Philippa Kaur

FEW COMPANIES are more emblematic of the tech-obsessed, easy-money era of the early 21st century than SoftBank, the Japanese investment conglomerate founded and run by Son Masayoshi, or Masa for short. Starting life as an obscure Japanese internet company before the turn of the century, it has made one debt-fuelled bet after another to become first a telecommunications giant, and then what Mr Son last year called the world’s biggest venture-capital (VC) provider, comfortably ahead of Tiger Global, a New York hedge fund, and Sequoia Capital, a VC powerhouse. Parts of its balance-sheet are opaque yet it continues to borrow heavily and is one of the world’s most-indebted non-financial firms. Like many of the Silicon Valley firms it invests in, it has a dominant founding shareholder who is not averse to spouting gobbledygook. Mr Son says he invests with a 300-year horizon, making SoftBank as close to immortal as financial firms get. But it is the here and now that he should be most concerned with.That is because the tech boom, which SoftBank has both fuelled and benefited from, may be coming to an end. In the face of the highest rates of inflation in decades, central banks have started to raise interest rates. That threatens to tighten credit markets for highly leveraged entities like SoftBank. More important, higher rates make a big difference to the long-term value of the sort of high-growth tech startups it invests in, whose profits are in the distant future. As one of the highest rollers in two of the business megatrends of the past few decades, it is worth asking what would happen if tech fandom and easy money prove evanescent. As Warren Buffett once said, it’s only when the tide goes out that you can see who is swimming naked. What, Schumpeter wonders, is the state of Mr Son’s bathing attire?Mr Son, like Mr Buffett, enjoys a colourful turn of phrase. On Feb 8th, reporting an 87% year-on-year slump in SoftBank’s net profit in the nine months to December, he was blunt. Not only was the company in the midst of a blizzard that started last autumn, he said. The storm had got worse in America and elsewhere because of the threat of rising rates. Though SoftBank eked out a small profit in the most recent quarter, the two most important variables that Mr Son watches like a hawk deteriorated sharply. One was the net value of SoftBank’s portfolio of assets, which fell by $19bn to $168bn. The other was the value of its net debt relative to equity, which reached the highest level since 2018 when SoftBank floated its Japanese telecoms business.To gauge the risks, start with the asset side of those calculations. However much of a brave face Mr Son puts on it, there is scant good news. On the day of its results SoftBank confirmed that it had called off the sale of its British chip business, Arm, to Nvidia, a California-based semiconductor firm, because of regulatory pressure. At Nvidia’s highest price, the implied sale value was above $60bn, or about twice what SoftBank paid for Arm in 2016. Instead SoftBank will sell shares in Arm in an initial public offering (IPO) in the next financial year. Mr Son noted that the underlying profits of Arm’s chip business are estimated to have improved recently, which may make it more attractive. Yet Kirk Boodry of Redex Research, a firm of analysts, reckons an IPO has little chance of generating as much value as a sale. Moreover, potential investors need only look at the poor public-market performance of almost all the 25 companies SoftBank listed in the past ten months to know that tech IPOs are no longer a gravy train.Also on the asset side are SoftBank’s troubled investments in China and in its two Vision Funds, which invested in a whopping 239 young companies last year. Alibaba, the embattled Chinese tech giant, was once the cornerstone of SoftBank’s investment strategy, accounting for 60% of net assets. Now SoftBank treats it like a get-out-of-jail-free card, selling stakes to fund riskier ventures elsewhere. Its weight in the portfolio has shrunk to 24%. On February 7th Alibaba’s share price fell by 6% on fears that SoftBank would cut its stake yet more. For SoftBank, Alibaba is now vastly eclipsed in importance by its two Vision Funds, which account for almost half of the group’s net assets. These inched up in value in the most recent quarter, mostly because of valuation gains in unlisted firms. If the stark sell-off of SoftBank’s publicly traded firms is any guide, however, it may be only a matter of time before valuations of firms in the pre-IPO stage get caught in the same tech-market malaise.SoftBank’s debt situation is worrying, too. It said its loan-to-value (LTV) ratio, or net debt as a share of the equity value of its holdings, was 22% at the end of December, up from 19% three months earlier; it considers 25% to be reasonable in normal times. However, others calculate the ratio more conservatively, including additional liabilities