September 21, 2021 • 32 mins
A series of articles in The Wall Street Journal has Facebook on the defensive. Tech companies struggle to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. And some non-astronauts learn that pooping in space is tricky.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
I love all things tech. And it's time for the
tech news for Tuesday, September twenty one, twenty one. And
(00:26):
here's a follow up on a story that I talked
about last week. The Wall Street Journal has recently published
a few stories that put Facebook in a really negative light.
One of those stories was about an internal study that
looked at how divisive content on Facebook goes up in
the ranks in the Facebook algorithm because that kind of
(00:47):
content encourages high engagement. So essentially, it's saying what most
of us already know, which is that if you stir
shinola up, folks will get head up about it and
join the fracas. That's my colloquial way of saying that,
you know, saying or posting awful things gets a rise
out of people, and they in turn get emotional and
typically they then engage. And we know this is a
(01:08):
thing because it's been going on since long before there
ever was an Internet, and even back in the days
when the Internet wasn't really much more than a bunch
of message boards. We saw this in the form of
flame wars. Like everybody knows this. This is like the
basis of a lot of toxic behavior on the Internet
and in the world in general. So none of this
(01:29):
is new, But the study essentially confirmed that Facebook's algorithm
promotes content like that and then amplifies it, so something
that was already getting a lot of engagement could go
to the level where it goes viral, and when that
stuff is divisive, it can do a lot of harm.
Then there was the study that I talked about last
(01:50):
week in which Facebook researchers found that Instagram users can
experience a negative impact on their mental health. Particularly teenage
girls are are vulnerable to this, and the researchers found
that some users, including up to thirty two of teenage girls,
experience self esteem issues and worse, and that this links
(02:10):
back to their activities on Instagram. But those stories weren't
the end of it. There was more. The journal also
published a report that said as bad as Facebook is
dealing with these issues in English speaking countries, it's even
worse elsewhere, and that's because apparently Facebook just doesn't have
(02:31):
the staff on hand to deal with problems in places
that have other languages, and so issues like misinformation campaigns
can be even worse in those other places because there
aren't enough moderators who can curb the problem. They're not
enough people who understand the language to recognize when those
things are happening. CNBC's Salvador Rodriguez points out that a
(02:55):
company that makes around thirty billion dollar in profit, and
that's not revenue, that's profit, you know, they might be
able to actually hire on some folks who understand other languages.
And I think that's a pretty salient point. Facebook has
responded in a blog post that essentially says the Wall
Street Journal got stuff wrong. However, the blog post does
not refute any of the points of the internal study
(03:18):
that the journal was citing. So I mean, I guess
the wrong stuff would be any conclusions that the journalists
were drawing as a result of reading over the data.
I'm not sure that that blog post is going to
convince anyone. I feel like there's a real momentum building
against Facebook, and my guess is that soon it's going
(03:38):
to be politically unfeasible to offer the company any sort
of protection. In related news, the m I T Technology
Review gained possession of another Facebook internal study. These things
just keep on coming out. This one was actually done
way back in twenty nineteen. I say way back because
twenty nineteen was before we ever had a pandemic. Do
you remember those days? Anyway, that study was looking into
(04:01):
the proliferation of troll farms that were dedicated to spreading
misinformation and propaganda in the lead up to the presidential
election in the United States. A former Facebook employee handed
the report over to the m I T Technology Review.
That employee reportedly had nothing to do with the the study,
but had access to it before they left Facebook, and
(04:22):
the study showed that troll farms were pushing content out
that was seen by around one hundred forty million Americans
every month, and that these troll farms had created networks
of Facebook pages, and that some fifteen thousand pages targeting
US audiences actually originated out of Kosovo and Macedonia. Now
(04:44):
keep in mind this is after Facebook had already been
through the wringer in the two thousand sixteen election, which
means you would expect Facebook to have some protections in
place to guard against the same sort of thing. Happening
again just a few years later, but according to the review,
the few measures that Facebook did activate mostly prevented quote
the worst of the worst end quote. Jeff Allen, author
(05:07):
of the report and who was at the time a
senior level data scientist with Facebook, said that quote, we
have empowered in authentic actors to accumulate huge followings for
largely unknown purposes end quote. So, in other words, Facebook
has given the ability for people who are not who
(05:27):
they claim to be to get enormous followings and then
potentially to do, you know whatever. It might be good,
or it might be bad, probably bad. So this ties
in with our earlier story showing that Facebook is very
much aware of how its systems enable bad actors to
reach huge audiences and spread misinformation. When that misinformation convinces
(05:49):
people that, you know, the COVID vaccine is harmful, or
that misinformation says the virus itself is overblown, then it
not just you know, affects those users on Facebook. It
affects their behaviors and people can get sick and some
of them will die. Facebook, as you would imagine as
representatives that say say the company is taking measures to
(06:10):
keep the platforms safe and to eliminate these issues. But
like I said, I feel that Facebook is pretty much
on a collision course with the US government and likely
some other governments around the world, with the aim to
break up the company or otherwise reduce its power to
facilitate harm. I mean, it is pretty damning evidence when
(06:31):
internal studies within Facebook are confirming some of the accusations
that people have had against the company, and meanwhile representatives
for the company have continuously denied or deflected those accusations.
Meanwhile their own studies from inside the house are saying
the same thing. Not a good look. A few weeks ago,
(06:52):
I talked about how El Salvador adopted bitcoin as their
the country's national currency. Previously, it had been mostly relying
on the US dollar. Well, recently, bitcoin has had a
bit of a dip. It dropped ten percent in value
very quickly, not long ago. It's not to say that
it's in a spiral or anything, but it didn't have
(07:12):
a dip, and Salvador and President Naive Boo Keley responded
to that by directing the government to purchase even more bitcoin,
buying the dip. In other words, the country purchased another
hundred fifty bitcoin which was worth around six and a
half million dollars at the time, and that brings the
total number of bitcoin held by El Salvador to seven hundred.
