October 14, 2021 • 23 mins
This episode is all about issues at Amazon and Facebook as the two companies try to fend off allegations that the companies engage in anti competitive practices. Plus we learn a bit about how Facebook is pursuing AI research.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and a love of all things tech except for tech news.
Today's a tech news day for Thursday, October one. And y'all,
(00:27):
the tech news can just really it's just like reading
the news in general. He can really beat you down
after a while. We're really going to focus on Amazon
and Facebook in this news episode because a lot of
stuff has come out about both companies and it's not
great for the most part. So let's start with Amazon.
Reuter's reports that Amazon has been found to game the
(00:50):
system in a really big way, leaning heavily on the
company's ability to gather and analyze data at a huge scale. Now,
in this particular case, we're talking about Amazon's operations in India.
Broiters came into possession of various internal documents and emails
that show Amazon employees were analyzing customer behaviors on the platform. Okay,
(01:15):
no problem so far. I mean, you would expect Amazon
to analyze customer behaviors because the company wants to streamline
the experience, make it as useful as possible so that
people keep coming back to Amazon. So some analysis makes sense.
Amazon was also looking at which products were particularly popular.
(01:35):
Still no problem. I mean, if you identify which products
are popular, you can feature those and thus sell more units.
So not necessarily a bad thing here either. However, company
employees designated these as reference products and then set about
to make Amazon knockoff versions of those things. Now they
(02:00):
wouldn't go so far as to actually counterfeit something, but
they did make products that were virtually identical to existing
ones on the market. So this wasn't about Amazon saying, hey,
you know, recharging cables are really popular, Let's make our
own recharging cable. This was Amazon saying, hey, this very
(02:21):
specific recharging cable is really popular. Let's make a version
that is indistinguishable from this, sell it at a lower cost,
and then promote it and thus make, you know, essentially
undercut this existing vendor who is dependent upon Amazon as
an online shop front. So on top of all this,
(02:44):
Amazon used its algorithm to place the Amazon made versions
of these products higher in search. So now someone searching
for a specific product, you know, it could be a
piece of clothing, it could be an electronics gadget, it
could be a household item, They're more likely to come
across the Amazon branded version of that before whichever one
(03:06):
Amazon employees were using as a reference product. So you
can find something that is almost identical to a very
popular product that's branded by Amazon. And because the algorithm,
you're seeing the Amazon one first, and their Amazon is
essentially undercutting these other merchants. Now, I'm pretty sure you
(03:28):
would be hard pressed to come up with a way
to defend Amazon against a charge of being anti competitive
in this case. Uh the internal documents showed that company
employees wanted to displace existing products on the market. According
to Reuters, the documents also showed that employees even sought
out partnerships with the companies that were making the reference
(03:50):
products because some of those products had final touches or
unique processes that meant that those products were set apart
and then it was harder to to make a you know,
a reasonable copy of that thing. So employees needed to
be able to find out what these unique processes were
(04:11):
in order to replicate those products. For Amazon. That's pretty
much industrial espionage when you get down to it again.
This is all according to Reuters, and this also contradicts
claims that Jeff Bezos made when he appeared before the
United States Congress in twenty twenty. During that testimony, Bezos
argued that Amazon doesn't use the data it collects to
(04:33):
give its own branded products a leg up on other
sellers that would be anti competitive, nor that the company
uses its algorithm to boost Amazon brands in search results
at the expense of other brands. But hey, maybe maybe
he just meant, oh except in India. Maybe that's what
he just forgot to say that part. Even if all
of that is the case, the Reuters report is already
(04:55):
stirring up activity in US politics again. Senator Elizabeth Warren
sent a tweet saying, quote, these documents show what we
feared about Amazon's monopoly power. That the company is willing
and able to rig its platform to benefit its bottom
line while stifling small businesses and entrepreneurs. This is one
(05:16):
of the many reasons we need to break it up.
End quote. Similarly, the American Economic Liberties Project criticized Amazon,
pointing out that there have been reports from various sellers
that alleged the company has copied product designs, indicating that
Amazon had likely used its powerful data collection and analysis
(05:36):
tools to identify products that could be big sellers, and
then followed a similar path as we saw in India
and the that that organization UH cited a an article
from the Wall Street Journal that was published in twenty
twenty that alleged Amazon employees had done pretty much the
same thing that was going on in India over here, Oudweight,
(06:01):
we are not done reporting on Amazon just yet. See.
