模式匹配 (Pattern Matching)

Welcome back to Pattern Matching, OneZero’s weekly newsletter that puts the week’s most compelling tech stories in context.

欢迎回到 OneZero 每周的时事通讯 Pattern Matching ， 它将本周最引人注目的技术故事作为背景。

On April 14, 1994, the CEOs of the seven big American tobacco firms sat side by side, facing a Congressional subcommittee hearing on their products’ health impacts. Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, asked them one by one to answer a simple question: Do you believe nicotine is not addictive? All seven, under oath, confirmed that they did not believe nicotine was addictive (video). The executives acknowledged that they manipulated nicotine levels in their products, but said it was to improve their flavor, not keep users hooked.

1994 年 4月14日，美国七大烟草公司的首席执行官并排坐着，面对国会小组委员会关于其产品对健康的影响的听证会。 俄勒冈州众议员Ron Wyden一步一步地问他们一个简单的问题：您认为尼古丁不会上瘾吗？ 宣誓就职的所有七个人都证实他们不相信尼古丁会上瘾( 视频 )。 高管们承认他们操纵了产品中的尼古丁含量，但表示这是为了改善风味，而不是让使用者迷住了。

The hearing marked a turning point in the industry’s history. Up to that point, Big Tobacco had seemed untouchable politically at the federal level thanks to its cozy relationship with the GOP. But public opinion gradually turned against it as the industry continued to deny what had become plain to see: that its products were deadly, that it knew they were deadly, and that it marketed them to young people anyway.

听证会标志着该行业历史的转折点。 到那时为止，由于大烟草与共和党的良好关系，在联邦一级在政治上似乎是不可动摇的。 但是，随着行业继续否认显而易见的事实，公众舆论逐渐反对它：它的产品是致命的，知道它是致命的，并且无论如何都将其销售给年轻人。

After the 1994 hearing, the executives’ claims became infamous, and they were dubbed the “seven dwarfs.” A cascade of litigation followed, and by 1998 Republicans had abandoned the industry as a political liability, setting the stage for the industry-changing Tobacco Master Settlement later that year.

在1994年的听证会之后， 高管们的声名狼藉 ，被称为“七个小矮人”。 随后进行了一系列诉讼，到了1998年， 共和党人放弃了 烟草业，将其作为一种政治责任，为当年下半年改变烟草业的和解方案奠定了基础。

What does all of this have to do with the tech industry in 2020? Well…

这一切与2020年的科技行业有什么关系？ 好…

模式 (The Pattern)

Mr. Bezos, Mr. Cook, Mr. Pichai, and Mr. Zuckerberg go to Washington.

贝索斯先生，库克先生，皮查伊先生和扎克伯格先生前往华盛顿。

• On Wednesday, the CEOs of the four most dominant internet platforms testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on antitrust. Each called in via Cisco’s WebEx videoconferencing service, though each runs a company that offers its own such service. (Fun fact: the venerable WebEx is The Wirecutter’s top pick for videoconferencing.)

  周三， 四个最主要互联网平台的首席执行官在美国众议院司法委员会反托拉斯小组委员会作证 。 尽管每个公司都运营着提供自己的此类服务的公司，但每个公司都通过Cisco的WebEx视频会议服务进行了呼叫。 (有趣的事实：古老的WebEx是Wirecutter的视频会议首选 。)

• While it may not have been clear to the casual viewer, this wasn’t a one-off event; it was the sixth in a series of hearings by the subcommittee on digital platforms and market power, part of an investigation that’s expected to culminate in a bipartisan report to Congress later this year. So you can automatically discount any take that treated the hearing as if it were supposed to be the be-all and end-all of Congress’s antitrust inquiry. As the Amazon critic Stacy Mitchell pointed out in my Q&A with her ahead of the hearing, there’s a long game here that’s bigger than the hearing itself.

