Tech News: Amoral Algorithms and Anticompetitive App Stores

Former president Donald Trump files legal complaints against YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. More than 30 states say that the Google App store is "monopolistic." China's WeChat shuts down LGBT channels on the platform. And Dodge announces an all-electric muscle car.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and a love of all things tech. It is time
for the tech news for Thursday, July one. Let's get

(00:25):
to it. Yesterday, former President Donald Trump announced he was
filing class action complaints against YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook in
a Florida court, claiming that the company has violated his
First Amendment rights by banning his accounts in the wake
of the January sixth Capital riots. Numerous experts in law

(00:46):
have pointed out that this kind of sounds like a
lost cause. The First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees
that the government shall not infringe upon the freedom of
expression the freedom of speech. But last I checked, Twitter, YouTube,
and even Facebook are not the US government. You might
argue that these entities are, at least in some ways

(01:09):
on a level with some parts of the government, but
that does not make them government entities. They are instead businesses,
and well, as such, they're allowed to do stuff like say,
here are the rules for being part of this platform,
and if you violate the rules, you get banned. Kind
of like, if you have someone come in your house

(01:30):
and they are bad mouthing you and your loved ones,
you can tell them to leave and not allow them
back in your house. That's not violating the First Amendment. Now,
what this does seem to be to me, and I
stressed this is just my opinion and it's total armshare observation,
but it seems to be an effort to raise money

(01:51):
from supporters, and ostensibly that money is supposed to go
to this legal fund. And maybe also it's an attempt
to stay in the news cycle, which I mean, you
know it worked because here I am covering it. But
if these complaints actually make their way through the system
and ultimately go to court like a trial, and that

(02:14):
the court finds in favor of the former president, it
would mean a monumentally huge shift in how the US
handles the First Amendment, and it would no doubt immediately
get moved to a court of appeals. It would be
pushed up the court system from there. But most of
the legal experts I've read seemed to indicate that this

(02:38):
is at most a frivolous lawsuit, and that in fact,
the law team supporting Trump could find themselves reprimanded for it. Anyway,
I thought I had to reference it because it is
something that's happening within the world of tech. Let's move on. Mozilla,
the company behind Firefox, create a browser extension called Regrets Reporter,

(03:02):
and this was all to be, you know, part of
an informal study. So Firefox users could install this extension
onto their browser and the extension would log that users
viewing activity on YouTube. This was all on the up
and up. That was the stated intent and purpose of
this extension. So it was essentially Mozilla looking for volunteers.

(03:24):
So these volunteers could then flag clips of stuff that
they wished they had not seen. That's why it's called
regrets Reporter. So the idea was to see how frequently
YouTube's recommendation algorithm might submit videos that people just plain
wish they had never encountered. And it turned out to be,

(03:45):
you know, a fairly decent number. Users would flag videos
that they found upsetting or nonsensical or just playing unappealing,
and some of them were videos that were dedicated to
spreading misinformation. Uh somewhere the bizarre and and offensive parodies
or mash ups that started making headlines a few years ago.

(04:06):
When they began to pop up on YouTube frequently. Nearly
forty thousand people volunteered to take part in this project
across one countries, and over the course of a little
less than a year, the app extension collected three thousand,
three hundred sixty two reports about recommended videos that people
regretted watching, which I mean three thousand, three d sixty two.

(04:30):
That's not an enormous number for a full year of
this project going on, or almost a full year of
it going on. Generally, areas in non English speaking countries
had more incidents than English speaking countries, which suggests that
perhaps YouTube's algorithms work less well in those countries, and

(04:50):
some of the recommended videos videos that YouTube's own algorithm
was pushing seemed to violate YouTube's own content policies, which
is not great. YouTube is pretty guarded about how it's
algorithm actually works, and in a way that makes sense
because if word got out how the algorithm worked, then

(05:12):
people could figure out ways to potentially game the system
even more than they already do. But at the end
of the day, the purpose of the algorithm isn't really
to serve up the perfect video to you. The purpose
of the algorithm is to keep you on YouTube for
as long as possible. It's an engagement algorithm designed to

(05:32):
have you stick to the platform for longer because that
means you watch more videos and you see more ads,
and that makes YouTube more money. So if you think
about it like that, the algorithm doesn't quote unquote care
about the content or quality of any given video. The
algorithm doesn't care if the video even violates YouTube's policies.

