Microsoft President Says Tech Must Compromise, Downplays Metaverse 'Hype'
Tech companies must do more than pay lip service to regulation while opposing every government measure, Smith warned.
The tech sector needs to compromise with regulators and take governments and people's concerns seriously, Microsoft president Brad Smith said in an interview on Wednesday.
"Tech is going to have to lean in...with real concrete ideas...even make concessions, so that we can all compromise and build a common platform that better protects people than ... the internet as a whole has in recent past," Smith told Reuters.
On the sidelines of Lisbon's Web Summit, Smith said he was not sure the tech industry had shifted to trying to solve these problems as much as will likely be needed in the coming decade.
Tech companies must do more than pay lip service to regulation while opposing every government measure, Smith warned.
"Government (will) see through that, and it's not going to bode well for the sector...We sort of need to get real."
Smith did not mention Apple's recent campaign against a provision of the EU's Digital Markets Act that would oblige the iPhone maker to let customers install software from outside its App Store, a practice called sideloading.