Most expect it to end in the Fourth Quarter of this year. If that does not happen, that could really take a chunk out of the rally and make 2020 difficult. Plus, trade. That agreement still has to be signed. President trump indicated that could happen over the next few weeks. Then we are looking at phase 2. 2020 could bring some new risks that are not priced in, at least not now. Kurt certainly something we will be following. Thanks to bloombergs Abigail Doolittle for that update. The final stretch of the Holiday Season and shipping deadlines loom. Amazon cites a decline in fedexs delivery performance. Here with us, spencer, who covers amazon for bloomberg news. What is happening here . Spencer you basically have a big fat vote of noconfidence in fedex from amazon as we enter the Holiday Season. These are the dates that people decide, will i buy this online and hope it gets here in time for christmas or not. Amazon has narrowed the amount of time people are willing to make that call. Amazon thinks fedex cannot meet the pledge for prime delivery. Kurt i am wondering why there is heightened attention on this right now . Spencer they analyze this and figure out, when will the delivery cut off feet, who can we count on, who can we not . As amazon emerges as more of a logistics provider, yes, indeed they will be a threat to Companies Like fedex and ups, they are creating their own logistics operation, there is heightened sensitivity to this kind of news. Kurt how are amazon merchants reacting so far . Spencer some merchants who rely on this service. If you basically have your Holiday Plans set out and you know who your carrier will be, if you have committed to buying a certain amount of capacity from fedex and you have a rate you are comfortable with, it is extremely difficult for you. All of a sudden, you have to find alternatives. Ups will charge you handsomely deliver packages now even if they have room. Kurt is there anything they can do or is this kind of out of their hands . Spencer it is definitely out of their hands. It is a race to find an alternative. We never know. Every Holiday Season, ecommerce sales grow by double digits. Every year, it is a new rates to find new capacity. That is one of the reasons amazon launched this business to begin with. They saw demand where they thought their partners did not appreciate the extent to which ecommerce demand was going to grow. Basically, they have to scramble right now to find a truck to take a package to their customer. Kurt obviously, regulators are looking at tech right now for a lot of antitrust reasons. Do you think this has a big impact on a lot of the antitrust stuff going on in the Tech Industry . Spencer because amazon is an ecommerce platform, ecommerce marketplace. There are estimates and the u. S. That amazon controls 70 or more of ecommerce marketplace sales, like ebay, or walmart has a marketplace now. Amazon clearly dominates online marketplace sales. If they can use that dominance to shift more business towards their logistics services, that can be an antitrust nono. That will be important to watch because that is something ups and fedex do not have. If amazon is using that cloud to steal business away from them, that can be something alarming. Kurt thank you. Spencer soper in seattle. Uber has lost a court bid that would require them to reclassify drivers as employees. A judge refused to dismiss the case entirely. A decision stemmed from a driver filing a complaint saying that uber failed to pay for Services Based on how he was classified. Coming up, moderators stop hate speech and report crime. But some moderators say the job is too much for their Mental Health. If you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio, the bloomberg app, bloomberg. Com, and in the u. S. , on sirius xm. Kurt content moderation is becoming a bigger challenge as tech giants host more and more content online. The job itself is causing trauma. Casey newton has written about this exclusively for the verge. He has a new article out about moderation at google and youtube. Casey this story is basically two stories in one. I tell the story of these lowpaid immigrant contractors who work in austin, texas, making 18. 50 an hour, working on what youtube calls the ve, violent extremism. I also tell the story of a young woman who had a great salary, goldplated benefits, but after a year she got ptsd as well. Kind of a story about the Different Levels of care you get depending on whether you are a contractor or not. Kurt you wrote a similar investigation into facebooks content moderator practices. Did you notice a lot of similarities or were there a lot of differences . Casey definitely similar in a lot of ways. The Companies Operate this part of their business like a call center. There were noticeable differences. Facebook gives their employees about nine minutes a day to decompress. Google gives them two hours. That, i think, is better. The average moderator is having kurt mark, give us context of how things have changed over the past couple of years. Mark in 2017, they had this big hiring. Googlewide, they hired 10,000 moderators. Youtube really cut its teeth a decade ago with the copyright fight with viacom, all these legal challenges where they built up their liability, we will release it to the best of our abilities according to our guidelines, but they had a very handsoff policy. 