such as margin loans, investment commitments and share buybacks that SoftBank excludes. Sharon Chen of Bloomberg Intelligence, a financial-analysis firm, says that based on her measurements, SoftBank is getting close to the 40% LTV threshold that S&P Global, a ratings agency, has said could be a trigger for a debt downgrade (though the plan to list Arm could ease the pressure). A further sale of Alibaba shares could be used to cut debt, but might also lower the quality of the portfolio—another rating-agency red flag.The Son also setsSoftBank has had enough debt-related troubles in the past for Mr Son to realise the dangers. The global financial crisis of 2007-09 struck just as SoftBank had geared up massively to buy Vodafone Japan, a telecoms firm. It has long pledged to keep enough liquidity on hand to fund two years of debt payments. But its longer-term financial stability rests on two variables—the value of its assets and the size of its debts—which would both benefit from an obsession with prudence, not growth. More than a pair of speedos, Mr Son needs a wetsuit. 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A TEENAGED girl who periodically transforms into a giant panda is the improbable star of “Turning Red”, a coming-of-age movie from Disney due out next month. The world’s biggest media company, which will celebrate its 100th birthday next year, is no adolescent. But Disney is going through some awkward changes of its own as it reorganises its business—worth $260bn—around the barely two-year-old venture of video-streaming.So far the experiment has been a success. The company’s streaming operation, Disney+, initially aimed for at least 60m subscribers in its first five years, ending in 2024. It got there in less than 12 months, and now hopes for as many as 260m subscribers by that date. Bob Chapek, who took over as chief executive just before the pandemic, is convinced that Disney’s future lies in streaming directly to the consumer, his “north star”. Disney+ is all but guaranteed to be among the survivors of the ruthless period of competition that has become known as the streaming wars.But doubts are surfacing across the industry about how much of a prize awaits the victors. Every year Disney and its rivals promise to spend more on content. And yet the growth in subscribers is showing signs of slowing. A realisation is setting in that old media companies are pivoting from a highly profitable cable-tv business to a distinctly less rewarding alternative. Amid a bout of market volatility which last week saw Alphabet’s and Amazon’s share prices rise by a tenth or more and Meta’s fall by a quarter, investors are awaiting Disney’s quarterly results on February 9th with some trepidation. So, too, is Mr Chapek, whose contract expires one year from now.Markets took fright last month when Netflix, the leading streamer, forecast that in the first quarter of 2022 it would add just 2.5m new members. That would be the weakest first quarter since 2010, when most Netflix subscribers still got dvds by mail. Its share price fell by more than a quarter on the news. The previous quarter Disney said it had added only 2.1m streaming subscribers, the least in its short experience, sending another judder through markets. With some exceptions, growth has slowed across the industry (see chart 1).The firms blame temporary headwinds: a continuing covid hangover, content delays and, in the case of Apple tv+, the phasing out of free trials. But some analysts are concluding that the ceiling for subscriptions is lower than they had thought. Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, now thinks Netflix will end 2024 with 260m global members, down from its earlier estimate of 300m. And though streamers see the potential to raise prices in rich-world markets, that will be harder in the faster-growing poor ones. In India, Netflix recently slashed the price of its basic plan from $6.60 to $2.60 a month. Morgan Stanley now expects Netflix’s total revenue to grow by about 10% a year in the medium term, not the 15% or more it had previously predicted.As revenue growth slows, costs swell. Media firms will spend more than $230bn on video content this year, nearly double the figure a decade ago, forecasts Ampere Analysis, a research firm. Netflix’s weak results came despite what it billed as its “strongest content slate ever”, including “Squid Game”, its most popular series, and “Red Notice”, its most successful film. Disney+ is doing far better than the company ever dreamed—but it is costing more, too. Three years ago Disney said it would spend about $2bn on streaming content in 2024. Mr Chapek recently said the figure would be more than $9bn.Spending is going up partly because the costs of filming have risen. The final season of WarnerMedia’s “Game of Thrones”, in 2019, cost around $15m per episode, which then seemed steep. Amazon’s serialised “Lord of the Rings”, due in September, reportedly cost about