Amazon is opening new stores — in the real world. And in true Big Tech fashion the experience is meant to emphasize convenience. All you need to do is walk in, grab your stuff, and go.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Amazon’s move from the digital to the physical world started with brick-and-mortar bookshops. Now the company is opening convenience stores. As you would expect, there is a high-tech twist. In these stores, you don’t have to take out your wallet to pay. Cardiff Garcia and Sally Herships from our daily economics podcast The Indicator From Planet Money look at what this development means for the market.

SALLY HERSHIPS, BYLINE: In the new stores, there are no cashiers. There are no checkout counters. You take stuff off the shelf and out of the store. And somehow, Amazon figures out what you have, and it charges you.

CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: Amazon’s system represents a tradeoff that we often make when we use technology. As consumers, we supply our data in return for convenience. When we shop at Amazon and other online retailers, those companies are collecting information on you, which they think they can sell or use to bombard you with targeted ads or ideas for what to buy next.

HERSHIPS: So far, shopping in the real world has been a holdout, right? It’s a place where you can still use cash. You can still buy stuff that maybe you don’t want tracked.

GARCIA: Amazon told us that they only hold onto customers’ data just long enough to send them a receipt. So if humans are no longer checking us out at the register, what’s going to happen to all those jobs – all those cashier jobs? Heidi Shierholz is senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

HEIDI SHIERHOLZ: In the early 1800’s, over 80% of our labor market was in agriculture. So if you would have been sort of a futurist at that time, you would have gone, oh, my goodness. We’re going to lose all of these jobs. And you would have, in some ways, been absolutely right.

GARCIA: Instead, they now work in other industries. Heidi says that what we find is that automation has never caused sustained decline in the overall number of jobs. And you might be wondering, how is that possible? Well, think about it. When a company like Amazon uses tech instead of human workers, it can now sell its products more cheaply to consumers, and that starts a process where consumers have more leftover cash to buy other things. And when they buy those other things, that generates economic activity, and that brings new jobs to those sectors.

HERSHIPS: Which brings us to a question – how are small business owners, the kind that often run convenience stores, going to be impacted by Amazon moving in on their turf?

GARCIA: Jonathan Bowles is executive director at the Center for an Urban Future.

JONATHAN BOWLES: We survived 7-Eleven. We survived the expansion of all these national drugstore chains, and now we’ve got to deal with this.

HERSHIPS: Right around the corner from Amazon’s new store is a local deli. It’s a small business. And, Cardiff, you know, they told us they didn’t want to go on tape, but they were not psyched about Amazon. The company represents major competition for them.

BOWLES: When you shop at a bodega or a small business, your money is staying in the community. Oftentimes, that small business or bodega owner is sponsoring a Little League team or being part of the community, investing or spending money on local workers. They’re putting money into the community by spending things that they earn at the business.

GARCIA: Jonathan says that if too many national chains move in and displace small businesses, that could cause another problem.

BOWLES: When it tips too far in that direction – when the unique independent small businesses are so crowded out – it’s just a much less interesting place to be.

HERSHIPS: For now, I think I’m going to head to my local deli for lunch.

Sally Herships.

GARCIA: Cardiff Garcia, NPR News.

SHAPIRO: And we should say Amazon is an NPR sponsor.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

NPR’s Audie Cornish speaks with Instagram head Adam Mosseri about how it is adding protections for users, while preserving influencers’ ability to make money through the platform.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

With All Tech Considered.

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CORNISH: The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, knows what it’s like to be bullied. He also knows that today kids are likely to be bullied on Instagram. That’s why he says he wants to lead the industry in the fight against online bullying.

ADAM MOSSERI: I had, like, Coke bottle, Corbusier glasses at 5 years old that made my eyes as big as – I don’t know – lemons.

CORNISH: I can picture that.

MOSSERI: I had a haircut that made me look like Harry Potter long before Harry Potter existed or was cool. It was not a good look. I was made fun of a lot. But yeah, I probably would have been made fun of on Instagram.

CORNISH: Yeah, there would have been an Instagram account that was like Adam’s Glasses.

MOSSERI: Yeah. Oh, man. You’re really bringing me back.

CORNISH: (Laughter) I’m just saying.

MOSSERI: (Laughter) I got to find those glasses.

CORNISH: I had a rough time of it, too. And I have to admit, I look at social media; I look at things like Instagram. And I say – thank God it wasn’t around when I was a kid. It would have been worse.

MOSSERI: I don’t quite feel that way. Obviously, I’m biased given that I’m sitting in the situation that I’m sitting in. I have two kids. They’re too young to use Instagram. They’re 3 and 1 right now, but they will use Instagram when they get older.

I think that certain things would absolutely be worse. Other things would be better. For me right now, the way my kids appear on Instagram is they have private accounts. They don’t use them; they’re literally 3 and 1 years old. But I manage them, and I share basically their upbringing with my family who lives all around the world. I have family in Pittsburgh. I have family in New York. I have family in Israel. I have family in Germany. I have family in LA. And they can stay up to date on what my boys are doing and how they’re growing in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to do just 15 years ago.