2017 was a flashpoint year where they had a series of advertising and content problems. Clearly, they have a long way to go. They, like facebook, are also pushing for algorithmic and sort of Machine Learning systems. Kurt a few months ago, facebook raised the minimum wage for a lot of their contract workers. What are you hearing from the companies in terms of policies . Casey the biggest fallout so far has been that one of the Major Companies doing the work said they will exit the business. Some combination of brand risk and business trouble led them to say to heck with it. A lot of these big consultants are in over their head. They see that giant contract, they want the 100 million or 200 million, then they get these folks in the door and figure out they are over their head. Kurt to do that, there needs to be another solution, you talked about maybe transitioning this work to official intelligence. To artificial intelligence. Both facebook and google so that was the plan at some point. Do you have a sense of how realistic that is . Mark with video, it is still a long way to go. The more pressing problem is political. Where do you draw the line . Child pornography and terrorism videos. There is an active debate about white supremacist, nationalist content. All the platforms are running up against this pressure. Politically, they are being seen as anticonservative. I think that will be a bigger hurdle than the technical one. Mark it seems to me that facebook and google are dealing with a lot of the same issues. Are there any ways they are working together . Mark the hash network they have around child pornography and terrorism. They are lobbying to repeal section 230 which is shielding them from certain liability. They are working together in d. C. To make sure they can continue to have this user generated advertising Business Model in the future. Kurt casey, when we read the personal stories of the people you have spoken with, it is pretty disheartening, to say the least. Do you have a sense or do these companies have any sense of the longterm impact . Casey no, and that is one thing i find frustrating, that they are not investing in finding out the longterm consequences of this work. They are not isolating the folks that are in these queues. Even though, for four years now, they are seeing employees going to their managers and saying, i need to take medical leave because i have ptsd. Kurt 2020, you talked about how some of these thirdparty groups may get out of the business entirely. Obviously facebook and google still have millions of posts. What happens . Casey i am cynical and i think there will always be some consultant that will step up and say, we will do it. The question, what sort of conditions will facebook and google tolerate . Kurt both of you, keep up the good work. Thank you for being here. The verges casey newton, and Bloomberg Technologys mark berman. Coming up, technology and the relationship with content creators. And Bloomberg Technologys livestreaming on twitter. Check us out technology. Follow our Global News Network at quicktake. This is bloomberg. Kurt 2019 has not been an easy year for social media platforms. Very people who built their careers on these platforms. To discuss, we are joined by john shahidi. We just had people talking about a lot of the issues faced by content moderation. I am curious if all of this criticism has affected your relationship with the youtube and instagrams of the world. John it has not necessarily affected the relationship. The content and platform world, you always have to adapt to new policies, algorithm changes. It is just another thing we have to adapt to. Kurt i know you work with a whole range of different platforms. When you are selling to a brand or partner come how do they view youtube versus instagram or tiktok, all of these platforms . Are there certain ones that they are more or less comfortable with . John the brands we have been working with are most interested in youtube. We have worked with google to create longer content. When people come to shots studios, they want something that will create more engagement. Kurt the election is coming up next year. Do you think it is something we will see a lot of, a lot of politics coverage from creators . John i think so. I think you will see creators speak up a lot more on different topics out there that are important, whether it is politics, climate change, debt. I think you will see creators start speaking up more to educate their audience. Kurt what other kind of stuff do you have in the hopper . I imagine, on the journalism side, kind of a 2020 coverage plan, what stuff will we see from you . John over the last three years since we made the pivot into shots studios, our big focus has been comedy. The last year and a half, we have gotten into music and used youtube to successfully launch the careers, including lele pons. We are going to start creating more educational videos that inform our audience about what is important in the