Hello, this is bbc news. The headlines. A record day for vaccines in england yesterday more than 444,000 doses were registered. But the Health Secretary issues a warning to those who have had them. We dont yet know how much the vaccine impacts on how much you transmit the virus, so thats why its so important that people continue to stay at home after theyve had the vaccine. Police fines as more than 300 people attend an illegal rave in east london. 0rganisers reportedly locked the doors from the inside to stop officers getting in. Severe weather warnings as snow and ice sweeps across the uk amid fears of travel disruption. Leaving the union the snp to present its National Assembly with what its calling a road map to a new referendum on scottish independence. And a dramatic rescue in china as 11 gold miners whod been trapped underground for two weeks are brought out alive. Now on bbc news, hardtalk. Welcome to hardtalk, im stephen sackur. Can and should anything be done to halt the inexorable rise of the western worlds Global Technology giants the likes of amazon, google and facebook . Over the past decade, we have seen these tech titans come to dominate data collection, cloud computing, retail, social media, publishing the list goes on. But now there is pushback from anti monopoly lawyers and sceptical politicians. My guest, American Lawyer lina khan, is in the vanguard of the movement to tame big tech. But whose interest is she serving . Lina khan in dallas, texas, welcome to hardtalk. Thanks for having me. Do you believe there is a new momentum behind the push to tame the big, the giant Technology Companies in the western world . Yes, i think there absolutely is. I think we have seen a transformation in Public Opinion over the last few years and the public case for how these firms have so much power and how they are wielding it in ways that harm our economy and our society i think have only become more apparent, such that now we see a wave of lawsuits Anti Trust Lawsuits as well as new regulatory proposals that would curb their power. But in a funny sort of way, what we have learned through the covid 19 pandemic is just how useful, how incredibly important these Technology Companies are im thinking of the likes of amazon, apple, google. We perhaps rely on them more now in this very restricted world of lockdowns than we ever have relied upon them before. I think thats absolutely right and i think what the pandemic has underscored for us is the degree to which these firms essentially provide infrastructure for the digital age. These firms control the Core Infrastructure for both commerce and communications and they are providing very valuable services, but it also means that you have a small group of private executives that are ultimately setting the rules of who gets to use the infrastructure and on what terms, and that approach is historically at odds with how we have treated infrastructure which has always been accountable to public rules and has had to meet a higher set of regulations. But in your daily life as you are right now at home in dallas, texas are you thinking to yourself, as you use your laptop and your smartphone, are you thinking to yourself oh, my god these services that i am getting actually dont work. Theyre utterly dysfunctional and they need to be changed because i dare say many people watching this around the world are not thinking that. Thats a great question. I think two things. One is i think even when services are good for consumers, they can be hurting a whole set of other interests, be it workers, be it new business formation, be it democracy at large. And second, you know, we it is really difficult to know what we are missing out on. One reason why the us in particular has focused so much on competition policy is because there has been a view that competition and forcing businesses to compete on the merits of their products and services is really one of the best ways to guarantee that consumers and users are getting the best products and services that are available. And when you instead have firms that gain monopoly power and are exercising that monopoly power in ways that inhibit new firms, new competitors, from competing on the merits of their own products and services, you know, you can lose years and years of innovation, years and years of superior products that users just never had access to because the incumbents, the giants, snuffed them out. So i think that counterfactual can be quite difficult to get at, but it is something that is very real to consider. Right, well, i want to dig deeper into that notion, that competition is not working and is not delivering for the public and specific sort of ways in which you can make that case a little later, but i do actually want to track backjust for a short while and ask you how you got into this, because your back story is fascinating. You came to the us from the uk as a kid with your family. You went through university, i believe you thought for a while you wanted to be a journalist and then you got very preoccupied with the law, but in particular with Anti Trust Law and the way that the us capitalist system works and the way its regulated by law. What what drove your fascination with anti trust . So one of the firstjobs i had after university was as a policy researcher and journalist, and my beat was to document how markets and economies across the us economy had really evolved over decades. So i did these deep dives into all sorts of sectors including agriculture, chicken farming, the seed industry, the airline industry, the Book Publishing industry, rental cars and what became clear after doing these deep dives is that there had been a systemic trend across the us economy towards increasing concentration across the board. So across sectors, markets had come to be controlled by a very small number of companies. And this was creating all sorts of problems for us as consumers but also for us as workers, as citizens, it had contributed to a decline in new business formation, and so here was this systemic problem across the economy and it was interesting to encounter because the us has a set of anti trust, anti monopoly laws on the books and so i got really deep into researching how it was that, on the one hand, we had all of these laws that were designed to prevent the exact situation that we were now confronting, and that led me to understand how, in the us, we have undergone this wholesale ideological transformation of how