Tech News: Brazil Ditches X and Russia Buys Some Influencers

Brazil's Supreme Court has shut down access to X after Elon Musk defied some questionable court orders. The US Department of Justice says that an American media company was secretly generating propaganda on behalf of Russia. And a musician used bots to both generate and listen to music for nearly a decade before being accused of fraud.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
the week ending Friday September sixth, twenty twenty four, which

(00:26):
my math holds up means that next week is Friday
the thirteenth. But we got plenty of unlucky things to
talk about today, so I guess I should just hold
my horses for next week. First up, we got some
updates on some unfolding stories in the world of tech.
Pavel Diroff, the CEO of Telegram, has made a statement

(00:46):
following his arrest in Paris, France. So if you recall,
French authorities are accusing Telegram of harboring illegal activity and
doing nothing to stop it. In fact, there are concerns
that the platform actively shields criminal users by refusing to
cooperate with legal requests for user information. Telegram established itself

(01:09):
as a communications platform that was meant to be free
of censorship, but many countries have laws about content moderation
and if a platform refuses to moderate content and as
a result, users conduct illegal activities on the platform, well,
then the platform itself can be held at least partly

(01:30):
responsible for that, being complicit in that. Durov's statement acknowledges
that criminals have made use of Telegram and that this
is a problem. He maintained that his arrest was a
surprise and in his view, unfair, but he also admitted
that Telegram has areas that need attention and improvement. He

(01:50):
didn't go into a whole lot of detail, but I
inferred that he will be implementing a more active content
moderation policy, and that if the allegations that Telegram has
in the fact been too slow to respond to legal
requests in the past, that could be something that changes
as well. Like he pointed out, hey, we have an
established way to go through channels and make legal requests,

(02:14):
but a lot of government officials have said, yeah, we
did that and we didn't get a response. So my
guess is that's going to change too. Derov did double
down in one way, however. He pointed out that if
a country or region makes demands that are counter to
Telegram's values, he will not hesitate to pull up stakes
and leave that country or region. He has done so

(02:36):
in the past and would do so again. Another update,
So last week I talked about how a Supreme Court
judge in Brazil was threatening to shut X down X
formerly known as Twitter, at least in Brazil, and that
has happened. So essentially, internet service providers in Brazil are
supposed to block traffic to X. Now. All of this

(02:58):
also centers around the issue of moderation, similar to the
Telegram story. The judge has said that X is giving
a platform to hate speech and disinformation campaigns and has
demanded that X remove certain accounts, and X refused that,
and now we're here Now. Reportedly Brazilians have been flocking

(03:19):
to an alternative to X, slash Twitter. It's not Meta's threads,
although those have seen you. Downloads for Threads have seen
an uptick, But really the big one has been blue Sky. Apparently,
downloads for blue Sky spiked this week, with more than
two million users joining the service over a matter of days.
Now you might remember blue Sky was one of Jack

(03:41):
Dorsey's projects, and Dorsey came from the old version of Twitter.
As for X's status in Brazil, well, the full Supreme
Court weighed in on that. One judge's decision, and essentially
they said, yeah, no, that was the right call. So
I'm not really sure where things will go from here.
Presumably X will remain inaccessible in Brazil unless you're using

(04:04):
like a VPN or something until the company changes and
starts to comply with the government orders. I don't see
that happening necessarily with X. It just doesn't seem like
that it would be a thing. And yeah, this to
me is kind of icky, Like I'm not a big
fan of the entities that prompted this action in the

(04:28):
first place, that is, the hard right wing accounts that
have concerned the Supreme Court justice in Brazil. But I'm
also not a fan of like just a blanket ban
going on here. It's a tough situation and I honestly
I don't know how I would handle it. I also
don't know if the situation that's going on in Brazil

(04:49):
influenced the former head of Global affairs over at X,
because he just handed in his resignation. Nick Pickles is
his name. He has the absolute best name ever, and
he has been with Twitter slash X for like a decade.
So he sent a message to the company alerting staff
that he has resigned in his last days today, and

(05:09):
he didn't really give any details regarding the reason behind
his departure. And I'm sure there are actually a lot
of factors involved. I don't want to suggest that one
thing convinced him, oh, it's time to go. And in fact,
I don't even know if the situation in Brazil was
a contributing factor. I just imagined that being the head
of global affairs when an entire country has decided to