Amazon also recently scrapped plans to build a distribution center
in San Diego County in San Diego, California. Now, the
company has not cited a specific reason for backing out
of this plan, like this was something that was not
(06:22):
a done deal, but it was heading towards that direction. Critics, however,
point to how San Diego recently passed legislation called the
Working Families Ordinance. Now, that law would require companies that
operate within San Diego County to pay the prevailing wage,
and the prevailing wage takes union wages as the benchmark,
(06:46):
and also any company that employs people within San Diego County.
Any company that operates within San Diego County has to
provide a baseline level of benefits and worker safety guarantees.
So in other words, if you don't meet these basic criteria,
you cannot operate within San Diego County. So these critics conclude,
(07:10):
it looks like Amazon said, huh, if we have to
if we build something here, if we build our distribution
center in San Diego County, we would have to pay
people more money, and we would have to spend more
money to make sure that employees are safe, and we'd
have to give them a minimum of fifty six hours
of annual sick leaf. No thanks now again, Amazon, I
(07:35):
should stress, has not referenced the law when addressing the
fact that the company is no longer building a distribution
center in San Diego County. But based on other recent
activities that we've seen in which Amazon has taken a
pretty tough stance against efforts of worker organization and unionization,
(07:55):
I feel like maybe the critics who are pointing at
this they might be onto something here. The company behind
the development of the warehouse, essentially the real estate company,
Chestnut Properties, sent a message out that also gets me
a bit angry. That message says, quote, just the threat
mention of this ordinance has already cost over four hundred
(08:19):
great jobs for the weld property that I have been
working on for over five years end quote. Now that
seems to argue that the ordinance is actively harming the
community because it's discouraging businesses from moving in and creating jobs,
and that this therefore is a bad thing. Now, keep
in mind, the ordinance demands a baseline level of compensation
(08:43):
and benefits to employees, and without that legislation, companies like
Amazon could be paying out much lower wages with fewer
benefits and fewer guarantees of workers safety. I would argue
that that kind of job does not qualify as a
unquote great job, you know, as Chestnut Properties has argued.
(09:04):
I mean, it's a job, so it is a job.
But if it's a job that keeps workers living below
the poverty line and workers are on the hook even
if they get sick or injured, that's not a great job.
That's that's like indentured servitude. It might have been great
(09:25):
for the developer. It might have been great for Chestnut
Properties because they saw to make a lot of money
for you know, essentially selling off this this space for
a distribution center. But that filter, so no, it's not
great for them. I mean I get that, but I've
said it a few times in this podcast, I since
that there is a general labor movement that's growing in
(09:46):
the United States, and it's something that has been overdue
because there have been a lot of big companies that
have grown exponentially at the expense of the folks who
work for those companies. One of the frequent things you'll
hear is, you know, it's hard to look at a
company that pays its employees at such a low level
(10:07):
that the employees can't afford whatever it is the company makes.
That's not necessarily the case with Amazon. Amazon makes a
lot of stuff, and it makes a lot of stuff
that's super cheap. But you get the idea, right, Like,
you know, the the argument about paying out, say fifteen
dollars an hour, Well that's pretty much the minimum wage
in California, and California is a state that has a
(10:28):
very high cost of living. So while that might sound
great if you're in a place that has a very
low cost of living in California by comparison, it does
not mean you're making a ton of money. And if
you're in an environment that could potentially lead to you
getting sick or hurt and you have no real benefits
(10:49):
to recover from that. That's not great. So a trio
of Amazon stories that are pretty rough. When we come act,
we're gonna do the same thing all over again, except
this time we'll talk about Facebook. Okay. So yeah, Facebook,
(11:14):
like I said on Tuesday's episode, had a bad week
last week. Well, that bad week has stretched into a
couple of bad weeks. You probably know that the company
has been dealing with consequences after some employees have leaked
internal documents to reporters, law enforcement agencies, and political bodies
like the United States Congress, and next week it will
(11:35):
be regulatory body bodies in the European Union. Well, when
that happens to a company, there are a few things
that a company can do. There are a few different um,
you know, the courses of action that you can pursue.
