The New York Times. April 04, 2020

SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2020 B1

N

TECH ECONOMY MEDIA FINANCE

7 VIRUS FALLOUT

‘Zoombombing’ to disrupt

videoconferences by a wide

variety of victims is a

fast-growing problem.

8 YOUR MONEY ADVISER

You have three extra months

to file your taxes. Be wise

about using that time; don’t

wait if you’re due a refund.

11 SPORTS

The U.S. Women’s Open will

be rescheduled, becoming

the first women’s golf major

played in December.

The longest stretch of job creation

on record in the United States

came to a halt last month, the La-

bor Department reported on Fri-

day, another reflection of the coro-

navirus pandemic that has

brought the economy to a virtual

standstill.

Compared with the astounding

numbers of people recently apply-

ing for unemployment benefits —

nearly 10 million in the previous

two weeks — the figure an-

nounced on Friday was less strik-

ing: a loss of 701,000 jobs. But the

data was collected mostly in the

first half of the month, before stay-

at-home orders began to cover

much of the nation. With that,

what had been a drip-drip-drip of

job losses turned into a deluge.

“As bad as this report is, next

month will be many orders of

magnitude worse,” said Michael

Gapen, chief U.S. economist at

Barclays. “This is the initial slip-

page of the labor market.” He said

the March unemployment rate of

4.4 percent could rise to 13 percent

in April.

The decline in employment last

month was the biggest monthly

drop since the depths of the Great

Recession in 2008-9. It was paced

by a net loss of 459,000 jobs in the

Run of Job Growth Ends.

Don’t Expect Fast Return.

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

and PATRICIA COHEN

CONTINUED ON PAGE B3

Before the coronavirus, there was something I

used to worry about. It was called screen time.

Perhaps you remember it.

I thought about it. I wrote about it. A lot. I

would try different digital detoxes as if they

were fad diets, each working for a week or two

before I’d be back on that smooth glowing

glass.

Now I have thrown off the shackles of

screen-time guilt. My television is on. My com-

puter is open. My phone is unlocked, glittering.

I want to be covered in screens. If I had a virtu-

al reality headset nearby, I would strap it on.

The screen is my only contact with my par-

ents, whom I miss but can’t visit because I

don’t want to accidentally kill them with the vi-

rus. It brings me into happy hours with my

high school friends and gives me photos of peo-

ple cooking on Facebook. Was there a time I

thought Facebook was bad? An artery of dan-

gerous propaganda flooding the country’s

body politic? Maybe. I can’t remember. That

was a different time.

A lot of people are coming around.

Walt Mossberg, my former boss and a long-

time influential tech product reviewer, deacti-

vated his Facebook and Instagram accounts in

2018 to protest Facebook’s policies and negli-

gence around fake news. Now, for the duration

of the pandemic, he is back.

“I haven’t changed my mind about the com-

pany’s policies and actions,” Mr. Mossberg

ANDREA CHRONOPOULOS

Staring Endlessly at Screens

Is Now a Less Guilty Escape

By NELLIE BOWLES

CONTINUED ON PAGE B7

We’ve tried all sorts of digital detoxes. But now? Bring on the Zoom cocktail hour.

WASHINGTON — Last month, lob-
bying groups representing adver-
tising giants like Google and Face-
book asked California’s attorney
general to wait to enforce the
state’s new online privacy rules
given the coronavirus ripping
around the world.
In Washington, lobbyists repre-
senting cloud computing giants
like Amazon pushed for more
money to help federal employees
work remotely.
And Uber began reframing a
longtime campaign to avoid clas-
sifying its drivers as full-time em-
ployees through the urgency of a
mounting public health crisis.
The coronavirus has created an
opportunity for tech companies
and their lobbying operations to
quietly push for long-held goals in
the frantic political and economic
environment created by the out-
break.
In some cases, groups or lobby-
ists representing companies like
Google and Facebook have pur-
sued changes, like the delay in
California’s privacy law enforce-
ment, that they were already hop-
ing for before the pandemic. Oth-
ers representing companies such
as Amazon have asked for regula-
tory changes to benefit their busi-
nesses where demand is now
soaring because of the outbreak.
“It’s certainly opportunistic,”
said Daniel Auble, the senior re-
searcher at the Center for Respon-
sive Politics, a research organiza-
tion that tracks money in politics.
“Everybody’s searching for every
way that they can get some kind of
assistance, whether it’s cash or
delaying a regulation that will cost
them money to implement, and
may or may not have an effect on
their performance during the cri-
sis in essential ways.”
While many industries rocked
by the virus have recently asked
Congress for direct financial as-
sistance, tech companies’ re-
quests are striking because Sili-
con Valley has not suffered from

In Pandemic,

Tech Firms

See Chances

For Lobbying

CONTINUED ON PAGE B5

Renewing old fights and

pursuing new ones to win

aid or loosen regulations.

By DAVID McCABE

RECESSION

600 thousand

400

200

0

200

400

600

800

+ + + – – – –

MONTHLY CHANGE IN JOBS

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics THE NEW YORK TIMES

MARCH 2020

–701 thousand jobs

’04 ’05 ’06 ’07 ’08 ’09 ’10 ’11 ’12 ’13 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’19 ’20

The billboard was blank.
In all the times Takeshi Sato had
walked through Shibuya Cross-
ing, Tokyo’s answer to Times
Square, he had been more or less
surrounded by ads. But on March
23, he noticed something strange
looming over the pedestrians: an
empty sign.
“I thought, ‘Oh, this is not nor-
mal,’ and I remember feeling de-
pressed,” Mr. Sato said. “But it’s
understandable that advertisers
want to stop running ads on bill-
boards, because fewer people are
going out.”
Even in 2011, after a devastating
earthquake and tsunami, the bill-
boards in that part of town were
full, he said. The blank spot in
Shibuya, facing one of the world’s
busiest intersections, suggested
the far-reaching effects of the co-
ronavirus.
Companies that spent big to get
the word out about their products
before the pandemic have hit the
brakes. Facebook has described
its advertising business as “weak-
ening.” Amazon has reduced its
Google Shopping ads. Coca-Cola,
Kohl’s and Zillow Group have
stopped or limited their market-
ing. Marriott’s advertising, in the
words of the company’s chief ex-
ecutive, has “gone dark.”
“A lot of advertisers are just
pulling back — the tide’s going
out,” said Garrett Johnson, an as-
sistant marketing professor at

Jittery Firms

Cut Back Ads

During Crisis

By TIFFANY HSU

CONTINUED ON PAGE B4