(05:56):
The algorithm's job is to suggest videos that are like
need to keep each individual on YouTube longer. That's it.
While YouTube says that the company has refined its algorithms
so that the time it's working perfectly well and it's
not going to push any sort of borderline content your way,
the fact that the company remains so guarded about that

(06:18):
algorithm means there's not really any way for someone to
verify that claim. Now, I have no idea how effective
the algorithm really is at serving up content without it
being borderline or in violation of YouTube's policies, but I
do know that the recommendation algorithms on various social platforms
can easily exacerbate problems sticking with Google. A collection of

(06:42):
thirty seven states in the United States have brought a
class action lawsuit against the company, claiming it is exercised
quote monopolistic leverage end quote with the Google play Store.
Now that's the Android app store in case you weren't familiar.
So Google imposes a comm sition on purchases made within
the play Store, and it takes up to thirty percent

(07:05):
of that money. And that's pretty standard in the industry.
So in other words, this is the same sort of
practice that's used by Apple, by Amazon, and by Microsoft.
In addition, this one is a bit odd because Google
is actually fairly lax when it comes to how you
get apps on your Android devices. You can actually download

(07:26):
apps directly from developer websites and not go through the
play Store at all, so you can bypass that whole system. Plus,
if you are an Android user, you can elect to
allow side loading. That means you can load apps that
developers never even submit to Google. So another you know,
it doesn't have to be in the Google play Store

(07:47):
for you to be able to use it. You can
just sideload it from wherever. This is a little risky
because it could involve installing malware to your Android device,
so it's not recommended for everyone, but it is something
you can do. Apple famously does not allow for sideloading,
So it seems to me like Google has a fairly

(08:08):
decent argument to make here about how the company allows
for alternatives then going through the Google Play Store. But
let's say this does go to trial and that Google loses,
that would be some pretty scary news for the other
companies that I've mentioned, like Apple and Amazon. We've heard
a lot about app stores and the cut that companies
like Google and Apple take. I mean, that's at the

(08:29):
heart of the ongoing battle between Apple and Epic Games,
So we will keep an eye on this particular story.
Speaking of Apple, Steve Wozniak, who co founded Apple with
Steve Jobs back in the nineteen seventies, gave what amounted
to a nearly ten minutes speech in support of the
right to repair. This was in response to a cameo request. Cameo,

(08:52):
just in case you're not familiar, is a service that
allows celebrities to set a price for personalized video messages
that fans and then buy, usually for someone else. I
tried to set up a cameo for myself, but turns
out I can't afford to pay people to have me
send them videos, so I'm out anyway. Louis Rossman, who

(09:13):
is a supporter of the right to Repair movement, purchased
a cameo request from Wosniac and asked him to speak
about the idea of right to repair, and Wosniac did
not disappoint You can actually watch this video on online.
And the right to repair is a general movement that
pushes for legislation that would require companies to stop making

(09:34):
it difficult or even impossible for someone to make alterations
or repair the technology that they purchase. So one example
I always like to give with this is with John
Deer equipment, as in like farming equipment like tractors, John
Dear restricts the ability to repair those products. So you

(09:55):
know what you're supposed to do is take your your
John Deer equipment and go to an authorized repair shop
that has a license with John Dear and they have
the equipment that is necessary to diagnose and repair the equipment.
If you try and do it yourself, uh, you get

(10:15):
you run into roadblocks, like figurative roadblocks. So for the
d I Y types out there, this is a slap
in the face, and I mean particularly for people like farmers,
who often can be very self reliant, having this can
mean not just it's it's not just inconvenient for some people,
it can be an enormous hassle. Wozniak spoke about how

(10:38):
in the not too distant past you could buy whatever
electronics he wanted. It could be a TV or a
radio or whatever, and you could make repairs on that
technology yourself. As long as you had to know how
and you had the components. You could just go out
and buy something like, you know, a vacuum tube and
replace it yourself. He even said that Apple started off

(10:59):
with that kind of pilosophy, which is a far cry
from how the company operates now. Wozniak asked the question,
is it your computer or is it some company's computer?
As an is it a company's computer that you get
to use but you don't actually own it. We've seen
the right to repair movement pick up support both here
in the United States and overseas in Europe, and I

(11:21):
am curious to see where it goes and whether or
not it actually leads to any meaningful change. Next security
firm trust Wave Spider Labs published a report that says,
the malicious code in ransomware used by hacker groups like
REvil have a feature that looks for Russian or Russian
related languages on computer systems, and if it detects that

