Peter Yared's Musings

This post was also published in Refresh Miami There was a moment after the pandemic where some thought that Miami could become a contender for tech dominance against the San Francisco Bay Area. AI has re-established the Bay Area as the epicenter of technology, and dislodging the entire Bay Area as the technology epicenter was always a stretch. Miami should have a different goal in mind: New York City, the world’s second largest technology hub. Only fifteen years ago, the technology scene in New York was still nascent. During his tenure as mayor, Michael Bloomberg helped drive the technology ecosystem with the help of early players like DoubleClick’s Kevin Ryan and Union Square Venture’s Fred Wilson. Today, New York attracts 14% of venture-backed deals , a solid number 2 beyond the Bay Area’s 25% share. South Florida has catapulted to a top ten US tech hub and ranks seventh for deal volume and is already a peer with traditional tech hubs like Austin and Seattle. Miami Mayor Fra...

Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is dropping censorship in the U.S. for Facebook and Instagram was accompanied by a comment that he is going to work with the U.S. government to encourage other countries to not censor content. Upon acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk dropped censorship and soon learned that government mandates from across the world censor content. In 2024, Brazil blocked Twitter until it complied with censorship demands, France arrested Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov, the EU censored additional Russian outlets and wrote letters to Twitter mandating more content moderation, and Australia announced it will fine platforms for misinformation. The current U.S. administration had a heavy censorship hand and had threatened to revoke Section 230 which protects Internet sites from liability about their users’ content. Zuck indicated in his announcement and a letter to Congress in November that Meta felt coerced to comply. Twitter under Jack Dorsey was also coerced to censor, as ...