  尽管休闲观众可能还不清楚， 但这并不是一次性事件 。 这是该小组委员会关于数字平台和市场力量的一系列听证会的第六次听证会，调查的一部分有望在今年晚些时候提交给国会的两党报告中达到高潮。 因此，您可以自动取消将听证会视为国会反托拉斯调查的全部和全部的任何做法。 正如亚马逊评论家Stacy Mitchell在我的问答中指出的那样，在听证会之前， 她有一个漫长的比赛，比听证会本身还重要。

• That became more apparent when the subcommittee released a huge trove of documents obtained in the course of the investigation, which included internal emails and chats from each of the companies. “These documents build a far better antitrust case against the four tech giants than anything the CEOs said during the hearing,” CNBC’s Steve Kovach wrote.

  当小组委员会发布了在调查过程中获得的 大量文件时，这一点变得更加明显，其中包括来自每个公司的内部电子邮件和聊天记录。 CNBC的史蒂夫·科瓦奇(Steve Kovach)写道： “这些文件比四位首席执行官在听证会上所说的要好得多，对这四家科技巨头构成了反托拉斯案件。”

• Still, Wednesday’s six-hour marathon understandably stole the spotlight, because it featured the top executives of four of the most powerful companies in world history. The hearing was Thursday’s top story in the major U.S. papers, and drew inevitable comparisons to the Big Tobacco hearings a quarter-century ago.

  可以理解的是，周三长达六个小时的马拉松吸引了人们的注意，因为它吸引了世界历史上四家最有实力的公司的高管。 听证会是周四美国主要报纸上的头条新闻，与25世纪前的大烟草听证会进行了 不可避免的比较 。

• We can learn from the similarities between the two. The label “Big Tech” to describe the largest internet companies overtly echoes “Big Tobacco,” and is meant to evoke the same sense of shadowy power, a force in society whose influence sprawls far beyond its direct relationship with customers. Inviting the executives of all four of the major companies involved in the probe was certain to evoke callbacks to the seven dwarfs. As with Big Tobacco, there’s a sense that Big Tech is up to devious tricks behind the scenes that belie its marketing claims.

  我们可以从两者之间的相似之处中学习。 用来形容最大互联网公司的标签“ Big Tech”公开呼应“ Big Tobacco”，意在唤起同样的影子力量 ，这是一种社会力量，其影响力远远超出了与客户的直接关系。 一定要邀请参与调查的所有四家主要公司的高管回想起对七个小矮人的回调。 与大烟草一样，从某种意义上说，大技术公司可以根据其营销主张掩盖幕后的诡计。

• But the differences are at least as instructive as the similarities, when it comes to mapping out where this will lead us. While smartphones and social media have been compared to tobacco for their addictive qualities and health effects — mostly mental health, in tech’s case — that is not the core of the antitrust argument against them. Whereas Big Tobacco was under fire for making products that were literally lethal to its customers, the alleged harms at issue in the current Big Tech inquiry are mostly to rival businesses, and to more nebulous concepts such as fair competition and open markets. (I wrote briefly on Wednesday about what’s really at stake.) That doesn’t necessarily make them less urgent. But it makes them harder for the mainstream press and general public to wrap their minds around, let alone get riled up about.

  但是 ，在确定将导致我们去向何处时， 差异至少与相似性一样具有启发性 。 尽管智能手机和社交媒体因其令人上瘾的质量和对健康的影响而被比作烟草 ，在技术方面主要是心理健康，但这并不是针对它们的反托拉斯论点的核心。 尽管大烟草公司生产的产品实际上给顾客带来致命的伤害，但大企业当前的调查中所称的危害主要是对竞争对手的业务，以及对公平竞争和开放市场等模糊概念的伤害。 (我在星期三简短地写了真正要害的东西 。)这并不一定会使他们的紧迫性降低。 但这使他们更难为主流媒体和公众所接受，更不用说惹恼了。

• And unlike the tobacco executives, whose companies were more or less interchangeable, the tech executives who testified Wednesday represent firms whose core platforms focus on four different arenas: online retail, mobile apps, internet search, and social media. There is a common thread — their control of lucrative sub-economies that myriad smaller companies depend on — but each raises distinct competition problems that must be understood individually. That’s why there could be no single “gotcha” moment in Wednesday’s hearing, as there was in the 1994 tobacco hearing; no iconic clip that indicts all of them in one swoop.