we view and enforce the Anti Trust Laws. Crosstalk. Well, let me stop you let me stop you there, because i think this is really important. What you appear to believe is that the way in which the Us Government and the courts have interpreted Anti Trust Laws changed fundamentally in and around the 19605 and � 70s and it became much more driven by a very simple notion of whether the consumer, the customer, was being served in terms of price more than anything else, and, as long as that was the case, as long as the customer was getting a decent low price and it appeared to be the customer was being well served, then Anti Trust Laws did not come into play and your contention is that there is more to it than low price . Am i right . Thats right. Foundationally, the us Anti Trust Laws were passed in order to curb concentrations of economic power. There was a recognition that in the same way that concentrations of political power say, in a king would undermine democracy, the concentration of economic power in the hands of industrial titans would also undermine democracy. And so there were these democratic roots to how Anti Trust Laws were passed and how they were enforced. When we underwent this revolution instead to focus the Anti Trust Laws on consumer welfare, they effectively became focused on efficiency. And so the idea was that, if companies are merging but that they can promise that they will lower prices, that they will produce more goods and services, that that means there were no other problems. But surely you cannot argue that the sort of service being delivered, for example by amazon which has become a real target company of yours you cannot argue that their service is not both efficient and low cost, which is precisely why tens and tens of millions of people notjust in the us but right around the world have turned to amazon, in the face of many, many alternatives. For online retail, online shopping, they go to amazon because it is very efficient and relatively cheap, and that is, surely, a success story. I think its worth interrogating what we mean when we say amazon is efficient. There is one thing that is Operational Efficiency and then theres another thing when it is basicallyjust increased Bargaining Power over retailers, over brands and over Third Party Merchants. I think there is an open question as to whether Consumer Prices have fallen. Amazon goods and services, you know, prices change hundreds of times a day and so there is kind of an instability of prices that limits our ability to actually do one on one comparisons. Crosstalk. But in a capitalist system, isnt the ultimate arbiter what the consumer does . And the consumer turns to amazon. As i say, they have other choices. There are many other online retailers in most capitalist economic models across the world and People Choose amazon because they like what it offers. Im just struggling to see how, in a competitive marketplace which still, to me, it looks like it is you can claim that amazon is breaching anti trust rules. So amazon in the us captures more than 50 of all online commerce. Thats a very significant amount. And during the pandemic, its share has only increased. It also, importantly, not only sells its own products as a first Party Retailer but also serves as a host to Third Party Merchants. And there has been terrific journalism showing how amazon actually exploits those Third Party Merchants in order to, you know, basically mine that marketplace for information that it then uses to actually, you know, directly compete with those businesses and under you know, demote them in its rankings and so i think there is a real question here about, you know, whether these third parties are able to compete on a level playing field. You know, the real essence of competition is the question of whether you can compete on the merits of your own product. So if you have a Third Party Merchant that introduces a new, say, vacuum cleaner. 50 of all online sales are made through amazon, so it has to sell on amazon. All of a sudden, amazon sees that the sales of this vacuum cleaner are off the charts. What it does often times is uses that information to go create a direct replica and then, all of a sudden, amazons replica is number one in the rankings and this original merchant that took the risk is nowhere to be seen. This is an age old argument, goes back to the Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis a century ago and his phrase about the curse of bigness. You just do not like big, successful capitalist corporations, it seems, and the Big Tech Companies with their trillion dollar values these days are the biggest of all. But is it enough to want to bring them down just because they are very big and very successful . So two things. I think there is actually ample evidence that these firms have actually not grown and you know, to the heights that they have simply through competing on the merits, right . In the us, as well as in the uk, we have a series of competition rules that clarify what is fair conduct, what is pro competitive conduct and what is unfair conduct or anti competitive conduct. And so, you know, if you are a Grocery Store and a new Grocery Store emerges across the street, if you go and burn down that store, that is not considered fair competition, right . There are all sorts of rule that limit what kind of conduct you can engage in. I think we have seen from the lawsuits filed in the us recently in particular against facebook and google is that at key moments, these firms engaged in predatory and coercive tactics that were designed to maintain their dominance and squash rivals, rather than compete on the merits, and so i think those are the questions that we really need to be asking. Separately, i do think we are at a stage of assessing whether these firms are now providing essential infrastructure to us as citizens, as consumers, as businesses. And if so, traditionally, we have applied a very different set of rules to infrastructure, right . I mean, the railroads, which were also monopolistic 100, 120 years ago, we require them to abide by non discrimination rules, we applied rate caps that limited how much they could charge because we understood that when companies are playing a gatekeeper role, they can use the gatekeeper power in all sorts of extortionary, coercive and predatory ways, and so, even if were not gonna break them up, we need to apply a set of rules that limits how they can use their power. Crosstalk. And