world. Kurt we mentioned igtv a little earlier. You were at the launch about 18 months ago. It does not seem that it has caught on the way instagram had hoped. What do they need to do to get igtv more on the map . John i think it takes time. The User Behavior on instagram is so different than a video platform. It took youtube time. 10 years ago, you are watching quick home videos on youtube, charlie bit my finger types of videos. Then it was hard to watch a five minute, six minute video. Now, the trending section on youtube, half of the videos are over 20 minutes long. It takes a while to create User Behavior. I think it will take instagram a little bit of time. I am a believer in it. I just think it takes some time. Everyone has been used to uploading photos and short form video. Kurt one of the ways instagram made a lot of news was they said, we are going to test removing the like count from the feed. How does that fit with some of your creators . Is that something you are they are taking about . John it is going to be an interesting move. I am an advocate of positivity online. I think removing the likes will harm the business a little but i think it will help it in the long run. Comparing posts to previous posts, start thinking, that is where creators come in, the toxicity of social media comes in. I think when you start removing that, you can share what your life is about, and that is what social media is about. Kurt john shahidi, from shots studios, thank you. How vsco is taking on instagram without likes or comments. This is bloomberg. Kurt this is Bloomberg Technology and global link where we joined bloomberg australia to bring you the latest in global news. Lets take a look at the top level tech stories of the day. Paul they are getting out of uber holdings quickly. The cofounder has sold 350 million more shares. It brings has proceeds to more than 2. 1 billion. His remaining uber stake remains about 1 5 of his 3 billion fortune. A japanese banker is taking a hard look at its most important clients. Some say they are less comfortable with his management of softbank. Softbank reported 6. 5 billion loss the last quarter, blamed on falling valuations of investments of wework and uber. Billionaire deborahs mavericks Dallas Mavericks owner mark cuban is selling one of his investments and buying a technology company. Cuban is the biggest investor. Synergy provides its analytics to a number of College Sports teams. Those are the top global tech stories we are watching. Kurt it is a social media platform redefining the way genz is posting genz is posting. It has taken the social media scene by storm. It has generatedgavv generated we are joined by the cofounder. This has been around since 2011. I feel like this summer was the big moment for you with this. How does that happen this far into your lifecycle . We have been growing and it is something we have seen this rising trend definitely this summer with the meme, it went to all new heights. I think a lot of that has been a lot of how we have bit built this from the beginning. Vsco was built without likes or comments. It is a safe space to be who you are and create and express yourself. What we are seeing specifically with genz is they are looking for this outlet where they can share how they see the world. Shery the thing about social media and what attracts these young people is engagement you see. How do you compete with axel apps like tictoc . Tiktok . Joel what you will hear say is it is more like a social network. To broadcast to as many people. With tiktok it is to find humor and fun and pass the time. Vsco is not about sharing how you want the world to see you but sharing about how you see the world. Kurt unlike most social media platforms, your business is not advertised independent. You have a sub scription offering. How do you convince people to pay for something what often they have a lot of other free outlets to post or share . Joel from the beginning vsco has built something of value people would be willing to pay for. There has always been a component of praying paying for. Tools. In 2017 we brought that into a complete package. Last year we launched with video that brought up our membership to over 2 million members. We see that continue to grow. Shery tell us about your acquisitions and how you plan to grow besides editing and photo sharing. Joel like i mentioned previously, one of the biggest growths last year was a lock in functionality. With a recent acquisition we made, we are excited by the technology they were building. They would just about to launch. Helping to advise them on that launch. Kurt you just completed a new study on genz. These are a lot of your users, teenagers. What was most interesting that you learned . Joel we surveyed over 1000 genz members on vscos platform. The one thing that was not surprising to me was over 56 mentioned that through social media they have been able to find their group, their friends or where they fit in. A lot of that was also around 46 of them identified as an activist through this, or 46 identified as creative. The flipside of that is that 41 said they were feeling really anxious about going home for the holidays and not being accepted for who they are. This is really something that i think has grown at a much larger scale. 