(05:31):
ban your company's service has to be a rough way
to start your day. CNN's Hannah Ziadi posted an article
titled advertisers plan to withdraw from X in record numbers
And that might sound a little familiar to a lot
of y'all. We've seen this actually a few times. Since
Elon Musk acquired Twitter in twenty twenty two, advertisers have

(05:54):
shown concern that X slash Twitter isn't really a safe
place to advertise. Most brands are not keen about the
possibility that their ads could show up next to posts
containing like hate speech or misinformation. It's not really a
good look if there's a screenshot showing truly horrific content.

(06:15):
And meanwhile, there's also an ad for like athletic shoes
or maybe a family friendly streaming service or something right
next to it. Ziadi references a survey conducted by a
market research firm called Cantar and Kantar reported that more
than twenty five percent of marketers have plans to decrease
spending on X next year. And I think this is

(06:36):
really damning. Apparently only four percent of marketers view X
as being brand safe, meaning you can be reasonably certain
that your advertisers were not going to just show up
next to posts from like white supremacists or Russian funded influencers.
More on those just a second. Actually, honestly, I think

(06:56):
this is really a continuation of a trend we saw
not long after elimsk first took control of Twitter. Twitter
slash X is no longer a publicly traded company. That
means we don't get SEC filings like we would for
other organizations, where we could take a really close look
at things like revenue vers cost. But I have to
imagine the revenue sheets over at X have to look

(07:19):
pretty grim unless they've sold a whole lot more of
those blue check marks. Now, I just referenced that I
would talk about Russian funded influencers, and now we're at
that point. So the US Department of Justice unveiled an
indictment this week that alleges two Russian nationals have been
coordinating with right leaning influencers in the United States in

(07:42):
order to publish and distribute content that's aligned with Russia's
global goals. So essentially, this is a story about how
a group of US influencers are allegedly the paid spokespeople
of the Russian government when you really get down to it,
so as the saying goes, you gotta follow the money,
and some of these influencers landed some really lucrative deals

(08:05):
to produce relatively small amounts of work. Not all of them,
I mean all of them are making crazy bank compared
to someone like I don't know me. But then I
also I would like to think that if I were
approached to become the mouthpiece of a propaganda arm for
a country like Russia, I would have the good sense
to say, no, thank you, I appreciate the offer, but

(08:29):
this is not in alignment with my own values. However,
the money given to these influencers that traces back to
a media company in Tennessee, which is believed to be Tenant.
In fact, we might as well just say it is Tenant,
but it's not overtly named in the indictment. In turn,
Tenant was allegedly receiving money from various shell corporations that

(08:50):
ultimately were drawing cash from a state backed Russian media
outlet called RT. So the DOJ released this indictment that read,
in part quote. Many of the videos published by US
Company one contain commentary on events and issues in the
United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related

(09:11):
to domestic and foreign policy. While the views expressed in
the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content
of the videos are often consistent with the Government of
Russia's interest in amplifying US domestic divisions in order to
weaken US opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such

(09:31):
as its ongoing war in Ukraine end quote. So the
indictment again, it doesn't name specific organizations or people. It
uses things like, you know, founder one and founder two
or company one to designate the different parties. But it
is insanely easy to read between the lines, because, for
one thing, the indictment uses a description of this Tennessee

(09:54):
based company. That description is literally word for word, the
same description that shows up on Tenant media website. A
day after the indictment, made News YouTube announced it was
quote terminating the Tenant Media channel and four channels operated
by its owner, Lauren Chen as part of our ongoing
efforts to combat coordinated influence operations end quote. Several of

(10:17):
the influencers who were working for Tenant Media have since
come forward to claim that they were unaware of the
business relationship between Tenant and RT, though it sure is
convenient that the videos they were told to produce and
share aligned so neatly with the talking points that the
Kremlin has been pushing out. I guess if the dollar
figure on the piece of paper is big enough, it's

(10:38):
really easy to ignore everything else and to not employ,
i don't know, some common sense and judgment. So yeah,
that also includes ignoring the fact that you could be
complicit in violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is
what this indictment is all about. The investigation appears to
show that Tenant Media's founders figured something was up as