so thats really the conversation we need to have. Right, raises the question whether your view of what should happen will actually happen i. E. , is the Us Government really ready for a very big fight with the Technology Giants who wield an awful lot of power and influence in the United States today. You spent some time working inside the federal trade commission, which has a key role to play here. What do you believe today . Do you think, right now, the Us Government is ready for that kind of a showdown . The Us Government has already entered that kind of showdown, right . The Justice Department in 0ctoberfiled a landmark lawsuit against google. The federal trade commission in decemberfiled a landmark case against facebook. We also have somewhere between 48 50 state attorneys general that have brought their own separate lawsuits two against google and one against facebook so we are already in the throes of this fight when it comes to anti trust litigation. Yeah, but its not clear, its not clear how hard the government is going to press this, and it is not clear whether they are going to press it all the way to calling for the break up of some of these companies. Theres a professor at colombia law school, whom you know well tim wu who argues the only remedy here is to break up Companies Like facebook, for example. Facebook being sued on the basis that it has gone too far in its monopolistic practices by taking over whatsapp and instagram. Timothy wu says the only remedy is to force facebook to relinquish those branches like instagram and whatsapp. Do you believe that can and will happen . Well, i think there is no doubt the government is requesting from the court that facebook be forced to divest whatsapp and instagram, so the government is already pushing for the break up. I think we have to see how the arguments unfold in court and what remedy, ultimately, the Court Decides in this case. That said, you know, lawsuits antitrust lawsuits are only one path to achieving break ups. You can also achieve break ups through legislation which, in the past, the us has done again when dealing with infrastructure industries, be it railroads, telecoms firms, banks and so if lawsuits do not get us there, i think there is a question about whether new laws could. Yeah. But the point is, one looks atjoe biden and what he has said about big tech and the need for government to intervene, to change the rules of the game, and his signals are quite mixed. For example, those who know best say that his favourite pick to run antitrust matters at the department ofjustice is a woman called renata hesse, who used to work for one of the tech giants and who, in the past, has talked about amazon in a very positive way, saying it has added hundreds of billions of dollars of value to the us economy, its a brilliant innovator. It doesnt necessarily sound likejoe biden� s top team are gonna be as keen in on this as you are. Its a great question, and i think we are all eagerly awaiting to see who he picks for that key role. You know, public advocacy groups in the us are very concerned that it could go to somebody who has a history of representing some of the same companies that the Justice Department is currently investigating and litigating against, so i think that will be a key signal. But i also think there. Crosstalk. As a matter of interest, what do you think of renata hesse . Another quote from her the reason why people use Google Search generally, she says, is because they like it better which goes back to the argument we were having earlier about the importance of Consumer Choice and judging Consumer Choice about what people actually do. She doesnt sound like a woman who is determined to go after any of these companies. Well, i think that argument in particular is one that has now been significantly rebutted by the evidence. Actually, the uks competition and markets authority did this fantastic report, very closely studying the Search Market and search advertising markets in particular, and noting all the ways in which actually google� s dominance inhibits competition on the merits, and so its notjust that users like google better and so they go to google for that reason, but that google has instead systematically deprived rivals of the type of traffic, of the type of data that would allow them to compete on their merits. So i do think that that view which my understanding is she expressed a few years ago is increasingly out of date and not really corresponding to the new facts and realities that we are seeing on the ground. Why do you think that, in europe, for example, there appears to be a much greater readiness to hit these companies hard and very soon. For example, the European Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has said that the Digital Markets act and the other legislation that the commission is pushing forward will involve a willingness to impose structural remedies, divestitures that sort of thing. She has been very explicit with the stick, rather than the carrot. Why . Is it because there, in europe, they are less pressured by the financial clout of these big american tech giants . Its a good question and, you know, i would say that these giants have so much at stake that they are really able to, you know, throw a lot of money in all sorts ofjurisdictions. I think europe has been quite clear eyed about the problem. The European Commission has investigated and brought lawsuits against google for antitrust violations three times now. I think the real key issue that they have run into is the problem of remedy. And so, in each of those cases, the remedy ultimately ended up being quite weak and i think that is what has then pushed the commission to really argue in favour of structural rules, of broader marketplace wide rules, and so it will be really interesting to see what happens there. Lets turn the focus from the raw economic power of these companies to their power as content providers, as well, some would say publishers, although they do not like that phrase. It has come into sharp focus over the last four years in the donald Trump Presidency and, in particular, the last few weeks with the ending of the Trump Presidency, and with trump finally being taken off twitter and facebook. And then the right wing conservative social media platform parler effectively being shut down because it lost its amazon servers. In these various different ways, were you happy as a if i may say so a progressive person, that