46 said they feel judged by their social media posts. When i was young it was really only what i said around the table, and now i cannot even imagine going home for the holidays and having my entire family judge everything i posted the previous year. Kurt i am not sure that is genz specific. I am sure a lot of people can relate. We were talking earlier about instagram, removing likes from the feed. You have never had like counts on vsco. Tell me about the decision to do that. You were ahead of your time a little bit. Joel we were very intentional. One of our biggest inspirations around that was it is like an actual museum. When you walk into a museum you are not seeing the net worth of the creator of the wall, you are not seeing how many people have walked through that day, you are definitely not seeing emojis at the bottom of the work to tell you what to think about it. For vsco it was how can you have this personal connection, and how does this inspire you to go and create . From the beginning we are a our communityted that way, and we really do welcome others to that because it really is a positive step and the right direction for Mental Health and impact social media has on people. Kurt interested to see if that translates to other bigger platforms as well. Joel, thank you so much for being here. Plenty more global stories ahead. This is bloomberg. Kurt this week in time we are looking back at 2019 to bring you the biggest tech trends. Big Companies Like facebook, twitter and will headed to google headed to capitol hill to testify in front of congress in regards to potential regulation. The biggest technical unicorns went to public. The year would not be complete if we didnt mention the streaming wars. One of the biggest trends is cutting the cord. Theres an endless amount to watch and the list isnt getting shorter. By mid2020 forbes of the most Viable Companies will introduce their own streaming services. They are spending billions of dollars to compete with established players netflix, amazon, and hulu in what has become known as the streaming wars. Disney plus and apple tv class kicked off in november. At 6. 99 a month, disney plus is about half as much as netflix. Apple tv plus is cheaper at 4. 99 but with only a Small Library of original programs. Two other services to watch for, hbo max from at t, and peacock from comcast. Why now . As more people cancel their cable and sidelights of subscriptionse the higher netflixs stock rose, the higher. For those companies to ignore the change in viewing habits. An october poll of consumers with broadband, 63 said they watched their favorite show online. With the u. S. Producers making at least 100 more shows a year now than in previous years, the pace does not seem to be slowing down. Taylor riggs, bloomberg news, san francisco. Kurt to further discuss the streaming wars of 2019 we are joined by rich greenfield and greg portillo. On the surface when i think about all the Different Services i think they are all going to be competing with each other, eating each other alive. You do not really see it that way. Why is that . Rich that is the real fallacy. We like to call it streaming wars and i think the press and the industry likes to talk about one of these eating into the other. But the reality is we are going to see an explosion of streaming services. The consumer wants to stream video. You have seen obviously with what has happened with netflix and hulu and amazon. But even look at youtube and how much time is being spent. You have Jeffrey Katzenberg introducing qwibi next year. People want to stream content. You have 85 million subscribers to multichannel television. My guess is the number of homes that actually have to have sports and news, the only way they can get that is a linear tv package. That is 40 to 50 million homes. You have 30 to 40 million homes that will come out of the paytv bundle, the cut the cordtight bundling, and they will find new ways of adding content whether netflix, amazon, hulu, disney plus, apple tv plus. All of these are far easier and cheaper to subscribe to than cable was. You can sign up, you can cancel, you can have a few. This really empowers the consumer to create a bundle they want versus being forced to take channels they never wanted. How many people are paying 900 espn anda month for never watch it . Kurt i do feel like this can be somewhat confusing to the general consumer when you think about all these players and price points. Obviously some of them are advertising but are not yet available. Are these streaming services doing a good job of actually marketing themselves, and how is that playing out . Greg one of the challenges they have is they are drawing so much attention. The narrative around the streaming services, what they are going to offer and when, is difficult for them to control. And that makes it pretty challenging for them to get the right message out around price points and when content will be available. As we were mentioning, we are already talking about content and networks that will be available in 2020, and that kind of