May 12, 2022 • 28 mins
All right, stop! Collaborate and listen; ICE is back with invasive digital surveillance covering essentially all US residents. Plus the SEC is after Elon Musk (again), the EU might outlaw end to end encryption and we learn what Google has announced at its I/O event.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. How the tech are you. We're gonna start
off today's news episode with a little story about digital surveillance.
(00:24):
Georgetown Laws Center on Privacy and Technology reports that the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency or ICE, has been engaged
in widespread digital surveillance despite the fact that the agency
isn't supposed to do that now. Essentially, ICE has been
using a loophole, so instead of conducting digital surveillance on
(00:48):
US residents itself, the agency has actually just been purchasing
massive amounts of data through various data brokers and other
private companies as well as public utilities. Now, according to
the researchers, ICE has accumulated nearly three quarters of all
adult residents who have a driver's license in the US
(01:10):
three quarters of photos. That is, of those driver's licenses.
The agency purchases information from utility companies, and that gives
ICE the ability to detect when someone moves by seeing
when someone activates service at a new address. ICE is
part of the Department of Homeland Security, and the researchers
are arguing that the agency lacks proper congressional oversight. The
(01:36):
researchers have made a few recommendations to address this incredible
amount of digital surveillance, ranging from more thorough oversight of
the agency to reforming immigration law. Personally, I think this
really points to a need to create comprehensive laws about
who can sell data to whom and under what circumstances,
(01:57):
because as it stands right now, there's no need to
be some sort of skullduggery oriented agency. You don't have
to be you know, Mission impossible or anything in order
to spy on people. These agencies just purchased the information
they need from various sources, and through that they get
(02:17):
an incredibly detailed dossier on anyone they like. I mean,
our ability to analyze data has reached a point where
if you just have the information, you can sift through
it and put together a really comprehensive picture of who
someone is and where they've been. Big Brother has been
distributed and democratized. Yikes. In other news on how US
(02:42):
departments are using technology, the Pentagon recently held a demonstration
via its Joint Counter Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office. I
had to be really careful about reading that. It's kind
of a mouthful, But in this demonstrate, Shan vendor teams
used high powered microwave transmitters to bring down drones. So
(03:06):
the department has been assessing the possibility of using high
powered microwave beams to bring down hostile drones. We're talking
military grade drones here, not your average little quad copters.
And this was the third set of demonstrations, all intended
to give the agency the information needed to determine capability
gaps like where do they need to make improvements, and
(03:29):
to focus on developing the next generation of anti drone weaponry.
The vendors had to demonstrate their respective technologies effectiveness, which
included everything from threat detection to tracking too bringing down
targeted drones, sometimes two at a time. So this is
still very much in development, and while similar weapons may
(03:50):
already be deployed, what we're really looking at is the
refinement process intended to develop more effective anti drone defense systems.
There have been a few people who have suggested that
Elon Musk's quest to purchase Twitter has had at least
something to do with his own tendency to post things
that the United States securities and Exchange Commission or SEC,
(04:14):
has objected to not that buying Twitter is going to
change that at all, but whether that factored into his
decision to purchase the company or not. The SEC is
once again investigating Musk with relation to Twitter. This time,
it's because Musk was late in submitting a form indicating
his intent to purchase more than five percent of Twitter's shares.
(04:37):
He ended up purchasing a little more than nine percent.
That's something that investors are supposed to do when they
plan to make that substantial and investment in a company,
is to file that with the SEC. Musk apparently filed
the form at least ten days after he was supposed to, and,
according to the SEC, by not reporting the intended purchase
(05:00):
in a timely manner, Musk was able to buy that
stock essentially at a discount, potentially amounting to as much
as a hundred forty three million dollars. How Well, if
Musk had followed the proper protocol and submitted the form properly,
that submission would be public information, which means investors would
(05:21):
have seen that Musk was going to buy more than
nine of Twitter's stocks, and that in turn could have
been enough to drive up the share price, which would
have increased the wealth of current shareholders or encouraged more
people to buy into Twitter stock ahead of that actual purchase.