four times as much. And audiences have become more demanding. Most people used to cancel their cable-tv subscription only when they moved house, says Doug Shapiro, a former chief strategy officer at Turner Broadcasting System, a television company. Now, he says, they are “becoming accustomed to churning on or off over the quality of content”, signing up to devour the latest hit and then cancelling their membership. Apple tv+, which has the most serious retention problem, loses a tenth of its customers every month, according to Antenna, a data firm, meaning that every year it churns through the equivalent of more than 100% of its members (see chart 2).The combination of rising costs and slowing revenue growth “calls into question the end-state economics of these businesses”, argues MoffettNathanson, a firm of analysts. Netflix, the most successful of the bunch, expects its operating margin to shrink in 2022, for the first time in at least six years, to 19%; it has attributed its compressed margins to higher spending on programming. MoffettNathanson adds that these figures flatter the firm’s performance. Like other streamers, Netflix amortises the cost of content over several years, when in reality most of its shows are binged in a matter of weeks. (The company insists that its amortisation schedule is based on viewing patterns.)Streaming’s pinched economics are especially galling for old media firms like Disney, which are used to the far more profitable cable-tv business. Last year Disney reported an operating margin of 30% for its linear tv networks, a typical figure for the industry. The average American cable bill is nearly $100 a month—and viewers are usually subjected to advertising on top of that. Media firms are accelerating the decline of this profitable business by shifting their best content from cable to their streaming services. They are also forgoing box-office revenue by sending movies straight to streaming (though covid-related cinema closures have often forced their hand). Animators at Disney’s Pixar studio are said to be miffed that “Turning Red” is not getting an outing at the cinema in most countries.There is little choice but to stick with the strategy. Cable is not coming back; streaming is expected to account for half of tv viewing in America by 2024. The focus is increasingly turning to how to make the new business more profitable. Streamers increasingly drip-feed new episodes rather than dropping entire series. Bundling is becoming more common: Disney sells Disney+ along with espn+, its sports streamer, and Hulu, a general entertainment service that it jointly owns with Comcast, a cable giant. Apple and Amazon both package tv with other services. WarnerMedia and Discovery are set to merge this year. There may be more to come. “If Netflix is decelerating more rapidly than expected, the great streaming rebundling may need to begin sooner rather than later,” writes Benjamin Swinburne of Morgan Stanley.The hope at the bigger media firms is that the streaming wars will eventually claim some casualties, leaving the survivors free to raise their prices and dial down spending on content. Peacock, Comcast’s streamer, is trailing. Viacomcbs, which owns Paramount+, is the subject of endless takeover rumours. But even their exit from the industry would leave some determined competitors. Warner-Discovery is betting its future on streaming. Apple and Amazon are getting better at making hits, and have enough money to run at a loss for as long as they like. Disney and Netflix are not going anywhere. It looks like being a long war, and short on spoils. More

THERE COMES a time in every great bull market where the dreams of investors collide with changing facts on the ground. In the subprime boom it was the moment when mortgage default rates started to rise in 2006; in the dotcom bubble of 2000-01 it was when the dinosaurs of the telecoms sector confessed that technological disruption would destroy their profits, not increase them. There was a glimmer of a similar moment when Meta (the parent company of Facebook) reported poor results on February 2nd, sending its share price down by 26% the next day and wiping out well over $200bn of market value. That prompted a further sell-off in technology stocks. Along with low interest rates, a driver of America’s epic bull run of the past decade has been the view that big tech firms are natural monopolies that can increase profits for decades to come with little serious threat from competition. This belief explains why the five largest tech firms now comprise over 20% of the S&P 500 index. Now it faces a big test.Since listing in 2012 Meta has exemplified big tech’s prowess and pitfalls. For a glimpse of the caricature, consider the American government’s antitrust case against it first launched in 2020. It describes an invincible company in a world where technology is perpetually frozen in the 2010s: “this unmatched position has provided