On some corners of the web, online apartment and room-rental service Airbnb looks embattled. Quartz featured an article which claimed that “Airbnb could squander billions fighting every landlord in the world.”  The same article quoted a New York judge who likened an Airbnb apartment rentals to an “illegal hotel” (check out Ali’s post on Airbnb’s legal status in New York). In Quebec, police officers, at the behest of local bed and breakfasts, are cracking down on Airbnb users, even conducting sting operations against “repeat offenders.” All the while, hotel bloggers remind incumbents in the hospitality industry that in the fight against Airbnb, “local governments may be an ally.” Nevermind that US hotel room revenue rose 6.8% in 2012, in spite of Airbnb’s success.

While so much incumbent ire implies that economically, Airbnb is doing something right, new evidence validates our hunches. This data, from priceonomics, details the savings associated with using Airbnb versus a traditional hotel. The benefits are pretty radical. On average, Airbnb users pay 21.2% less to rent out a full apartment than a hotel room. Users looking to stay in a single room via Airbnb save a whopping 49.5%. Priceonomics went even further, comparing Airbnb apartments with hotels in major US cities. While in some smaller cities, hotel rooms cost less than apartments, Airbnb single rooms are always cheaper. As a bonus, priceonomics compiled Airbnb listing per capita by city, in order to evaluate which cities were best suited to its business model. Unsurprisingly, San Francisco topped the chart with 213 listings per 100,000 people.

Essentially, priceonomics tells us what we already know: collaborative consumption saves consumers’ money. Collaborative consumption is the driving force behind similar startups such as Zimride, TaskRabbit and Blackjet (movie stars can consume collaboratively too!), which eliminate costly middlemen and allow individuals to effectively allocate unused goods and services. Indeed, while Airbnb “landlords” undoubtedly benefit from its services, we now have tangible evidence that consumers do as well. While Airbnb is the latest example of efficient, innovative and digital collaborative consumption, legacy firms, fearful for their previously unassailable profits, will continue pushing back. Taking on the global hospitality industry will be a costly challenge, but with consumers reaping such massive savings, it’s an important fight to win.

Benjy Cannon is an intern at the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Follow @benjycannon

Do you miss the days when revised terms of service from Internet companies would have people outraged over the threat to their privacy?

I’d like to think the National Security Agency does after the last two weeks of disclosures about its telecom surveillance operations.

It’s still unclear just how much data the NSA has been collecting about Americans’ telephone and Internet use, incidentally or not, and what sort of privileged access to private networks sustains that activity. For that you can blame the NSA’s just-trust-us unwillingness to document even the procedures it says it follows to avoid targeting domestic communication, but also to rushed and ongoing reporting that exaggerated some things and got others wrong at first.

What’s clearer is how the controversy seems to have either liberated or prodded some previously-quiet tech companies to describe how much data about their users the government has sought–and to push back publicly against this surveillance.

For example, Facebook followed the good examples of Google, Twitter and Microsoft by posting its first “transparency report,” which even folded in rough numbers about how many queries came via Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act proceedings: between 9,000 and 10,000 in the second half of 2012.

But by not breaking out FISA demands from others, even in vague ranges, this post was not as helpful as it could have been.

Microsoft revealed a similarly obscured total number of criminal and national-security inquiries–”between 6,000 and 7,000″ in the last six months of 2012–the next day. You can, however, compare that figure with Microsoft’s earlier transparency report; Forbes’ Kashmir Hill estimated that over all of 2012, maybe as many as 34,000 were targeted in national-security inquiries.

Monday morning, Apple broke with its customary silence to sum up the law-enforcement requests it fielded from Dec. 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013: ”between 4,000 and 5,000 requests” concerning “between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices.” Again, this did not break down which queries came via FISA and which resulted from everyday domestic law enforcement.

And that night, Yahoo posted its own rough totals: “between 12,000 and 13,000″ criminal, FISA and other queries between Dec. 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013. In that post, CEO Marissa Mayer and general counsel Ron Bell pledged to publish a more comprehensive transparency report–which I hope will note how many users were targeted–twice a year.

I feel like I should applaud this newfound activism. I want to see companies compete to defend the data I share with them against unwarranted government snooping (provided they’re no less picky about handing it over to other companies). We need more firms documenting how many inquiries they get from the Feds and explaining how they respond to them.

But that’s not all of it. In some ways, this situation feels like a breakdown from how things ought to work.

