“Legislation should prevent discrimination and self-preferencing, and put a price on data extraction-and in some cases cap excessive fees.” The legendary thinker + doer Tim Wu www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

this is the craziest thing I've read in a long time???? Meta projected that 10% of its revenue last year, $16 billion, came from scams. Meta intentionally charges the scammers MORE and knows that people who click on scams are more likely to see more of them www.reuters.com/investigatio...

#CIGF2025 kicks off on November 13 with a panel discussion into Canada’s digital sovereignty. Don’t miss voices from policy, tech and academia on shaping our digital future. 🇨🇦 @vassb.bsky.social, @mgeist.bsky.social, @mariejulie.bsky.social. Register: www.eventbrite.com/e/canadian-l...

This is a great opportunity for provinces! Ontario has some updates to the Consumer Protection Act that gesture on this, but we could be more explicit, intentional.

"Eight of the 10 biggest stocks in the S&P 500 are tech stocks. Those eight companies account for 36 per cent of the entire US market’s value, 60 per cent of the gains in the index since the market bottomed in April and almost 80 per cent of the S&P 500’s net income growth in the last year."

Happy Amazon Prime Day! Amazon collects mountains of data about how you use the service, but there is a setting you can change to make it harder for the company to use that data to sell you more things. #OptOutOctober www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

"Unless Canada acts, we risk outsourcing not only our data but also our ability to govern wellness itself." policyoptions.irpp.org/2025/10/heal...

"The growing use of AI in digital espionage, cybercrimes and influence operations requires stronger guardrails and policymakers who do more than cheerlead the tech."

The “rip-off economy”, in which firms profit from opacity, confusion or inertia, is meeting its match. But the extent to which AI can eliminate this market depends on two things

does anyone want to be our friend 🥺👉👈

The problem that ticketing legislation aims to solve isn’t to make events any less appealing or special. Rather, ticket legislation can curb the ability of persons (and computer bots) to independently capitalize on that.

Platform regulation is politics is censorship is trade.

“we need to learn the hard lesson that this is the way it’s going to be. There is no end to Mr. Trump’s tactical bullying & bluster. [He] views any deal not as the end of a process but as the stepping stone to the next set of demands. He will break any deal as soon as he feels it’s in his interest”

Fighting wildfires should be counted as defence spending, too The latest from the Globe's business commentary, by Toby A.A. Heaps: www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...

It’s the logic of market competition, not rogue models, that drives the risks investors and the public now need disclosed by companies, write Dr. Ilan Strauss and Tim O’Reilly. They launched the AI Disclosures Project to ensure AI markets can benefit from proper information and technical standards.

Two long reads from the weekend that are lingering in my mind: the first was the New York Times' interview on Wikipedia and the attack on information. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/m...

“Sports betting is now legal everywhere—even in the states where it isn’t,” Marc Novicoff writes:

“No one can deny that the big tech platforms have become essential, the default infrastructure of much economic activity,” Tim Wu writes. “But being essential should not entail an unfettered power to extract wealth from everyone else.”

"We are right at the precipice where fascism can win globally." Leaders must now take a stand and treat digital sovereignty as more than just a catchphrase. Just as the government puts building codes in place to protect us, the same must be done for the virtual world.

“The people can take on corporate power when we act in large enough numbers,” Kabas told Ekō News. “This whole ordeal should serve as a warning to other companies who think bending to Trump’s will is going to work in their favor.”

Market regulation opportunities are my bat signal. When there is an opportunity to talk about how to make competition more fair or just make sense of how things work, I tend to appear. Here's a clip from the National earlier this week. GO JAYS! www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

"But if we ignore realities of how firms are competing or how they're structured, how they've evolved over time, then those conversations around things like barriers to entry or getting a new entrant to the marketplace are really difficult." #digitalsovereignty www.cbc.ca/news/busines...

What does real competition look like in the age of Big Tech? Moderator @vassb.bsky.social (Managing Director, @canadianshieldinstitute.ca) explores this question with Marcus Bokkerink and @lutherlowe.bsky.social. #AttnGovernOrBeGoverned #Attention2025 #techmonopolies #Competition

Ticketmaster, the online ticketing platform accused by the Federal Trade Commission of jacking up ticket resale prices, announced changes to its ticket sale practices in a letter to Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M.

