CEO & Director, News Corp (Class B)
NewsCorp CEO Robert Thomson compares Google, Facebook to Big Tobacco #OpenMarkets
Newscorp CEO Robert Thomson filmed by Capitol Intelligence/BBN using CI Glass comparing social media monopolies such as Google and Facebook as Big Tobacco at Open Markets Institute forum "Breaking the News: Free Speech and Democracy in the Age of Platform Monopoly" in Washington DC. June 12, 2018
About Robert Thomson
Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp, has been a vocal critic of major technology platforms, arguing that companies like Google and Facebook have devalued content created by news organizations. In a 2018 speech, he compared the dominance of these digital platforms to that of Big Tobacco, questioning "when does irresistibility become irresponsibility." He has called for an Algorithm Review Board to increase accountability and transparency from dominant algorithms, and has stated that if large digital companies want to avoid the fate of Big Tobacco, they need to take the initiative rather than being reactive. In a 2019 oration, Thomson defended the Murdoch family against what he described as a "rancid New York Times hatchet job" and "multi-generational muck spreading." He also discussed the importance of the U.S.-China relationship, describing it as the most important bilateral relationship globally and noting that the world is "in the midst of a crucial shift in that axis." Thomson has expressed concern about the growing size of the state in the UK and has advocated for the protection of intellectual property and privacy, stating that "if we are to be a well-informed society, you have to respect the provenance of intellectual property."
Transcript (25 segments)
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Unknown0:00
And then he said, 'Why? How is this happening?' The digital advertising revenue that we news organizations have all been forecasting has been half-inch pinched by Facebook and Google. They have taken the money to advertise around our content. It is wrong and it has to stop. So anyway, I'll let Mr. Thomson speak for himself, but we should recognize that Mr. Thomson has actually led the way in many ways.
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Robert Thomson0:40
That's very kind. I'm too kind, in fact. I guess that on the amuse-bouche ahead of your hearty lunch, and Mark Thompson—we're not related—the title of this coronary artery for some of what will be a difficult-to-digest diatribe is: When does irresistibility become irresponsible? It's a thing familiar to Big Tobacco and perhaps in our time to Big Digital. A possible subtitle is: The line of least compliance.
The subject of subtitles reminds me inevitably of film, and I do want to call out one Philbo whose good taste in cinema is only exceeded by her zeal in trying to write digital rhymes, and that would be European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, reputedly the inspiration for Danger. Commissioner Vestager delivered a speech two weeks ago that is worthy of closer scrutiny by all here, and certainly so by any company subject to her tender mercies.
Most importantly, she referenced the original Blade Runner and its poignant portrayal of loss and love and meaning, and particularly the telling lines, 'Used like tears in rain.' I was intrigued, and so we had an exchange, obviously not about pending cases, but about the inherent irony in Blade Runner. The irony being that it is the automatons, the replicas, who most cherish the essential human values: family, friends, loyalty, shared experiences, shared memories.
If journalism were a film, the last decade is certainly the equivalent of a slasher movie: the Silicon Valley Chainsaw Massacre. And there have been many tears shed in rain. So when we contemplate a robust commercial future for journalism and for professional media, we must first ponder an ecosystem that has punished the creators and provident disproportionately, the distributors who are indeed publishers, but pronounce the word 'publishing' and it gets a little harder for YouTube not to admit being a broadcaster.
It spends many millions advertising its $40-a-month television package, and surely it and Facebook will concede it is a broadcaster-publisher now that the company has bought English football rights in Asia and surfing rights globally. Unfortunately, the current content ecosystem is fertile territory for the fabricators of the fabulous. As you can tell, I lack the deliberation and the furnishes of the fake and the firm.
I've been holding forth on, some would say ranting about, this vexed topic for a decade. Only I was recently reminded by Nick Thompson of a UK House of Lords testimony in 2007 in which I warned that the internet was ripe for exploitation by bad actors who could take advantage of the large digital platforms to disseminate durable untruths. Being questioned by those august peers in 2007, I suggested: 'What you have is a lot of young people who are growing up surrounded by much more information, but whose provenance is not clear. In the longer term, critical judgment will not be as it should be. The rumors will be believed, the fiction will be thought of as fact, and the political agendas, among other agendas, will be influenced by interest groups. We're coming from some quite strange trajectory which is based on collective understanding that is founded on...'
Now, that was not Irie Precedence, so don't come to me for advice on stock investments or racing tips or an NCAA bracket or today's time-order ruling. But it was really just a judgment of a journalist at that time, the editor of The Times of London, who had spent every working day since the ridiculous Utamaro age of 17 trying to assess the veracity and authenticity of information. In the newsroom, it was clear back then that the internet had inherent vulnerabilities and that the digital platforms have a responsibility to protect professional journalism and cultivate cultural compliance, so that the real could be separated from the unreal.
And the seller, if your business model is to commodify content—which is an egregious mistake because there is a hierarchy of content—and then allow a search engine or social platform to be easily manipulated by bad actors, then you're failing a basic testament, basic compliance. It should have been a modest price of admission for the big digital players. And there's a very profitable player: Facebook's operating margin last year was around 48%, and yet almost daily we hear of issues and compliance that seem to be an awkward afterthought.
That is because we are indeed in a new era, an era in which the pervasiveness of the largest digital platforms may stand out like a corner gas station. And so naturally, there are comparisons already being made between Big Tobacco and Big Digital. If Big Digital wants to avoid the fate of Big Tobacco, it needs to take the initiative rather than being reactive.