(05:41):
And one shareholder has now filed a lawsuit against Musk,
essentially arguing that by filing late, Musk robbed shareholders of
potential wealth. The SEC could also seek its own lawsuit
against Musk, but neither the shareholder lawsuit or a potential
SEC lawsuit would likely have any real impact on the
(06:02):
planned acquisition, which still requires shareholder and regulatory approval before
it can go through. Let's start talking about Meta. There
are a couple of stories to to cover now. The
owner of Facebook, that being Meta, is looking to make
some cutbacks to its Reality Labs division, which is the
(06:22):
hardware centric part of Meta that develops mixed reality hardware. Apparently,
at an internal meeting, leaders told employees to expect upcoming
changes to be announced within a week or so, with
those announcements being specific cutbacks. And this is a pretty
dramatic turnaround from where we were in the fall of back.
(06:45):
Then that's when Zuckerberg spoke at length about how the
company was putting an intense focus on developing all things metaverse.
I mean that's when they changed the company name from
Facebook to Meta and the development includes making immersive hardware
that will give people the chance to experience the metaverse.
(07:07):
But you see, this dedicated focus on the metaverse comes
at a massive cost. And if you skip ahead a
few months to earlier this year, we learned that Facebook
had experienced a drop in active users. That news shocked investors,
who I guess clutched their pearls whenever certain numbers go
(07:28):
down instead of up, and I might be getting increasingly
grouchy about how the stock market works. Anyway, there was
a drop in confidence from the investor community, and Meta
reps said that the company would be cutting costs to
reduce the negative impact on shareholders. Subsequently, news broke that
the company was slowing down on hiring for mid to
(07:49):
senior level positions within the company in general. And now
we hear that they're going to be cutbacks that will
put some of these reality labs projects on old at
least for a while. Some might end up being shelved permanently.
We do not yet know which of those projects are
going to be impacted. We had previously heard that the
(08:10):
division was working on four new headsets to aiming at
a more premium space in the market, which really means
you know, more features and more expensive, and too meant
for a more of an entry level space in the market.
Still expensive, but you know less. So not sure if
any of those four are going to be impacted by
these cutbacks or if this is actually going to affect
(08:32):
projects that are further down the pipeline. Meta reps said
there are no current plans for employee layoffs at this time,
so that's good. I mean, I don't like Meta, but
I really hate seeing people lose their jobs. In an
earlier tech News episode, I talked about how Facebook relied
on third party staffing services to hire content moderators in
(08:55):
places like Africa. Now, one former employee is bringing a
lawsuit against both Meta and one of those third party companies,
a tech outsourcing firm called Sama, which is based out
of San Francisco. This former employee argues that he was
hired under false pretenses because he says he was never
(09:18):
told that he would be working for Facebook and that
he would be doing content moderation when he interviewed for
the position. He relocated from South Africa to Kenya in
order to take this job and then discovered what it
was that he was meant to do. His lawsuit claims
that this practice is a violation of Kenya's anti human
(09:40):
trafficking laws. So the headlines about this all naturally say
that Facebook is being sued for engaging in human trafficking.
In fact, that's why I clicked on the story to
read up on what was going on. Now, I don't
know the particulars of this law in question, However, I
have to assume the fact at the former employee allegedly
(10:02):
had no idea who his employer was going to be
or what his actual position was going to be while
he relocated to another country has to factor into it.