  与烟草高管的公司或多或少可以互换的不同，星期三作证的技术高管代表的公司的核心平台专注于四个不同的领域：在线零售，移动应用，互联网搜索和社交媒体。 这是一条共同的思路，即他们控制着众多小公司所依赖的有利可图的子经济，但是每家公司都提出了必须单独理解的独特竞争问题。 这就是为什么在周三的听证会中没有像1994年烟草听证会那样唯一的“陷阱”时刻的原因。 没有标志性的片段可以一口气指示所有人。

• It did offer moments of drama. They were one-on-ones between a prosecutorial representative and a stammering CEO, as when Rep. Pamila Jayapal, R-WA grilled Zuckerberg (video) on whether he bullied Instagram into selling in 2012, or when Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-PA, pressed Bezos (video) on Amazon’s alleged 2010 use of predatory pricing against Diapers.com. On multiple occasions the CEOs were struck by sudden cases of selective amnesia when it came to some of the largest business moves in their history. But watching them dissemble separately, via videoconference, in response to disparate lines of attack was not the same as seeing the tobacco executives squirming side-by-side as Wyden pinned them down with one simple question.

  它确实提供了戏剧性的时刻。 他们是检察官代表与结结巴巴的首席执行官之间的一对一，当R-WA众议员Pamila Jayapal抨击Zuckerberg( 视频 )时，他是在2012年欺负Instagram还是当众议员Mary Gay Scanlon， -PA向贝佐斯( 视频 )敦促亚马逊在2010年对Diapers.com使用掠夺性定价 。 在有史以来一些最大的业务举动中，首席执行官多次被选择性失忆的突然事件所震惊。 但是，通过电视会议观看它们分别分解以应对不同的攻击路线，这与看到烟草高管并排扭动，而怀登(Wyden)用一个简单的问题将它们压倒了一样。

• The antitrust questions around tech platforms won’t be decided solely by the media and the public, of course. The subcommittee’s inquiry is helmed by Chair David Cicilline, D-RI, who in turn is being advised by staffers with deep knowledge of antitrust law and a strong reform agenda, as this New York Times profile of Cicilline from December 2019 explains. (See also this profile of law professor Lina Khan, who is helping to lead the investigation behind the scenes.) Several other Democratic committee members, including Jayapal — who got her own Times profile as an increasingly vocal Amazon critic in May — seem fully on board.

  当然，围绕技术平台的反托拉斯问题将不会完全由媒体和公众来决定。 小组委员会的调查由D-RI主席David Cicilline主持，反过来又由具有反托拉斯法渊博知识和有力改革议程的工作人员提供咨询 ，正如《纽约时报》自2019年12月以来对Cicilline的简介所解释的那样。 (另请参阅法学教授Lina Khan的简介 ，他正在协助进行幕后调查。)其他几名民主党委员会成员，包括贾亚帕尔(Jayapal)，她在5月获得了自己的《泰晤士报》个人资料， 成为亚马逊越来越挑剔的批评家 ，似乎已经充分出现了。板。

• But the Big Tobacco saga reminds us that it may take more than a cadre of crusaders from one party to effectively take on a powerful industry. In tobacco’s case, it ultimately took both parties, plus an outraged public. It also took a very long time. Though the 1994 hearing is rightly remembered as a turning point, it was only in 1996 that then-President Bill Clinton made the crucial decision to regulate nicotine as a drug. And it wasn’t until Newt Gingrich’s Republican majority in Congress finally turned on its longtime allies in the tobacco industry in 1998 that industry leaders realized they had no choice left but to settle, as detailed by an in-depth Washington Post series from that year. Gingrich did so not out of conviction, but out of fear that Republicans would be punished politically by Democrats for continuing to support an industry that had by then become deeply unpopular.