(07:32):
It will be interesting to see how El Salvador progresses
while relying on a currency that has frequent and frequently
dramatic fluctuations in value. I'm not saying it's impossible, but
it's gonna be tricky. If bitcoin stabilizes and becomes more
of a reliant kind of thing or reliable kind of thing. Um, yeah,
(07:54):
I guess it could work, but right now, it's just
it's so volatile that I am very curious to see
how this works for El Salvador in the future. And
of course we talked to in the previous episodes about
how a lot of critics are worried that the fact
that bitcoin is is frequently associated with stuff like money
(08:14):
laundering and corruption, that this will play a large role
in El Salvador as well, but we'll have to wait
and see. Let's talk about tech and climate change for
a second. So the Big Five that being Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft,
and Facebook have all stated that their respective companies have
plans to go carbon neutral and at least in some
(08:36):
cases even carbon negative over the next several years, most
of which are aiming around for that goal. Microsoft even
says that the company intends to remove enough carbon from
the atmosphere to offset all the carbon the company has
ever generated. Ever, So, in other words, by I think
it's twenty fifty, Microsoft plans on having systems in place
(09:00):
that will effectively remove the equivalent amount of carbon that
the company has ever produced. That's pretty phenomenal if it
actually works out. Now, let's talk a little bit about actions,
because those speak louder than words, right. You can claim
to have this plan in place, but unless you do
stuff about it doesn't do you much good. And when
it comes to some of these companies, the promises being
(09:22):
made might not actually be achievable, at least not from
the companies themselves all by themselves. Let's take Apple for example.
So the Guardian reports that a semiconductor manufacturing company called
t s MC, this is part of Apple's supply chain,
has its goal to become carbon neutral by twenty Now,
(09:43):
Apple's goal was to get its entire supply chain to
carbon neutral by so there's a disconnect there of twenty years.
I mean, that's huge, right now, The company t s
MC in Taiwan uses nearly five of all electricity and
Iwan while manufacturing silicon chips. It also used around sixty
(10:04):
three million gallons of water in twenty nineteen for that purpose,
and it will likely consume more over the near future,
not less, at least, you know, when the ability to
manufacture at scale has really returned in full effect. And
this is yet another reminder that the world is way
more complicated than the way we typically see it in messaging.
(10:27):
You know, you might think, oh, Apple, Apple makes iPhones,
that iPhone came from Apple, but we all know that's
oversimplifying things way too much because there are a lot
of different companies that that produce components within that iPhone
that are not Apple. Apple partners with those companies, they
are part of Apple's supply chains. So it is a
(10:48):
much more complex ecosystem than just a single company. And
we have to remember there's this ripple effect, right, The
manufacturing process has this ripple effect on different economies around
the world as well as different environments. Now, I am
not blaming Apple for this, because I mean, for one thing,
the company made its own uh owned and operated businesses
(11:09):
carbon neutral back in eighteen. That is amazing. Hats off
to Apple for doing that. That's great. This is just
a reminder that when we hear these promises about attaining
carbon neutrality across all lines of businesses, we have to
remember it's not always entirely up to the companies that
are making those promises, and we need to make sure
(11:30):
that all the pieces are in place in order to
take care of all the different components. We have more
to talk about with tech, even more with tech and
climate in just a moment, but first let's take a
quick break. Okay, before the break, I was talking about
(11:52):
carbon neutrality and climate change in tech. This is kind
of related to that in a way. I want to
talk out the Bezos Earth Fund that's obviously named after
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. That fund has pledged
one billion dollars toward efforts to conserve and protect vulnerable
areas around the world. And this is part of a
(12:14):
ten billion dollar commitment that Jeff Bezos has made toward
preserving natural habitats and fighting climate change globally. And the
initial focus is on a region in the Pacific Ocean,
a tropical region of the Pacific uh the tropical Andes
Mountains and the Congo Basin. Now you might wonder how
(12:35):
does this actually work, because obviously you can't just dump
airplane loads of cash on an area to make it better.
The Pacific Ocean does not care if you make it
rain dollar bills over it. No, So this fund is
actually doling out large amounts of money toward established organizations
that focus on this kind of work on preservation and
(12:58):
fighting climate change. So really it's almost like a grant
foundation that's granting this money to other organizations. This in
itself is still a challenge, both because even if you're
just donating to charity yourself, you always want to try
and select organizations that have the potential to do the
most good with your donation and to make the best
(13:19):
use of the money you you offer. And also, once
you hit a certain scale of donation, you might actually
be giving an organization more money than that organization can manage.
It can literally be too much of a good thing. Yeah,
if you are really focusing on smaller, more local organizations
that can do you know, direct good in a region,
(13:42):
then you might have to spend a lot more time
managing that whole situation. Because again, you don't want to
overwhelm the organization by giving it more than it can handle.
But at least this is some good news that's related
to Amazon, which is nice because the rest of my
Amazon news is not quite so positive. Of those pieces
is about um sponsored results in Amazon item listings. So
(14:07):
when you go on to Amazon and you're searching for something,
let's say it's a ball peen hammer, then you're gonna
get results on that, and that's going to include results
from companies that have paid to be in your view,
like on that first page. So Amazon has been doing
this for a while. It's not like it's brand new,
but over time the company has increased the number of
(14:29):
sponsored item slots on those initial lists. Like in the
past it might be you know, two to three items,
and now it can be five or six on some searches. Uh.
And like search engines in general, you know, we typically
see people stick to the first page or first couple
of pages of results when they're searching for stuff. Now,
(14:50):
I have to admit I'm kind of an outlier because
I will frequently page through multiple pages in an effort
to find, you know, the best fit for whatever item
I'm looking for. I've always got this fear that on
the next page was the perfect fit, and I went
with something you know, I settled for something less. So
with these sponsored results, there's no algorithm around how popular
(15:10):
the item is, or how well reviewed it is or
anything like that. It shows up there because the company
paid for that spot. And Amazon has also increased the
price for ads, which, yeah, I don't even know how
much revenue Amazon must be pulling in when you factor
both of those things together. They're showing more ads, and
they're charging more per AD, and they've got millions of
(15:33):
people using the site, and I mean, that's going hog wild,
especially during pandemic. Now, the amount charged is not a
big amount on a per click basis. If you look
at it as how much does Amazon charge for an
AD for a single click, it's a dollar twenty seven.
That's not very much, But that's one click. That's per click, right.