One thing a company could try to do is it
can try to address systemic problems within the organization. They
(11:59):
can try to operate in a more ethical, transparent, and
responsible way. It can try to improve in other words,
or we can do what Facebook has done and try
to just clamp down on leaks by instituting policies that
limit access to certain internal group assets on the company's
(12:19):
internal communications platform. Facebook uses Workplace. I've also used Workplace.
It's a platform for all sorts of internal company uh processes.
I'm actually amazed that folks have time to access the
darned thing to, you know, have conversations. UM. I find
(12:40):
navigating it somewhat tedious, but that's my own experience. And
in Facebook, it is a way for employees to be
able to access and share information internally within the company.
None the past, employees were pretty much able to communicate
across different topics within workplace without issue. They could jump
into a front channels essentially that are dedicated to specific
(13:04):
issues or concerns or corporate areas of interest. But now
certain groups that focus on specific topics, ones that Facebook
has labeled as being sensitive, have institute a kind of
members only kind of approach. In other words, it's a
need to know basis sort of thing. If you are
part of that department, you have access, Otherwise you do not.
(13:28):
Um and multiple outlets, including The New York Times, have
reported on this, showing that the effort to stop leaks
was then immediately leaked to the media. So what does
that mean for Facebook? Well, I would say it probably
means that for one thing, some employees at the company
might not be so thrilled about what Facebook has been
up to, and their discontent is enough to be an
(13:53):
ongoing issue, and that perhaps if Facebook wants to fix this,
they need to look at the root causes as opposed
to the leaks. The Verge has another Facebook story that
is interesting. The company has been working on various AI
projects that ultimately would relate to Facebook's augmented reality initiatives.
(14:16):
So the idea is to create a system that has
a type of almost like a memory connected to it.
Like the system itself would be able to go back
over data over time and glean important things from that.
You may have seen videos of Google kind of showing
off a similar approach to how like the Assistant program,
(14:39):
the virtual assistant in Google can continue to answer questions
about a subject. So you ask one question, then after
you get the answer, you follow up with another question,
and without you know, specifically referencing that you're still talking
about the same topic, assistant can then draw the conclusion
that the second question is about the same subject as
the first. Let me give you an example. Uh, using
(15:02):
this version of assistant, I could say something like, what's
the weather like at Disneyland tomorrow, and I get the answer,
and then I might follow that up with what time
does it open? Well, I didn't say Disneyland, I said
what time does it open? Using this kind of approach
to AI, the assistant might be able to glean the
fact that when I say it, I'm referring to the
(15:26):
subject from my previous question, that is Disneyland, and thus
give me the correct answer. Now this is trivial for
human beings, right, but it's actually a big deal for
artificial intelligence. AI does not natively have the ability to
understand context. So Facebook is working on several similar prop projects,
(15:46):
some of which are really ambitious. Now, the downside of
this is that it could lead to some pretty nasty
privacy and security issues. So, for example, imagine that someone
is wearing a pair of those a R ray band glasses,
except these are a more advanced version. They're one that
are have you know, more augmented reality type of features
(16:10):
built into them. They're not just like a camera built
into glasses. And let's say this person wearing the glasses
goes by a secure facility of some sort, maybe it's
a bank, right, and they look into the bank and
the camera and the glasses captures images of a person
who's accessing a secure part of that facility. So someone
(16:30):
who's actually authorized to go into some area that otherwise
you would not have access to. Okay, if you have
this capability and you pair it with something like facial recognition,
you could compromise that person's security. It could say, all right,
this person so and so has access to this secure
(16:52):
part of the bank. Here's some more information about so
and so that we're able to pull from the Internet.
Because of online mind social networking platforms and Twitter profiles
and all that kind of stuff, you could easily see
where this can quickly become a threat to privacy and security. Now,
that is a pretty dramatic example, right, That's something that's
(17:14):
obviously not going to apply to everyone. But the reality
is that this technology, unless it's implemented very carefully, could
become a huge threat to privacy for people in general.