  但是“大烟草传奇”提醒我们，要有效地发展一个强大的行业，可能需要一个党派的一支十字军干部。 以烟草为例，最终导致了双方和愤怒的公众。 还花了很长时间。 尽管1994年的听证会被认为是一个转折点，但直到1996年，时任总统比尔·克林顿才做出了决定尼古丁作为药物管制的关键决定。 直到1998年纽特·金里奇(Newt Gingrich)在国会中获得共和党多数票之后，烟草业的领导者们才意识到他们别无选择，只能解决，正如那一年深入的《 华盛顿邮报》系列所详述的那样。 。 金里奇这样做并不是出于信念，而是出于担心共和党人会因为继续支持这个当时已不受欢迎的行业而受到民主党的政治惩罚。

• While there’s no guarantee that the same political dynamics will apply to Big Tech in the 2020s as Big Tobacco in the 1990s, there are a couple of lessons we might safely draw. One is that the Democrats and Republicans will have to find some common ground, if not in ideology than at least in political expediency. Right now, members of both parties are going after Big Tech, but for very different reasons. The Democrats on the subcommittee are concerned chiefly with how they wield market power, but the Republicans, with one or two exceptions, are preoccupied with what they see as anti-conservative bias in the companies’ enforcement of content rules. One is a classic antitrust question, the other only tangentially related. And neither party seems yet to fear that failing to stand up to Big Tech will cost them at the ballot box, in part because the public is not yet nearly as disenchanted with the industry as it became with Big Tobacco.

  尽管不能保证在2020年代大科技将与1990年代的大烟草一样具有相同的政治动力，但我们可以借鉴一些经验教训。 一个是， 民主党人和共和党人必须找到一些共同点 ，即使不是意识形态方面的，也至少是政治上的权宜之计。 目前，双方的成员都在追求Big Tech，但是原因却截然不同。 小组委员会的民主党人主要关注的是他们如何发挥市场支配力，但共和党人(一两个例外)全神贯注于他们对公司执行内容规则的反保守主义偏见。 一个是经典的反托拉斯问题，另一个仅与切向相关。 而且，任何一方似乎都没有担心，如果不坚持使用大技术，将使他们在投票箱中丧生，部分原因是，公众对这个行业的兴趣还不如对大烟草公司那么大。

• Another is that we shouldn’t necessarily expect a big breakup to ensue anytime soon. There are likely to be any number of intermediate steps as the political battle plays out, evidence accrues, and the public learns more about the core issues. And by the same token, if it doesn’t happen soon, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually.

  另一个是我们不必期望很快会发生大的分裂 。 随着政治斗争的进行，证据的积累以及公众对核心问题的更多了解，可能会有许多中间步骤。 同样，如果它不会很快发生，那并不意味着它最终不会发生。

暗流 (Undercurrents)

Under-the-radar trends, stories, and random anecdotes worth your time

雷达下的趋势，故事和随机轶事值得您花费时间

• The documents released by the antitrust subcommittee make for fascinating reading, not just from an antitrust standpoint but for students of business strategy and anyone who wants to better understand how the largest tech companies operate and make decisions. You can read them for yourself here. (You can also watch a replay of the hearing, if you have six hours to kill and a masochistic streak.) As The American Prospect’s David Dayen pointed out, “the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division all had access to the same information that the subcommittee had,” and could have used it to make the same case against Big Tech, but so far has not.