(15:56):
You multiply that times potentially tens of thousands of click
and you apply that pricing across all items, across all categories,
and you really start seeing the cash pile up, which
I guess then you could throw at the Pacific Ocean. Amazon,
by the way, says that it doesn't dedicate slots to
sponsored items, So in other words, it doesn't have like
a minimum or a set amount. It's not like every
(16:19):
time you search for something, you're gonna get six sponsored
results and then everything else. In fact, it's possible, according
to Amazon, that you could do a search and get
no sponsored items at all, depending on whatever it was
you were searching for. Now, I've recently had to purchase
a bunch of stuff, so anecdotally, I can say that
I have noticed way more sponsored items than I remember
(16:41):
seeing in the past. However, I also have to say
that could just be confirmation bias on my part. It
might not actually reflect reality. It may just be that
I'm noticing it more. Anyway, it's good to pay attention
to this kind of thing when you're a comparison shopping now.
Just because something is sponsored doesn't mean it's the best fit,
but it all. It doesn't mean it's not the best fit.
(17:02):
It might be the best option for you, but it
is good to remember that it's a sponsored item and
that the reason it's showing up in your view has
nothing to do with its price, its quality, or reviews
or anything like that. Uh, it may fit those criteria
that you need, but it doesn't necessarily do that, so
(17:24):
you need to keep that in mind when you're comparison shopping.
OSHA a k a. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
is a regulatory agency in the United States that is
charged with assuring safe and healthy working conditions in the
US by establishing and enforcing standards. And when there is
an incident that that results in an injury, like a
(17:47):
serious injury, something you know, beyond just slapping a band
aid on someone, then companies are supposed to report that
to OSHA. They are legally bound to do so well.
The Tech Journal is m site. The information took data
from OSHA and looked at Amazon delivery stations. Now, delivery
stations are hubs that exist between warehouses and customers. Amazon
(18:12):
essentially established delivery stations largely in an effort to eliminate
the need to rely on other delivery services like ups
and instead use its own owned and operated delivery vehicles
in order to get packages to end customers. So the
way Amazon typically works with shipping is that it has
these massive warehouses that hold products. These then get shipped
(18:36):
to the delivery stations, and then workers at the delivery
stations sort and load the boxes onto delivery vehicles, which
then go out to you know, deliver the stuff to customers.
And according to the information, the rate of injuries at
Amazon delivery stations is more than twice that of the
industry average. People are getting hurt twice as often at
(18:58):
Amazon delivery stations as people who work at comparable facilities.
It's also a higher injury rate than what is seen
at other Amazon facilities, including warehouses and sorting facilities. The
delivery stations are the most dangerous. The information also points
out that companies only report to OSHA if those injuries
(19:19):
are severe enough. Like I was saying before, it has
to be something more than what would require a first
aid response. So we're not just talking about people stubbing
a toe or something. We're talking about some serious injuries,
everything from moderate to potentially critical injuries. And you know,
who knows how many bumps and scrapes people are getting
along the way. The study also found that Amazon had
(19:43):
overstated the number of employees working at these delivery stations
on more than one occasions. Now that matters because it
means Amazon's information to OSHA indicates that these delivery stations
had more employees. Thus were more fully staffed, and that
would usually mean that you would see fewer injuries, right,
(20:03):
because you're you're dividing the work well amongst the people
that you have. But if in fact fewer people are
working there, then that means you have fewer people doing
more work. And that work includes moving heavy stuff like
heavy packages, as well as working around delivery vehicles that
are coming and going all the time. So it's no
wonder there have been lots of injuries. No real report
(20:26):
from Amazon yet about this, apart from the company saying
that it works hard to improve safety conditions and its facilities. Okay, well,
I've got a few more stories to cover, but before
I get to those, let's take another quick break. Okay,
(20:47):
we're gonna talk a little bit more about workers rights
and tech organizations in the form of instat cart. So,
the company is rumored to be preparing an initial public
offering or i p O. That's when a private company
becomes a publicly traded company on a stock exchange. This
process is lengthy, it is not a sure thing. They
just take a look at we work for an example
(21:09):
of that. But some instacart workers are spearheading a campaign
to convince users to boycott the app. They're using the
hashtag delete insta Cart to promote their cause, so they
want to put pressure on the company. If insta Cart
is planning ongoing public then public opinion is going to
impact the share price and thus the company valuation and
(21:31):
the I p O. So this is important stuff. And
the workers have a list of demands that they want
to have met from the company. One of those includes
Instacart reinstating a previous commission pay model where people got
a dedicated amount of money per order. Um. They want
a ten percent default tip built into the transaction. Right now,
(21:54):
the default tip is at five. They wanted to be
up to ten percent because they say a lot of
users never bother to go outside of the default. Uh.
I always I always go to twenty percent at least
and sometimes over than that, because I mean, these folks
are working hard and they're they're doing a real service
(22:15):
for me. But that's me anyway. They also want a
system that does not penalize workers for stuff that is
outside their control. So for example, uh, there's a cold
brew coffee that I absolutely love and it is almost
never in stock in any of the stores. I always
put it into the order just in case, but more
often than not, I get a message saying they were out.
(22:36):
Well right now, instacart allows me to review my you know,
results of my delivery and I can say, oh, the
delivery person didn't find all the items, uh, and that
can reflect badly on that person. It penalizes the insta
cart gig worker and it's not really their fault, right,
I mean, if the company's off stock, they couldn't do
(22:58):
anything about that, so it's not fair. They want that changed.
They also want occupational death benefits, and they want the
system that assigns orders to workers to be more transparent.
They say that it's gotten less so over the years.
The workers are asking users to delete the app to
send a message to insta Cart because if the installed
base for the app drops dramatically, they hope that that
(23:19):
will end up pressuring the company to granting these demands
because it will not look good on its way toward
an initial public offering. Workers say instat carts changes have
resulted in lower pay for workers who are working just
as hard, if not harder, than they were before, but
they're making less. The workers acknowledge that asking users to
delete a delivery app during a pandemic is potentially a
(23:42):
pretty big request for what it's worth, I just deleted
it from my phone, even though I have depended upon
it quite heavily in the past, because I happened to
believe in the cause of the workers. All right, moving on,
have you been to Thailand in the last ten years?