In addition, the former employee claims he was fired after
he tried to organize other employees, so there are also
charges of union busting wrapped up in this too. Now,
(10:22):
on top of all that, the man says that exposure
to truly horrifying material, which ranged from child abuse to
videos of executions, has left him traumatized and impacted his
physical and mental health. Now, y'all, I can tell you
I could never be a content moderator on Facebook. Just
(10:44):
my exposure to the normal news is enough to cause
me mental distress, and that's the same stuff that everybody
else is seeing all the time. Anyway, Meta reps have
claimed that the company takes employee welfare seriously and holds
their third party staffing service is accountable for providing fair pay,
benefits and support, something that the lawsuit UH argues with,
(11:08):
and SAMA that third party staffing service, for its part,
denies that it engaged in any anti union behavior. So
I'll have to see where the story goes from here. Okay,
we've got some more news stories coming up, but first
let's take a quick break. Last year, the state of
(11:31):
Texas passed a law called HB twin Team, which would
give Texans the right to sue social media platforms that
have fifty million or more active monthly users if those
users believe that they got a ban from those platforms
due to their political views. So, in other words, if
they think that they've been banned from a service because
(11:55):
of their political views, they can sue the company within
the state of Texas, UH if they are residents of Texas.
That is, the law also forbids social networks from cutting
off access to people in Texas in order to sidestep
this issue, which y'all that is absolutely wild. Uh. It's
left a lot of folks saying, where does Texas get
(12:17):
off litigating how a business in another state conducts itself,
Like if the business is incorporated, saying California, why gives
Texas the authority to prevent that company from not providing
service to Texas? Anyway. A federal judge previously passed an
injunction against HB twenty, preventing it from going into effect
(12:41):
until further judgment determined whether or not the law is
you know, legal, and the Fifth U. S. Circuit Court
of Appeals has now overturned that injunction and HB twenty
is now in effect in Texas. I suspect this is
just another stop on the journey to bringing this law
ahead of the Supreme Court. But then, considering the current
(13:05):
makeup of the U. S. Supreme Court, I can't confidently
say that they will find the law to be unconstitutional,
even though it appears to be pretty unconstitutional. The federal
judge who passed the injunction had pointed out that passing
the law infringed upon the freedom of speech for the
actual social media platforms that these platforms have the right
(13:29):
to establish codes of conduct and then they have the
right to enforce those codes of conduct, and any state
coming in to say no, you can't do that is
akin to censorship, which you know is ironic because Texas
was positioning its law as being anti censorship, but in
fact Texas was engaging in censorship against the social platforms
(13:51):
in order to do this. Anyway, HB twenty is just
a terrible law, full stop. It's a terrible law. On
top of that, one of the judges in the the
Circuit Court of Appeals referred to Twitter as an Internet provider,
which is just playing wrong, Like you can't get more wrong.
(14:12):
Twitter provides a service that's on the Internet, but it's
not an Internet provider. It's not providing Internet service. I
swear Texas is like the upside down in Stranger Things.
And I say that as a resident of Georgia, a
state that has its own share of totally backwards legislation. Anyway,
(14:34):
I can't wait to see where the story goes in
the future, and my heart goes out to all the
folks in Texas who opposed this kind of stuff. I
understand how hard it can be to live in a
state where leaders make bad decisions that reflect poorly on you,
and you had nothing to do with it. Over in Europe,
we're seeing another example of how leaders, in an effort
to fight something that's truly hideous, in this case UH
(14:56):
images and video of child sexual abuse use, they are
pursuing rules that will have massive, unintended consequences and a
negative impact. So the EU has proposed founding a new
division to fight child abuse material online, as well as
required tech companies to quote, detect, report, block and remove
(15:20):
end quote such material from their platforms. On the surface,
that all sounds fairly you know, reasonable right to detect, report, block,
and remove child abuse material. And obviously this material is
incredibly harmful and reporting it would be absolutely key in
order to track down the people responsible and to stop
(15:40):
them from abusing children. But it's the detect part that
could be particularly disruptive and dangerous for lots of reasons.
You see, for any platform that allows private messaging between
people on that platform, if that platform is ordered to
dete hecked this kind of material, well, to do that,
(16:03):
it would have to scan messages that were being sent
between individuals on the platform to see if any of
that material was included in those messages. These could be
messages that people presumably come on as being private and secure.
It would also mean that end to end encryption would
be pretty much impossible or rendered meaningless. A solid end
(16:25):
to end encryption service would be created in such a
way that no one other than the parties communicating would
be able to see the contents of that communication. That
includes the communications platform itself. So in other words, if
company A allows true end to end encryption, company A
(16:46):
has no way of knowing what is being sent over
those messages. It cannot access those messages, it cannot scan them.
