1 big thing: The next wave to hit Main Street

Illustration of shopping bag in rough waves

2. Exclusive: How the high-tech economy is expanding

3. ...but R&D investment is uneven

4. The next tech hot spots

5. Mayors to Trump: Cities need aid now

6. Scooter maker Unagi bets people want to rent rather than share

7. Urban files

8. 1 WiFi thing: San Jose gets 11,000 hotspots for students

Congrats, you've almost made it through another week. 

Today's edition is very tech-centric, taking a look at e-commerce's impact, high-tech workers, e-scooters and WiFi hotspots. 

Our tech tour clocks in at 2,042 words, an 8-minute read. 

In case you're looking for something to do today: Join me at 12:30pm ET for a conversation on ethical technology and the role of tech companies in the coronavirus response with former U.S. chief data scientist DJ Patil and Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth.

Axios Cities: What's next for downtowns — Tech economy expands — Scooter subscriptions

Cities

A block model of different sized buildings and skyscrapers.

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Explore the technology and market forces shaping our cities

Axios Cities

1 big thing: 15-minute cities are making a comeback

2. Pandemic drives e-bike spike

3. Poll: School reopening plans will factor into voting decisions

4. Pic du jour: Teachers protest reopening schools in Boston

Woman protesting in front of Massachusetts State House

5. Suburbanites are considering relocating, too

6. Urban files

7. 1 helpful thing: 🚮 Volunteers keep Philly parks clean

Hope you are staying cool on this steamy mid-August Thursday. 

Today's edition is 1,429 words, a 5-minute read. 

Not yet a subscriber? You can sign up here. 

Situational awareness: At the end of today, unless an appeals court grants Uber and Lyft's request to further suspend a recent ruling ordering them to immediately reclassify drivers as employees, the companies plan to suspend their ride-hailing services across California until at least November's election. 

The companies are hoping a ballot measure will allow them to keep drivers as contractors and undo a new state law. Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva breaks it down here.

Axios Cities: The new commute — E-bike spike — School reopening politics

1 big thing: Pandemic hits city budgets harder than Great Recession

2. The suburban renaissance 

Illustration of four different people's hands reaching to grab one suburban house.

3. Map du jour: Small-town America's growing diversity

4. Restaurants push for local laws to cap food delivery app fees

Illustration of a hundred dollar bill with Benjamin Franklin wearing a chef's hat.

5. Confidence in public school system jumps

7. 1 😱 thing: The era of elevator anxiety 

Welcome back! As always, thanks for reading.

Today's edition is 1,754 words, a less than 7-minute read.

For your weekend reading: I've been working on a deep dive into what "back-to-school" entails this year. If you're an Axios AM reader, you'll find it in your inbox on Saturday. 

Axios Cities: Suburbs rising — Small-town diversity — Elevator anxiety

1 big thing: The age of constant crises

Illustration of city welcome sign covered in hazard and warning signs

2. Most urban schools will start the year with all-remote learning

3. Exclusive: Curb management in the age of coronavirus

4. Airbnb becomes a force for remote workers

5. Invisible valet will park cars in high-tech garage

Ford and Bosch's automated valet parking demonstration.

7. 1 amazing thing: Rooftop acrobatics in Prague

Welcome back. If your children have started school already, I hope it's going as smoothly as possible.

Today's edition is 1,714 words, a 6-minute read

If you're not yet a subscriber, sign up here. 

Programming note: This newsletter will take a quick end-of-summer break next week. We'll be back in your inboxes on Sept. 10.

Axios Cities: Crises collide — Urban schools go remote — The new curb

1 big thing: The race to finish the Census count

Illustration of five buildings making a tally mark

2. Coronavirus may preview acceleration of digital divide

3. Portland's broad new ban on facial recognition

4. Fiery light in West Coast cities 

Orange sky over a San Francisco neighborhood and a bank of fog with a giant radio tower in the distance.

5. Urban files

6. 1 helpful thing: D.C. to foot school families' internet bills

Illustration of a notebook and computer juxtaposed with handwritten and typed abc's on the devices

Join Axios' Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian and Dave Lawler tomorrow at 12:30pm ET for a live, virtual event on U.S. foreign policy in the post-pandemic world, featuring Carnegie Endowment for International Peace president William J. Burns, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace vice president for studies Evan A. Feigenbaum, and Carnegie Middle East Center director Maha Yahya.