So here we are in 2018, where sense and nonsense rub shoulders on platforms with the artificial and the asinine, and with click cultivates and search engine speeds reap bountifully. Yet professional journalism still faces an existential crisis in many countries. Now, I could fulminate furiously on this subject ad infinitum and occasionally ad hominem, but I would like to highlight one issue which is very relevant to today's question about the future of economic models for journalism, which is of great concern to me. It's what I like to call algorithmic anarchy.
Media must also tend to its reputation. Our reporters have to create compelling content and be seen to have the objective of clear objectivity. That is particularly the case in an age of bluster and bombers. Our journalists have to be Renaissance reporters, willing to traverse platforms to ensure that the story is told where people are reading or listening or watching. And journalists have to be wary of being too self-referential or self-reverent. Journalism is about society, about so enough about people and the voiceless and their voice.
Let's focus on something far more important: the machine and the software that is their salt. Algorithms are awesomely powerful, and they are destined to become far more so. The compounding impact of AI will mean that they know much more about us, and we will know much less about them. Their ability to create a growing audience of addicts will be enhanced, and the young will be the most targeted, the most vulnerable.
Social platforms obviously do much good, but they can also be antisocial. And idealism cannot be an excuse for deleterious behavior. Facebook has long believed that connecting people absolved it from other secondary responsibilities. Google has long held that informing people is the greater good and that any negative consequences are a small price to pay. I make a distinction between Google, which is making an effort to reform, and YouTube, which must do far more to purge piracy and extremism.
The modern metric that drives digital platforms is engagement. It's fair to say that Big Tobacco was also driven by engagement, but the engagement priority can have a social cost. It is clear, for example, that young people are not as distracted by acts of reading as they are by responding to posts or tweets or photos, to likes or dislikes, to friendly or unfriendly status updates that undermine personal status.
The truth is that they are deeply distracted by, and sometimes seriously distressed by, the thought of the anticipation of a response. When the intention of a powerful algorithm is to increase so-called engagement, what is the potential for a vulnerable person to be disengaged from society? There is well-documented evidence that radical groups, whether it's Islamist extremists or fascists, successfully groom and radicalize young people on the web. These are the obvious outcomes with an obsession. What about the less obvious damage done to the psyche and to the self-esteem of the young, and that would include damage done to the ability to concentrate and to tolerate?
And yet there has been no serious movement to hold these omnipotent algorithms to account, which is why I think there should be an Algorithm Review Board. Get more accountability and transparency from the three overwhelmingly dominant algorithms: Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Amazon.
If you buy a small bar of chocolate in Newark, with autonomy, the ingredients on the pack and generally how many calories per serving will be stocked. Health warnings to make a low alcohol, that your vehicle clothing labels often synthetic screens in multiple languages to ensure compliance. And yet the powerful, mind-altering, behavior-shifting, mood-changing algorithms are allowed to work their invisible alchemy on our personalities, on our societies, and on our young people.
So what should an algorithm review board look like? Call it an algorithm transparency, what if you like, or if you must, an algorithm altruism board. It's obviously important that experts in related fields preside, not politicians, and that which should be confidential is kept confidential, but that which should change is changed.
There are a few basic categories to which an expert industry panel can provide insight and protection for the vulnerable. These priorities will include invasion of privacy, which is already commonplace; IP piracy, which is rife; censorship, which is clearly already underway; and commercial abuse by dominant players, which is both real and difficult to monitor. There would also be a role during election campaigns to ensure that the sanctity of the system is not violated by bad actors. A further crucial area is the socio-psychological impact, particularly on children.
Essentially, we have the world's cleverest engineers and the world's cleverest machines finding ways to make programs irresistible. The net as nicotine and technological time in the midst of the modern morass. Facebook has made a contribution by highlighting the importance of trusted partners, but who is to judge trustworthiness? And the very citing of trusted publishers reinforces the rightness of Facebook paying premium publishers and premium journalists for the reputational and experiential services they provide.
And Google, which has actually become more responsive under significant pressure, has been tweaking its algorithm in ways that seem to be a mystery to even the company itself. At the end of the prejudicial first click free, which we certainly applaud as it had punished professional journalism, there are extremely odd traffic patterns across our sites. One week in February, we saw a remarkable surge in Google referrals to wsj.com, the Wall Street Journal website. This erratic movement followed months of relative inactivity. So our CTO asked Google what had happened and was told it was a bug.
Now, we'll certainly favor more referrals, but it is extraordinary that the algorithm was so anarchic. And BuzzFeed reported last week that a changing of a Google News algorithm led to a bizarre dominance in a supposedly eclectic broad feed by the BBC. Every one of the top 50 results to search was a BBC news article, and 97 of the top 100. Technically, that was a violation. Okay, no explanation, just an admission that the results were bizarre and unintended.
And Amazon can punish or reward companies with a tweak or a turn or a twist in its algorithm, as they did so brutally a couple of years ago with Hachette. Now, there's a story of abortion in the U.S. Amazon has over 95% of the audiobook market and is a publisher of books itself. In the language of an antitrust expert in Brussels, they dominate a horizontal and are thus able to influence a vertical containing their own products. Such dominance is clearly in need of close screening, and that scrutiny can only come from a rigorous assessment of unintended psychological and social and commercial and political impact.
If the imperative of an algorithm is to be irresistible, when does irresistibility become irresponsibility?