So the only way to get around this is to
do was called client side scanning. That means you would
actually have to scan the material on the end devices
once the material has been decrypted. So that would mean
(17:08):
all users in the EU would have various companies scanning
their personal devices for signs of this kind of material.
Apple had actually proposed doing this and then put the
plans on hold after receiving some pushback from civil rights activists,
and those activists have argued that this kind of surveillance
(17:30):
is really dangerous. It removes all privacy. Now, there is
no denying that child abuse is horrible and it needs
to be stopped and prevented. But researchers are suggesting that
it might be better to use other methodologies rather than
stripping away the possibility of true d end encryption, which
(17:50):
promotes human rights, and that those methodologies can be things
like analyzing metadata in order to detect criminal behavior and
to stop it. Obviously, this is one of those really
emotionally charged topics. It is hard to tackle. There are
no easy solutions, and it is very clear that a
(18:11):
solution is desperately needed, so it is a difficult situation
to kind of suss out. A couple of weeks ago,
we talked about how Netflix had a very rough call
with investors as the company reported its first net loss
and subscribers ever, and once again, you know, if numbers
go the wrong way, the stock market goes bananas. Anyway,
(18:33):
apart from this being another example of how reactionary things
are in the investment world, it pushed Netflix to talk
about the ways the company intends to drive up revenue
and reduce costs in the future. Two of those ways
involved clamping down on the practice of password sharing, and
the other was to introduce ads. Two create different tiers
(18:57):
of subscriptions now. The company says we might see both
of these practices begin by the end of this year,
and we have an idea of how this is probably
going to play out. For one thing, Netflix has been
experimenting with a model in a few countries in which
households can pay a little bit extra in their monthly
(19:17):
subscriptions and in return, they are authorized to share their
password with at least a person outside of their household.
So this this allows them for the case where someone
who is not living under the same roof is able
to access the service, so you pay a little bit
(19:37):
more per month and you get a kind of adjunct
household member who just happens to live outside the house.
As for advertisements, the general belief is that Netflix would
do something similar to what we've seen other platforms do
in the past, which is that they offer a less
expensive subscription model for folks who opt to have ads
(19:58):
included in their service, and those who don't want ads
will just have to pay a little bit more per
month for a premium service. Whether this will address the
issue of subscriber loss remains to be seen. Okay, I've
got a couple more stories to go through before we
get to those, let's take another quick break. One service
(20:25):
that did not have Netflix's problems was Disney Plus. The
mouse House reported that nearly eight million people joined as
new subscribers to Disney Plus over the first quarter of
twenty two, which was better than anticipated. This makes Disney
Plus a leading company when it comes to growth. Keep
in mind, like there are other services that are bigger,
(20:48):
they're just not growing at the same rate as Disney
Plus growth. Like again, this is why I think growth
is a bad metric for success, because you could be
growing really fast, but the reason for that might be
that you're pretty small. So if you have two people
on your service and then six more people sign up,
(21:10):
you know that if you if you convert that over
to percentages, looks really impressive, but when you look at
the actual numbers, maybe not so much. Anyway, despite the
fact that Disney Plus is growing very fast, faster than
services like Hbo Max, the division is losing lots of money.
In fact, it's losing money faster than it was before. This,
(21:31):
by the way, is again one of the things that
really puzzles me about business. It convinces me that all
money is fake and we're all just playing pretend until
it all falls apart. But yeah, Disney Plus is growing
super fast and pulling in more money per subscriber on average,
but it's also losing money faster because the cost of
producing exclusive content for the platform is really high. We've
(21:55):
seen this with other services as well. Netflix, in particular
streaming platforms attracts subscribers primarily by securing exclusive content. Sometimes
that is involved by signing deals with specific studios so
that you have the exclusive right to stream that studio's content.