The reason I ask is that if you have, your
(24:04):
data might be among the one hundred six million records
of international travelers who have gone to Thailand that was
found to be stored on a database on the web
without password protection. So, in other words, anyone who got
hold of that U r L to that database could
go and look through it and see the personal information
of one six million people who had visited the country
(24:28):
over the last decade. A security researcher with compare Tech
alerted Thai authorities about this problem last month, and the
day following that alert, those authorities were able to secure
the database. So how long was that database up I
don't know, but the search engine census c E N
S y S indexed the database on August twenty one, So,
(24:53):
in other words, not only was the database unprotected and
up on the web, but a search engine indexed it
so that means it would come up in search results
for any sort of relevant query. The researcher who found
the database found it two days after it had been indexed,
and on the twenty three the database was under lock
and key. The former u r L of the database
(25:14):
is still active, but if you were to visit it now,
you would see a message that reads and I quote
this is honeypot. All access were logged end quote. According
to the authorities, no one obtained unauthorized access to the database,
though I'm not sure how they determined that or whether
the information is accurate, but once again that shows how
poor data management security policies can make all of us vulnerable.
(25:38):
The folks who were in that database did nothing wrong.
At least they did nothing wrong as far as being
included on that database is concerned. I don't know if
they're entirely innocent of all wrongdoing, but they had no
control over the security of their own data, and that's
a problem. Netflix has an interesting new offering that has
very specific parameters for a certain target audience. Viewers will
(25:58):
get free access to about tw of all the content
on Netflix Streaming to watch free of charge. That is,
there's no subscription. There's no advertising, nothing, but there are
a couple of requirements you have to meet. First, one
is that this offering is for Android users, so it
only applies on Android devices. And the other is that
(26:20):
the offering is for people in Kenya. And you might wonder,
what the what, what's going on, and maybe a lot
of you are already saying, well, of course, the first
taste is free, and that's exactly right. This is essentially
a marketing campaign with the ultimate goal to be to
convince Kenyans to subscribe for you know, paid for Netflix services.
(26:41):
You know, you give them a sample of what is
available on the platform. Android smartphones are popular in Kenya,
often like the most popular computing device in Kenya, and
so that represents a potential new audience for a Netflix.
But to get things rolling, the company needs to convince
Kenyans that they want the service in the first place.
And I think you were going to see lots of
similar campaigns across different companies in different parts of the world.
(27:04):
Many companies use growth as the most important metric of
the organization's success, but for subscription based businesses, there comes
a point in any market where you start to hit saturation.
And you see growth slow down, you might even see
it stabilize, and if you're in trouble, it might start
to go and reverse. It is very hard to create
(27:25):
new customers in a saturated market. You know, you've pretty
much got everyone who wants to be on the service
on the service you've got in the worlds to go,
So it makes more sense to look for untapped markets
elsewhere in the world and then aggressively go after those
and when you do that, boom, you get your growth back. Now.
I used to see this a lot when I worked
for a multibillion dollar cable content company that rhymes with Discovery. Anyway,
(27:52):
we'll have to see if Netflix is Queen's gambit pays off.
That was a reference. I've been talking a lot about
NASA recently, with series on text stuff dedicated to things
like the evolution of space suits and the various space
stations that have been in orbit around the Earth over
the years, and have also covered the Artemis Project, NASA's
plan to return to the Moon. Now, while the return
(28:15):
of humans to the Moon is likely to be pushed
back from the plan deadline because of stuff like you know,
not having space suits ready in time, other parts of
the project are moving forward. One of those is to
land a new rover on the surface of the Moon.
The rover is called the Volatile Investigating Polar Exploration Rover
or VIPER. Now that tells me someone came up with
(28:38):
an acronym that they thought was totally bad ass, and
then they worked their way backward from there. Or maybe
I'm wrong. Maybe they came up with a full name
first and then they said, hang on. The acronym for
this name is VIPER. That's bad ass. Anyway, NASA has
identified the target landing spot for the rover. It's near
the south pole of the Moon, on the edge of
(28:59):
a crater called the Nobile Creator and Viper's mission will
be to seek out resources that could be useful you know,
some might say critical for long term Moon missions. We're
talking stuff like ice, which could be used to generate
not just water, but also oxygen and even rocket fuel.
This will mark the first time that anything has directly
(29:21):
explored that specific region of the Moon. Previously, we've studied
it only through fly by missions, where you know, satellites
have gone by and taken measurements and metrics and pictures
and stuff. But this will be the first time we'll
have wheels on the ground, so to speak, in that region.
The thought is that in areas that are in permanent
shadow on the Moon, you might be able to find ice,
(29:44):
but we won't know for sure until we go there.
Viper is scheduled to go loony in tree. And finally,
another space news, Pooping in space is difficult. I've covered
this extensively, some might even say gratuitously, in those text
Stuff episodes about space suits. But recently this has popped
(30:04):
into the news again thanks to the crew of the
Inspiration Four. That was the group of four non astronauts
who boarded a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft last Wednesday, went
into orbit, stayed there for a few days, and then
returned back to Earth this past weekend. Elon Musk, responding
to questions about the mission, said that the next Crew
(30:25):
Dragon space capsule would have quote an upgraded toilet end
quote because and I quote, we had some challenges with
it this flight. Now you might wonder where the toilet
is on the Crew Dragon capsule, and I'll tell you
it's located above the crew seats. It's on the ceiling.
(30:48):
Now in microgravity, up and down are largely meaningless, but
it does mean that to use the toilet, you'd have
to float up to the top of the capsule, position
yourself so that you are upside down with regard to
the bottom of the capsule, and position yourself on the toilet,
and you use a little privacy curtain that divides the
capsule so that you know you're not turning it into
(31:10):
a spectator sport, and then you are inside a glass
dome once you're you know, positioned on the toilet, and
then you would do your business. You know what a
feeling when you're pooping on the ceiling. I made myself
laugh when I thought that up, which tells you that
i might be forty six years old, but I'm still
a thirteen year old boy at heart. Anyway, the next
(31:32):
Dragon capsule will have an improved toilet, and I cannot
wait to learn what the heck that actually means. And
that's it. That's the news for Tuesday, September twenty one. One.
