Insurance Industry: China hits insurance industry with nearly $10m fines - By: Gary Robinson |

Chinese insurance regulators has issued more almost $10m in fines a gainst intermediaries and insurance firms in the first four months of 2018.

China’s promise of getting tough on financial services companies that do not follow guidelines in 2018 has seen around 60 insurance companies – a mix of intermediaries and companies –  hit with more than 63 million yuan (about $9.8m) in penalties in the January-April period, according a report in specialist local news outlet Securities Daily.

Insurance firms and intermediary agencies were fined for irregularities, including misguiding sales pitches and fake materials, according to the report.

Read more: China hits insurance industry with nearly $10m fines - International Investment

Monopolies: The European Union Just Showed Democrats How To Take On Monopolies - by A. C. Kaufman and D. Marans

European antitrust officials slapped Google with a record $2.7 billion fine on Tuesday for manipulating search results to favor its own services.

The ruling, which came after a seven-year investigation, exposes what critics described as the failure of U.S. regulators to rein in monopolies at home, forcing their victims to seek recourse in the European Union.

“The U.S. does not do antitrust regulation,” Matt Stoller, an antitrust expert at the nonpartisan New America Foundation’s Open Markets program, told HuffPost. “That’s the key difference. [Europeans] actually do antitrust.”

But what is most surprising about America’s kid-gloves approach to antitrust policy is that it is not limited to Republicans, who are often open about their philosophical objections to regulating monopolistic behavior. In recent decades, influential Democrats have proved just as, if not more, willing to let companies with concentrated financial power off the hook, experts told HuffPost.

“It would be hard to be worse than the [Obama] administration on this,” Stoller said. “The failure of leadership was incredibly profound. That said, it could always get worse, but I don’t think we know enough.”

A monopoly is a company that controls such a large share of an industry that it has the power to dictate prices or engage in other behavior that limits competition. Sometimes companies without sole monopoly power conspire to control prices, forming what are known as cartels.

For many Americans, the word “monopoly” conjures images of robber baron-owned railroad and steel conglomerates from the turn of the 20th century. The trust-busting policies of former President Theodore Roosevelt put an end to them, a certain popular wisdom goes, giving us the thriving, competitive economy we have today.

In reality, as Stoller laid out in a lengthy essay in The Atlantic in October, cutting monopoly business and financial power down to size was the product of constant battles with big money interests that picked up significantly during the New Deal of the 1930s.

Responding to the banking abuses that led to the Great Depression, populist Democrats, often from rural parts of the country, battled the monopolies of their era in order to protect their constituent farmers and local businesses. Antitrust legislation allowed for companies that grew too large or abused their size to be fined or broken up, and Congress, together with the executive branch’s Federal Trade Commission, often put those laws

Social Media -Hate Speech: The EU gave an ultimatum to Facebook and Google about hate speech - by Jacob Kastrenakes

The European Union is once again asking Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other web companies to crack down on hate speech and speech inciting violence and terrorism — but this time, it’s taking things a step further. The European Commission has issued guidelines for web companies to follow, and it’s warning the companies that, if they don’t comply, the Commission may pass legislation. And that legislation, of course, could lead to some huge fines.

There are a handful of guidelines so far. The Commission recommends that web companies appoint a dedicated point of contact, who law enforcement can contact when illegal content is discovered. It wants web companies to allow third-party “trusted flaggers” with “specific expertise in identifying illegal content” to come in and monitor potentially illegal posts. And it asks web companies to invest in technologies that can automatically detect potentially illegal posts and speech.

The Commission would also like companies to do more to prevent illegal content from being reposted after it’s been taken down. And the Commission says time frames may need to be established for how quickly illegal content is taken down once it’s discovered. Web companies should issue public guidelines, the Commission says, so that users know how takedown requests are treated and what kind of content gets removed.

It sounds like a lot, but it mostly boils down to this: web companies should remove illegal content faster and invest in tools and employees to make it happen.

Web companies still take over a week to remove illegal content in more than a quarter of cases, says Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for the digital economy and society. “The situation is not sustainable,” Gabriel says in a statement. “Today we provide a clear signal to platforms to act more responsibly.”

And there’s a good chance web companies will take steps toward following what the European Commission suggests. 

For one, the European Union is known for levying enormous fines on tech companies — like the €2.4 billion fine on Google — and those companies would certainly like to avoid any new legislation coming down that they could one day be in violation of. But also, these companies have already been working with the EU toward reducing hate speech. 

And several European countries have already passed or considered passing their own laws on hate speech that web companies have to comply with.

A year ago, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft all agreed to hate speech rules, which required the companies to review “the majority of” hateful content within 24 hours of becoming aware of it. 

As a result of the partnership, the companies later teamed up on a new database of images and videos identified as promoting terrorism, helping the platforms quickly pull down content that had already been identified as illegal by another company.

In today’s announcement, Vera Jourová, commissioner for justice and consumers, refers back to that agreement saying it’s proof that asking web companies to more strictly regulate hate speech on their own can work. 

“The code of conduct I agreed with Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft shows that a self-regulatory approach can serve as a good example and can lead to results,” Jourová said. But she also warned that “if the tech companies don't deliver, we will do it."

The Commission says it plans to “carefully” monitor web companies’ progress in implementing these recommendations and assess whether further action needs to be taken. That’s supposed to be completed by next May. 

“Follow-up initiatives will depend on the online platforms' actions to proactively implement the guidelines,” the Commission writes. Further actions, the announcement says, include “possible legislative measures to complement the existing regulatory framework."

Read more: The EU gave an ultimatum to Facebook and Google about hate speech - The Verge

Anti-trust laws: EU Fines Google

EU fines Google billions for breaching antitrust rules http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/google-eu-fine-1.4179272 Shared via the CBC News Android App