In other cases, it involves funding productions directly, and this
(22:19):
stuff is expensive you. Disney is reportedly considering introducing an
ad supported subscription tier to Disney Plus in the future,
similar to what Netflix is considering. Yesterday, Google kicked off
its annual Io event. That's the one in which the
company reveals new products and invites developers to become familiar
(22:41):
with various platforms so that those developers can create stuff
that can work on those platforms. Like this is where
developers learn about increased features and and upcoming operating system updates,
that kind of stuff. Now, I've attended one io event
that was the year that they brought in Flight of
the con Chords to play the after party. But I
(23:02):
didn't know who Fly the Concords were at the time,
and now I kick myself because if I had known,
I would have been at the whole set instead of
just at the tail end of it. Anyway, none of
that matters. Let's talk about some of the stuff that
Google showed off this year. So it teased the Pixel seven.
This is going to be the next generation of the
Pixel line of smartphones, the Android phones. The company plans
(23:26):
to release a Pixel seven and a Pixel seven Pro,
which is in line with what it's done over the
last couple of years. Both of those phones will sport
Google Tensor chips, but that's about all the information that
the company was willing to part with at this stage.
Google also announced the Pixel six A, which is meant
to be a more budget friendly version of the Pixel
(23:47):
six smartphone. It'll be slightly smaller, might lack a few
other features. Uh, it will retail for four dollars, and
one thing that the Pixel six A will not have
is a headphone jack. Google has gone back and forth
when it comes to including a physical headphone jack, and
(24:08):
has even taken some potshots at Apple for having abandoned
the headphone Jack in the past, but it looks like
Google is doing the same thing, at least with the
six A. Maybe that's because of another announcement that the
company made, which is that the Pixel Buds Pro Earbuds,
a a two dollar set of earbuds with noise cancelation
and advanced microphones to allow for calls with a minimum
(24:31):
of interference, are coming out this year. At long last,
Google also unveiled the Pixel Watch, which will incorporate fitbit technology.
That fitbit connection is critical because it means Google can
rely upon tried and tested technology rather than developing everything
from scratch. The company said it would be available in
the fall, and it would be sold at a premium price,
(24:54):
which probably means if you have to ask, you can't
afford it, So I guess no Pixel Uch for me. Then.
Google also showed off a prototype of some smart glasses
that would be able to display translations in real time,
meaning if you had two people and each of them
had a pair of these glasses, they could have a
(25:15):
conversation with one another even if neither of them spoke
the other person's language, which is pretty cool. Uh, there's
no telling if this prototype will ever become an actual product,
but it is a nice demonstration of how augmented reality
technology could have some real world applications outside of gimmicky stuff.
The io event continues today, but usually we see all
(25:38):
the big reveals on day one. But if anything huge
gets announced today, I'll be sure to cover it in
an episode next week. Finally, Bethesda, the video game studio
and publisher, tweeted that upcoming video game titles Redfall and
Starfield will not be coming out this year. The company
has chosen to postpone the publication these games until the
(26:01):
first half of three, citing the need to quote ensure
that you received the best, most polished versions end quote.
Bethesda first announced Starfield at e three way back in
calling it a an all new i P, so not
a continuation of any of the franchises Bethesda is known for,
(26:21):
you know, stuff like Fallout and Skyrim or Elder Scrolls.
I should say, and that this game puts players in
the role of space explorers. Uh, there's not a whole
lot more detail available about Starfield. There's a bit, but
you know it's it's largely mysterious since it's a brand
new I P. Red Fall is actually an arcane Studios title.
(26:43):
Bethesda is the publisher, not the developer in this case,
and it's a first person shooter game similar to titles
like Left for Dead, in which players can assume one
of four playable characters and up to four people can
play cooperatively in a session x app. Instead of fighting
off zombie hordes like you do and Left for Dead,
(27:05):
where you're you know you're fighting off endless waves of
zombies on your way to a safe zone, the Red
Fall game is going to be about fighting off vampiric
hordes as you presumably try to make your way to safety.