If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on
tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The handle
for the show is text Stuff h s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(31:59):
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Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
I love all things tech. And it's time for the
tech news for Tuesday, September twenty one, twenty one. And
(00:26):
here's a follow up on a story that I talked
about last week. The Wall Street Journal has recently published
a few stories that put Facebook in a really negative light.
One of those stories was about an internal study that
looked at how divisive content on Facebook goes up in
the ranks in the Facebook algorithm because that kind of
(00:47):
content encourages high engagement. So essentially, it's saying what most
of us already know, which is that if you stir
shinola up, folks will get head up about it and
join the fracas. That's my colloquial way of saying that,
you know, saying or posting awful things gets a rise
out of people, and they in turn get emotional and
typically they then engage. And we know this is a
(01:08):
thing because it's been going on since long before there
ever was an Internet, and even back in the days
when the Internet wasn't really much more than a bunch
of message boards. We saw this in the form of
flame wars. Like everybody knows this. This is like the
basis of a lot of toxic behavior on the Internet
and in the world in general. So none of this
(01:29):
is new, But the study essentially confirmed that Facebook's algorithm
promotes content like that and then amplifies it, so something
that was already getting a lot of engagement could go
to the level where it goes viral, and when that
stuff is divisive, it can do a lot of harm.
Then there was the study that I talked about last
(01:50):
week in which Facebook researchers found that Instagram users can
experience a negative impact on their mental health. Particularly teenage
girls are are vulnerable to this, and the researchers found
that some users, including up to thirty two of teenage girls,
experience self esteem issues and worse, and that this links
(02:10):
back to their activities on Instagram. But those stories weren't
the end of it. There was more. The journal also
published a report that said as bad as Facebook is
dealing with these issues in English speaking countries, it's even
worse elsewhere, and that's because apparently Facebook just doesn't have
(02:31):
the staff on hand to deal with problems in places
that have other languages, and so issues like misinformation campaigns
can be even worse in those other places because there
aren't enough moderators who can curb the problem. They're not
enough people who understand the language to recognize when those
things are happening. CNBC's Salvador Rodriguez points out that a
(02:55):
company that makes around thirty billion dollar in profit, and
that's not revenue, that's profit, you know, they might be
able to actually hire on some folks who understand other languages.
And I think that's a pretty salient point. Facebook has
responded in a blog post that essentially says the Wall
Street Journal got stuff wrong. However, the blog post does
not refute any of the points of the internal study
(03:18):
that the journal was citing. So I mean, I guess
the wrong stuff would be any conclusions that the journalists
were drawing as a result of reading over the data.
I'm not sure that that blog post is going to
convince anyone. I feel like there's a real momentum building
against Facebook, and my guess is that soon it's going
(03:38):
to be politically unfeasible to offer the company any sort
of protection. In related news, the m I T Technology
Review gained possession of another Facebook internal study. These things
just keep on coming out. This one was actually done
way back in twenty nineteen. I say way back because
twenty nineteen was before we ever had a pandemic. Do
you remember those days? Anyway, that study was looking into
(04:01):
the proliferation of troll farms that were dedicated to spreading
misinformation and propaganda in the lead up to the presidential
election in the United States. A former Facebook employee handed
the report over to the m I T Technology Review.
That employee reportedly had nothing to do with the the study,
but had access to it before they left Facebook, and
(04:22):
the study showed that troll farms were pushing content out
that was seen by around one hundred forty million Americans
every month, and that these troll farms had created networks
of Facebook pages, and that some fifteen thousand pages targeting
US audiences actually originated out of Kosovo and Macedonia. Now
(04:44):
keep in mind this is after Facebook had already been
through the wringer in the two thousand sixteen election, which
means you would expect Facebook to have some protections in
place to guard against the same sort of thing. Happening
again just a few years later, but according to the review,
the few measures that Facebook did activate mostly prevented quote
the worst of the worst end quote. Jeff Allen, author
(05:07):
of the report and who was at the time a
senior level data scientist with Facebook, said that quote, we
have empowered in authentic actors to accumulate huge followings for
largely unknown purposes end quote. So, in other words, Facebook
has given the ability for people who are not who
(05:27):
they claim to be to get enormous followings and then
potentially to do, you know whatever. It might be good,
or it might be bad, probably bad. So this ties
in with our earlier story showing that Facebook is very
much aware of how its systems enable bad actors to
reach huge audiences and spread misinformation. When that misinformation convinces
(05:49):
people that, you know, the COVID vaccine is harmful, or
that misinformation says the virus itself is overblown, then it
not just you know, affects those users on Facebook. It
affects their behaviors and people can get sick and some
of them will die. Facebook, as you would imagine as
representatives that say say the company is taking measures to
(06:10):
keep the platforms safe and to eliminate these issues. But
like I said, I feel that Facebook is pretty much
on a collision course with the US government and likely
some other governments around the world, with the aim to
break up the company or otherwise reduce its power to
facilitate harm. I mean, it is pretty damning evidence when
(06:31):
internal studies within Facebook are confirming some of the accusations
that people have had against the company, and meanwhile representatives
for the company have continuously denied or deflected those accusations.
Meanwhile their own studies from inside the house are saying
the same thing. Not a good look. A few weeks ago,
(06:52):
I talked about how El Salvador adopted bitcoin as their
the country's national currency. Previously, it had been mostly relying
on the US dollar. Well, recently, bitcoin has had a
bit of a dip. It dropped ten percent in value
very quickly, not long ago. It's not to say that
it's in a spiral or anything, but it didn't have
(07:12):
a dip, and Salvador and President Naive Boo Keley responded
to that by directing the government to purchase even more bitcoin,
buying the dip. In other words, the country purchased another
hundred fifty bitcoin which was worth around six and a
half million dollars at the time, and that brings the
total number of bitcoin held by El Salvador to seven hundred.