You know, it could even be like who did I
see yesterday? Well, a question like that might be answered with, oh,
you saw your buddy Jim, and you also saw these
(17:35):
other five people you don't know, but I know them
because I have facial recognition technology and I was able
to cross reference it with the profiles that are available
on Facebook. So now you know all the people you encountered,
whether they wanted you to know them or not. They
were just going about their daily lives, So that is
a potential threat. Now Facebook is looking into some pretty
(17:56):
incredible AI applications such as hand and object manipulation shtion,
And in that case, you might be trying to learn
a specific skill and you could use an augmented reality
system to kind of teach you the steps you need
to do in order to build your skills. But you
could also use it potentially to analyze your own performance
and then and you know, give you tips on how
(18:16):
you can do that skill better and get you know,
improve upon it, which is really cool. So this sort
of hyper focused AI is really you know, compelling, but
you also start to see where the need for things
like privacy protection has to step in. This, by the way,
is all part of an initiative that Facebook calls Ego
(18:37):
four D. The Verge has a great piece that goes
into much further detail if you want to learn more
about this. It is titled Facebook is researching AI systems
that see here and remember everything you do. It's by
James Vincent. Highly recommend you check it out more than
for The organizations have banded together to launch a campaign
(18:58):
called how to Stop Facebook. So yeah, that hard week
does just keep extending. The group advocates for regulations that
would restrict how Facebook collects and uses data, citing the
concerns that we've seen pop up due to Facebook's reliance
on engagement driving algorithms, and those algorithms frequently favor content
that can be harmful in various ways because it drives engagement,
(19:21):
and as the campaign strategies director of Media Justice Masha
Hayes has said, quote Facebook's surveillance capitalist business model is
fundamentally incompatible with basic human rights end quote. That's a
heck of a statement. Hard for me to find fault
in it. Um, especially the way Facebook pursues its you know,
(19:43):
business model. Uh, it appears that it is at least
indifferent to basic human rights. The group is calling upon leaders,
like political leaders to intervene and essentially force Facebook to
fundamentally change how it operates. Um. And there are a
lot of different groups that are all part of this,
and a lot of them are are human rights groups
(20:04):
and things along those lines that are very much concerned
that Facebook's performance in the last you know a few
years has shown it to be an organization that has
the capacity to do a disproportionate amount of harm to
vulnerable populations. Finally, the cherry on top for bad Facebook
(20:24):
news comes out of Washington State. The Attorney General of
Washington has filed a lawsuit against Facebook, saying that the
company representatives have provided false testimony during a previous case
about whether or not the platform violated Washington's campaign finance laws.
So at the heart of the matter is how Facebook
sold political ads in the state of Washington. Washington state
(20:47):
law requires that any platform that sells ads space to
political campaigns has to provide information about the ads who
bought them, uh that their address. It has to also
have who were the ads meant to target, how many
views did those ads get. All of that information is
(21:07):
required by state law to be publicly available upon request.
Facebook is not complied with the full extent of that law.
You can request information about Facebook ads, but it doesn't
include all the points of data that Washington State law
calls for. The Company's lawyers facebooks lawyers argue that Washington's
(21:27):
law is unconstitutional, but the heart of this matter is
that the Attorney General says in that case, Facebook representatives
specifically gave false statements to questions asked of them, and
that therefore they are guilty of perjury. So this is
another part layer on top of everything else. So this
(21:49):
legal battle is ongoing. We will have to check back
in the future. Okay, there were other news stories today,
but honestly, all the Amazon and face Book stuff kind
of took all the wind out of my sales just
because it was just so much rough reporting on different things.
So we're gonna wrap it up here. Plus I can
(22:12):
here that the lawn maintenance folks are outside of my
house now, so it's gonna get progressively louder. My dog's
gonna join into it's just gonna be a free for all.
So um, while the noise level continually goes up in
this episode, if you have suggestions for topics I should
cover in the future, maybe like how weed whackers work,
for example. Don't know why that jumped to mind, let
(22:33):
me know. Send me a message on Twitter. The handle
for the show is text stuff h s W and
I'll garden again. I'm sorry, I'll talk to you again
really soon. Text Stuff is an i heart Radio production.
