Marshall Van Alstyne
@infoecon.bsky.social
Interested in human side of information, economics, social & tech. Questrom Professor Boston University. Digital Fellow MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. Visiting Scholar Harvard Berkman-Klein. Leap on in! The water is fine.
German courts just found Google liable for false AI summaries the-decoder.com/landmark-ger...
Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers
A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for the content of its AI search overviews. According to the court, previous limited liability protections for search engine operators ...
the-decoder.com
Wonderful article by David Brooks on those who will use AI to outsource their thinking versus those who will use it to sharpen and extend it. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age
What will differentiate people is not how smart they are but their relationship to mental effort.
theatlantic.com
Today, SpaceX rose 19% in value, pushing its value past $2T and Elon Musk's net worth past $1T. If life expectancy is 79 years, you'd need to earn $1.45M per hour from birth to become a trillionaire based on an hourly wage. www.bloomberg.com/news/live-bl...
SpaceX IPO Live: SPCX Stock Opens at $150, Shares Pop
bloomberg.com
DEADLINE THIS WEEKEND! We invite scholars from management, economics, computer science, law, and policy to submit their best platform research. platforms.bu.edu
Now accepting papers for the 13th Platform Strategy Summit. We invite scholars from economics, management, computer science, policy & law. $1000 best paper prize. Pls share #platforms #AI #regulation #strategy #conference @buquestrom.bsky.social
Will #Congress please constrain the charlatan in the Whitehouse?! The exec branch has neither authority to set tariffs nor authority to declare war. apnews.com/article/denm...
Trump says he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the US controlling Greenland
U.S. President Donald Trump says he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the U.S. controlling Greenland. Trump didn't provide details Friday.
apnews.com
Interested in why regulating digital platforms has proven so challenging, and what to do about it? Latest writing on platform abuses, diagnoses, and solutions. Comments welcome. tinyurl.com/mrry4a8u #platforms #antitrust #misinformation #regulation #GDPR #DSA #Governance #CompetitionPolicy
Do you have a platform challenge? #Strategy #Launch? #Monetization? #OpenInnovation? Student teams will produce a 25-page solution for you to boost their learning. Any platform topic in course below possible. Call for projects here: tinyurl.com/PlatStratKit26 Pls Share
What happens when AI makes answers really cheap? Human questions become ever more important. We also need the skill to challenge those answers lest we become complacent and miss the bigger picture. New work with Sangeet Choudary shows how to do this: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/sieyk...
Do you have a platform challenge? #Strategy #Launch? #Monetization? #OpenInnovation? #Growth Student teams will produce a 25-page solution for you to boost their learning. Any platform topic is possible. Call for projects here: tinyurl.com/PlatStrat26 Pls Share.
New working paper on reducing fraud and deception by AI agents using mechanism design. Comments are very welcome. Market Design Interventions for Safer Agentic AI aisel.aisnet.org/icis2025/gen...
New poll shows only 28% of Americans trust the media - lowest ever. In related news, you shouldn't trust a Tweet. news.gallup.com/poll/695762/...
Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S.
Americans' trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly is at a new low of 28%.
news.gallup.com
New poll shows only 28% of Americans trust the media - lowest ever. In related news, you shouldn't trust a Tweet. news.gallup.com/poll/695762/...
Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S.
Americans' trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly is at a new low of 28%.
news.gallup.com
Do non-citizens have free speech rights in the US? Historic ruling: yes they do! www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
Judge takes down Trump’s ‘bullying’ in victory for pro-Palestine students
Reagan-appointed judge rebukes top officials for targeting pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses
independent.co.uk
New report ranks LI, Insta, FB, YouTube, TikTok & X for prevalence and monetization of misinformation science.feedback.org/first-measur...
The new $100,000 fee for an H1-B visa to the US is idiotic. It's hard to design a policy more likely to move hi tech jobs overseas www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Trump signs proclamation imposing annual $100,000 fee on H-1B visas
Move deals potentially major blow to US tech industry, which relies heavily on workers from India and China
theguardian.com
New research attributes probability of heat events to individual companies www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Dozens of heatwaves linked to carbon emissions from specific companies
Nearly one-quarter of heatwaves would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without global warming — and can be attributed to the emissions of individual energy producers.
nature.com
The summary of the MIT Platform Summit is now available ide.mit.edu/publication-... @mitsloanphd.bsky.social
The great silencing: Colbert (comedy), Washington Post (news), Columbia (education), NIH (medicine), NOAA (climate). Killing free speech is how democracy dies open.substack.com/pub/robertre...
The silencing
Colbert, The Washington Post, Columbia University … and on it goes
open.substack.com
BU Platform Summit July 15 features great rsch on social media, using AI to build platforms, decentralization, M&A strategies, robo taxis... $1000 best paper prize. Program: questromworld.bu.edu/platformstra... Registration: questromworld.bu.edu/platformstra... We look forward to seeing you!
Recommended reading - The Anti Autocracy Handbook
Stephan Lewandowsky@lewan.uk · last yr.It is not entirely coincidental that we released the Anti-Autocracy Handbook on this date: sks.to/autocracy. It is with sadness because it shouldn't be necessary and because it shows how impoverished America has become. But it also signals that the fight will go on. #Juneteenth
How can we create value from data but give users more control? One possibility is a just published proposal for a new data right www.networklawreview.org/data-sharing/
"Towards Efficient Data Sharing in Platform Markets" - Network Law Review
Platforms collect valuable data that they do not share. Welfare then suffers as information asymmetry produces market failures. Current proposals to address this, however, fail because they grant acce...
networklawreview.org
The MIT Platform Summit is here this July. See speakers and registration at platforms.mit.edu @g2parker.bsky.social
Trump attacking student visas completely undercuts his narrative that his immigration policies rid the US of gang members, rapists, and drug dealers. He's making unwelcome some of the most talented people in the world. The damage will last a decade.
3 tested ways to undermine autocrats - mockery, highlight corruption, human examples www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/o...
Opinion | Three Well-Tested Ways to Undermine an Autocrat
nytimes.com
International students upend their lives to join American science, bringing their novel insights that drive innovation. Now, they are being illegally targeted by Trump, because Harvard won't back down. Classic bully behavior. We Stand Up for International Students. www.npr.org/2025/05/22/n...
Trump administration revokes Harvard's ability to enroll international students
International students make up more than a quarter of Harvard University's student body. Harvard says the government's actions, which could cut off a major revenue stream, are "unlawful."
npr.org