Facebook with staggering profits,” America’s Federal Trade Commission wrote in its lawsuit. Examine the firm’s fourth-quarter results, though, and its position seems rather vulnerable and its profits somewhat less staggering. It comes across as a business with decelerating growth, a stale core product and a cost-control problem. The number of users of all of Meta’s products, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is barely growing. Those of the core social network fell slightly in the fourth quarter compared with the third. Net income dropped by 8% year on year and the firm suggested that revenue would grow by just 3-11% in the first quarter of 2022, the slowest rate since it went public and far below the average rate of 29% over the past three years—and below the growth rate necessary to justify its valuation.Meta’s troubles reflect two kinds of competition. The first is within social media, where TikTok has become a formidable competitor. More than 1bn people use the Chinese-owned app each month (compared with Meta’s 3.6bn), a less toxic brand that is popular among young people and superior technology. Despite attempts by Donald Trump to ban it on national-security grounds while he was president, TikTok has shown geopolitical and commercial staying power. Just as the boss of Time Warner, a media behemoth, once dismissed Netflix as “the Albanian army”—an inconsequential irritant—Silicon Valley and America’s trustbusters have never taken TikTok entirely seriously. Big mistake. The second kind of competition hurting Facebook is the intensifying contest between tech platforms as they diversify into new services and vie to control access to the customer. In Facebook’s case the problem is Apple’s new privacy rules, which allow users to opt out of ad-tracking, in turn rendering Facebook’s proposition less valuable for advertisers. So are Meta’s problems a one-off or a sign of deeper ructions within the tech industry? Strong results from Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft in the past two weeks may lead some to conclude there is little to worry about. Apple’s pre-eminence in handsets in America and Alphabet’s command of search remain unquestionable. Yet there are grounds for doubt.The competition between the big platforms is already intensifying. The share of the five big firms’ sales in markets that overlap has risen from 20% to 40% since 2015. Total investment (capital spending plus research and development) for the quintet has soared to $300bn a year, as they search for new vistas such as virtual-reality metaverses or autonomous cars. These promise growth but will also lead to more overlap, disrupt existing products and depress short-term returns. Meanwhile, venture-capital funds invested $600bn last year. Some of this will go up in smoke, but some will finance competitors who will eventually pose a threat.And, if you look closely, pockets of strain are emerging beyond social media. Video-streaming has turned into a bloodbath as half a dozen firms throw huge sums at a cash-hungry business that has few barriers to entry. According to the Wall Street Journal, customer churn has exceeded 50% for some streaming services in just six months, one reason why Netflix’s share price has dropped by 33% so far this year. Some other aspiring tech platforms are showing signs of stress: Spotify said this week that subscriber growth would slow down and PayPal walked away from its goal to have 750m users by 2025. Even in e-commerce, where Amazon remains pre-eminent, serious challengers such as the supermarket giants (Walmart and Target) or rival online platforms (Shopify) are making their presence felt. In any case, Amazon’s thin margins and vast investment levels that suggest consumers may be getting a better deal than investors. Although a strong showing from the cloud division divulged on February 3rd may buoy the e-empire’s market value by more than half as much as Meta lost, the cloud business is unlikely to stay as lucrative for ever. Alphabet, Microsoft and Oracle are already trying to compete away some of Amazon’s lofty cloud margins.Meta’s mishaps signal that two changes need to happen, although only one will. One relates to Mark Zuckerberg, its leader and pantomime villain. He is pushing for a leap into the metaverse in which the firm is now investing $10bn a year. His reputation with shareholders rests on successfully completing similarly bold moves in the past: the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012-14 and a shift from desktop to mobile around the same time. The trouble is that Mr Zuckerberg’s and his firm’s toxic reputation will impede its expansion into new terrain: its plan for a digital currency flopped because governments objected (this week the venture announced that it was winding down). Mr Zuckerberg is a liability, but controls Meta’s voting rights, enjoys a pliant board and so is probably going nowhere. The second change involves how