THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020 B1
YTECH ECONOMY MEDIA FINANCE
6 COMPANIES
Berkshire Hathaway says it
was tricked into buying a
troubled company. So it’s
suing the company’s law firm.
6 BANKSTrading activity has helped
keep the big banks in goodhealth, and they aren’t even
counting on more stimulus.9 SPORTSDespite its success on the
field, French soccer is beingroiled by complaints of a
toxic workplace.Facebook has just leased enough
new office space in Manhattan to
nearly triple its current local work
force, including at one of the city’s
most iconic buildings, the 107-
year-old former main post office
complex near Pennsylvania Sta-
tion.
Apple, which set up its first of-
fice in New York a decade ago, is
expanding to another building in
Manhattan. And Google and Ama-
zon are stitching together corpo-
rate campuses in the city more
quickly than anywhere else in the
world. Amazon paid roughly $1
billion in March for the iconic Lord
& Taylor building on Fifth Avenue.
Despite a pandemic that has
ravaged New York, hollowed out
many of its office buildings and
raised fundamental questionsabout its future, the four compa-
nies collectively known as Big
Tech are all significantly expand-
ing their footprint in the city, giv-
ing it a badly needed vote of confi-
dence.
With fears that the virus could
spike again in the colder months,
many companies are grappling
with how, when and even if office
workers will come back to build-
ings in Manhattan. And the techgiants have not brought their
workers back yet, either.
Even so, the giants have not
only moved forward with previ-
ous growth plans, but have also in-
creased their pace of hiring and
office acquisition during the pan-
demic.
The industry’s embrace of New
York City comes despite the tu-
multuous reception that Amazon
received last year when it pro-posed building a sprawling head-
quarters in Queens. Amazon
abandoned the plans in the face of
political and community opposi-
tion, but now has acquired more
than 2 million square feet of office
space for corporate workers, as
well as warehouses from Staten
Island to Queens to the Bronx.
After Amazon bought the Lord
& Taylor building, it announced in
August that 2,000 employeeswould eventually work there, in-
creasing by half its current tech
work force of 4,000.
Amazon now has eight office
properties in New York, most of
which are clustered in Midtown.
The company recently expanded
outside Manhattan, leasing space
on the Brooklyn waterfront for its
Amazon Music team.
“We know that talent attractsThe Manhattan Exodus Is Cause for Concern. But Big Tech Is Still Moving In.
CONTINUED ON PAGE B7By MATTHEW HAAGThere’s a disease that has been spread-
ing for years now. Like any resilient
virus, it evolves to find new ways to
attack us. It’s not in our bodies, but on
the web.
It has different names: misinforma-
tion, disinformation or distortions.
Whatever the label, it can be harmful,
especially now that it is being
produced through the lens of severalBrian X. Chen
TECH FIXThe Perils of Treating Fiction as Fact
In a video posted to Facebook on Sept.
14, Dan Bongino, a popular right-wing
commentator and radio host, declared
that Democrats were planning a coup
against President Trump on Election
Day.
For just over 11 minutes, Mr. Bongino
talked about how bipartisan election ex-
perts who had met in June to plan for
what might happen after people vote
were actually holding exercises for such
a coup. To support his baseless claim, he
twisted the group’s words to fit his
meaning.“I want to warn you that this stuff is
intense,” Mr. Bongino said, speaking
into the camera to his 3.6 million Face-
book followers. “Really intense, and you
need to be ready to digest it all.”
His video, which has been viewed 2.9
million times, provoked strong reac-
tions. One commenter wrote that people
should be prepared for when Democrats
“cross the line” so they could “show
them what true freedom is.” Another
posted a meme of a Rottweiler about to
pounce, with the caption “Veterans be
like... Say when Americans.”By DAVEY ALBACONTINUED ON PAGE B4Baseless Claims of a Coup Are Inflaming Tensions
And Stoking Fears of Violence During the Election
CONTINUED ON PAGE B4emotionally charged events: the co-
ronavirus pandemic, a presidential
election and protests against law en-
forcement.
The swarm of bad information circu-
lating on the web has been intense
enough to overwhelm Alan Duke, the
editor of Lead Stories, a fact-checking
website. For years, he said, false news
mostly consisted of phony web articles
that revolved around silly themes, like
myths about putting onions in your
socks to cure a cold. But misinforma-
tion has now crept into much darker,GLENN HARVEYWith Falsehoods Rampaging on the Web,
It’s Time to Slow Down and Be Skeptical
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