Today's edition is 1,543 words, a 6-minute read

Axios Cities: Last-minute Census scramble — Virus speeds digital divide — Portland face-recognition ban

National

About two dozen Democratic lawmakers are sending letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Nextdoor requesting details about what resources the social networks are putting toward rooting out misinformation in Spanish and other non-English content in the U.S.

Why it matters: The letters follow the introduction last week of the Health Misinformation Act, which seeks to hold social media companies more accountable for misinformation on their sites. 

Led by Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), the letter notes that the companies' Spanish-language moderation efforts aren't keeping up with rampant content "promoting human smuggling, vaccine hoaxes and election misinformation."

What they're saying: "The lack of transparency across the industry is concerning," they write. "Congress has a moral duty to ensure that all social media users have the same access to truthful and trustworthy content regardless of the language they speak at home or use to communicate online."

Between the lines: The companies have spent millions on content moderation and other efforts to find viral disinformation. But it's impossible to catch it all across all languages — making disinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccine particularly dangerous as the Delta variant causes new cases to spike. 

Lawmakers question CEOs on Spanish-language misinformation

Two dozen Democrats want social media companies to detail resources they are devoting to deal with this issue.

Photo of social media app icons on a smartphone screen

Photo by Muhammed Selim Korkutata/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Misinformation

Latin America and Latinos

Elon Musk

About two dozen Democratic lawmakers are sending letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Nextdoor requesting details about what resources the social networks are putting toward rooting out misinformation in Spanish and other non-English content in the U.S.Why it matters: The letters follow the introduction last week of the Health Misinformation Act, which seeks to hold social media companies more accountable for misinformation on their sites.

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

President Biden has made the COVID-19 crisis and a post-Trump return to national unity and traditional democratic ideals his top priorities. From vaccinations to stimulus to schools, Biden is seeking bipartisan compromise while showing a willingness to use executive authority and bare Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate to implement his policies. Republican leaders are navigating deep party divisions over if and how to move beyond former President Trump.

Politics & Policy

Retail stores of all sizes are turning part of their real estate footprint into logistics and fulfillment centers as they try to blend in-store shopping with e-commerce offerings.

Why it matters: In addition to staying competitive in a buy-everything-online environment, the trend is pushing brands to locate stores closer to dense population centers to try to reach consumers where they are and better cover the last-mile delivery zone to doorsteps.

The backdrop: Brick-and-mortar retail businesses were forced to go digital when the pandemic shut down most physical stores in 2020. Restaurants quickly offered curbside pick-up and delivery, and grocery stores implemented online ordering. Clothing retailers beefed up their e-commerce infrastructure to support the boom of online orders.

The big picture: Amazon has greatly expanded the reach of its fulfillment centers in recent years, locating them outside cities to get merchandise closer to consumers, helping to make its fast delivery times possible. In the post-pandemic era, micro-fulfillment centers in or near brick-and-mortar stores are the antidote to giant warehouses.

What's happening: Now that people are starting to venture out to stores again, retail brands have to cater to those who are now in the habit of shopping from home as well as those who prefer the in-store experience. 

"The flexibility of shopping from the location most convenient for the customer will remain a primary driver of sales," according to a recent National League of Cities report on the future of retail.

It's part of the "halo effect" — a retail industry term that describes how the existence of a brick-and-mortar store boosts online sales for the brand. 

For example, consumers may buy clothes from The Gap online because they live around the corner from a physical Gap store and it's easy to return things that don't fit, said Tracy Hadden Loh, a fellow with the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program.

So major brands are trying to find smaller buildings near neighborhoods. Part of the space is designed to appeal to in-store shoppers, while the back is a mini-logistics center where online orders are collected and packaged and online order returns are sorted. 

Yes, but: Cities have obsolete retail footprints — like large malls and strip shopping centers — in the wrong places, often set apart from residential areas. 

"I guarantee you that IKEA desperately wants to open a location near you, but they can't do it because retailers are having a hard time finding spaces that actually match these new omni-channel business models," Loh said. "Target and Walmart are trying to find smaller spaces where they can do new kinds of store concepts that are part shopping experience, part logistics and fulfillment center."

"But finding these smaller retail spaces that are actually close to where people live is like trying to find a dinosaur in a lot of U.S. metro areas," she said. 

What to watch: Maximizing fulfillment capabilities in smaller spaces has become big business.

A startup called Ox uses augmented reality to speed up order picking to turn brick-and-mortar stores into micro-fulfillment centers. 

Instacart announced plans to build automated warehouses in or around grocery stores. Robots will pull the items and Instacart workers will pack and deliver them, the WSJ reported recently. 