investors and governments think about big tech, and indeed the stockmarket. The narrative of the 2010s—of a series of natural monopolies with an almost effortless dominance over the economy and investment portfolios—no longer neatly reflects reality. Technology shifts and an investment surge are altering the products that tech firms sell and may lead to a different alignment of winners and losers. And, as in previous booms, from emerging markets to mortgages, high returns have attracted a vast flood of capital, which in turn may lead to overall profitability being competed down. Given the enormous weight of the technology industry in today’s stockmarkets, this matters a great deal. And the mayhem at Meta shows it is no longer just an abstract idea. More

HOYERSWERDA, BAUTZEN, Kamenz More

IN MUCH OF the world the business of running ski slopes has, like most of tourism, been crippled by lockdowns and travel restrictions. China is no exception. Visits to Chinese ski areas slumped by 38% in 2020—steeper than a global decline of 14% after covid-19 hit. Two in five winter-sports businesses lost more than half their revenue as a result of anti-virus measures, according to the Beijing Olympic City Development Association, an official group set up to champion sport. One in 14 ski areas, especially small ones, gave up the ghost in 2020. As China prepares to host the Winter Olympics, which open in Beijing on February 4th, its ski-industrial complex is hoping that this celebration of all pursuits below freezing will mark the end of a short-lived icy patch.Unlike Europe and America, where the winter-sports sector’s downhill slide predates the pandemic, Chinese skiers were taking to the slopes in record numbers. The Beijing Ski Association says that people paid more than 20m visits to China’s ski venues in 2019, twice as many as in 2014. Eileen Gu, a teenager raised in San Francisco who has chosen to represent China, where her mother was born, in freestyle skiing, has recalled that just a few years ago she knew virtually all the freestyle skiers in the country. Now the gold-medal contender suggests they are like snowflakes in a blizzard.Investors have been swept up, too. China had nearly 800 ski areas before the pandemic, four times the number in 2008 and not a world away from around 1,100 in the Alps, where they began popping up around 1900. Though the Chinese areas still have many fewer lifts than Western ones, they are getting more sophisticated. Some now offer summer pastimes like mountain-biking, hiking and rafting. China’s 36 indoor ski centres—it has more of these than any other country—accounted for a fifth of all ski visits in the country in 2020. Sunac China is the world’s largest operator of such venues. Indoor ski slopes contributed to the success of the developer’s culture-and-tourism business (which also includes malls, water-sports venues and hotels), where revenues grew by 166% year on year in the first half of 2021.Even so, Chinese ski-resort operators are vulnerable to two industry-wide uncertainties. The first is climate change. Since milder temperatures mean less snow, ski resorts everywhere are hostage to global warming. Doubts over sufficient snowfall have prompted Olympic organisers this year to rely entirely on artificial snow for the first time. But making the white stuff artificially uses an awful lot of water—a scarce resource in China’s drought-prone north, home to half its population and most of its resorts. The Olympic games alone may need 2m cubic metres—enough to fill 800 Olympic-size swimming pools—to produce sufficient snow cover, according to Carmen de Jong, a hydrologist at the University of Strasbourg. Officials reckon the event will use up to a tenth of all water consumed during the ski events in the Chongli district, which will host them. Indoor slopes, for their part, need less snow but all of it is artificial.The second uncertainty has to do with future demand. China still has room to catch up with big skiing nations. Chinese skiers hit the slopes once a year in the winter of 2020-21, on average, compared with half a dozen times for those in Austria or Switzerland. Optimists also point out that many Chinese skiers are young, and so in principle have plenty of skiing left in their legs; whereas in America more than one-fifth of skiers are over 55, about 80% of China’s are under 40 years old, according to Laurent Vanat, a consultant on the global ski industry.However, precisely because China lacks a strong tradition of skiing, absolute beginners are exceptionally common on its pistes. Around 80% of skiers in China are first-timers this season, up from 72% in 2019, according to Mr Vanat. In Europe and America the share is less than 20%. China’s ski industry is counting on a strong showing from Ms Gu and the rest of the national team to convert such neophytes into regulars. Like her, though, resort owners face tough terrain ahead. ■This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Avalanche risk” More