I'm told there's more to it than that, and I'm
being a bit snarky. It's my reaction is mostly based
(27:25):
off of a teaser video about Red Fall that I
saw a couple of years ago, where I thought, ah,
it's Left for Dead, but with vampires. So I'm sure
it's more complicated and sophisticated than that. So my apologies.
It was just my initial reaction. And that's it for
the Tech News for today. That's Thursday May twelve, two
(27:46):
thousand twenty two. Hope all of you are well. If
you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
episodes of tech Stuff, Please leave me a note on Twitter.
The handle for the show is text Stuff. Hs W
definitely used the the tech show handle because I don't
check my own Twitter anymore. And I will talk to
you again really soon. Y tech Stuff is an I
(28:14):
Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. How the tech are you. We're gonna start
off today's news episode with a little story about digital surveillance.
(00:24):
Georgetown Laws Center on Privacy and Technology reports that the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency or ICE, has been engaged
in widespread digital surveillance despite the fact that the agency
isn't supposed to do that now. Essentially, ICE has been
using a loophole, so instead of conducting digital surveillance on
(00:48):
US residents itself, the agency has actually just been purchasing
massive amounts of data through various data brokers and other
private companies as well as public utilities. Now, according to
the researchers, ICE has accumulated nearly three quarters of all
adult residents who have a driver's license in the US
(01:10):
three quarters of photos. That is, of those driver's licenses.
The agency purchases information from utility companies, and that gives
ICE the ability to detect when someone moves by seeing
when someone activates service at a new address. ICE is
part of the Department of Homeland Security, and the researchers
are arguing that the agency lacks proper congressional oversight. The
(01:36):
researchers have made a few recommendations to address this incredible
amount of digital surveillance, ranging from more thorough oversight of
the agency to reforming immigration law. Personally, I think this
really points to a need to create comprehensive laws about
who can sell data to whom and under what circumstances,
(01:57):
because as it stands right now, there's no need to
be some sort of skullduggery oriented agency. You don't have
to be you know, Mission impossible or anything in order
to spy on people. These agencies just purchased the information
they need from various sources, and through that they get
(02:17):
an incredibly detailed dossier on anyone they like. I mean,
our ability to analyze data has reached a point where
if you just have the information, you can sift through
it and put together a really comprehensive picture of who
someone is and where they've been. Big Brother has been
distributed and democratized. Yikes. In other news on how US
(02:42):
departments are using technology, the Pentagon recently held a demonstration
via its Joint Counter Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office. I
had to be really careful about reading that. It's kind
of a mouthful, But in this demonstrate, Shan vendor teams
used high powered microwave transmitters to bring down drones. So
(03:06):
the department has been assessing the possibility of using high
powered microwave beams to bring down hostile drones. We're talking
military grade drones here, not your average little quad copters.
And this was the third set of demonstrations, all intended
to give the agency the information needed to determine capability
gaps like where do they need to make improvements, and
(03:29):
to focus on developing the next generation of anti drone weaponry.
The vendors had to demonstrate their respective technologies effectiveness, which
included everything from threat detection to tracking too bringing down
targeted drones, sometimes two at a time. So this is
still very much in development, and while similar weapons may
(03:50):
already be deployed, what we're really looking at is the
refinement process intended to develop more effective anti drone defense systems.
There have been a few people who have suggested that
Elon Musk's quest to purchase Twitter has had at least
something to do with his own tendency to post things
that the United States securities and Exchange Commission or SEC,
(04:14):
has objected to not that buying Twitter is going to
change that at all, but whether that factored into his
decision to purchase the company or not. The SEC is
once again investigating Musk with relation to Twitter. This time,
it's because Musk was late in submitting a form indicating
his intent to purchase more than five percent of Twitter's shares.
(04:37):
He ended up purchasing a little more than nine percent.