these things happened . Or were you extremely worried because, again, it pointed to the power of big tech, the unaccountable power, to actually decide what gets published and what does not . I think its quite coherent to think both that facebook and twitter and belatedly youtube did the right thing to remove trumps messages, and that their unilateral ability to do so is a problem for democracy, right . But the context here was that messages from trump had helped incite a violent and deadly insurrection and Additional Communications from him posed an immediate threat. But this also demonstrated the remarkable way in which private power is now governing our public sphere. And so, ithink, you know, the question of whether, on any given instance, these firms do or do not remove harmful messages is besides the point. The question is really who is setting the rules . Is it democratically accountable public officials, or it is really a small number of private executives . Right. But does it give you pause that angela merkel, alexei navalny, the russian opposition politician, tony blair, all of these individuals expressed deep alarm that twitter, facebook could just unilaterally take donald trump off their platform. There is a real issue here of freedom of expression, is there not . And who actually controls the way in which information flows in the 21st century . I think those are the central questions that we are grappling with, right . The reason that there was so much alarm at the unilateral ability of these firms to cut off the president of the United States is because these firms are now serving as Core Communications infrastructure, right . If there were adequate competition or if there were real alternatives, then i dont think you would not have seen the same level of alarm. Crosstalk. Butjust finally then, is it time because they are acting like publishers and they are making editorial decisions and judging content is it time for them to be treated as publishers under us law . Which they never have been in the past, and which is one more incredibly important a bone of contention. I think the time is absolutely right to reconsider whether the section 230 regime in the us that we have had that exempts these firms from liability for the content that they host, whether that is still right. I think we have seen that, you know, in many ways it doesnt make sense any more especially given that these firms� Business Models facebook and google� s in particular incentivise them to promote hateful speech, propaganda, disinformation, and so i think the Business Model also raises questions about whether they should not really be liable here. Very briefly, lina khan, will these giants thinking of amazon, google, facebook will they be with us in their current form in the size they currently are, or even bigger, in ten years� time, or not . Its a great question. You know, i think it will really depend on the courage of public governments to take on these firms and ensure that their Core Infrastructure is really working for the public and notjust a small number of private executives. And you think, therefore, the answer is they will be brought down, they will be tamed, or not . I think we are at a point where it seems like the us, at least, is finally interested in doing so and we have a strong history of doing so you know, in the first gilded age where we dealt with the first era of big monopolies. So i am hopeful that well be able to draw on that tradition and do so again. Lina khan, thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. Thanks for having me. Hello there. Some of us have seen our first significant snow of the winter today, but it has been causing treacherous conditions out and about on the roads because it has been settling as you can see here in gloucestershire but, even on the faster routes, it settled. It cleared away, but showers followed on, but the snow is still falling in some areas and, with the surfaces damp, ice will be a problem for many through the evening and overnight. Treacherous conditions because the snow ground to a halt somewhere, as you can see, across north wales, the north midlands, into southern parts of northern england. Those sort of areas across to east anglia seen quite a bit of snow falling and covering the ground, and further centimetres to come as it returns southwards this evening on top of the snow that weve already had. It does eventually clear away but it will be treacherous. The snow showers will continue in the north with a widespread frost, freezing fog and temperature is 80 9. So, yes, several centimetres of snow during the day today, more to come this evening, but drier for england and wales and northern ireland. A few showers coming in here, a few more showers for scotland again, evenin more showers for scotland again, even in the central, southern areas, a cold day but not as cold as today because we will not have the cloud cover. More sunshine but it will still feel cold. Lighter winds under a ridge of High Pressure but that does not last long. By tuesday, a battle with the atlantic are trying to displace the cold arctic air we have been sitting on to the last two or three days but its reluctant to clear away so you get all the smart, most air which will turn misty and murky, lots of low cloud, some rain, unwelcome because there are numerous flood warnings in force, the rivers are very sensitive to any more rain on the ground is saturated. The rain comes into colder and further snowfall, that cold air will hang on in the far north and east of the uk. That first weather front fizzling out, not that much rain on it, but the second weather front will see more persistent rain coming in here so clearly that is a cause for concern. Meantime though we still have that snow around. So we could have that snow around. So we could have that snow around. So we could have that cold air hanging on in the north. If youre heading out please do check out our website where all the warnings are listed. This is bbc news. Im tim willcox. The headlines at 4pm. A record day for vaccines in england yesterday more than 444,000 doses were registered. But the Health Secretary warns those whove had them that they still need to be cautious. Severe weather warnings as snow and ice sweeps across the uk amid fears of travel disruption. Leaving the union the snp to present its National Assembly with what its calling a road map to a new referendum on scottish independence. Good afternoon