Darkstore turns extra brick-and-mortar and storage space into micro-fulfillment centers for other stores.

Physical stores go hybrid with micro-fulfillment centers

The pandemic led to a burst of online shopping, and physical stores need to adjust to the new reality

Illustration of a man pushing an online shopping cart icon

Retail

Economy & Business

A new survey finds that 68% of Americans believe Big Tech companies have too much power in the economy, and 56% think these firms should be regulated more than they are now.

Why it matters: The Pew Research Center survey, conducted April 12-18, 2021, shows a statistically significant increase for those who support more regulation — a big uptick from 47% in June 2020.

The only political group that did not show a significant increase in those calling for more regulation is moderate or liberal Republicans, Pew found. 

Conservative Republicans (80%) are the political group most likely to say Big Tech companies have too much economic influence, followed by liberal Democrats (74%).

The intrigue: Americans are split on whether the government should cap these companies' growth so that they can't undermine competition. 

Even if major tech companies follow the rules, 55% say the government should not let them grow beyond a certain size.  Liberal Democrats are most likely to support this.

42% think that, as long as companies follow the rules, they should be allowed to grow unchecked by government intervention. 

Of note: Americans who are more familiar with the debates over regulating tech companies are more likely to think that the firms should be more regulated and are also more likely to say their growth should be limited. 

Survey: U.S. majority supports more tech regulation

A new Pew survey finds significant growth in support for measures to rein in Big Tech.

Animated illustration of a binary code changing into an x symbol

Big Tech regulation

A new survey finds that 68% of Americans believe Big Tech companies have too much power in the economy, and 56% think these firms should be regulated more than they are now.Why it matters: The Pew Research Center survey, conducted April 12-18, 2021, shows a statistically significant increase for those who support more regulation — a big uptick from 47% in June 2020.

The Biden administration's push to increase competition in the technology industry could be on a collision course with a formidable obstacle: the courts.

Why it matters: Regulatory agency actions — whether it be adopting new rules or bringing enforcement cases against companies — are almost always challenged and litigated in the court system.

The big picture: As president, Donald Trump appointed 226 federal judges, leaving a huge mark on the judicial system, particularly appellate courts. Conservative judges on benches across the country tend to take a narrower view of antitrust law focused on proving "consumer harm" to justify antitrust enforcement. 

While Big Tech issues don't necessarily map to traditional political lines, free market advocates have already made the case that Biden's sweeping competition executive order could bring unnecessary government intervention and inadvertently undermine competition rather than improve it.

"For the past 40 years the courts have required agencies to offer evidence that their antitrust actions will make consumers better off," said Neil Chilson, former FTC chief technologist and senior research fellow for technology and innovation at the Charles Koch Institute.

"If the FTC or DOJ bring politicized cases or cases focused on protecting competitors, where they cannot show that consumers will be better off, courts will be a major obstacle," he said. 

The latest: Proponents of taking antitrust measures against Big Tech were dealt a huge blow last month when a federal district judge dismissed the FTC's December complaint against Facebook, which asked the court to unwind Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatAapp, among other things. 

The judge said the FTC's complaint was "legally insufficient" in making the case that Facebook has monopoly power. 

"It is almost as if the agency expects the court to simply nod to the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopolist,"  Judge James Boasberg of the D.C. Federal District Court wrote in his ruling.

The FTC has to decide whether to refile the case by Aug. 19.

What's happening: That ruling has made progressives push harder for Congress to enact stronger antitrust rules while giving additional clarity and authority to the key agencies — the FCC, DOJ and FTC. 

"It's more than the courts taking a narrow view of antitrust law. Even if these cases are successful, they focus on a particular company and a particular behavior," said Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at Public Knowledge. 

"So we need more comprehensive legislative solutions to the competition problem in Big Tech," she said. "We can't wait to see how the rulemakings or cases play out."

As the FTC's experience has shown, strong action targeting Big Tech will be hard to sustain without legislation, said Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

"Even before the influx of new Trump judges and Justices, the courts have been getting tougher and tougher on economic regulation issues," he said. 

Yes, but: Despite the headwinds, agencies still have a chance of winning in appellate courts by building strong factual records and staying within the lines of legal precedent, Schwartzman added. 

What to watch: Facebook and Amazon are trying to get FTC Chair Lina Khan to recuse herself from proceedings involving them. Biden's nominee to lead the DOJ's antitrust division, Jonathan Kanter, may face similar recusal pressure from Google.