This pushback against government curiosity isn’t new–we’ve recently learned that some of these companies were trying to stop national-security searches in the courts five years ago. Why didn’t more share their views about protecting digital privacy from government overreach back then? The troubling idea that they didn’t think we needed to know invites skepticism that this week’s moves are a defensive PR ploy.

(It could be worse! Remember how some companies lined up in support of SOPA before their customers rebelled?)

Further, we don’t have actual representation in most of these companies. And most of them, as the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus noted Tuesday, aren’t too open about their own information-sharing procedures.

We can certainly take our business elsewhere–but does the massive asymmetry of this situation distort our options? It’s nice to suggest that we switch to smaller firms that haven’t been implicated in NSA surveillance, but can these competitors do any better at pushing away the government’s magnifying glass when it inevitably turns toward them? Going to court against the Feds is a slow and expensive proposition. Should I also factor in their ability to put enough lobbyists on retainer?

(There are honorable counter-examples. The mobile-phone-service reseller Credo Mobile apparently took the government to court over the gag order routinely applied to National Security Letter demands–I have to say “apparently” because it couldn’t even acknowledge its reported involvement–and had a district court judge rule that gag order unconstitutional.)

Alas, a lot of the people we actually hired to hold the Executive Branch accountable don’t appear too interested in that work.

Too many representatives and senators see no problem with the reach of “No Such Agency” and its ilk–they’ve voted in favor of sweeping, classified surveillance more than once, subject only to the discretion of a secret court that rarely says no. Some not only think this state of affairs is fine today but regard press inquiries as a bigger problem: The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence refused to let its former general counsel share unclassified details about its oversight with Talking Points Memo.

Pending a massive switch towards public-key encryption of all of our online communication–which I’m sure will happen right after everybody gets in the habit of making regular backups–we may be stuck in a weird situation in which large corporations can offer a more effective defense of our Constitutional rights than some of our elected representatives who swore an oath to do so “well and faithfully.”

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Time Warner Cable is allegedly incentivizing media companies to withhold content from online competitors.  Given the facts reported, it is difficult to tell whether this is blatantly anticompetitive behavior that should be discouraged by competition authorities, or whether these contracts are commonplace and unremarkable.  Generally speaking, businesses are free to contract as they wish, and exclusive licenses are common copyright arrangements.  It’s standard practice for one network to get the sole rights to premiere a movie or television series during a specific window, for example.  The analysis might change if Time Warner Cable were abusing market power, either as a content buyer, or in its role a distribution platform.  It is too soon to tell.

The article nevertheless features some interesting interviews from various stakeholders.  One priceless quote was from Chris Winfrey, CFO of Charter Communications (which according to Bloomberg is the fourth-largest cable company), speaking at this week’s National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) conference:

It’s in everybody’s mutual interest that we are protecting the ecosystem in a way that continues to keep the value of that programming that we have and the way it’s delivered to our subscribers today.

Really, Mr. Winfrey?  I’m not sure that limiting the outlets through which consumers can access content is in “everybody’s mutual interest”.  Consumers would beg to differ, as Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn explains later in the article.  “Protecting the ecosystem” is solely beneficial to the incumbent cable companies.  (And, notwithstanding its dominant position in the ecosystem, Charter was apparently bankrupt for most of 2009.)  Furthermore, the desire to maintain “the way [programming is] delivered to our subscribers today” exemplifies how cable companies are still in denial about cord-cutting, trying to delay consumers’ inevitable transition, by suing competitors with innovative new features like Aereo and DISH, rather than introducing their own new technologies.

As we have discussed before, the Federal Trade Commission has a wide ranging competition remit.  Besides reviewing mergers and investigating monopolistic behavior, they also have broader powers to (and an institutional history of) advise lawmakers (state, local, and even national) on the competitive effects of proposed regulations and legislation, including local governments, on potential anticompetitive problems with regulations.  Back in March we wrote about the FTC writing a letter to the Colorado PUC advising it that its proposed taxicab regulations were needlessly anticompetitive and harmed innovative new startups like Uber that harness the power of the Internet to better serve customers and easily connect willing suppliers of a service with those who demand that service.  Economics 101.  The FTC also chimed in on proposed Alaska legislation and encouraged the state to liberalize their taxicab markets.  Furthermore the FTC recommended that the new taxi regulatory framework be forward-looking and accommodate new Internet-driven innovations in the local transportation markets:

The Assembly may wish to consider reforms that anticipate and will facilitate the future development of new technologies and new services, while maintaining or creating appropriate consumer protections.