mutes the conversation about what is available today. Rich one of the things you should think about is that the consumer really looks to one of these services to focus on. Every streaming Service Needs to create to create addicts. The services that have one or two shows you are watching, you are not going to build that habitual daily behavior where you just go on looking to watch something. You may go onto disney plus because he want to watch the men because you want to watch but there isian, not much to watch at lot as an adult unless you want to watch old marvel or lucasfilm shows. There is not a lot to actually watch. When you are thinking where to build that daily behavior going on to find something to be entertained, sort of like when you turned on the cable box and scrolled through to find something to watch, i think that is what netflix has tried to create where there is something for everybody and always something new, always a new show coming on. And they are trying to build that addictive behavior every night youre going back look and for something new or continuing what you were doing last night. That is very different than most of these other services which are not really in that same game. Kurt you mentioned the mandalorian and disney plus. Apple plus is trying to do a similar big highlight show to get people interested. I am curious, how do you feel that those two have hit the market at the end of the year . Rich it is hard to deny that disney plus has been an incredible early success story. They have already announced 10 million subscribers on day one. Obviously part of that is people who locked in multiyear deals. Still, it is a staggering number. The team working for bob iger on rolling this out didnt did an incredible job. They are probably heading towards 20 plus million subscribers by the end of 2019. In a couple months they will have added 20 million subscribers. That is a staggering number. The question is how do you grow from there. Theyre needs to be a lot more programming to keep you interested. Right now youre burning through a lot of library. People are real watching hannah montana, wizards of waverly place. When they get through that they will realize there is not a lot of fresh content, especially for a more mature audience. That is where it will be interesting to see how much does disney invest and how much are they relying on legacy movies and legacy content. And will that really be enough to mitigate churn . They are collapsing windows so movies will not be on disney plus for six months, those windows will close. Apple it is early. They are playing the long game. There is a lot of content coming. They are pretty pleased with how their shows have done initially. But there is a tremendous cadence of original programming. In a year you will see a Different Service with a lot more to do. A new show a couple weeks ago came on. Youll see in much more robust offering the next 12 to 18 months out of apple. Kurt we have been talking about cord cutting for a number of years. I know it is moving pretty quickly in the world of technology. But it is still kind of slow for some consumers to get there. Im wondering if there is anything specific that will happen in 2020 that makes you think this might be a banner year for actual cord cutting. Greg i think the expertise that the companies have in terms of getting the right content to the right consumers in a format they want is really what will accelerate that cord cutting. Because what Consumers Want is control. They want the ability to choose what they watch, when they watch, how deep they watch it, and how they explore. In 2020 as we see Companies Get more sophisticated in how they bundle and package, that will start tipping over those consumers that have been sitting on the sideline waiting to see what happens. Rich when you think of your viewers, there was a sense they were watching what these executives were saying. Most of them were talking about, if you look at this point last year, late 2018, most executives some Media Companies were talking about cord cutting slowing. They were saying things are Getting Better because of who thef hulu live and youtube tv. And here we are a year later and you have gone from 1 to 2 loss of subscribers to, you are going to exit 2019 probably down 5 . We have never, ever in the history of this industry seen a 5 drop yearoveryear in subscribers. I think a lot of them hope it stabilizes or gets better in 2020. When you look at what you just showed in that promo heading into this segment of all the services coming on, and you going to all the content of those services, it is really hard to believe the trend that started in 2019 do not exacerbate meaningfully in 2020. I think he could see 5 to 7 loss of subscribers in 2020. That is where you start to get real fear about what cord cutting is doing to the legacy media industry. Greg the question that comes to my mind when i think about that is is it cord cutting or switching channels . Because you have to have an alternate way to monetize those. The companies that are moving into this space now are creating that path to capture the new digital consumer, similar to the way retailers did