That's something that investors are supposed to do when they
plan to make that substantial and investment in a company,
is to file that with the SEC. Musk apparently filed
the form at least ten days after he was supposed to, and,
according to the SEC, by not reporting the intended purchase
(05:00):
in a timely manner, Musk was able to buy that
stock essentially at a discount, potentially amounting to as much
as a hundred forty three million dollars. How Well, if
Musk had followed the proper protocol and submitted the form properly,
that submission would be public information, which means investors would
(05:21):
have seen that Musk was going to buy more than
nine of Twitter's stocks, and that in turn could have
been enough to drive up the share price, which would
have increased the wealth of current shareholders or encouraged more
people to buy into Twitter stock ahead of that actual purchase.
(05:41):
And one shareholder has now filed a lawsuit against Musk,
essentially arguing that by filing late, Musk robbed shareholders of
potential wealth. The SEC could also seek its own lawsuit
against Musk, but neither the shareholder lawsuit or a potential
SEC lawsuit would likely have any real impact on the
(06:02):
planned acquisition, which still requires shareholder and regulatory approval before
it can go through. Let's start talking about Meta. There
are a couple of stories to to cover now. The
owner of Facebook, that being Meta, is looking to make
some cutbacks to its Reality Labs division, which is the
(06:22):
hardware centric part of Meta that develops mixed reality hardware. Apparently,
at an internal meeting, leaders told employees to expect upcoming
changes to be announced within a week or so, with
those announcements being specific cutbacks. And this is a pretty
dramatic turnaround from where we were in the fall of back.
(06:45):
Then that's when Zuckerberg spoke at length about how the
company was putting an intense focus on developing all things metaverse.
I mean that's when they changed the company name from
Facebook to Meta and the development includes making immersive hardware
that will give people the chance to experience the metaverse.
(07:07):
But you see, this dedicated focus on the metaverse comes
at a massive cost. And if you skip ahead a
few months to earlier this year, we learned that Facebook
had experienced a drop in active users. That news shocked investors,
who I guess clutched their pearls whenever certain numbers go
(07:28):
down instead of up, and I might be getting increasingly
grouchy about how the stock market works. Anyway, there was
a drop in confidence from the investor community, and Meta
reps said that the company would be cutting costs to
reduce the negative impact on shareholders. Subsequently, news broke that
the company was slowing down on hiring for mid to
(07:49):
senior level positions within the company in general. And now
we hear that they're going to be cutbacks that will
put some of these reality labs projects on old at
least for a while. Some might end up being shelved permanently.
We do not yet know which of those projects are
going to be impacted. We had previously heard that the
(08:10):
division was working on four new headsets to aiming at
a more premium space in the market, which really means
you know, more features and more expensive, and too meant
for a more of an entry level space in the market.
Still expensive, but you know less. So not sure if
any of those four are going to be impacted by
these cutbacks or if this is actually going to affect
(08:32):
projects that are further down the pipeline. Meta reps said
there are no current plans for employee layoffs at this time,
so that's good. I mean, I don't like Meta, but
I really hate seeing people lose their jobs. In an
earlier tech News episode, I talked about how Facebook relied
on third party staffing services to hire content moderators in
(08:55):
places like Africa. Now, one former employee is bringing a
lawsuit against both Meta and one of those third party companies,
a tech outsourcing firm called Sama, which is based out
of San Francisco. This former employee argues that he was
hired under false pretenses because he says he was never
(09:18):
told that he would be working for Facebook and that
he would be doing content moderation when he interviewed for
the position. He relocated from South Africa to Kenya in
order to take this job and then discovered what it
was that he was meant to do. His lawsuit claims
that this practice is a violation of Kenya's anti human
(09:40):
trafficking laws. So the headlines about this all naturally say
that Facebook is being sued for engaging in human trafficking.
In fact, that's why I clicked on the story to
read up on what was going on. Now, I don't
know the particulars of this law in question, However, I
have to assume the fact at the former employee allegedly
(10:02):
had no idea who his employer was going to be
or what his actual position was going to be while
he relocated to another country has to factor into it.