FOR THE uninitiated, which includes your columnist, there are two things to know about video gaming. The first is that some things never change. For all the virtual worlds they can create, gamers, a mostly male bunch, like nothing better than to blow their on-screen opponents to smithereens. The second is that everything else is in flux. Gaming is moving from consoles, PCs and smartphones to streaming and the metaverse. It is not just avatars that are being shot to shreds. Business models are, too.Bear both points in mind when making sense of recent deals involving the two biggest rivals in the console wars, Microsoft, maker of the Xbox, and Sony, producer of the PlayStation (Nintendo is in its own orbit). To cater to those itchy trigger-fingers, both want to expand their bestselling “first-person shooter” rosters. Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a publisher, would give the tech giant ownership of “Call of Duty”, one of the most successful shoot-’em-up franchises of all time. Sony’s $3.6bn takeover of Bungie brings it “Destiny 2”, another popular shooter.The large sums of money changing hands highlight the second point: that everything is up in the air, even the relative strength of each firm. For years Sony has had the advantage. Its latest consoles, PlayStations 4 and 5, have far outsold equivalent Xboxes. It has more exclusive games, which draw in fiercely loyal players. Yet Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, if it fends off antitrust concerns, could alter the balance of power. According to Newzoo, a data-gatherer, it could put Microsoft’s game-software revenue ahead of Sony’s, even combined with Bungie. It underscores Micro soft’s commitment to a subscription and streaming service, funded by a mountain of cash and supported by its Azure cloud business. It reflects a willingness to be open to a range of devices and business models, including free-to-play games and ad-supported ones. It could, literally, be a game-changer.Like Netflix in video, Microsoft hankers after vast subscriber growth. That fits with the current zeitgeist that everything in business, from media to Microsoft’s Office 365 programs, should be based on subscriptions, rather than one-time sales—and reliant on the cloud. But while it is tempting to think Sony should chase after Microsoft, it has neither the money to outspend it on content nor, despite a foray into streaming called PS Now, the infrastructure to compete with it in the cloud. The Bungie deal, which is big for Sony, makes the gap between the two companies’ financial firepower starkly clear. Thomas Aouad of Drawbridge Research, an analysis firm, likens it to taking a spoon to a gunfight rather than a knife. To outmanoeuvre Microsoft, Sony must do something different—and uncharacteristically bold.For starters, it could make the case that streaming and subscription services are no guaranteed road to riches. Yes, streaming dispenses with the need for a costly console, which could draw in casual gamers. But unlike Netflix viewers, players interact with streamed material, often at speeds measured in the milliseconds when their fingers are on the trigger. Low latency, or lag, over an internet connection is a life-and-death matter for a player’s avatar.The business model is unproven, too. Sony and Microsoft have long used consoles as loss-leaders to sell high-margin games to which they often hold exclusive rights (think Gillette razors and razor blades). The approach has benefited their overall gaming businesses, as well as independent game developers. In contrast, selling blockbuster content via monthly subscriptions involves vast outlays and fewer barriers to entry. It may attract lots of new users. Microsoft’s Game Pass service, which grants access to a library of games to run on consoles for up to $14.99 a month, has 25m subscribers; Netflix is getting into games. But such services could face brutal competition and need constant replenishing with blockbuster titles to reduce customer churn. Indeed, Sony, with a deep catalogue of music and films, has profited from being the source of such replenishment for video- and music-streamers.As an alternative gaming strategy, on February 2nd it outlined plans to double down on “live service” games such as “Destiny 2”, which are regularly upgraded and hence easy to monetise. That is not enough, though. It also needs to outline a strategy that draws on its efforts to break down the silos between its gaming, music, film, electronics and image-sensor businesses. As Kato Mio, who publishes on Smartkarma, an investment-research site, puts it, while other firms, such as Meta, talk of building the metaverse, Sony already has many of the ingredients for immersive entertainment (including virtual reality) at its fingertips. It needs to turn its conglomerate structure into a virtue.That means cross-fertilising its entertainment business, by