(22:54):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and a love of all things tech except for tech news.
Today's a tech news day for Thursday, October one. And y'all,
(00:27):
the tech news can just really it's just like reading
the news in general. He can really beat you down
after a while. We're really going to focus on Amazon
and Facebook in this news episode because a lot of
stuff has come out about both companies and it's not
great for the most part. So let's start with Amazon.
Reuter's reports that Amazon has been found to game the
(00:50):
system in a really big way, leaning heavily on the
company's ability to gather and analyze data at a huge scale. Now,
in this particular case, we're talking about Amazon's operations in India.
Broiters came into possession of various internal documents and emails
that show Amazon employees were analyzing customer behaviors on the platform. Okay,
(01:15):
no problem so far. I mean, you would expect Amazon
to analyze customer behaviors because the company wants to streamline
the experience, make it as useful as possible so that
people keep coming back to Amazon. So some analysis makes sense.
Amazon was also looking at which products were particularly popular.
(01:35):
Still no problem. I mean, if you identify which products
are popular, you can feature those and thus sell more units.
So not necessarily a bad thing here either. However, company
employees designated these as reference products and then set about
to make Amazon knockoff versions of those things. Now they
(02:00):
wouldn't go so far as to actually counterfeit something, but
they did make products that were virtually identical to existing
ones on the market. So this wasn't about Amazon saying, hey,
you know, recharging cables are really popular, Let's make our
own recharging cable. This was Amazon saying, hey, this very
(02:21):
specific recharging cable is really popular. Let's make a version
that is indistinguishable from this, sell it at a lower cost,
and then promote it and thus make, you know, essentially
undercut this existing vendor who is dependent upon Amazon as
an online shop front. So on top of all this,
(02:44):
Amazon used its algorithm to place the Amazon made versions
of these products higher in search. So now someone searching
for a specific product, you know, it could be a
piece of clothing, it could be an electronics gadget, it
could be a household item, They're more likely to come
across the Amazon branded version of that before whichever one
(03:06):
Amazon employees were using as a reference product. So you
can find something that is almost identical to a very
popular product that's branded by Amazon. And because the algorithm,
you're seeing the Amazon one first, and their Amazon is
essentially undercutting these other merchants. Now, I'm pretty sure you
(03:28):
would be hard pressed to come up with a way
to defend Amazon against a charge of being anti competitive
in this case. Uh the internal documents showed that company
employees wanted to displace existing products on the market. According
to Reuters, the documents also showed that employees even sought
out partnerships with the companies that were making the reference
(03:50):
products because some of those products had final touches or
unique processes that meant that those products were set apart
and then it was harder to to make a you know,
a reasonable copy of that thing. So employees needed to
be able to find out what these unique processes were
(04:11):
in order to replicate those products. For Amazon. That's pretty
much industrial espionage when you get down to it again.
This is all according to Reuters, and this also contradicts
claims that Jeff Bezos made when he appeared before the
United States Congress in twenty twenty. During that testimony, Bezos
argued that Amazon doesn't use the data it collects to
(04:33):
give its own branded products a leg up on other
sellers that would be anti competitive, nor that the company
uses its algorithm to boost Amazon brands in search results
at the expense of other brands. But hey, maybe maybe
he just meant, oh except in India. Maybe that's what
he just forgot to say that part. Even if all
of that is the case, the Reuters report is already
(04:55):
stirring up activity in US politics again. Senator Elizabeth Warren
sent a tweet saying, quote, these documents show what we
feared about Amazon's monopoly power. That the company is willing
and able to rig its platform to benefit its bottom
line while stifling small businesses and entrepreneurs. This is one
(05:16):
of the many reasons we need to break it up.
End quote. Similarly, the American Economic Liberties Project criticized Amazon,
pointing out that there have been reports from various sellers
that alleged the company has copied product designs, indicating that
Amazon had likely used its powerful data collection and analysis
(05:36):
tools to identify products that could be big sellers, and
then followed a similar path as we saw in India
and the that that organization UH cited a an article
from the Wall Street Journal that was published in twenty
twenty that alleged Amazon employees had done pretty much the
same thing that was going on in India over here, Oudweight,
(06:01):
we are not done reporting on Amazon just yet. See.