And so there’s good and there’s bad that comes from connecting people. Technology is not inherently good, and it’s not inherently bad. For those of us who work in the industry, it’s our responsibility to magnify the good and address the bad as effectively as we can.

CORNISH: Mosseri took the helm of Instagram almost a year ago, coming from its big brother Facebook. Shortly after, The Atlantic published a story headlined “Instagram Has A Massive Harassment Problem.” People said it was too easy to set up anonymous pages just to taunt someone. They said the company wasn’t responsive when they tried to sound the alarm about abuse, so now Mosseri is overseeing a rollout of new features that Instagram hopes will protect its users from bullying and keep them on the site.

I asked him what he learned about bullying on the platform over the past year.

MOSSERI: A few different things. One – a lot of it happens. Actually, most of it seems to happen between people who know each other in real life. Another is that the controls that we had before or have today are insufficient. So specifically, I and our researchers talked to a bunch of teens and we asked them, why don’t you just block someone who is bullying you on the platform? Because you can block someone right now – they can’t see you. You essentially don’t exist on Instagram to them.

And there were two reasons that came back. One was – often, that can actually escalate the situation. They’ll figure that out. They’ll know, and they will bully more, either on Instagram or elsewhere. And two is that you need, as a target of bullying, to see what the actor is actually doing. Teens would often say, like, they’re talking about me. If I blocked them, I won’t be able to see that.

So I need to track what’s actually happening. Which is why we’ve been developing this new control called restrict, which allows you to restrict an individual – it means that if they comment on your post, you’ll see it, and it’ll look to them as if they’ve – it’s actually been commented on, but you have to approve it before anybody else sees it. It means that their messages are going to go into your other inbox, and you have to go there to see them and that they won’t actually get read receipts – a whole bunch of different little nuanced ways to give a target of bullying a bit more power over the experience, which allows….

CORNISH: So it’s not about changing their behavior. Right? It’s about giving the person who’s the victim a few more tools to protect themselves.

MOSSERI: Yeah. Restrict is not about changing their behavior. There are other things we’re doing to try and adjust people’s behavior by changing incentives.

CORNISH: One of them is very interesting. It’s an alert that flags a mean-spirited post. Right? It essentially asks you – hey, are you sure you want to post this?

MOSSERI: Yes.

CORNISH: It’s very polite (laughter).

MOSSERI: It is.

CORNISH: Why do you think that will be effective? I mean, if someone’s about to say something cruel (laughter), saying think about it – like, I don’t know.

MOSSERI: I think it’s going to be somewhat effective but not very effective. I actually think that’s true of all of the work that we’re going to do. All of these problems are not solved by any one solution. They are complicated. I’ve also seen in the actual data that a minority but a significant minority of people do rewrite their comments, and they rewrite them in a much more pleasant way. Now, do most people rewrite their comments? No – because if you have an intent that’s really intense to harass an individual, a polite comment from Instagram is not going to prevent you from doing so.

But sometimes people get caught up in the moment, and a lightweight reminder can actually help them rethink what they’re doing or what they’re saying. And so it’s not supposed to be the solution that we hang our hat on for all of bullying. It’s supposed to be one of many tools to try to prevent bullying from happening in the first place.

CORNISH: One controversial idea that I know you are thinking about is the idea of making the number of likes private. Right?

MOSSERI: Yeah.

CORNISH: So when a person posts to Instagram their image, lots of people can click on a little heart that shows I love this thing. And some people get a high off of that – right? – when they – ’cause it’s a big popularity contest in a way. If you make that private, doesn’t that get to the heart of what Instagram is?

MOSSERI: In some ways, yeah. When I said before that…

CORNISH: That sounds bad for business.

MOSSERI: It might be. But ultimately, if we make decisions that are bad for business but that keep people safe or are good for well-being more broadly, I have to believe that those are going to be good for the business over the long run, and so I’m going to make those decisions. The idea with making like counts private is to try and depressurize the experience a bit. It can sometimes feel like a popularity contest, which is why we…

CORNISH: How likely is this to actually happen, though? Am I speculating with you right now, or is this something you’re going to do?

MOSSERI: I’m bullish on it. It’s a big change. We’re working through all the challenges. One challenge is for creators. They use Instagram to make a living. Likes are a sign of how relevant they are, so we have to figure out some way to make sure we preserve that.

CORNISH: You’re talking about influencers. Right? I mean, there are people who now essentially make a living off of their social media presence. And the way they show potential advertisers – look, I’m a good bet – is how many likes I get.

MOSSERI: Absolutely. We’ve actually had a pretty mixed response from influencers. So I think – I’m optimistic to answer your question very directly. We aren’t there yet. We’re still iterating on the experience. But I am personally optimistic and really personally invested in making it work.

