Marketplace Tech

Now, more than ever, we rely on technology when we work, go to school, get health care and connect with people we can’t visit in person. But technology is only useful if it’s accessible. Host Kimberly Adams speaks with Microsoft’s Mary Bellard, who says we are in a “data desert.”

For many small businesses, the pandemic-driven shift to selling on the internet is a huge change. Plenty of brick-and-mortar store owners were selling in person only, using everything from spreadsheets to paper and pencil to keep track of it all. So companies are increasingly offering new tools to help those brick-and-mortar stores manage their inventory and figure out which online platforms are best for them. Intuit launched something called QuickBooks Commerce earlier this year to help companies sell everywhere. Molly speaks with Alex Chriss, the EVP of the small business group at Intuit.

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This week, we’re looking at how small businesses are navigating e-commerce during the pandemic, and today, we hear from one business owner navigating that world. Kathleen Donahue is the owner of Labyrinth Games & Puzzles, a store in the Eastern Market neighborhood of Washington, D.C. She only sells analog games, not electronic, and perhaps unsurprisingly, she was a reluctant entrant to the world of e-commerce. We hear the story of her store’s transition online.

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The costs of this pandemic are staggering. Most importantly, in lives lost. And increasingly, businesses lost or struggling to survive. Changing lockdown rules upended supply chains and a wary public. A lot of those businesses have been scrambling to get online, and as it happens, there are a lot of places online to list your goods beyond your own website — almost too many. Do you go to Shopify, Amazon, Facebook or Etsy? Molly speaks with Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst with Forrester. She says the options can be overwhelming.

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Climate change is here. Experts say we need to adapt, but what does that look like? This one-hour special from “Marketplace Tech” explores the role of technology in helping humanity weather the impacts of climate change. The time of complete prevention has passed, and we must turn toward adaptation.

We learned this week that hackers have been spying on the U.S. departments of State, Homeland Security, Commerce and the Treasury and maybe the Nuclear Security Administration — bad, bad stuff. The intrusion began in the spring, and the hackers are thought to be working for the Russian government. And the ongoing news about this hack have some worried about all kinds of things from a physical attack on critical infrastructure to data manipulation to more election shenanigans. We wondered, what should we be worried about? Molly speaks with Jackie Schneider, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

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We talk a lot on this show about how social media platforms have been slow to react to disinformation over the years, and especially around elections — and now the coronavirus and also the coronavirus vaccine. But perhaps the slowest to take a stand is YouTube. The video platform waited until Dec. 9 — more than a full month after the presidential election — before it started to remove videos falsely claiming election fraud or rigging. Researchers have worried about its radicalizing algorithm for years, and the company has basically no interest in working with them. Molly speaks with Evelyn Douek, an affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She said YouTube is flying firmly under the radar.

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The European Union is proposing new regulations on big tech companies and how they use their data, potentially to the detriment of competing companies. That is on the heels of the FTC and 46 states suing Facebook, and the FTC opening investigations into lots of other tech companies. One thing that both the EU and the FTC say is that these big tech companies impose anti-competitive conditions on third-party developers that operate on their platforms. Apple has been criticized over its App Store rules and Amazon over how it treats third-party sellers. The EU regulations would determine some companies to be “gatekeepers” subject to different rules. Molly speaks with Mark Lemley, a law professor at Stanford.

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At least three government agencies have been the target of a major cyberspying campaign, apparently by the Russian government. We learned this week that hackers have been spying on the U.S. departments of Commerce, Treasury and even Homeland Security since the spring, and officials say it’s likely there are more victims that haven’t been revealed yet. The attackers got in by corrupting software updates from the company SolarWinds, which provides network management tools to the agencies. Molly Wood speaks with Kim Zetter, a cybersecurity journalist and author.

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Millions of Americans remain unemployed in this pandemic and can’t pay their rent, so people are being evicted all over the country. Eviction hearings have moved to Zoom or Webex or even the phone, to limit the spread of COVID-19 in courtrooms. But some tenants’ rights advocates say the virtual hearings violate people’s rights. There aren’t procedures in place for people who don’t have broadband access, and translators that would be required in court aren’t required online. Molly speaks with Eileen Guo, a senior reporter on tech policy, ethics and social issues at MIT Tech Review. She’s been reporting on this and described a hearing she virtually attended in Jackson County, Missouri.

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