(07:32):
It will be interesting to see how El Salvador progresses
while relying on a currency that has frequent and frequently
dramatic fluctuations in value. I'm not saying it's impossible, but
it's gonna be tricky. If bitcoin stabilizes and becomes more
of a reliant kind of thing or reliable kind of thing. Um, yeah,
(07:54):
I guess it could work, but right now, it's just
it's so volatile that I am very curious to see
how this works for El Salvador in the future. And
of course we talked to in the previous episodes about
how a lot of critics are worried that the fact
that bitcoin is is frequently associated with stuff like money
(08:14):
laundering and corruption, that this will play a large role
in El Salvador as well, but we'll have to wait
and see. Let's talk about tech and climate change for
a second. So the Big Five that being Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft,
and Facebook have all stated that their respective companies have
plans to go carbon neutral and at least in some
(08:36):
cases even carbon negative over the next several years, most
of which are aiming around for that goal. Microsoft even
says that the company intends to remove enough carbon from
the atmosphere to offset all the carbon the company has
ever generated. Ever, So, in other words, by I think
it's twenty fifty, Microsoft plans on having systems in place
(09:00):
that will effectively remove the equivalent amount of carbon that
the company has ever produced. That's pretty phenomenal if it
actually works out. Now, let's talk a little bit about actions,
because those speak louder than words, right. You can claim
to have this plan in place, but unless you do
stuff about it doesn't do you much good. And when
it comes to some of these companies, the promises being
(09:22):
made might not actually be achievable, at least not from
the companies themselves all by themselves. Let's take Apple for example.
So the Guardian reports that a semiconductor manufacturing company called
t s MC, this is part of Apple's supply chain,
has its goal to become carbon neutral by twenty Now,
(09:43):
Apple's goal was to get its entire supply chain to
carbon neutral by so there's a disconnect there of twenty years.
I mean, that's huge, right now, The company t s
MC in Taiwan uses nearly five of all electricity and
Iwan while manufacturing silicon chips. It also used around sixty
(10:04):
three million gallons of water in twenty nineteen for that purpose,
and it will likely consume more over the near future,
not less, at least, you know, when the ability to
manufacture at scale has really returned in full effect. And
this is yet another reminder that the world is way
more complicated than the way we typically see it in messaging.
(10:27):
You know, you might think, oh, Apple, Apple makes iPhones,
that iPhone came from Apple, but we all know that's
oversimplifying things way too much because there are a lot
of different companies that that produce components within that iPhone
that are not Apple. Apple partners with those companies, they
are part of Apple's supply chains. So it is a
(10:48):
much more complex ecosystem than just a single company. And
we have to remember there's this ripple effect, right, The
manufacturing process has this ripple effect on different economies around
the world as well as different environments. Now, I am
not blaming Apple for this, because I mean, for one thing,
the company made its own uh owned and operated businesses
(11:09):
carbon neutral back in eighteen. That is amazing. Hats off
to Apple for doing that. That's great. This is just
a reminder that when we hear these promises about attaining
carbon neutrality across all lines of businesses, we have to
remember it's not always entirely up to the companies that
are making those promises, and we need to make sure
(11:30):
that all the pieces are in place in order to
take care of all the different components. We have more
to talk about with tech, even more with tech and
climate in just a moment, but first let's take a
quick break. Okay, before the break, I was talking about
(11:52):
carbon neutrality and climate change in tech. This is kind
of related to that in a way. I want to
talk out the Bezos Earth Fund that's obviously named after
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. That fund has pledged
one billion dollars toward efforts to conserve and protect vulnerable
areas around the world. And this is part of a
(12:14):
ten billion dollar commitment that Jeff Bezos has made toward
preserving natural habitats and fighting climate change globally. And the
initial focus is on a region in the Pacific Ocean,
a tropical region of the Pacific uh the tropical Andes
Mountains and the Congo Basin. Now you might wonder how
(12:35):
does this actually work, because obviously you can't just dump
airplane loads of cash on an area to make it better.
The Pacific Ocean does not care if you make it
rain dollar bills over it. No, So this fund is
actually doling out large amounts of money toward established organizations
that focus on this kind of work on preservation and
(12:58):
fighting climate change. So really it's almost like a grant
foundation that's granting this money to other organizations. This in
itself is still a challenge, both because even if you're
just donating to charity yourself, you always want to try
and select organizations that have the potential to do the
most good with your donation and to make the best
(13:19):
use of the money you you offer. And also, once
you hit a certain scale of donation, you might actually
be giving an organization more money than that organization can manage.
It can literally be too much of a good thing. Yeah,
if you are really focusing on smaller, more local organizations
that can do you know, direct good in a region,
(13:42):
then you might have to spend a lot more time
managing that whole situation. Because again, you don't want to
overwhelm the organization by giving it more than it can handle.
But at least this is some good news that's related
to Amazon, which is nice because the rest of my
Amazon news is not quite so positive. Of those pieces
is about um sponsored results in Amazon item listings. So
(14:07):
when you go on to Amazon and you're searching for something,
let's say it's a ball peen hammer, then you're gonna
get results on that, and that's going to include results
from companies that have paid to be in your view,
like on that first page. So Amazon has been doing
this for a while. It's not like it's brand new,
but over time the company has increased the number of
(14:29):
sponsored item slots on those initial lists. Like in the
past it might be you know, two to three items,
and now it can be five or six on some searches. Uh.
And like search engines in general, you know, we typically
see people stick to the first page or first couple
of pages of results when they're searching for stuff. Now,
(14:50):
I have to admit I'm kind of an outlier because
I will frequently page through multiple pages in an effort
to find, you know, the best fit for whatever item
I'm looking for. I've always got this fear that on
the next page was the perfect fit, and I went
with something you know, I settled for something less. So
with these sponsored results, there's no algorithm around how popular
(15:10):
the item is, or how well reviewed it is or
anything like that. It shows up there because the company
paid for that spot. And Amazon has also increased the
price for ads, which, yeah, I don't even know how
much revenue Amazon must be pulling in when you factor
both of those things together. They're showing more ads, and
they're charging more per AD, and they've got millions of
(15:33):
people using the site, and I mean, that's going hog wild,
especially during pandemic. Now, the amount charged is not a
big amount on a per click basis. If you look
at it as how much does Amazon charge for an
AD for a single click, it's a dollar twenty seven.
That's not very much, But that's one click. That's per click, right.