Today, the FTC announced that it submitted comments to the DC Taxicab Commission in the same vein as its Colorado and Alaska comments. Washington, DC is considering new taxicab regulation and the FTC took exception with several curious provisions of the draft regulations that unnecessarily hinder “digital dispatch services.”  (For the full version of the FTC’s comments, see here.)

Google’s acquisition of Waze, the startup that bridged the gap between social networks and turn-by-turn navigation, raises some interesting antitrust questions. Particularly relevant to DisCo is how U.S. antitrust law deals with “disruptive competitors” in merger analysis (which I will get to a little later).

There are two related questions to consider: (1) Will authorities stop this deal? And: (2) generally, how do antitrust regulators evaluate startup acquisitions by large players? These are not easy questions.

First, given that Waze reportedly makes well under $50 million in annual U.S. revenue, this merger will likely not have to go into pre-merger limbo (known as Hart-Scott-Rodino review).  This doesn’t mean that the antitrust agencies can’t challenge it.  However, it does mean that challenging the acquisition would be messier (and therefore less likely), because the Department of Justice would have to unwind the deal (as opposed to what usually occurs, where antitrust agencies block the consummation of a deal).

Beyond the fact pattern of this particular deal, the general topic begs an interesting question: when is an asymmetric acquisition of a startup by a major technology company an antitrust concern?  (Deals like Google-YouTube, Facebook-Instagram or Yahoo-Tumblr could also fall into this category.)

Typically, antitrust regulators block major transactions among big companies that threaten to control a huge share of a given market.  In fast-moving tech markets, the answers (and the markets themselves) are often unclear (although the antitrust authorities have a slightly more interventionist history when it comes to small tech mergers in cutting-edge markets).

Although it is theoretically possible for the antitrust cops to define Waze’s market narrowly and attempt to block the merger on grounds that it would be too consolidating, the most likely antitrust market for the purposes of this merger analysis is the turn-by-turn navigation market.  Since that market features a variety of strong companies, including Telenav and TCS (which power AT&T and Verizon navigators respectively), it is unlikely for antitrust regulators to block the merger on the grounds of its concentrating effect.  Furthermore, Apple has thrown its hat into the ring, and since a dynamic open source mapping project exists, OpenStreetMaps (in fact, Foursquare used OpenStreetMaps to replace Google Maps), it is not that much of a stretch to think that other social networks or major tech companies could build their own Waze competitor if they were so inclined.  Barriers to entry, particularly for companies that already have a large user base, appear low.

However, another angle regulators have to attack these types of mergers can be found in section 2.1.5 of the DOJ’s Horizontal Merger Guidelines, which focuses on the “disruptive role” of the acquired party:

The Agencies consider whether a merger may lessen competition by eliminating a “maverick” firm, i.e., a firm that plays a disruptive role in the market to the benefit of customers. For example, if one of the merging firms has a strong incumbency position and the other merging firm threatens to disrupt market conditions with a new technology or business model, their merger can involve the loss of actual or potential competition. Likewise, one of the merging firms may have the incentive to take the lead in price cutting or other competitive conduct or to resist increases in industry prices. A firm that may discipline prices based on its ability and incentive to expand production rapidly using available capacity also can be a maverick, as can a firm that has often resisted otherwise prevailing industry norms to cooperate on price setting or other terms of competition.

Unfortunately, this is not a cut-and-dry analysis either.  Sometimes, new entrants or startups are actually more of a pro-competitive force if they acquired by a major company and integrated into their platform and products (Apple’s acquisition of Siri and Google’s acquisition of Android being recent examples of this).  In fact, acquisition is an extremely common startup exit strategy, and many startups wouldn’t have an exit scenario without it.

However, there are certainly instances where the acquisition of disruptive technologies can be anticompetitive.   If a disruptive competitor threatens to undercut the revenue of an incumbent (or their entire business model), incumbents have an incentive to buy the competitor and bury its technology, so regulators should be suspicious about the acquisition.

Let me elaborate on that last point more.  Disruptive competition often undercuts the business model of big incumbents by providing a similar good and service at much cheaper prices.  If barriers to entry for that market are high, then the incumbent could acquire the dynamic startup for the purpose of killing it (or, at the very least, slowing down the disruptive innovation) and protecting its legacy revenue stream.  For example, regulators might be suspicious if American Express tried to acquire Square or Hilton tried to acquire Airbnb.

