what tangible actions can you make outside shutting them down? look, i think that there s a number of things that we can do to help the investing public. you mentioned gamification. our platforms, whether they re brokerage applications or robo advisers often are using digital analytics to maximize their revenues, and if they re trying to maximize their revenues rather than your investor returns, that s an inherent conflict, and i think we see that in other parts of our economy, too. it s not just in finance where platforms are trying to maximize their revenues rather than their well-being back to facebook. but here s the one thing that s different in the gamestop, the meme craze. you re in the business of protecting the little guy, and you think back to penny stocks and the sub prime crisis. in this situation, the little
no shortage of anger here from lawmakers. what there tends to be is a shortage of action. you listened to senators after that hearing, they say what could be the tipping point is the fact they now have a whistle-blower who brought the receipts with her when she left the company, new troves of data, an ability to look under the hood so to speak of facebook and how it works. again, this is not necessarily a conversation exexplicitly about content, it s about the rabbit holes that lead young girls and teens to content that is harmful to their mental health. that s where the conversation is on this. that s also where the conversation about oversight is going to go. you had a great graphic up a few minutes ago about the ways in which congress could move forward on this. it s a question of more oversight of how facebook functions, more federal oversight of big tech broadly requiring these platforms to share their proprietary algorithms. that s all a question of transparency. something that e
the way, roughly 5% below record highs, but if you throw in the d.c. drama, together with fears over interest rate policy from the fed, together with concerns about high stock market valuations, real estate valuations, and of course what appears to be data showing a possible slowing of the u.s. economy post-pandemic, you get this kind of up and down whipsaw action. it s not all that uncommon. it s just we haven t seen it in quite some time. also, by the way, a lot of this might have to do with traders and investors, stephanie, repositioning themselves ahead of that big jobs report on friday, which could add some more confirmation about the economy and whether it remains stable. as always, the key places to watch will be the big tech and media companies like apple, microsoft, alphabet, and facebook, keep an eye on those, they re driving the market action. it is not just janet yellen warning about the default. our nation s top wall street regulator said a default would shock the market
really done when it comes to internet regulation. i do think that facebook has said that they sought regular regulation for quite some time. i ve been covering a lot of these facebook hearings. for the first time i heard members of congress talking about the systems and the products that facebook has which is a system that amplifies agitating content, and they ve spoke about algorithms, ranking systems, things that were really at the heart of the belly of the beast and talking about whether facebook should be compelled to make that transparent and share how its algorithm works. that was new and i think that pushes the conversation much further than it has before. senators are agreeing in theory it s time to regulate, but what are they actually going to do about it? the whole like we re bringing zuckerberg back, we have all watched and covered mark zuckerberg getting grilled on the hill and then we get nothing. yeah, steph, there s usually
230, which is part of the larger conversation here. that s a liability shield for these tech companies, but it really does speak to the content, again, we re talking here about the algorithms and sort of the under the hood mechanisms of how this stuff works. i was struck yesterday, there are senators calling this a tipping point. we ve seen other tipping points and flash points on other big issues here in washington. i think specifically about the pushes that we see after mass shootings on gun violence prevention. i also think about how weeks ago we watched police reform fall apart, even though it came after a year where we saw months and months of protests after the murder of george floyd and other black men at the hands of police. we ve seen these kind of tipping points before and action hasn t come to fruition. the open question here is whether or not this will be different. jake, is regulation the only answer? right, facebook could do a lot on their own. right now if you google s