Tech Companies Take Center Stage in Today’s News

A number of news reports and stories by major international media outlets on Monday shined a light on the rising importance of technology companies in the world economy, as well as their intersection with the issues of privacy and political conflicts.

In India, the police announced that they visited a Twitter office to deliver a notice to the Managing Director about an investigation about what the ruling party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is saying is misinformation about failures in managing the coronavirus pandemic.

The problem resulted from the social media network tagging a post by Sambit Patra, a spokesman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, as manipulated media.

The Indian government recently objected to Twitter policies, asking for several posts to be removed due to spreading rumors, mainly criticizing handling the pandemic.

The role of social media networks in the political stage and the news industry recently came under scrutiny, especially since the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. An incident that led to the permanent suspension of former President Donald Trump’s accounts, as he questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential elections that he lost to the incumbent president, Joe Biden. The move was also criticized by some conservatives, as a violation of the freedom of speech rights.

Back to India, where Facebook told the government that the privacy of WhatsApp users is its highest priority.

This followed recent criticism from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology about the new privacy policy applied by WhatsApp, asking the messaging application to withdraw the recent updates and threatening legal actions otherwise.

According to Reuters, India is WhatsApp’s biggest market with over 500 million users.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom (UK) welcomed the United States’ commitment to reaching an agreement about taxing large tech companies, stressing the importance of fair taxation that reflects their economic activities.

It was also reported that over the past few days, BT started replacing Huawei’s 5G networks in the UK, according to British media.

Speaking of Huawei, the company’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, has called upon the Chinese technology giant to lead the world in software development, as it continues to struggle with sanctions imposed by the U.S.

Reuters reported that the memo focused on the area of software development as being outside of American control, promising it will provide greater independence and autonomy to the company.

It is worth noting that Huawei, a leader in hardware manufacturing, already has an operating system and a cloud platform.

Huawei was put on Trump’s blacklist of Chinese companies, in the midst of rising trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.

So far, the Biden administration has not provided any signals or intentions of reversing this policy.

The sanctions also banned Google, the developer of Android, from supporting Huawei’s mobile and smartphones with the operating system or application store.

Zhengfei’s notes reportedly spoke about dominating European, Asian, and African markets to face the U.S. influence and standards.