I am not privy to the underlying details of how Waze planned to make its money in the future (and it apparently doesn’t make that much of it yet), but the regulator’s question would be: is Waze’s social mapping business model one that might undercut Google’s revenue stream, which the latter would like to mothball?  Or is it likely that Google will integrate the best of its own mapping features (and advertising business models) with Waze to create a better, more competitive product.  If regulators believe the answer to be the former, they would probably attempt to unwind the merger.  If regulators think the latter is more likely, they would have no problem with the merger.  Only time will tell.

One recent acquisition that may shed light on the DOJ’s views on challenging acquisitions of potentially disruptive competitors is the January merger of Avis and Zipcar.  If anyone should be concerned about the effect of Zipcar on their future profits and revenue models, it would be traditional rental car companies.  However, antitrust authorities did not stand in the way of that merger. (Which is probably a good thing, as Avis has been using its bigger bankroll to aggressively expand Zipcar’s services.)  While similarities to precedents are no guarantee that regulators will treat a particular case similarly, a DOJ challenge to the Waze transaction would seem to signal a change of heart.

Tech business news these days is dominated by headlines about the trial of United States v. Apple, Inc., where the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is charging Cupertino with masterminding a massive conspiracy among publishers to increase prices for e-books. Apple’s defense lawyers and CEO Tim Cook call the allegations “bizarre.” What is really bizarre, though, is the plethora of private treble-damages lawsuits seeking to hold Apple liable under the antitrust laws for its vertical integration strategy with iTunes, iPhone and the App Store.

Just a bit more than a decade ago, Apple Computer (having since changed its corporate name) was decidedly stuck in the backwater of the PC industry. Its introduction of the USB-only iMac in 1998 failed to change the marketplace dynamics, where Apple’s closed Macintosh design and refusal to license its Mac OS to other manufacturers was viewed as the source of diminishing relevance. Apple was such a non-entity that its presence was flatly rejected by the federal courts as part of the relevant market in the Microsoft monopolization cases. Pundits predicted that like the fabled Betamax, Apple’s proprietary strategy would lead to its ultimate competitive demise.

But then along came the “iLife” software suite and the first generation iPod. What differentiated these products was not that Apple invented the technologies — after all, MP3s had been around for years and digital cameras as well — but rather that they all worked well together. Since then, the same business model has been applied to iPads and iPhones: native sync integrated with the Mac OS and Apple’s iCloud service, plus software content, whether media or apps, available easily through Apple’s online stores, with the company taking a 30% cut of retail prices for third-party content.

When the iPod and iPhone proved to be winners, big ones, Apple’s financial fortunes turned around dramatically. iTunes now is the largest digital music retailer, accounting for some 60% of all downloads, and the various iPhones are the most popular smartphones globally. Apple’s annual revenues soared from $5 billion in 2001 to $108 billion last year. But what short memories we have. The plaintiffs’ antitrust bar accuses Apple of unlawfully monopolizing these markets and has filed a series of sometimes confusing consumer class actions challenging Apple’s vertical integration and closed product systems.  (Nine separate lawsuits have been unified into one action in California focusing on the tight grip Apple exerts on the iPhone’s services and applications; other individual and class suits are pending elsewhere.) The EU reportedly has investigated Apple’s App Store restrictions, and more recently its deals with European wireless carriers, to determine whether the company “abused” a “dominant position.”

It’s difficult if not impossible to discern the merits in competition claims that a company’s proprietary product design strategy should be held unlawful. Just as Kodak, once the single largest film, photo developing and camera company in the world, was permitted to introduce new products that were technologically integrated and incompatible with its competition, so too should Apple’s vertically integrated business practices be considered legal. Tech businesses can obviously live or die with their choice on interoperability, but it’s a valid business strategy either way.

Here are five straightforward reasons Apple’s private antitrust risks are minimal:

• The early class action cases challenging Apple’s alleged iPod “tie” and use of incompatible DRM for its iTunes Music Store did not advance far on the merits, as the courts recognized quickly that “the introduction of technologically-related products, even if incompatible with the products offered by competitors, is alone neither a predatory nor anticompetitive act.”
• Later private antitrust cases claiming that Apple’s deal with AT&T for the first two years of the iPhone’s history was illegal assert that Apple monopolized the “aftermarket” for voice and data services on the iPhone platform. (That itself is an end-run around the settled rule that one company’s products are not a relevant antitrust market.)  Yet consumers knew full well of the two-year AT&T exclusivity commitment before buying an iPhone in 2007, and the voice and data services were provided by AT&T, not Apple — which for legal purposes makes AT&T an essential party. Exclusive dealing typically is not an antitrust issue unless it forecloses a substantial part of the marketplace, which even now, and more so when the iPhone was young, Apple is nowhere close to achieving.
• Contentions that Apple’s iTunes service is improperly tied to the iPod and iPhone are factually wrong. Any MP3 file (and many other music and video formats) can be imported into iTunes and uploaded to Apple iOS devices, whether they come from artists, Amazon, another online music or video vendor, YouTube or even illegal peer-to-peer piracy. Even if “technological ties” were actionable, and they are not, there’s no compulsion and no technical mandate to buy from the iTunes Store, so consumers have not suffered any harm.
• App Store challenges are misdirected because while Apple gets a cut, prices are set by app developers, meaning that the restrictions (such as prior approval) imposed by Apple have not had any exclusionary impact on competition. But more cogently, as Apple outside counsel Dan Wall argues, “There’s nothing illegal about creating a system that is closed.”
• As the smartphone market stands now, plaintiffs cannot demonstrate monopolization because Apple’s share of that market, though growing, remains well below the Android OS collectively and far less than that of major vendors like Samsung. Without a monopoly share, unilateral practices by Apple are simply not illegal under American antitrust law. If Apple begins dominating the mobile advertising market, some of its ancillary practices (i.e., availability of data analytics to competing ad networks) might then come under scrutiny, but the mobile-ad market in general is young, many questions remain and, as in the 2007 Google-DoubleClick acquisition and the 2012 Google-ITA deal, fears that a dominant tech firm will extend its power into adjacent markets are frequently overstated.

Two years ago, Adobe launched a rather public campaign to have DOJ investigate Apple for restrictions excluding Flash technology from the iPhone. Nothing came of that initiative, which was the right competition policy result (whether or not one agrees with Apple’s product strategy) and in the interim Adobe has released a touch version of Photoshop for tablets, is moving to a SaaS model of subscription software, and HTML 5 video and applications now command most attention on the Web. As one commentator observed:

If Apple wants to stump for HTML 5 or some other standard it can. If your iPad doesn’t deliver Flash you can always get annoyed and buy something else. Apple simply doesn’t have the world domination market share in the iPhone or iPad for regulators to give a hoot.

The moral is that closed products can win competitively if they are superior but always run the risk of being leap-frogged technologically or shunned by consumers wanting to mix-and-match components. It’s a decision for markets, not governments.

Some think the Samsung Galaxy or Google Nexus are poised to supplant Apple’s iPhone/iPad ecosystem by offering more advanced features, updated mobile OSs and a “cool” factor exploited constantly in television advertisements. Maybe Mozilla’s forthcoming Firefox mobile OS will do so. That those are “open” software and devices makes them no less or more favored under the antitrust laws. Apple’s proprietary strategy is working well in today’s marketplace, but as recent history so clearly shows, such a business model is fraught with risk. In the final analysis, the choice of a vertically integrated structure is unlikely to get Apple into antitrust trouble — either private or governmental, and whether in the United States or the EU — unless Tim Cook and company add some seriously bad acts to their competitive arsenal. Building your own mousetrap, especially a segment-leading proprietary one that consumers like, just doesn’t cut it.

It’s almost axiomatic at this point that the larger, wealthier and more powerful a company grows, the more it becomes viewed as a deep pocket. In short, the larger a corporation becomes, the more it is forced to contend with lawsuits, frequently unmeritorious. That’s where Apple stands today. Whether to spend its billions in cash on settlements or legal defense fees will test Mr. Cook’s powers of prediction as the company’s former CFO. Apple settled the iPod tying case but continues to aggressively litigate the consolidated iPhone exclusivity cases. On the pure antitrust merits, however, whether to pay off these class action plaintiffs is a decision Apple really should not have to make.

Digital suppression is a tried and true political tactic of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his “Justice and Development Party.” In that sense, it wasn’t surprising that Erdogan blamed Turkey’s latest rounds of protest on every embattled, authoritarian leaders’ favorite new culprit: social media (Ex: [1], [2], [3]).

The recent unrest in Turkey — suppressed anti-government protests now in their third week — began following a peaceful demonstration in Gezi Park. Activists were staging a sit-in; responding to plans to uproot a park and build replica, nineteenth century Ottoman barracks  (which would house a shopping mall). Police dispersed protesters with tear gas and water cannons, which unleashed a wave of latent anger across the country, as thousands marched against Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule.