Amazon also recently scrapped plans to build a distribution center
in San Diego County in San Diego, California. Now, the
company has not cited a specific reason for backing out
of this plan, like this was something that was not
(06:22):
a done deal, but it was heading towards that direction. Critics, however,
point to how San Diego recently passed legislation called the
Working Families Ordinance. Now, that law would require companies that
operate within San Diego County to pay the prevailing wage,
and the prevailing wage takes union wages as the benchmark,
(06:46):
and also any company that employs people within San Diego County.
Any company that operates within San Diego County has to
provide a baseline level of benefits and worker safety guarantees.
So in other words, if you don't meet these basic criteria,
you cannot operate within San Diego County. So these critics conclude,
(07:10):
it looks like Amazon said, huh, if we have to
if we build something here, if we build our distribution
center in San Diego County, we would have to pay
people more money, and we would have to spend more
money to make sure that employees are safe, and we'd
have to give them a minimum of fifty six hours
of annual sick leaf. No thanks now again, Amazon, I
(07:35):
should stress, has not referenced the law when addressing the
fact that the company is no longer building a distribution
center in San Diego County. But based on other recent
activities that we've seen in which Amazon has taken a
pretty tough stance against efforts of worker organization and unionization,
(07:55):
I feel like maybe the critics who are pointing at
this they might be onto something here. The company behind
the development of the warehouse, essentially the real estate company,
Chestnut Properties, sent a message out that also gets me
a bit angry. That message says, quote, just the threat
mention of this ordinance has already cost over four hundred
(08:19):
great jobs for the weld property that I have been
working on for over five years end quote. Now that
seems to argue that the ordinance is actively harming the
community because it's discouraging businesses from moving in and creating jobs,
and that this therefore is a bad thing. Now, keep
in mind, the ordinance demands a baseline level of compensation
(08:43):
and benefits to employees, and without that legislation, companies like
Amazon could be paying out much lower wages with fewer
benefits and fewer guarantees of workers safety. I would argue
that that kind of job does not qualify as a
unquote great job, you know, as Chestnut Properties has argued.
(09:04):
I mean, it's a job, so it is a job.
But if it's a job that keeps workers living below
the poverty line and workers are on the hook even
if they get sick or injured, that's not a great job.
That's that's like indentured servitude. It might have been great
(09:25):
for the developer. It might have been great for Chestnut
Properties because they saw to make a lot of money
for you know, essentially selling off this this space for
a distribution center. But that filter, so no, it's not
great for them. I mean I get that, but I've
said it a few times in this podcast, I since
that there is a general labor movement that's growing in
(09:46):
the United States, and it's something that has been overdue
because there have been a lot of big companies that
have grown exponentially at the expense of the folks who
work for those companies. One of the frequent things you'll
hear is, you know, it's hard to look at a
company that pays its employees at such a low level
(10:07):
that the employees can't afford whatever it is the company makes.
That's not necessarily the case with Amazon. Amazon makes a
lot of stuff, and it makes a lot of stuff
that's super cheap. But you get the idea, right, Like,
you know, the the argument about paying out, say fifteen
dollars an hour, Well that's pretty much the minimum wage
in California, and California is a state that has a
(10:28):
very high cost of living. So while that might sound
great if you're in a place that has a very
low cost of living in California by comparison, it does
not mean you're making a ton of money. And if
you're in an environment that could potentially lead to you
getting sick or hurt and you have no real benefits
(10:49):
to recover from that. That's not great. So a trio
of Amazon stories that are pretty rough. When we come act,
we're gonna do the same thing all over again, except
this time we'll talk about Facebook. Okay. So yeah, Facebook,
(11:14):
like I said on Tuesday's episode, had a bad week
last week. Well, that bad week has stretched into a
couple of bad weeks. You probably know that the company
has been dealing with consequences after some employees have leaked
internal documents to reporters, law enforcement agencies, and political bodies
like the United States Congress, and next week it will
(11:35):
be regulatory body bodies in the European Union. Well, when
that happens to a company, there are a few things
that a company can do. There are a few different um,
you know, the courses of action that you can pursue.