releasing games as films, for instance. More ambitiously, it should put its cutting-edge technologies in better service of the future of entertainment. Here, its small stake in Epic, a maker of hit games such as “Fortnite”, and gamemaking technology such as Unreal Engine, could be a building block. If Tencent, a Chinese tech giant, were ever minded to sell its 40% stake in Epic, Sony should consider raising its investment. With Epic as a partner, Sony could hold its own much better against Microsoft.Mutually assured destructionIn the near term, Sony needs a strong enough slate of content to retaliate if Microsoft tries to deprive the PlayStation of Activision titles (Microsoft says it won’t). It has other problems to confront, such as a slowdown in PlayStation 5 sales due to the supply-chain crunch, and game developers’ demands that console-makers cut the commissions they charge. In the longer run, Sony’s strength is that gaming, which accounts for over a quarter of its revenues, is crucial to its future. For Microsoft, it is less existential. That is an incentive to think big—and laterally. Sony has a panoply of entertainment and technology businesses to turn to, as well as a potential partner in Epic. To safeguard its future, it should do so. ■This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Epic battle” More

COMMUNICATION IS AN essential part of leadership. And body language is an essential part of communication. On these slim pillars rests a mini-industry of research and advice into how executives can influence, encourage and ascend without needing to say a word. The pandemic has made much of it redundant.Plenty of studies have looked into the non-verbal behaviour that marks out “emergent leaders”, people who do not have a specified role in the hierarchy but naturally assume a position of authority in groups. They are a bag of tics. They nod; they touch others but not themselves; they gesture; they furrow their brows; they hold themselves erect; their facial expressions are more animated.Other research suggests that, to win votes in an election, candidates should deliver speeches with their feet planted apart. The second-most popular TED talk claims that two minutes of private, hands-on-hips “power posing” can infuse a job candidate with confidence and improve others’ perceptions of them.Gazing can foster a sense of psychological safety as well as confer authority: in a recent paper, a trio of researchers from Harvard Business School found that receiving more eye contact from a bigwig led to greater participation in group interactions. Leaders who adopt open body positions, with arms and legs uncrossed, are also more likely to encourage contributions.There are three problems with this body of research on non-verbal communication. One is that so much of it is blindingly obvious. Nodding at someone rather than shaking your head in incredulity when they are speaking to you—this does indeed send a powerful signal. But so does punching someone in the face, and no one thinks that requires a journal publication.A second problem is that people look for different things from their bosses. Frowning is seen as a mark of emergent leaders but not of supportive ones; the reverse is true of smiling. (The effect of smiling with lowered eyebrows cries out for study.) A recent paper found that male recipients regarded bosses who used emojis, a form of not-quite-verbal communication, in an email as more effective, but that female recipients perceived them as less effective.The third problem is newer. Almost all of the research on body language dates from a time of in-person interactions. Even when the pandemic wanes and offices in the West refill, most buildings will not return to full capacity. Employees will keep working remotely for at least part of the week; Zoom will remain integral to white-collar working lives. And if there is one thing for which online interactions are not suited, it is body language.That is partly because bodies themselves are largely hidden from view: whatever language they are speaking, it is hard to hear them. You will know the partners, pets and home-decor choices of new colleagues before you will know how tall they are. And although faces fill the video-conferencing screen, meaningful eye contact is impossible.Once past a basic threshold of attentiveness—not looking down at your mobile phone, say—most people have the same glassy-eyed stare. If several faces appear on screen, these participants have no way of knowing that you are gazing specifically at them. (Anyway, admit it: the face you are looking at with most interest is your own.) If your camera is in the wrong place, you may think you are looking meaningfully at your team but you are actually just giving them a view of your nostrils. Animated expressions are hard to spot, particularly when people attending hybrid meetings in the office are Lowry-like figures seated metres away.There are no good ways to