While in power, Erdogan has straddled a thin line between economic liberalization and religious conservatism. However, in his attempts to protect tradition and exert social control, Erdogan has repeatedly attacked and censored web-based platforms. Consequently, despite his purported steps towards reform and prosperity, Turkey’s Internet economy remains well short of its potential.

In 2005, Article 301 of the Turkish penal code took effect. Among other things, article 301 prohibits public denigration of “Turkishness” or the “Turkish government” and associated institutions. It’s worth noting that “insulting” speech was punishable even before the passage of Article 301. In fact, Erdogan himself, while mayor of Istanbul was arrested and jailed in 1997 for publically reading an “Islamic poem” — deemed incitement by the authorities.

The Internet has suffered from Erdogan’s social conservatism. In 2007, the Turkish parliament banned a series of websites, ostensibly “in an effort to curb child porn, prevent the dissemination of terrorist propaganda and stamp out illegal gambling.” Additionally, they blocked websites which allegedly disrespected Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, or demonized religious sensibilities. In 2008, responding to complaints that certain YouTube videos criticized Ataturk, Turkish authorities blocked access to the entire site. Apparently, since (a) restricting certain videos and (b) blocking YouTube were insufficient, in 2010, authorities banned sites which shared Google IP addresses, to prevent anyone from circumventing the ban. In other words, Turkey’s determination (and unfortunately, ability) to restrict access to “troublesome” sites is well documented.

Furthermore, restricting Internet access is the antithesis of economic modernization. Erdogan has repeatedly committed to liberalizing Turkey’s economy and bringing the country into the EU. While Turkey’s economic growth over the past decade is impressive, the Boston Consulting Group issued a study of Turkey’s web-sector in 2012, noting plenty of room for improvement. FreedomHouse awarded Turkey an Internet freedom score of 46/100 (0 being the least free). To put that in perspective, Tunisia and Jordan were the next freest on FreedomHouse’s list. The Brookings institute has pointed to a well-defined positive correlation between Internet freedom and digital innovation and prosperity. In 2012, Internet-related industries accounted for a whopping 24% of GDP growth in mature economies. Mckinsey compiled a survey of ecommerce in 13 countries, which collectively account for 70% of the global GDP; and Internet commerce accounted for 3.4% of these countries collective GDP. In Sweden and the United Kingdom, the Internet accounts for 6.3% and 5.4% of the GDP, respectively. While generally, the Turkish economy seems promising, it lags well behind its aspirational contemporaries in the crucial Internet sector, which, in 2011, accounted for just 1.7% of Turkey’s GDP.  Erdogan must loosen his government’s hold on the web if he truly wants to deliver his economic promises.

Even in light of Turkey’s history of censorship, Erdogan’s response to the latest protests was a worrying indication of his views on technology.

Like many mass-protest movements of the last half-decade, Turks have relied heavily on social media platforms — namely Twitter — to spread their message to the world and coordinate with one another. The Social Media and Political Participation Project, at New York University, has done amazing work monitoring the Twitter activity of the Turkish protesters. Unlike the protests in Tahrir square, where only 30% of the associated Twitter activity took place in Egypt, as Ross recently pointed out, 88% of the Tweets with relevant hashtags are in Turkish and 90% have been geolocated to Turkey. This indicates that protesters themselves are utilizing Twitter, rather than just foreign sympathizers. Along with Twitter, the protesters have made numerous gaming references in their graffiti and Facebook banter, underscoring the depth of their immersion in the digital ecosystem, despite Turkey’s restrictions.

Given the protesters’ reliance on social media, Erdogan’s first speech in light of the demonstrations was expected, but still ridiculous:

Now we have a menace that is called Twitter. The best example of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.

Of course, the “menace to society,” the true cause of insurrection is Twitter, not the police brutality or increasingly autocratic social landscape. Still, Erdogan’s comments set a dangerous precedent. Rather than merely blaming common targets of autocratic regimes (marginalized members of society or an external enemy), the Turkish government’s new straw man is social media. Erdogan has started his crackdown accordingly: arresting dozens of people last week for “spreading untrue information” and “inciting the people to enmity and hate.” Their crime? Tweeting. These arrests are not only bizarre, but potential harbingers of economic stagnation.