  反托拉斯小组委员会发布的文件不仅从反托拉斯的角度引人入胜 ，而且还为商业战略的学生以及希望更好地了解大型科技公司如何运作和做出决定的任何人提供了阅读的参考。 您可以在这里自己阅读。 (如果您有六个小时的时间杀人和受虐狂，还可以观看听证会的重播 。)正如《美国展望 》的戴维·戴恩(David Dayen)所指出的那样 ，“联邦贸易委员会和司法部的反托拉斯司都有权使用小组委员会拥有的相同信息，”本可以用来针对Big Tech提起相同的诉讼，但到目前为止还没有。

• Amazon will launch 3,200 new satellites into orbit. The Federal Communications Commission this week approved its application to move forward with Project Kuiper, a constellation of broadband internet satellites in low-earth orbit, which it plans to deploy over the course of the next nine years, Space News reported. The $10 billion project will rival SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. Together, the two figure to clutter the sky to an unprecedented degree, as critics say the FCC’s requirement that Amazon update its debris mitigation plan is not nearly enough.

  亚马逊将向轨道发射3200颗新卫星。 据《 太空新闻》报道 ，美国联邦通信委员会本周批准了其申请，以推进库伊珀计划，该计划是一个在低地球轨道上的宽带互联网卫星群，它计划在未来九年内进行部署。 这项耗资100亿美元的项目将与SpaceX的Starlink星座相匹敌。 批评者说，FCC要求亚马逊更新其减缓碎片计划的要求还远远不够 ，这两个数字一起使天空杂乱无章。

• Augmented-reality glasses will soon be a thing, Niantic COO Megan Quinn told Protocol’s Janko Roettgers. Niantic, the maker of Pokemon Go and Ingress, has no plans to build its own hardware, Quinn clarified. Apple has long been reported to be working on Apple Glasses, but recent reports put the release date as far out as 2023. Via BoingBoing, here’s a designer’s concept video of what they could look like. And speaking of companies that have tried to make AR glasses — er, Spectacles — happen …

  Niantic首席运营官梅根·奎因(Mean Quinn) 告诉《协议 》的Janko Roettgers ， 增强现实眼镜将很快成为现实 。 Quinn澄清说， Pokemon Go and Ingress的制造商Niantic没有计划建造自己的硬件。 长期以来，一直有报道称苹果正在开发Apple Glasses眼镜 ，但最近的报道称其发布日期可能要到2023年。通过BoingBoing ，这是一个设计师的概念视频，介绍了它们的外观 。 说到试图制造AR眼镜的公司(例如， 眼镜 )……

• Snap finally released a diversity report, the Los Angeles Times reported. The company had previously balked at releasing reports on the demographics of its workforce, even as other major tech companies have done so for years. The Snapchat maker has repeatedly released racially insensitive features, and last year paid settlements to female employees who alleged discrimination in the company’s layoff decisions. The report showed significant underrepresentation of women as well as Black and Latino people.

  据《洛杉矶时报》报道 ，Snap终于发布了多样性报告 。 该公司此前拒绝发布有关其员工人数统计的报告，即使其他大型科技公司已经这样做了多年。 Snapchat的制造商已多次发布对种族不敏感的功能，并于去年向涉嫌在公司裁员决定中受到歧视的女雇员支付了和解金 。 该报告表明，妇女以及黑人和拉丁裔人的任职人数明显不足。

本周头条 (Headlines of the Week)

The Gig Economy Is Failing. Say Hello to the Hustle Economy

零工经济正在失败。 向忙碌的经济问好

— Caitlin Dewey, OneZero

— OneZero的 Caitlin Dewey

Animal Crossing Fans Get Fireworks, Immediately Draw Dicks — Patricia Hernandez, Polygon

动物穿越迷们得到烟花，立即画鸡鸡 —帕特里夏·埃尔南德斯(Patricia Hernandez)， 多边形

Thanks for reading Pattern Matching. Reach me with tips and feedback by responding to this post on the web, via Twitter direct message at @WillOremus, or by email at oremus@medium.com.

感谢您阅读模式匹配。 通过在Web上回复该帖子，通过Twitter直邮@WillOremus或通过电子邮件oremus@medium.com与我联系，以获取提示和反馈。