(15:56):
You multiply that times potentially tens of thousands of click
and you apply that pricing across all items, across all categories,
and you really start seeing the cash pile up, which
I guess then you could throw at the Pacific Ocean. Amazon,
by the way, says that it doesn't dedicate slots to
sponsored items, So in other words, it doesn't have like
a minimum or a set amount. It's not like every
(16:19):
time you search for something, you're gonna get six sponsored
results and then everything else. In fact, it's possible, according
to Amazon, that you could do a search and get
no sponsored items at all, depending on whatever it was
you were searching for. Now, I've recently had to purchase
a bunch of stuff, so anecdotally, I can say that
I have noticed way more sponsored items than I remember
(16:41):
seeing in the past. However, I also have to say
that could just be confirmation bias on my part. It
might not actually reflect reality. It may just be that
I'm noticing it more. Anyway, it's good to pay attention
to this kind of thing when you're a comparison shopping now.
Just because something is sponsored doesn't mean it's the best fit,
but it all. It doesn't mean it's not the best fit.
(17:02):
It might be the best option for you, but it
is good to remember that it's a sponsored item and
that the reason it's showing up in your view has
nothing to do with its price, its quality, or reviews
or anything like that. Uh, it may fit those criteria
that you need, but it doesn't necessarily do that, so
(17:24):
you need to keep that in mind when you're comparison shopping.
OSHA a k a. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
is a regulatory agency in the United States that is
charged with assuring safe and healthy working conditions in the
US by establishing and enforcing standards. And when there is
an incident that that results in an injury, like a
(17:47):
serious injury, something you know, beyond just slapping a band
aid on someone, then companies are supposed to report that
to OSHA. They are legally bound to do so well.
The Tech Journal is m site. The information took data
from OSHA and looked at Amazon delivery stations. Now, delivery
stations are hubs that exist between warehouses and customers. Amazon
(18:12):
essentially established delivery stations largely in an effort to eliminate
the need to rely on other delivery services like ups
and instead use its own owned and operated delivery vehicles
in order to get packages to end customers. So the
way Amazon typically works with shipping is that it has
these massive warehouses that hold products. These then get shipped
(18:36):
to the delivery stations, and then workers at the delivery
stations sort and load the boxes onto delivery vehicles, which
then go out to you know, deliver the stuff to customers.
And according to the information, the rate of injuries at
Amazon delivery stations is more than twice that of the
industry average. People are getting hurt twice as often at
(18:58):
Amazon delivery stations as people who work at comparable facilities.
It's also a higher injury rate than what is seen
at other Amazon facilities, including warehouses and sorting facilities. The
delivery stations are the most dangerous. The information also points
out that companies only report to OSHA if those injuries
(19:19):
are severe enough. Like I was saying before, it has
to be something more than what would require a first
aid response. So we're not just talking about people stubbing
a toe or something. We're talking about some serious injuries,
everything from moderate to potentially critical injuries. And you know,
who knows how many bumps and scrapes people are getting
along the way. The study also found that Amazon had
(19:43):
overstated the number of employees working at these delivery stations
on more than one occasions. Now that matters because it
means Amazon's information to OSHA indicates that these delivery stations
had more employees. Thus were more fully staffed, and that
would usually mean that you would see fewer injuries, right,
(20:03):
because you're you're dividing the work well amongst the people
that you have. But if in fact fewer people are
working there, then that means you have fewer people doing
more work. And that work includes moving heavy stuff like
heavy packages, as well as working around delivery vehicles that
are coming and going all the time. So it's no
wonder there have been lots of injuries. No real report
(20:26):
from Amazon yet about this, apart from the company saying
that it works hard to improve safety conditions and its facilities. Okay, well,
I've got a few more stories to cover, but before
I get to those, let's take another quick break. Okay,
(20:47):
we're gonna talk a little bit more about workers rights
and tech organizations in the form of instat cart. So,
the company is rumored to be preparing an initial public
offering or i p O. That's when a private company
becomes a publicly traded company on a stock exchange. This
process is lengthy, it is not a sure thing. They
just take a look at we work for an example
(21:09):
of that. But some instacart workers are spearheading a campaign
to convince users to boycott the app. They're using the
hashtag delete insta Cart to promote their cause, so they
want to put pressure on the company. If insta Cart
is planning ongoing public then public opinion is going to
impact the share price and thus the company valuation and
(21:31):
the I p O. So this is important stuff. And
the workers have a list of demands that they want
to have met from the company. One of those includes
Instacart reinstating a previous commission pay model where people got
a dedicated amount of money per order. Um. They want
a ten percent default tip built into the transaction. Right now,
(21:54):
the default tip is at five. They wanted to be
up to ten percent because they say a lot of
users never bother to go outside of the default. Uh.
I always I always go to twenty percent at least
and sometimes over than that, because I mean, these folks
are working hard and they're they're doing a real service
(22:15):
for me. But that's me anyway. They also want a
system that does not penalize workers for stuff that is
outside their control. So for example, uh, there's a cold
brew coffee that I absolutely love and it is almost
never in stock in any of the stores. I always
put it into the order just in case, but more
often than not, I get a message saying they were out.
(22:36):
Well right now, instacart allows me to review my you know,
results of my delivery and I can say, oh, the
delivery person didn't find all the items, uh, and that
can reflect badly on that person. It penalizes the insta
cart gig worker and it's not really their fault, right,
I mean, if the company's off stock, they couldn't do
(22:58):
anything about that, so it's not fair. They want that changed.
They also want occupational death benefits, and they want the
system that assigns orders to workers to be more transparent.
They say that it's gotten less so over the years.
The workers are asking users to delete the app to
send a message to insta Cart because if the installed
base for the app drops dramatically, they hope that that
(23:19):
will end up pressuring the company to granting these demands
because it will not look good on its way toward
an initial public offering. Workers say instat carts changes have
resulted in lower pay for workers who are working just
as hard, if not harder, than they were before, but
they're making less. The workers acknowledge that asking users to
delete a delivery app during a pandemic is potentially a
(23:42):
pretty big request for what it's worth, I just deleted
it from my phone, even though I have depended upon
it quite heavily in the past, because I happened to
believe in the cause of the workers. All right, moving on,
have you been to Thailand in the last ten years?