(10:59):
the continue to receive pressure to share more videos supporting
narratives that were favorable to Russia. Like it may not
have been overtly understood, but it certainly appears that they
kind of knew where the money was coming from. I'm
sure we'll talk about this story a lot more as
it develops. Okay, we're going to take a quick break

(11:20):
and come back with more tech news after these messages.
We're back and turning to AI. Now. Reuter's reports that
this week nations had the opportunity to sign on to
the AI Convention. This is an international treaty that's aimed

(11:43):
at establishing safety measures and best practices for artificial intelligence.
It is intended to protect human rights in an era
in which more organizations and corporations are integrating AI into
their processes, their products, and their services. However, Reuters also
talked to a legal expert named Francesca Ferucci about this treaty,

(12:07):
and Finucci expressed some concerns. She said, quote, the formulation
of principles and obligations in this convention is so overbroad
and fraught with caveats that it raises serious questions about
their legal certainty and effective enforceability end quote. Honestly, that

(12:27):
sounds pretty much on par for how governments typically attempt
to legislate technology. They often use language that ends up
being so vague or so broad there ends up being
no meaningful way to implement or enforce rules. Further, the
treaty builds in various exceptions to those rules, and the

(12:49):
more exceptions you have to rules, the less useful the
rules are. It's kind of like if you were to
offer a back door to an otherwise secure communication line.
The very presence of a back door means the line
is not secure. So, on the one hand, I think
it is important that leaders try to understand AI, to

(13:09):
understand its potential applications, and specifically to understand any possible
negative consequences that we should be on the lookout for,
with the implementation of AI, perhaps even being able to
prevent those negative consequences, that's the best case scenario, right.
So on the other hand, I really worry that anything
that comes across as a half measure will give leaders

(13:33):
and citizens kind of a false sense of security, like, oh,
we got that sorted, we signed a treaty, everything's fine,
and then when the AI poop actually hits the fan,
things will be really, really bad. The Attorney General of
New Mexico has filed a lawsuit against Snap, the company
behind Snapchat the lawsuit alleges that Snapchat, through its recommendation algorithm,

(13:56):
facilitates and promotes quote illicit sexual material involving children end quote,
and that it can quote facilitate sex torsion and the
trafficking of children, drugs and guns end quote. Further, the
lawsuit of ledges that Snapchat promotes a feature in which
images shared on the platform delete themselves shortly after they've

(14:16):
been opened, but that in fact it's quite possible to
capture and save those images and videos, and people who
prey upon children have effectively used this to create a
kind of black market for child sexual abuse material. The
lawsuit of ledges that snap has violated the state's unfair
trade practices law. Now, I haven't seen a response from

(14:37):
snap yet. In many ways, I feel this lawsuit resembles
what's going on with Telegram. Over in France, Clearview AI
has been hit with a fine of thirty and a
half million euros or nearly thirty four million dollars. Now,
in case you're not familiar with Clearview, it's a company
that's largely known for compiling a truly massive database of

(14:58):
people's faces for the purposes of developing facial recognition software,
which gets used all around the world by different types
of organizations and companies. The Dutch Data Protection Authority or DPA,
charged that Clearview acquired those images without the permission of
the people who are captured in the photos, and that

(15:18):
Clearview's business practices violate EU privacy laws. The DPA said
that Clearview would be banned from doing business in the
Netherlands and that any entity in the Netherlands found to
be working with Clearview would face severe penalties. Clearview has
in the past argued that it doesn't do business in
the EU, so it shouldn't be held accountable to this,

(15:41):
but the DPA has said, yeah, well, you still have
our photos in your database and you still didn't ask
permission to get them from us, and that's still against
the laws over here. Bucco. So I'm guessing that Clearview
is not going to have a lot of success if
they want to try and appeal this fine. Not long ago,

(16:02):
Apple began allowing cloud based gaming apps on the App Store,
but one notable example has yet to show up there,
and that's Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming app. So why is
it not on iOS? Well, I bet a lot of
you out there already have guessed the answer, and it's
largely because of how Apple takes a big old cut