when they built up their dot com capabilities. Rich the only difference is you have Different Levels of profitability. That will never be a business as good as legacy cable networks. At the peak 100 Million People paying for espn, 8 plus a month, one probably no more than 25 million wanted to pay for it. The idea of paying for something monthly a year at a high price for something you do not want or use, that is hard to recreate in the digital world. When you think about netflixs global subscribers, presumably none of them are paying for it who really do not want to because it is literally click to cancel. You are moving from a world where there was a lot of breakage where people were paying for something they did not want, to now you have to earn every single subscriber. Kurt thank you both. I appreciate all the thoughts but we have to end it there. Thank you guys both for joining us. Still ahead, only a couple weeks left in 2019. We will be told productions for predictions for 2020. This is bloomberg. Kurt not a good year for some tech names. Wework backed out of public listing plans, while others are trading well below their ipo prices. Here to talk 2020 predictions and what he thinks for calls for next year we have john chambers. Also the former ceo of cisco. Thank you for being here. Lets get right to it. What will happen next year . John we take some risks and we hit them all and you and i are going to vegas. First prediction contrary to what everyone is saying, i do not think there will be a major change in the economy in 2020. I have heard for three years how everyone thinks a recession is coming. At the end of the next year we will be sitting here in december and say it was another solid economic year. The geopolitical issues will continue to be challenging, lots of ups and downs and surprises. But i think the fed for the first time in my lifetime has been proactive. I think the economy this next year will do solid. My first prediction is it will be a good but not great year. Second, in terms of technology, the next Major Technology behemoth will come out of artificial intelligence, computing cloud, networking, everything moving to the edge. We have always had a change every 10 years in the next major leader. I think one of the startups today will emerge and you will back and say that was annexed the next apple, the next google, etc. Kurt and who it will be . John i think it will be one of the startups. Hopefully one of mine. None of your readers have ever heard about them. A company that maybe is on the fastest path to unicorn status. All of them with great profitability. It was a poor year for startups. 45 or 50 of them were pulled from the market this year. 50 from last year. Many of the companies, their best day was right after they went public. I think youll see a return back to the future. It will be not just about growth but about profitability and free cash flow. I think next year will be a super year for startups, but it will be those who learn to focus on profitability and free cash flow. A tough thing to do if you have not built that into your culture. Making that transition is hard. Kurt tell me a bit about china. Obviously that is a topic of conversation now. Is the tension going to continue well into 2020 . John it is going to continue. I have been a huge backer of china. The first big decision i made in 1995 was to double down and china with cisco. A huge believer in the chinese people. It developed as a winlose scenario with the u. S. Losing. So the changes in terms of getting a reasonably leveled Playing Field where American Business and job creation in america has a level Playing Field with china, just like Chinese Business has in the u. S. , has to be fixed. Intellectual property, security, etc. Phase one was a good first step. It is so important we did not back off in terms of areas that have to be resolved in terms of that level Playing Field, intellectual Property Protection and securities. I think we will navigate through that. The question you didnt ask me, next president . Kurt he said next president you were going to call the election. John we will see how close we are. In may 2016, on tv like this one hillary was ahead by 10 points, who i voted for by the way, you asked me who was going to win, i said trump. I think people are making it too complex. America wants to change. Who is going to win this time . It will be trump if democrats stay on the left. If they pick one of the front runners today, trump will win. If democrats move to the middle and get a moderate, i think the democrat moderate will win. Kurt we will hold you to that. That was john chambers. Thank you for joining us. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Bloomberg technology of course is livestreaming on twitter. Check us out at technology and be sure to follow our global breaking news network at quick take on twitter. This is bloomberg. Bloomberg daybreak middle east. President trump says a deal could be finalized within two weeks. Tumblethe pound takes a and Boris Johnson plans to guarantee no extension to the brexit transition phase. Further prolonging the turmoil. Click saudi arabias biggest bank scrap plans to merge w