks investors will get behind his fish waste-based cannabis concept when his company, Canadian marijuana producer Green Relief, heads to the public market this year. "We are going out, we'll say, sometime this year into the IPO space," Bravo, Green Relief CEO and co-founder, told Cheddar on Wednesday, adding that he's not committed to a specific time frame.
If there's one issue on which President Trump and Congress can work together, it's infrastructure. That's according to Henry Cisneros, a veteran private equity investor and former HUD Secretary under President Bill Clinton.
Firefly is a car-top digital smart screen that benefits ridesharing drivers by giving them a new source of income ー and helps their home cities by providing them with new streams of data, the company's CEO told Cheddar.
"We placed digital smart screens on top of taxi and rideshare cars, and thereby we serve location and time-targeted outdoor advertisements, at the same time our smart screen generates a lot of smart screen data which we share back with municipalities and cities," said Firefly's co-founder and CEO Kaan Gunay.
Social media has helped fuel massive opportunity in the travel industry, but with opportunity, comes cutthroat competition, Trivago CEO Rolf Schrömgens said Wednesday. "People are really traveling in general more. They want to experience stuff, they don't want to buy stuff anymore," Schrömgens told Cheddar.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Feb, 6, 2019.
Abra, a five-year-old crypto company that has historically been focused on remittances, is starting to look like a fintech app itself; it will soon give users the ability to use their bitcoin to invest in traditional assets “like Apple, Amazon, gold and the S&P 500," according to a customer email it sent late Tuesday.
Amazon may have met the David to its Goliath in the epic battle for Long Island City ー provided that Gov. Cuomo doesn't stand in his way. State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents New York's 12th district, including Amazon's planned Long Island City outpost, said the tech giant's plan ー promising 25,000 jobs in exchange for billions in city funds ー doesn't even merit negotiation.
Shares of Disney jumped after the bell on Tuesday, boosted by revenue growth in its television and parks divisions. The report was good news for investors looking to gauge Disney’s strength as it deepens its direct-to-consumer offerings in an effort to compete against rivals like Netflix and Apple.
Shares of embattled social media company Snap soared more than 16 percent in extended trading on Tuesday, after beating Wall Street's expectations for its fourth-quarter financial results and reporting relatively stable daily active users year-over-year. Wedbush's Dan Ives said the results showed signs of progress.
Viacom CFO Wade Davis says the company's recent acquisition of Pluto TV gives it a competitive advantage as it vies for consumers in a saturated market."The market for video products has been segmenting for some time now," Davis told Cheddar Tuesday. "With this segmentation, consumers have become a lot more value conscious, and we think that that underscores the opportunity in what we talk about as the free price point."