World Series tickets now start at over $1,000. In 1992, they were $24 which is about $50 today. A beer at the game now costs more than a 1992 seat. When did baseball become a luxury good?

“Average musician makes $12 a month on Spotify. The fact that they are not even able to sell a record and it’s taken from them by rich motherfuckers on streaming platforms who get paid royally by record labels,Ticketmaster, merch companies. They’re all fucking getting paid, except for the musician.”

Amazon Web Services outage shows internet users ‘at mercy’ of too few providers, experts say

Between this and taking a 10% stake in Trilogy metals, the US will just keep buying up pieces of the country. I'm not seeing slogans having much affect on this, and neither is refusing to buy bourbon. I find this more unsettling than Trump's dementia-fueled rambling.

"🇨🇦 is finally waking up to the risks of relying on the US for digital infrastructure, we mustn't lose this momentum." Great new piece from one of our policy research associates @canadianshieldinstitute.ca Emily Osborne that helps to set up some of the market + governance Qs re: sovereign cloud.

"Lest it be forgotten, cultivating oligopolies rather than competition is more Canada’s economic forte. We have a banking oligopoly, an insurance oligopoly, a telecom oligopoly, an airline oligopoly, a retail-grocery oligopoly, big oil, big rail and a beer oligopoly too."

“Yet strangely governments in Canada act as though they can assert and protect Canadian sovereignty without involving Canadians themselves.”

The Federal Trade Commission removed several blog posts in recent months about open source and potential risks to consumers from the rapid spread of commercial AI tools.

The kind of culture war I can get behind 🎨 💃 🎭 www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/d72afc6...

No, it’s not a conspiracy theory: Your TV is probably spying on you. So is your fridge. Your doorbell, your security system, and your thermostat, too. The good news: You can turn that data collection off.

The weekend Globe and Mail is really good today.

Sometimes NO works from a policy perspective.

Interesting from @kylewilsontharp.bsky.social: neither the Zohran Mamdani nor the Andrew Cuomo campaign has "spent a single dollar on Facebook or Instagram advertising in the past three months." chaoticera.news/p/youtube-is-eating-cable-news

Private equity is swallowing up Canada’s mom-and-pop shops The latest from the Globe's business commentary, by Danny Parys: www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...

Announcement from PM Carney moments ago and this is good news. I've been working on this issue with @saulschwartz.bsky.social and @agenestgregoire.bsky.social for years. We've documented how many Canadians don't file and miss out on or loose benefits, .. 1/3

🚨Our 2025 Federal Election report is here and it should serve as a warning for Canada to act now to protect future elections. Canada’s 2025 federal election upheld its integrity, but exposed a digital ecosystem under mounting strain. Read on to learn about our key findings 🧵

"OpenAI is Canadian sovereign AI" is astonishing mental gymnastics and it gets worse the more you think about it

Water-hungry data centres are planned for drought-stricken regions across Canada. What will the AI data centre boom mean for communities? By @savannahridley.bsky.social: thenarwhal.ca/ai-data-cent...

“Everywhere we look, the world is ceding control to automatic systems that cannot be reasoned with like humans and whose decisions are often inscrutable, interrogated only after the damage has been done.”

Well, there's a jarring sequence of words to read. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/feat...

"We're watching, and you could get caught, and we will take you to court." Cineplex is headed to court to fight a decision — and record $38.9-million penalty — that experts say should serve as a warning for other companies. www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/business/cin...

Under assault from an increasingly aggressive and authoritarian United States, Canada's future is less secure than perhaps at any time in postwar history

"Quebec measures targeting retailers when it comes to sustainability of goods and planned obsolescence of products comes into effect today." Now do...the REST OF THE WORLD. globalnews.ca/news/1146531...

Prices rising largely as a result of the US imposing tariffs on Brazil, and Brazilian growers not selling to the market, forcing buyers to compete with alternate suppliers. Prices are not rising because of the size of the deficit, as Poilievre would have you believe.

Prediction markets like Kalshi, once known for offering wagers on elections, are now in the multibillion-dollar sports betting business and outside the reach of state regulations and taxes. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/u...

AI “actress” Tilly Norwood hit the red carpet this week. She’s a reminder that synthetic labour isn’t science fiction (!) and it’s already normalized in various corners of the internet. Can avatars be workers? When? And who gets to decide? PS. Bonkers post from Tyler Cowen below.