Business Weekly
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2020
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are big technology companies the modern versions of monopolistic oil barons or simply innovative companies that provide a service to enthusiastic consumers? That's the question we'll be looking at on this edition of Business Weekly as Democratic lawmakers in the US release a report detailing uncompetitive behaviour. We also look at the allegations made by a former Facebook employee who says she feels she has blood on her hands because the company failed to adequately act on political misinformation and propaganda she reported on the site. We head to Venice where we hear from workers in the tourism sector who are desperate for cruise ships to return; meanwhile environmental campaigners want them to stay away. We get to hear how human beings need to adapt to working in extreme heat and why musicians want the British government to support them during the pandemic. Presented by Lucy Burton and produced by Clare Williamson. (Image: Social network icons on phone screen, Image credit: Press Association)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, if a week is a long time in politics, a day is a long time in business at the moment, |
| 0:06.1 | and it can be exhausting trying to keep up with all the latest developments. |
| 0:10.1 | That's why we've interrupted your Business Daily pod feed to bring you Business Weekly, |
| 0:14.4 | a new weekend programme which brings you an hour of the most interesting, inspiring and thought-provoking stories you might have missed |
| 0:21.7 | from the BBC's business team. |
| 0:28.1 | Hello and welcome to Business Weekly with Lucy Burton. |
| 0:31.8 | It took 16 months, but laid out bare in a 450-page document were the results of a US congressional report into the |
| 0:39.5 | behaviour of the world's biggest technology companies, Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon. It was a |
| 0:46.4 | full-throated condemnation of the dominance of these companies. One of the biggest criticisms leveled at |
| 0:52.8 | them was that they have hindered innovation and behaved undemocratically. |
| 0:57.5 | A word that incidentally has been levelled in a slightly different context this week, |
| 1:01.7 | specifically against Facebook, as a former employee has said she has blood on her hands |
| 1:07.1 | after struggling to contain the political misinformation published on the social media platform. |
| 1:13.0 | So we'll be taking a closer look at the role Facebook plays in the spread of toxic content. |
| 1:18.4 | And we know that the coronavirus has changed the way many of us work, for the short term at least. |
| 1:23.2 | But how will we adapt to working in the extreme heat threatened by climate change? |
| 1:27.9 | We have a special report coming up. |
| 1:31.4 | First, though, acting like the railroad tycoons and oil barons of yesterday year, |
| 1:37.1 | big technology companies have used their monopoly to run the market whilst also competing in it, |
| 1:42.9 | crushing competition and reducing consumer choice. |
| 1:46.5 | So says a scathing report by an antitrust committee in the US. |
| 1:51.5 | This is not breaking news for most tech watchers who have long warned of the market dominance |
... |
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