Even if they aren't forced to recuse themselves from cases, Khan's and Kanter's backgrounds as advocates could become politicized and drag out cases in circuit courts.

Conservative courts could rescue tech

Making a strong case against tech giants will be extra hard before a federal judiciary that increasingly tilts rightward.

Monopolies

Column / Tech Agenda

The Biden administration&#x27;s push to increase competition in the technology industry could be on a collision course with a formidable obstacle: the courts.Why it matters: Regulatory agency actions — whether it be adopting new rules or bringing enforcement cases against companies — are almost always challenged and litigated in the court system.

The concept of a new media ecosystem that's non-profit, publicly funded and tech-infused is drawing interest in policy circles as a way to shift the power dynamics in today's information wars.

Why it matters: Revamping the structure and role of public media could be part of the solution to shoring up local media, decentralizing the distribution of quality news, and constraining Big Tech platforms' amplification of harmful or false information.

Flashback: Congress in 1967 authorized federal operating money to broadcast stations through a new agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and what is now PBS launched down-the-middle national news programming and successful kids shows like "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" and "Sesame Street." NPR was born in 1971. 

Despite dust-ups over political interference of national programming and funding, hundreds of local community broadcast stations primarily received grants directly to choose which national programs to support. 

Driving the news: A new policy paper from the German Marshall Fund proposes a full revamp of the CPB to fund not just broadcast stations, but a wide range of digital platforms and potential content producers including independent journalists, local governments, nonprofits and educational institutions. 

The idea is to increase the diversity of local civic information, leaning on anchor institutions like libraries and colleges that communities trust. 

Beyond content, the plan calls for open protocol standards and APIs to let consumers mix and match the content they want from a wide variety of sources, rather than being at the mercy of Facebook, Twitter or YouTube algorithms. 

Data would be another crucial component. In order to operate, entities in the ecosystem would have to commit to basic data ethics and rules about how personal information is used. 

"It's about power. We don't want government to tell the platforms what to do, but we don't want the platforms to have the power to deplatform" and decide which voices get heard, said Ellen Goodman, co-author of the report, a professor at Rutgers Law School, and founder and director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law.

"No one thinks the most efficient way to do things was to have a gazillion broadcast stations, but it was to decentralize power. So what would that look like on the internet?"

Reality check: Allowing people to "tune" their own content preference dials could exacerbate filter bubbles.

Still, the authors say the involvement of local trusted institutions in the creation and amplification of civic information — from public health updates to  local election news — could improve people's overall media diet and exposure "so it's not just a battle of government vs. platform," Goodman said. 

The big picture: More broadly, new models of non-profit media are gaining traction.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act takes a different approach to the government grant model. The bill would, for example, give a tax credit to people who donate to nonprofit newsrooms, or to small businesses who buy advertising at a nonprofit outlet. 

What they're saying: "There absolutely has to be a much bigger role for nonprofit media, with public media as a subset of that, than there has been in the past," said Steve Waldman, president of Report for America. 

While today's public media predominantly skews toward broadcasting, which requires licenses from the FCC, the modern version can use a variety of funding sources and digital tools that don't rely on the same rigid infrastructure. 

"Right now a disproportionate amount of CPB money goes to TV," Waldman said. "From a local news point of view, we may need to loosen that up and have the money go to wherever it can strengthen local programming." 

In a 2020 article, Waldman also called for "thousands of mini-SPANs," by using streaming technologies to broadcast public meetings the way C-SPAN does for congressional hearings. 

Be smart: The debate over misinformation and disinformation is primarily focused on who gets to decide whether content is good or bad — an unwinnable battle.

Revamping the underlying infrastructure that amplifies quality content — drawing on trusted local institutions and independent content producers — could give citizens a new source of news that doesn't rely solely on platform algorithms or polarized commercial outlets. 

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to note that Steve Waldman is president, not CEO, of Report for America. 

The push for a "PBS for the internet"

Revamping the structure of public media could help shore up local news.

Photo illustration of Big Bird and Elmo looking at a laptop computer. 

Photo illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios. Photos: Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Media trends

The concept of a new media ecosystem that&#x27;s non-profit, publicly funded and tech-infused is drawing interest in policy circles as a way to shift the power dynamics in today&#x27;s information wars.Why it matters: Revamping the structure and role of public media could be part of the solution to shoring up local media, decentralizing the distribution of quality news, and constraining Big Tech platforms&#x27; amplification of harmful or false information.

Kim Hart

Stories