The BCG report on the Internet and Turkey’s economy lists a number of recommendations for Turkey’s web sector. Among these are partnerships between the government and the people; building strong public sectors/private sector alliances; and amassing public support for business regulations. Banning YouTube and Google IP addresses is a slap in the face to investors looking for a public/private partnership, and rigorous censorship doesn’t usually arouse public support for tech regulations. Arresting protestors for tweeting and blaming protests on social media is a dangerous rejection of the Internet’s value, and the global consensus on Internet growth. The Turkish protest movement and Erdogan’s response serve as an important reminder: the Internet is an vital tool for social and economic organizing. Suppressing the web — one of history’s most powerful platforms for innovation —  can lead to social instability, and tends to stifle economic growth.  Embracing the web can lead to widespread economic prosperity, and is an essential component of modern, mature economies. Turkey would be wise to adapt accordingly.

Benjy Cannon is an intern at the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Follow @benjycannon

The Millennial Trains Project (MTP) is seeking applicants from young creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs for a cross-country road trip from the Bay Area to D.C., August 8-17.  (They’re also planning two other tracks, the South (L.A. to Miami in January 2014) and the North (Portland to Boston in June 2014).)

What are millennials and why trains?  Millennials are 18-34 and optimistic about making a difference, and trains have always connected people and commerce, since way before the Internet.  (For more, check out MTP’s FAQ; those are the first two things on it.)

The project is inspired by a similar trip in India, which has led to successful startup businesses, due to the creativity that is bound to occur when entrepreneurs and artists are brought together to collaborate.  As MTP Founder and CEO Patrick Dowd told me:

“One of the most high probability ways to foster innovation is to gather diverse people in close quarters and have them work together to spawn ideas.”

Applications are due July 1, but applying early is encouraged, as the process is rolling; the first person to receive $5,000 in crowdfunding in each of 10 specified categories gets a spot on the train.  Many applications have already been submitted and are in the process of getting funding.

It will be interesting to see what types of disruptive innovation come out of this train ride.

It’s no secret that the San Francisco Bay Area is home to two things: a hyper-connected technology savvy population and one of the more diehard fan bases in baseball’s San Francisco Giants.  Now, those two things may be coming together to make one of our national pastime’s honored traditions — fan voting for the All Star team — dominated by the San Francisco Giants.

As of June 4th, Giants position players are currently leading the ballot at catcher and third base, and are in second place at first base, second base and shortstop.  Additionally, they have outfielders close on the tail of the final third spot in sixth and eighth place.  The only player on that list remotely deserving of a starting All Star spot is starting catcher Buster Posey.  Giants third baseman Pedro Sandoval is having an average year, easily outpaced by the Mets’ David Wright, Cardinals’ Matt Carpenter, Reds’ Todd Frazier and Padres’ Chase Headly.  Journeyman second baseman Marco Scutaro is having a career year and might deserve backup consideration to the Reds’ Brandon Phillips.  But otherwise, none of these players have any business being All Stars.  Yet, if the final weeks’ voting trends occur as expected, you should see a National League All Star team with at least three, if not as many as six, Giants out of the eight elected starters.

At first one would expect that the Giants’ home attendance is the main part of the cause.  But they are actually second in home attendance, behind the Dodgers and slightly ahead of the Cardinals.  If attendance were the cause, one would also expect the Dodgers and Cardinals to also be faring well in All Star balloting.  They are not, with just one player between the two still in contention, Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, and he is a long shot to pass the Giants’ Buster Posey.

And 2013 is no fluke.  In 2012, the Giants started three players and successfully executed a final week campaign that saw Sandoval pass David Wright.  So, what is happening here?  Why are the Giants dominating the balloting compared to others, even teams with similar-to-better attendance figures?  The answer is a combination of social media, in-stadium wifi, a tech-savvy hyper-connected fan base and the league’s most sophisticated digital marketing team.

Wired magazine captured what was happening last year:

Two years after a major victory, the Giants organization bolstered its marketing and social media efforts to get its players into the All Star Game. Through Twitter, Facebook and Google+, San Francisco Giants social media gurus posted messages urging fans to vote. TV, radio and banner ads also provided near-constant reminders.

While fans watched games at AT&T Park, the Giants’ SoMa-based ballpark, messages on the scoreboard told them to cast their All Star votes on brand-new HP touchscreen all-in-one computers installed at various locations inside the park. AT&T iPhone-toting spectators enjoyed signal boosters so they could vote while knocking back a beer at their seat. And those on a different wireless network could use the stadium’s WiFi service to connect with the mobile voting site.