(11:44):
language is present, like if it detects that most of
the programming and code and documents are in Russian, the
malware does not activate itself on that system. It doesn't
infect those systems. So why is that well? The owing
theory is that these criminal hacker groups are largely located

(12:05):
out of Russia or former parts of the USSR, and
that the Russian government is at the very least ignoring
these criminal groups as they target various computer systems in
other countries, particularly in the West, and that the hacker
groups wish to keep it that way, and so they
make sure that the code they unleash isn't going to

(12:26):
affect Russian systems. In other words, you just you don't
poop where you eat, as they say. Russian authorities have
so far proven to be uninterested in cracking down on
hacker groups, which has led to suspicions that perhaps the
Russian government might even go so far as to encourage
or maybe even subcontract these hacker groups. Now, those allegations

(12:50):
are difficult to prove, but the discovery that the malware
being used as specifically avoiding Russian systems suggests that the
hackers at least know that they are more likely able
to operate freely as long as they don't step on
Russian toes. We recently had Pride Month here in the
United States, and while people within the LGBT communities still

(13:11):
face struggles here significant ones in other countries, the threats
can be even more overt. Take China, for example, we Chat,
the most popular social networking platform within China, recently shut
down multiple accounts relating to LGBT topics, and allegedly we
Chat sent out messages to the account administrators claiming that

(13:35):
these channels that were you know, being hosted by these
admins were violating me chats policies, but gave no details
as to how they were doing that, and the lack
of information has led to speculation, and some of that
speculation questions if perhaps the communist government in China is

(13:55):
cracking down on these groups, potentially because they the government
might view these groups as maybe questioning the government's authority
or challenging that authority. In some way, and that the
government then puts pressure on companies like we Chat, because
in China, the Communist government is heavily involved in every

(14:17):
major company within the country. China classified homosexuality as being
criminal until but while homosexuality is now decriminalized, at least
on paper, people in LGBT communities still must deal with
a great deal of discrimination in China. Now. To be fair,

(14:37):
that's also the case in many other parts of the world,
including the United States. It's not like China is an
outlier in that regard. It's just that this is one
of those cases where it looks particularly overt. As I
said earlier for my last story today, I want to
preface this by saying I'm not a car guy, and

(14:59):
also I find hyper masculine marketing to be absolutely ridiculous.
I think it's laughable. So perhaps it comes as no
surprise that I was rolling my eyes so hard that
you could probably hear it at a recent video revealing
that Dodge will release an all electric muscle car in Now.
To be fair, I think muscle cars are kind of cool,

(15:21):
and I think an all electric muscle car is a
really neat idea. It's kind of in a way antithetical
to the way muscle cars typically get positioned in the market.
But the way the video unfolded really kind of I
don't know. I guess it pushed some buttons with me.
It would have to, it's an electric vehicle anyway. The

(15:42):
video includes a narrator who at one point incredulously says,
wait a minute, did we hear that right? Dodge as
an Dodge making an electric muscle car. And then there's
a shot of a dude who's behind the wheel of
a Dodge muscle car saying, you mean hypothetically right, Like
they wouldn't Dare make an electric muscle car because internal

(16:06):
combustion engines are manly and whatnot, and going electric is
antithetical to muscle cars aesthetic. I suspect this is really
just Dodge getting ahead of the inevitable reaction of the
thought of an all electric muscle car. But seeing as
how the automotive industry in general is having to switch
to e v s or at least alternatives to internal

(16:26):
combustion engines, it was kind of bound to happen. I mean,
it either had to happen this way, or muscle car
variants of vehicles would just have to go away anyway.
I really do think an electric muscle car is a
cool idea. I just find the marketing approach to me
a bit laughable. But I feel that way, like I said,
about all hyper masculine advertising. I mean, if it's if

(16:49):
it's an ad for steak or beer or something like that,
typically it just makes me kind of get exasperated at
the the the way that masculinity is depicted. I feel
like it tends to reinforce perhaps not the healthiest of stereotypes.

(17:10):
But hey, I'll get off my soapbox. We'll stick with tech.
That's it for the tech news for today, Thursday, July one.
We'll be back next week with some more news. If
you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
episodes of tech Stuff, let me know the best way
to do that is send me a message on Twitter.
The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s

(17:31):
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.