One thing a company could try to do is it
can try to address systemic problems within the organization. They
(11:59):
can try to operate in a more ethical, transparent, and
responsible way. It can try to improve in other words,
or we can do what Facebook has done and try
to just clamp down on leaks by instituting policies that
limit access to certain internal group assets on the company's
(12:19):
internal communications platform. Facebook uses Workplace. I've also used Workplace.
It's a platform for all sorts of internal company uh processes.
I'm actually amazed that folks have time to access the
darned thing to, you know, have conversations. UM. I find
(12:40):
navigating it somewhat tedious, but that's my own experience. And
in Facebook, it is a way for employees to be
able to access and share information internally within the company.
None the past, employees were pretty much able to communicate
across different topics within workplace without issue. They could jump
into a front channels essentially that are dedicated to specific
(13:04):
issues or concerns or corporate areas of interest. But now
certain groups that focus on specific topics, ones that Facebook
has labeled as being sensitive, have institute a kind of
members only kind of approach. In other words, it's a
need to know basis sort of thing. If you are
part of that department, you have access, Otherwise you do not.
(13:28):
Um and multiple outlets, including The New York Times, have
reported on this, showing that the effort to stop leaks
was then immediately leaked to the media. So what does
that mean for Facebook? Well, I would say it probably
means that for one thing, some employees at the company
might not be so thrilled about what Facebook has been
up to, and their discontent is enough to be an
(13:53):
ongoing issue, and that perhaps if Facebook wants to fix this,
they need to look at the root causes as opposed
to the leaks. The Verge has another Facebook story that
is interesting. The company has been working on various AI
projects that ultimately would relate to Facebook's augmented reality initiatives.
(14:16):
So the idea is to create a system that has
a type of almost like a memory connected to it.
Like the system itself would be able to go back
over data over time and glean important things from that.
You may have seen videos of Google kind of showing
off a similar approach to how like the Assistant program,
(14:39):
the virtual assistant in Google can continue to answer questions
about a subject. So you ask one question, then after
you get the answer, you follow up with another question,
and without you know, specifically referencing that you're still talking
about the same topic, assistant can then draw the conclusion
that the second question is about the same subject as
the first. Let me give you an example. Uh, using
(15:02):
this version of assistant, I could say something like, what's
the weather like at Disneyland tomorrow, and I get the answer,
and then I might follow that up with what time
does it open? Well, I didn't say Disneyland, I said
what time does it open? Using this kind of approach
to AI, the assistant might be able to glean the
fact that when I say it, I'm referring to the
(15:26):
subject from my previous question, that is Disneyland, and thus
give me the correct answer. Now this is trivial for
human beings, right, but it's actually a big deal for
artificial intelligence. AI does not natively have the ability to
understand context. So Facebook is working on several similar prop projects,
(15:46):
some of which are really ambitious. Now, the downside of
this is that it could lead to some pretty nasty
privacy and security issues. So, for example, imagine that someone
is wearing a pair of those a R ray band glasses,
except these are a more advanced version. They're one that
are have you know, more augmented reality type of features
(16:10):
built into them. They're not just like a camera built
into glasses. And let's say this person wearing the glasses
goes by a secure facility of some sort, maybe it's
a bank, right, and they look into the bank and
the camera and the glasses captures images of a person
who's accessing a secure part of that facility. So someone
(16:30):
who's actually authorized to go into some area that otherwise
you would not have access to. Okay, if you have
this capability and you pair it with something like facial recognition,
you could compromise that person's security. It could say, all right,
this person so and so has access to this secure
(16:52):
part of the bank. Here's some more information about so
and so that we're able to pull from the Internet.
Because of online mind social networking platforms and Twitter profiles
and all that kind of stuff, you could easily see
where this can quickly become a threat to privacy and security. Now,
that is a pretty dramatic example, right, That's something that's
(17:14):
obviously not going to apply to everyone. But the reality
is that this technology, unless it's implemented very carefully, could
become a huge threat to privacy for people in general.