The Mets, whose David Wright fell victim to his trend in 2012, don’t have in-stadium wifi and didn’t have the technology or social media sophistication of the Giants.  New York Mets blogger Matthew Cerrone summed up the difference:

Here’s the thing, the Giants…[a]re widely considered to be the best organization in sports at connecting with and motivating fans to act online. The Giants also have vote-enabled kiosks in their ballparks, in addition to traditional ballots, as well as free Wi-Fi throughout the park, which makes it easier for fans to vote at games using their mobile phone.

Media people in baseball all say results are typically fueled by in-stadium voting during the last two weeks that votes can be cast, whether with online or paper ballot.

The Mets do not have free Wi-Fi. Actually, it’s quite difficult to keep a consistent connection on your phone in Citi Field. Also, in order to make kiosks most effective you need lots and lots of people in the ballpark, which the Mets do not have these days.

Technology can be leveraged in the strangest ways these days, and baseball’s All Star game is learning its power.  Kudos to the San Francisco Giants and their fans for realizing this.

So when you are watching the American League take on the San Francisco Giants as opposed to the National League All Stars at, ironically, the Mets home Citi Field on July 16, remember that it was a team leveraging technology and a diehard tech-savvy fan base, not democracy, that led to that result.

Over the weekend, the New York Times’ Bits blog featured a post by Quentin Hardy, summarizing a talk given by Kate Crawford, a Microsoft Research employee, at a Berkeley I School conference. The (somewhat provocative) title of the post is “Why Big Data is Not Truth” and it makes the rather uncontroversial conclusion, by way of a quotation from Ms. Crawford, that “We need to think about how we will navigate these [big data] systems. Not just individually, but as a society.” It gets there, however, by arguing against a number of strawmen surrounding big data that I’ve heard elsewhere and which I wanted to highlight.

First, Ms. Crawford sets up the “myth” that big data is objective, which she then dismantles, in part by pointing out that the users of Twitter skew toward the young, urban, and affluent. While this weekend’s protesters in Gezi Park may disagree with this characterization (fun fact: around 90% of the tweets using the various hashtags associated with the protests are coming from local Turkish users, and around 88% are in Turkish), the broader point that Crawford seems to be making — that the data in our big data system is inherently biased in various ways and we must accommodate that truth — is a well understood limitation of all statistical systems and at the same time is no reason to stop engaging in statistics. What wasn’t mentioned in the Times post, however, was the way in which big data attempts to compensate for the biases in statistical modeling through larger and larger data sets. No data set is ever perfect but the more you have, the closer to “truth” you can get.

Secondly, the Times piece has Crawford questioning the myth that big data doesn’t discriminate. She points out that even anonymized data can have information such as gender, race, and sexual orientation extracted from it by a determined analyst. By pointing out this supporting fact, it seem to me that she undermines her argument. Indeed, big data doesn’t discriminate. Big data is just a term for the force multipliers that come into play when you cram a lot of information into one system. People discriminate. How any one entity uses big data should be examined for discrimination. Casting the blame on big data itself is meaningless.

Finally, Ms. Crawford sets up as one of her myths the idea that “you can opt-out.” This is a somewhat misleading myth to put forward, because in some cases you can actually opt-out, and in others you can’t, and that’s how it should be. For example, many websites collect large-scale data about how people use the website itself. Which pages they visit, in which order, where they linger, and what they breeze by. That information is usually called web analytics and its used to modify websites so that people find what they’re looking for faster and easier. Similarly, Google scans the queries that its users input for various terms that they’ve learned are associated with flu outbreaks, and uses that information to predict the impact of the flu state-by-state. As a user you cannot, and should not be able to, opt-out of this collection.

On the other hand, there are some collections of data that you can opt-out of, such as for interest-based advertising. In these circumstances, Ms. Crawford claims, companies can change their terms and conditions, and she points out that Instagram recently did just that to expand the sharing for photos uploaded to the site. She then laments the lack of a paid option at Instagram that would avoid this sort of sharing. She seems to disregard, however, the vast competition in online photo storage, including Flickr, Picasa, Imgur, TwitPic, etc, etc, etc. Many of these other options allow you to carefully control who gets to see your photos, or you can use a service like Dropbox (which does allow you to pay for storage) if you want to share them with nobody at all.

Big data is at the end of the day just a tool. Like all other tools, its results should be examined for efficacy and desired outcomes. In that, I suspect Ms. Crawford and I probably agree. The ways that she gets to her conclusion, however, are suspect and should be examined closely.