CORNISH: So the boss is bullish. (Laughter) That’s the take so far.

MOSSERI: The boss is bullish, yes.

CORNISH: Well, Adam Mosseri, thank you so much for speaking with us.

MOSSERI: Absolutely. Thank you so much for the time.

CORNISH: Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram. We should note Facebook, which owns Instagram, is among NPR’s financial supporters.

Tomorrow Mosseri tells us what his time leading Facebook’s News Feed taught him about social media abuse.

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Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Most pink Himalayan salt comes from one source: Pakistan. And that country now would like everybody to know.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

You may have spotted pink salt in your supermarket. Himalayan pink salt is used to season food and is believed to have health benefits. It’s used in spa treatments. You can even buy lamps made of the stuff. Well, now the country that produces most pink salt wants to claim it as its own. NPR’s Diaa Hadid reports.

DIAA HADID, BYLINE: In Pakistan, Himalayan salt is shrouded in legend.

SHAHID IQBAL: When Alexander the Great invaded the Indian subcontinent…

HADID: That’s Shahid Iqbal, a Pakistani geologist. He says Alexander’s horses began licking the rocks.

IQBAL: The army was curious what they are licking at. And they found it was salt.

HADID: Himalayan pink salt. And folks here believe it’s been mined ever since. But it really took off a few years ago…

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: In today’s video, we’re going to be talking all about Himalayan pink salt. It’s really good for your body, your aches and pains, cramps.

HADID: …When it found popularity as a wellness product because it contains dozens of trace minerals giving it that pink hue. But the salt’s actual origins are rarely highlighted or even mentioned. Iqbal, the geologist, says the salt overwhelmingly comes from Pakistan. And we drove there. You see red brick hills emerge from marshlands. These are the furthest tendrils of the Himalayas. We’re hundreds of miles from the iconic snowy peaks.

It’s hot here. An engineer takes us inside a mine shaft, and a mile in, we meet miners in a soaring chamber. Their methods are basic. They crank levers to bore a hole in the rock face. Another miner packs the hole with gunpowder. The engineer lights a fuse, and a miner calls out, beware.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language).

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: OK. OK.

HADID: That’s terrifying.

(LAUGHTER)

HADID: Boulders of pink rock tumble down, and miners hurl them into trolleys. Until quite recently, much of that salt was exported just across the border to India, Pakistan’s enemy and neighbor.

Qaisar Mahmood is a salt exporter.

QAISAR MAHMOOD: (Through interpreter) India buys salt from here. They process it and export it to Europe. They say it’s made in India, and they charge people like you 10 times the price.

HADID: He used to sell his salt for $40 a ton to India. He could make $300 a ton selling it to Europe. But it’s not that easy for a man like him.

MAHMOOD: This language problem also.

HADID: He doesn’t speak English well. He doesn’t have contacts. And he can’t navigate his way around Pakistan’s complicated bureaucracy for exporting products, and he can’t meet European standards.

MAHMOOD: (Through interpreter) If they find even a strand of hair, they will reject the entire batch.

HADID: Those sales recently became controversial in Pakistan. It’s hard to imagine salt as a matter of national pride, but that’s what happened. A social media campaign against the sales to India went viral in June, and then it became a national issue.

SHIBLI FARRAZ: It was being sold for a song.

HADID: That’s Senator Shibli Farraz. Pakistan made just over $50 million exporting salt last year, and he believes they can triple that with reforms.

FARRAZ: There was lot of concern as to – we were exporting it at a very, very low price, and most of it was going to India.

HADID: So when tensions flared in August over the disputed territory of Kashmir, Pakistan banned all trade with India, including salt. Farraz is now advocating legislation to discourage crude salt sales and encourage the production on high-value finished products.

FARRAZ: Let this be an opportunity to kind of diversify and substitute for imports.

HADID: Farraz says in coming months, he’ll introduce legislation that will trademark Himalayan pink salt and force companies to list it as a Pakistani product. Farraz says that will allow Pakistan to accrue revenue when companies use the name, and it will tie Pakistan’s name to an upmarket product.

But traders like Mahmood, whose business has been devastated by the ban on exports to India, says that could hurt business. He says Pakistan doesn’t have a good reputation as a producer of high-end goods, and the country is associated with violence.

MAHMOOD: (Through interpreter) India works on its image; we don’t. We have neglected our branding.

HADID: But one Pakistani salt producer says things can be different. He’s built a rare business selling high-end products to the United States. Niaz Siddiqui shows me around his showroom. There’s lamps, tequila shot glasses, sushi platters and his most popular product.

NIAZ SIDDIQUI: They are called the Zen Cubes.

HADID: This is a Zen Cube.

SIDDIQUI: This is a Zen Cube.

HADID: It’s a cube of salt, and it costs 16 bucks. He says profits like this should be going to Pakistan. And it’s possible, he says, if the country improves its branding, to have a world where Himalayan pink salt is proudly Pakistani.

Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Kherwa.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.