After a tense week of voting, Democratic nominee Joe Biden has beaten Donald Trump to win the 2020 U.S. presidential election. At the same time, the United States also welcomed its first female vice president of African-American, Latino and South Asian descent, Kamala Harris.
At present, Biden has changed his Twitter account authentication to “President-elect of the United States”, and Harris has also changed his Twitter authentication to “Vice President-elect.”
After the dust settled on the election results, Biden tweeted:
America, I am honored that you have chosen me to lead our great nation. The work ahead of us will be daunting, but I promise you this: I will be president of all Americans — whether you vote for me or not. I will live up to your trust in me.
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Tech giants speak out to celebrate
After Biden was elected, bigwigs in the technology industry all spoke out on social media, congratulating Biden and Harris.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote a long post about the rise of female leadership, writing:
At times, America takes a big step toward a government that reflects our diverse nation. Today is such a day. I think with joy that young people across the country today are watching the news and thinking, “Maybe I can lead this country too.” Congratulations to Kamala Harris on this extraordinary achievement – breaking leadership Floors of glass ceilings and norms – congratulations to President-elect Biden on this historic milestone.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos posted a photo of Biden and Harris shaking hands after winning the election, congratulating them on their election, and said:
Solidarity, compassion and decency are not the hallmarks of bygone times. With record votes, the American people once again proved that our democracy is strong.
In addition, the two CEOs of Microsoft have also posted congratulations to Biden and Harris.
Bill Gates tweeted:
Congratulations to Biden on being elected president and Harris being elected vice president. Thank you to election officials and campaign workers who worked tirelessly to ensure record numbers of Americans voted and counted at a challenging time for our nation.
I look forward to working with the new administration and bipartisan leaders in Congress to contain this surging pandemic, engage with partners around the world on issues like poverty and climate change, and address inequality and opportunity at home .
Brad Smith, the current president of Microsoft, is even more eloquent, writing a long blog “Building New Bridges: Our Reflections on the US Election”, and a Microsoft logo is placed in the blog.
The blog wrote:
This year’s Election Day turned into a long and tense election week, with many Americans anxiously staring at screens waiting for the election results. We often hear pundits speculate that we rarely seem to have such a divided nation. If true, it also makes another proposition even more self-evident – if we are to move forward as a nation, we must build new bridges and bridge the gap between us.
In addition, some big names in the AI field are not idle.
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Chinese American Andrew Ng tweeted:
I am relieved by the election results and thank the many people who made the election possible. Thank you to every worker who helped with a fair election, to the media that defended the truth, and to everyone who voted or spoke out for this wonderful democracy.
Yann LeCun, a professor at New York University, Facebook’s chief AI scientist, and ACM Turing Award winner, tweeted a slightly humorous tone, along with a video of a roaring alarm bell in Paris, France.
Yann LeCun said:
Bells rang across France after Biden declared victory. In fact, I think they are happier with a Trump defeat than a Biden victory.
Jeff Dean, senior researcher and senior vice president of artificial intelligence at Google, is more concerned about whether the visa policy will return to normal after Biden takes office?
I very much hope that we can restore America to welcoming the best and brightest students from around the world to our colleges and universities. For decades, this has been the incredible strength of America. I hope we can once again welcome outstanding students with open arms!
Interestingly, a comment under this tweet said it had been bad for decades and Trump had only made it slightly worse.
Francois Chollet, father of Keras, said:
Anyway, I’m glad to see this episode of “America” end with a comedy rather than a tragedy.
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What will be the impact of the tech industry after Biden takes office?
Although the new president takes office has attracted much attention, its impact on the technology circle is also worthy of attention.
Especially in America under Trump, there are still many unanswered questions, including antitrust investigations of tech companies, net neutrality, rural broadband and online privacy.
According to Cnet reports, Biden’s stance on these issues is mainly as follows:
Antitrust
During the U.S. election campaign, the U.S. Congress launched an antitrust investigation into U.S. tech giants. And, just last month, Google was sued, alleging an illegal monopoly in search and search advertising.
The antitrust investigation of tech giants has not yet ended, and how to restrain large tech companies has become one of the issues that Biden needs to think about.
It follows a scathing 449-page congressional report detailing market power abuses by Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook and laying out a path to curb the dominance of the Big Four U.S. tech companies, which could herald Tech companies will face trouble under a Biden administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress.
Clearly, the U.S. government has begun to scrutinize Big Tech companies more closely.
On this issue, Biden has previously said that it is too early to discuss breaking up companies, and he prefers to limit the power of these companies through regulation.
Section 230
Section 230 (Section 230) refers to Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act of 1996, i.e.—a provider or user of an interactive computer service shall not be deemed to be provided by another information content provider the publisher or spokesperson of any information.
no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
That said, internet companies are generally not liable for what users post on their networks, providing internet companies with a legal “safe haven”.
In this regard, Biden once told the New York Times that the “Section 230” should be immediately repealed.
He said:
This is promoting a lie they know is false, and we should set standards, just like Europeans do with privacy.
In addition, Lei Feng.com noticed that during the election, the Biden team had attacked Facebook for political advertising content.
net neutrality
On the subject of net neutrality, Biden himself has said little so far.
However, a spokesman for the Biden campaign said the president-elect supports strict net neutrality protections.
In a statement, the spokesperson noted:
Joe Biden has pushed for net neutrality and wants to see[the Federal Communications Commission]take direct action to keep the internet open and free for all Americans.
However, Cnet reported that when Biden was a senator, he did not co-sponsor or support net neutrality legislation, including the 2007 Internet Freedom Protection Act.
Therefore, it remains to be seen and studied on this issue.
rural broadband
During the campaign, Biden said rebuilding the American middle class was “the moral imperative of our time.” He believes that revitalizing rural America is a cornerstone of this effort.
For rural economic development policy, one of his strategies is to invest $20 billion to bring broadband access to communities without it. He also called for a partnership with municipal utilities to bring fiber-optic broadband to rural America’s communities.
Biden wrote in his rural policy:
High-speed broadband is critical to the economy of the 21st century, and at a time when so many jobs and businesses can be located anywhere, high-speed Internet access should be a great equalizer for rural America, not another economic disadvantage.
online privacy
During the campaign, Biden did not mention the issue of data privacy too much, but from some of his speeches during his tenure as chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, we can still see a thing or two about his attitude.
During his tenure, Biden has introduced several bills, including the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, that would make it easier for the FBI and law enforcement to monitor communications.
Now that Biden’s presidency is a foregone conclusion, time will tell what kind of vision he can bring to the technology industry.
It is worth mentioning that while everyone was tweeting to celebrate, Trump also posted a number of tweets, but they were all blocked by Twitter as “misleading information”.
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