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Sort it out, nuclear family
Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
LEADERS
LOCATIONS UK 110 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6EU Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 50 Hampshire St, Floor 5, Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217
Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 330 333 9470 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3787 9001 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU Syndication Tribune Content Agency Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 [email protected]
© 2016 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Williams Gibbons (Wolverhampton)
Customer or lobbyist? Internet giants may be throwing your weight around THE bigger, the better. For the most part, internet companies are judged by the number of users they have. Sign up enough people, the thinking goes, and revenues and profits will follow. A large customer base can be useful in other ways, too. As internet companies have muscled in on existing business models, from taxi services to hotels, they have rubbed up against existing regulations. And so they have started lobbying to change them, just like their corporate brethren. But conventional advocacy is not enough for such disruptive types. Not content to rely on wellplaced lobbyists with the ears of politicians, they are recruiting users to promote their cause.
Facebook did this when India’s telecoms regulator sought public consultation on services that offer limited access to internet sites via phones, a model catching on in the developing world (see page 18). One such service is Free Basics, owned by Facebook. Its reaction to the consultation was to invite millions of its users to send boilerplate emails of support, deluging the unamused regulator. Others are also marshalling users to their cause. Uber, for example, last year defeated a proposed cap on the number of its vehicles in New York City. One of its tactics was to roll out a new mode on its app named “De Blasio” – after the city mayor championing the cap. The mode
Sort it out, nuclear family ARE nations duty-bound to deal with their own nuclear waste, or do we need a transnational solution? It is a pertinent question. Germany, despite decisively ditching nuclear power five years ago, still can’t decide what to do with the leftovers. Anti-nuclear activists there are vowing to block the return of spent fuel from the country’s reactors, being reprocessed in
France and the UK. They have also boycotted a parliamentary commission scheduled to report later this year on a final resting place for plutonium-rich waste, which needs keeping out of harm’s way for tens of thousands of years (see page 10). Their campaign may succeed, but only temporarily by dodging the big issue and saddling other countries with German waste.
made all of Uber’s cars disappear from the map and directed users to a petition. And home-stay giant Airbnb is organising its US users into “guilds” to fight proposed regulations on short-term rentals around the country. Internet services have spent vast sums learning how to direct their users’ activity. That makes for a powerful political force – which can be exercised with little transparency. As The Times of India reported, many Facebook users claimed they were enlisted in its campaign unwittingly. It’s all very well for internet firms to throw their audiences’ weight around, but they should strive to capture nuance as well as numbers. After all, might doesn’t make right. n
Perhaps the real problem is narrow nationalism. Does it really make sense to insist that waste be disposed of within the country that produced it? Maybe a few international repositories would be better. Germany is entitled to abandon nuclear power, but it cannot duck its responsibility to clean up. With nuclear waste piling up in more than 30 nations, the quandary could be a useful opportunity for the nuclear family to sit down together and sort out the mess. n 6 February 2016 | NewScientist | 5
LEADERS
LOCATIONS UK 110 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6EU Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 50 Hampshire St, Floor 5, Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217
Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 330 333 9470 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3787 9001 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU Syndication Tribune Content Agency Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 [email protected]
© 2016 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Williams Gibbons (Wolverhampton)
Customer or lobbyist? Internet giants may be throwing your weight around THE bigger, the better. For the most part, internet companies are judged by the number of users they have. Sign up enough people, the thinking goes, and revenues and profits will follow. A large customer base can be useful in other ways, too. As internet companies have muscled in on existing business models, from taxi services to hotels, they have rubbed up against existing regulations. And so they have started lobbying to change them, just like their corporate brethren. But conventional advocacy is not enough for such disruptive types. Not content to rely on wellplaced lobbyists with the ears of politicians, they are recruiting users to promote their cause.
Facebook did this when India’s telecoms regulator sought public consultation on services that offer limited access to internet sites via phones, a model catching on in the developing world (see page 18). One such service is Free Basics, owned by Facebook. Its reaction to the consultation was to invite millions of its users to send boilerplate emails of support, deluging the unamused regulator. Others are also marshalling users to their cause. Uber, for example, last year defeated a proposed cap on the number of its vehicles in New York City. One of its tactics was to roll out a new mode on its app named “De Blasio” – after the city mayor championing the cap. The mode
Sort it out, nuclear family ARE nations duty-bound to deal with their own nuclear waste, or do we need a transnational solution? It is a pertinent question. Germany, despite decisively ditching nuclear power five years ago, still can’t decide what to do with the leftovers. Anti-nuclear activists there are vowing to block the return of spent fuel from the country’s reactors, being reprocessed in
France and the UK. They have also boycotted a parliamentary commission scheduled to report later this year on a final resting place for plutonium-rich waste, which needs keeping out of harm’s way for tens of thousands of years (see page 10). Their campaign may succeed, but only temporarily by dodging the big issue and saddling other countries with German waste.
made all of Uber’s cars disappear from the map and directed users to a petition. And home-stay giant Airbnb is organising its US users into “guilds” to fight proposed regulations on short-term rentals around the country. Internet services have spent vast sums learning how to direct their users’ activity. That makes for a powerful political force – which can be exercised with little transparency. As The Times of India reported, many Facebook users claimed they were enlisted in its campaign unwittingly. It’s all very well for internet firms to throw their audiences’ weight around, but they should strive to capture nuance as well as numbers. After all, might doesn’t make right. n
Perhaps the real problem is narrow nationalism. Does it really make sense to insist that waste be disposed of within the country that produced it? Maybe a few international repositories would be better. Germany is entitled to abandon nuclear power, but it cannot duck its responsibility to clean up. With nuclear waste piling up in more than 30 nations, the quandary could be a useful opportunity for the nuclear family to sit down together and sort out the mess. n 6 February 2016 | NewScientist | 5