The reason I ask is that if you have, your
(24:04):
data might be among the one hundred six million records
of international travelers who have gone to Thailand that was
found to be stored on a database on the web
without password protection. So, in other words, anyone who got
hold of that U r L to that database could
go and look through it and see the personal information
of one six million people who had visited the country
(24:28):
over the last decade. A security researcher with compare Tech
alerted Thai authorities about this problem last month, and the
day following that alert, those authorities were able to secure
the database. So how long was that database up I
don't know, but the search engine census c E N
S y S indexed the database on August twenty one, So,
(24:53):
in other words, not only was the database unprotected and
up on the web, but a search engine indexed it
so that means it would come up in search results
for any sort of relevant query. The researcher who found
the database found it two days after it had been indexed,
and on the twenty three the database was under lock
and key. The former u r L of the database
(25:14):
is still active, but if you were to visit it now,
you would see a message that reads and I quote
this is honeypot. All access were logged end quote. According
to the authorities, no one obtained unauthorized access to the database,
though I'm not sure how they determined that or whether
the information is accurate, but once again that shows how
poor data management security policies can make all of us vulnerable.
(25:38):
The folks who were in that database did nothing wrong.
At least they did nothing wrong as far as being
included on that database is concerned. I don't know if
they're entirely innocent of all wrongdoing, but they had no
control over the security of their own data, and that's
a problem. Netflix has an interesting new offering that has
very specific parameters for a certain target audience. Viewers will
(25:58):
get free access to about tw of all the content
on Netflix Streaming to watch free of charge. That is,
there's no subscription. There's no advertising, nothing, but there are
a couple of requirements you have to meet. First, one
is that this offering is for Android users, so it
only applies on Android devices. And the other is that
(26:20):
the offering is for people in Kenya. And you might wonder,
what the what, what's going on, and maybe a lot
of you are already saying, well, of course, the first
taste is free, and that's exactly right. This is essentially
a marketing campaign with the ultimate goal to be to
convince Kenyans to subscribe for you know, paid for Netflix services.
(26:41):
You know, you give them a sample of what is
available on the platform. Android smartphones are popular in Kenya,
often like the most popular computing device in Kenya, and
so that represents a potential new audience for a Netflix.
But to get things rolling, the company needs to convince
Kenyans that they want the service in the first place.
And I think you were going to see lots of
similar campaigns across different companies in different parts of the world.
(27:04):
Many companies use growth as the most important metric of
the organization's success, but for subscription based businesses, there comes
a point in any market where you start to hit saturation.
And you see growth slow down, you might even see
it stabilize, and if you're in trouble, it might start
to go and reverse. It is very hard to create
(27:25):
new customers in a saturated market. You know, you've pretty
much got everyone who wants to be on the service
on the service you've got in the worlds to go,
So it makes more sense to look for untapped markets
elsewhere in the world and then aggressively go after those
and when you do that, boom, you get your growth back. Now.
I used to see this a lot when I worked
for a multibillion dollar cable content company that rhymes with Discovery. Anyway,
(27:52):
we'll have to see if Netflix is Queen's gambit pays off.
That was a reference. I've been talking a lot about
NASA recently, with series on text stuff dedicated to things
like the evolution of space suits and the various space
stations that have been in orbit around the Earth over
the years, and have also covered the Artemis Project, NASA's
plan to return to the Moon. Now, while the return
(28:15):
of humans to the Moon is likely to be pushed
back from the plan deadline because of stuff like you know,
not having space suits ready in time, other parts of
the project are moving forward. One of those is to
land a new rover on the surface of the Moon.
The rover is called the Volatile Investigating Polar Exploration Rover
or VIPER. Now that tells me someone came up with
(28:38):
an acronym that they thought was totally bad ass, and
then they worked their way backward from there. Or maybe
I'm wrong. Maybe they came up with a full name
first and then they said, hang on. The acronym for
this name is VIPER. That's bad ass. Anyway, NASA has
identified the target landing spot for the rover. It's near
the south pole of the Moon, on the edge of
(28:59):
a crater called the Nobile Creator and Viper's mission will
be to seek out resources that could be useful you know,
some might say critical for long term Moon missions. We're
talking stuff like ice, which could be used to generate
not just water, but also oxygen and even rocket fuel.
This will mark the first time that anything has directly
(29:21):
explored that specific region of the Moon. Previously, we've studied
it only through fly by missions, where you know, satellites
have gone by and taken measurements and metrics and pictures
and stuff. But this will be the first time we'll
have wheels on the ground, so to speak, in that region.
The thought is that in areas that are in permanent
shadow on the Moon, you might be able to find ice,
(29:44):
but we won't know for sure until we go there.
Viper is scheduled to go loony in tree. And finally,
another space news, Pooping in space is difficult. I've covered
this extensively, some might even say gratuitously, in those text
Stuff episodes about space suits. But recently this has popped
(30:04):
into the news again thanks to the crew of the
Inspiration Four. That was the group of four non astronauts
who boarded a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft last Wednesday, went
into orbit, stayed there for a few days, and then
returned back to Earth this past weekend. Elon Musk, responding
to questions about the mission, said that the next Crew
(30:25):
Dragon space capsule would have quote an upgraded toilet end
quote because and I quote, we had some challenges with
it this flight. Now you might wonder where the toilet
is on the Crew Dragon capsule, and I'll tell you
it's located above the crew seats. It's on the ceiling.
(30:48):
Now in microgravity, up and down are largely meaningless, but
it does mean that to use the toilet, you'd have
to float up to the top of the capsule, position
yourself so that you are upside down with regard to
the bottom of the capsule, and position yourself on the toilet,
and you use a little privacy curtain that divides the
capsule so that you know you're not turning it into
(31:10):
a spectator sport, and then you are inside a glass
dome once you're you know, positioned on the toilet, and
then you would do your business. You know what a
feeling when you're pooping on the ceiling. I made myself
laugh when I thought that up, which tells you that
i might be forty six years old, but I'm still
a thirteen year old boy at heart. Anyway, the next
(31:32):
Dragon capsule will have an improved toilet, and I cannot
wait to learn what the heck that actually means. And
that's it. That's the news for Tuesday, September twenty one. One.
If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on
tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The handle
for the show is text Stuff h s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(31:59):
an I heart radio production. For more podcasts from I
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TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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