You know, it could even be like who did I
see yesterday? Well, a question like that might be answered with, oh,
you saw your buddy Jim, and you also saw these
(17:35):
other five people you don't know, but I know them
because I have facial recognition technology and I was able
to cross reference it with the profiles that are available
on Facebook. So now you know all the people you encountered,
whether they wanted you to know them or not. They
were just going about their daily lives, So that is
a potential threat. Now Facebook is looking into some pretty
(17:56):
incredible AI applications such as hand and object manipulation shtion,
And in that case, you might be trying to learn
a specific skill and you could use an augmented reality
system to kind of teach you the steps you need
to do in order to build your skills. But you
could also use it potentially to analyze your own performance
and then and you know, give you tips on how
(18:16):
you can do that skill better and get you know,
improve upon it, which is really cool. So this sort
of hyper focused AI is really you know, compelling, but
you also start to see where the need for things
like privacy protection has to step in. This, by the way,
is all part of an initiative that Facebook calls Ego
(18:37):
four D. The Verge has a great piece that goes
into much further detail if you want to learn more
about this. It is titled Facebook is researching AI systems
that see here and remember everything you do. It's by
James Vincent. Highly recommend you check it out more than
for The organizations have banded together to launch a campaign
(18:58):
called how to Stop Facebook. So yeah, that hard week
does just keep extending. The group advocates for regulations that
would restrict how Facebook collects and uses data, citing the
concerns that we've seen pop up due to Facebook's reliance
on engagement driving algorithms, and those algorithms frequently favor content
that can be harmful in various ways because it drives engagement,
(19:21):
and as the campaign strategies director of Media Justice Masha
Hayes has said, quote Facebook's surveillance capitalist business model is
fundamentally incompatible with basic human rights end quote. That's a
heck of a statement. Hard for me to find fault
in it. Um, especially the way Facebook pursues its you know,
(19:43):
business model. Uh, it appears that it is at least
indifferent to basic human rights. The group is calling upon leaders,
like political leaders to intervene and essentially force Facebook to
fundamentally change how it operates. Um. And there are a
lot of different groups that are all part of this,
and a lot of them are are human rights groups
(20:04):
and things along those lines that are very much concerned
that Facebook's performance in the last you know a few
years has shown it to be an organization that has
the capacity to do a disproportionate amount of harm to
vulnerable populations. Finally, the cherry on top for bad Facebook
(20:24):
news comes out of Washington State. The Attorney General of
Washington has filed a lawsuit against Facebook, saying that the
company representatives have provided false testimony during a previous case
about whether or not the platform violated Washington's campaign finance laws.
So at the heart of the matter is how Facebook
sold political ads in the state of Washington. Washington state
(20:47):
law requires that any platform that sells ads space to
political campaigns has to provide information about the ads who
bought them, uh that their address. It has to also
have who were the ads meant to target, how many
views did those ads get. All of that information is
(21:07):
required by state law to be publicly available upon request.
Facebook is not complied with the full extent of that law.
You can request information about Facebook ads, but it doesn't
include all the points of data that Washington State law
calls for. The Company's lawyers facebooks lawyers argue that Washington's
(21:27):
law is unconstitutional, but the heart of this matter is
that the Attorney General says in that case, Facebook representatives
specifically gave false statements to questions asked of them, and
that therefore they are guilty of perjury. So this is
another part layer on top of everything else. So this
(21:49):
legal battle is ongoing. We will have to check back
in the future. Okay, there were other news stories today,
but honestly, all the Amazon and face Book stuff kind
of took all the wind out of my sales just
because it was just so much rough reporting on different things.
So we're gonna wrap it up here. Plus I can
(22:12):
here that the lawn maintenance folks are outside of my
house now, so it's gonna get progressively louder. My dog's
gonna join into it's just gonna be a free for all.
So um, while the noise level continually goes up in
this episode, if you have suggestions for topics I should
cover in the future, maybe like how weed whackers work,
for example. Don't know why that jumped to mind, let
(22:33):
me know. Send me a message on Twitter. The handle
for the show is text stuff h s W and
I'll garden again. I'm sorry, I'll talk to you again
really soon. Text Stuff is an i heart Radio production.
(22:54):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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