compensate for these problems. One tactic is to go all in on expressiveness, nodding furiously and gesturing dementedly—a small tile of caged energy somewhere in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Another is to do a “Zoom loom”, placing yourself so close to the camera that you will give everyone nightmares.The simpler option is not to think too hard about body language. At a few specific moments, like job interviews and set-piece speeches, first impressions matter and a bit of self-conscious posing pays off. But posture is not leadership. If you want to give people a break from staring at a screen, turning off your camera is a good way to do it. If you want to waggle your eyebrows, up or down, let them loose. And if you need to be told that looking at someone makes them feel valued, you have bigger issues.This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Body of research” More

NEIL YOUNG was five years old when, in 1951, he was partially paralysed by polio. Joni Mitchell was nine when she was hospitalised by the same illness around the same time. Both grew up to become famous singers—and, now, prominent campaigners against anti-vaccine misinformation. The two musicians, followed by a handful of others, have withdrawn their music from the world’s biggest streaming service in protest at a podcast that gave airtime to anti-vaxxers.“The Joe Rogan Experience”, to which Spotify bought exclusive rights in 2020 for a reported $100m, hosted vaccine sceptics and promoted dubious remedies such as ivermectin, which Mr Rogan himself tried out when he caught covid last year. At the time of writing Mr Rogan, Spotify’s most popular podcaster, had promised to “balance things out” in future interviews, but was still on air, to the irritation of his critics (including some Spotify staff, who in the past have accused him of sins including transphobia). Mr Young, Ms Mitchell and a few others were holding out.The bust-up looks like a gift to Spotify’s rivals. Yet it has raised questions about content moderation which could prove tricky—and rather expensive—for all audio-streaming platforms.As the biggest streamer, with 172m paid subscribers, Spotify has power over its artists. Mr Young says that he gets about 60% of his streaming income from the platform. A rough calculation by Will Page, a former Spotify chief economist, based on figures from MRC, a data company, suggests the musician stands to lose about $300,000 this year if he continues his boycott (though it seems that, for now at least, streaming of his songs is up by about 50%, owing to more plays on other platforms amid publicity from the spat). But Spotify, too, is vulnerable. Its main rivals, Apple and Amazon, have market values more than 70 and nearly 40 times its own $39bn, respectively, and bundle audio along with TV, gaming and more. Mr Young and Ms Mitchell are no longer A-list stars, but their departure undermines Spotify’s claim to offer “all the music you’ll ever need”. Apple and Amazon wasted no time in promoting the pair on their social-media feeds.Nonetheless, the Rogan affair touches on a sensitive subject for all streamers. Unlike “The Joe Rogan Experience”, which is professionally produced and owned by Spotify, most of the tens of thousands of new podcasts and songs uploaded to the platforms every day are user-generated. Services like Spotify thus increasingly resemble social networks like YouTube. A big difference is that their oversight of what is uploaded seems primitive by comparison.Spotify, a 16-year-old company, published its “platform rules” only after the Rogan controversy erupted. Apple has content guidelines for podcasts, but for music only a style guide that asks artists to flag explicit lyrics and to keep album artwork clean. Amazon seems to have published even less by way of rules for audio content.And whereas most social networks publish regular reports on what content they have removed, the audio platforms are mute on the subject. Amid Rogan-gate, Spotify revealed that it had deleted 20,000 podcast episodes over covid-19 misinformation. The rest is guesswork. Facebook employs 15,000 content moderators. How many work for the audio streamers? None will say. (Insiders suggest that the answer is not many.)“It’s always been baffling to me how podcasts have flown under the content-moderation radar,” says Evelyn Douek of Harvard Law School. “It’s a massive blind-spot.” It could also prove to be a pricey one. As audio platforms host more user-generated content, the moderation task will expand. It will probably involve lots of human moderators; automating the process with artificial intelligence, as Facebook and others are doing, is even harder for audio than it is for text, images or video. Software firms’ valuations “have long been driven by the notion that there’s no marginal cost”, says Mr Page. “Content moderation might be their first.”For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More