(16:22):
of transactions made on iOS devices, to the tune of
up to thirty percent. More than that, however, Apple also
demands that all subscriptions on iOS devices have to go
through the in app purchase process, meaning you can't just
port over an existing subscription to Microsoft Cloud Gaming and
then use it on iOS. You would have to subscribe

(16:45):
through the app itself so that Apple could get its cut.
Microsoft has pointed out that this pair of policies mean
it's not really feasible to offer a cloud based gaming
service on iOS devices because the economics just don't work out,
which is a pretty similar argument that we've heard from
lots of other companies that Apple's policies cut far too

(17:06):
far into revenue. Several years back, Apple made the move
to become more services oriented, and while it obviously still
produces hardware, and in fact hardware generates the majority of
Apple's revenue, the services side is insanely profitable. It doesn't
make up as much of the revenue, but it has
a much higher profit margin that's largely thanks to policies

(17:30):
like these, So I don't see Apple really changing anything
soon unless regulators around the world decide that those policies
are anti competitive and harmful to consumers. The Internet Archive
was handed a legal loss this week that I think
was a total mistake. It specifically relates to the archives
Open Library, So the Internet Archive would allow people to

(17:51):
digitally check out materials in the open library for free,
you know, like a library does. The Open Library operated
in a way that was meant to prevent unauthorized sharing.
For one thing, each digital copy was linked to a
copy that had been purchased or gifted to the Internet Archive,
and the Archive kept it one to one. That means

(18:13):
the Archive couldn't just lend out digital copies of works
willy nilly. Each copy had to be linked to one
that was actually owned by the archive itself. So if
the Archive only had a single copy of a work
in its possession, it could only lend out one digital
copy of that work at a time. It would not
be able to lend it out again until that lending

(18:35):
time had elapsed. None of that seemed to matter when
publishers argued that the Internet Archive was going to remove
all incentive for authors to write anything in the first place,
because who would write if their work was just given
away for free? But that's obviously not what's happening here,
at least not in my opinion. The archive is just
serving as a library, you know, those things that already exist.

(18:56):
They give citizens access to works that they might otherwise
never encounter, whether it's because they couldn't afford to buy
their own copy or they just didn't even know it existed.
There's tons more about this story on tech Dirt. I
recommend you go there to read about it. It's written
by Mike Masnik. It's a really great article. It's thoroughly researched.

(19:16):
He goes into a lot more detail. The title of
the article is second Circuit says libraries disincentivize authors to
write books by lending them for free. Check that out
over at ours Technica. BENJ. Edwards has another fun article
titled FBI busts musicians elaborate AI powered ten million dollars
streaming royalty heist. And I can't quite decide if I

(19:38):
find this story amusing or infuriating. Anyway, here's the quick version.
A guy named Michael Smith used AI to create a
whole bunch of songs, and he assigned these songs to
various fake bands and then upload the material to different
streaming platforms. Then he created a essentially a bot army
to quote unquote listen to these streams and thus drove

(19:59):
up royal ty for those songs. So songs he didn't
write he used AI to create them were being listened
to bots, not people, and over the course of several years,
this scheme netted him somewhere in the neighborhood of ten
million dollars until he was found out, and now he
faces charges a fraud because using bots to make music
that other bots tune into isn't really the spirit of

(20:21):
streaming services, though it is increasingly what the Internet is
turning into. I mean, I've talked about that a lot,
but it's a real problem that generative AI is creating
a lot of stuff that no one other than other
bots that are scraping content are actually consuming. And that
just means that the next generation of generative AI is
worse than the one before it. Now, this case is
not generative AI in that regard. I mean, it was

(20:44):
for creating the songs in the first place, but the
bots weren't trying to scrape data to make future songs.
They were just there to drive the numbers up for
those listens. It's kind of like when people would pay
to get bots to boost their follower numbers on various
plays platforms like Twitter or whatever. But of course this
scam involves money changing hands and that's where the fraud

(21:05):
comes in. Anyway, I'm really curious to know how many
actual human beings listen to any of these songs, and
whether there are any human fans of this AI generated music,
or if this literally was just a case where bots
were listening to stuff made by bots. That's it for
this week. I hope all of you are doing well,
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff

(21:33):
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