In addition, the former employee claims he was fired after
he tried to organize other employees, so there are also
charges of union busting wrapped up in this too. Now,
(10:22):
on top of all that, the man says that exposure
to truly horrifying material, which ranged from child abuse to
videos of executions, has left him traumatized and impacted his
physical and mental health. Now, y'all, I can tell you
I could never be a content moderator on Facebook. Just
(10:44):
my exposure to the normal news is enough to cause
me mental distress, and that's the same stuff that everybody
else is seeing all the time. Anyway, Meta reps have
claimed that the company takes employee welfare seriously and holds
their third party staffing service is accountable for providing fair pay,
benefits and support, something that the lawsuit UH argues with,
(11:08):
and SAMA that third party staffing service, for its part,
denies that it engaged in any anti union behavior. So
I'll have to see where the story goes from here. Okay,
we've got some more news stories coming up, but first
let's take a quick break. Last year, the state of
(11:31):
Texas passed a law called HB twin Team, which would
give Texans the right to sue social media platforms that
have fifty million or more active monthly users if those
users believe that they got a ban from those platforms
due to their political views. So, in other words, if
they think that they've been banned from a service because
(11:55):
of their political views, they can sue the company within
the state of Texas, UH if they are residents of Texas.
That is, the law also forbids social networks from cutting
off access to people in Texas in order to sidestep
this issue, which y'all that is absolutely wild. Uh. It's
left a lot of folks saying, where does Texas get
(12:17):
off litigating how a business in another state conducts itself,
Like if the business is incorporated, saying California, why gives
Texas the authority to prevent that company from not providing
service to Texas? Anyway. A federal judge previously passed an
injunction against HB twenty, preventing it from going into effect
(12:41):
until further judgment determined whether or not the law is
you know, legal, and the Fifth U. S. Circuit Court
of Appeals has now overturned that injunction and HB twenty
is now in effect in Texas. I suspect this is
just another stop on the journey to bringing this law
ahead of the Supreme Court. But then, considering the current
(13:05):
makeup of the U. S. Supreme Court, I can't confidently
say that they will find the law to be unconstitutional,
even though it appears to be pretty unconstitutional. The federal
judge who passed the injunction had pointed out that passing
the law infringed upon the freedom of speech for the
actual social media platforms that these platforms have the right
(13:29):
to establish codes of conduct and then they have the
right to enforce those codes of conduct, and any state
coming in to say no, you can't do that is
akin to censorship, which you know is ironic because Texas
was positioning its law as being anti censorship, but in
fact Texas was engaging in censorship against the social platforms
(13:51):
in order to do this. Anyway, HB twenty is just
a terrible law, full stop. It's a terrible law. On
top of that, one of the judges in the the
Circuit Court of Appeals referred to Twitter as an Internet provider,
which is just playing wrong, Like you can't get more wrong.
(14:12):
Twitter provides a service that's on the Internet, but it's
not an Internet provider. It's not providing Internet service. I
swear Texas is like the upside down in Stranger Things.
And I say that as a resident of Georgia, a
state that has its own share of totally backwards legislation. Anyway,
(14:34):
I can't wait to see where the story goes in
the future, and my heart goes out to all the
folks in Texas who opposed this kind of stuff. I
understand how hard it can be to live in a
state where leaders make bad decisions that reflect poorly on you,
and you had nothing to do with it. Over in Europe,
we're seeing another example of how leaders, in an effort
to fight something that's truly hideous, in this case UH
(14:56):
images and video of child sexual abuse use, they are
pursuing rules that will have massive, unintended consequences and a
negative impact. So the EU has proposed founding a new
division to fight child abuse material online, as well as
required tech companies to quote, detect, report, block and remove
(15:20):
end quote such material from their platforms. On the surface,
that all sounds fairly you know, reasonable right to detect, report, block,
and remove child abuse material. And obviously this material is
incredibly harmful and reporting it would be absolutely key in
order to track down the people responsible and to stop
(15:40):
them from abusing children. But it's the detect part that
could be particularly disruptive and dangerous for lots of reasons.
You see, for any platform that allows private messaging between
people on that platform, if that platform is ordered to
dete hecked this kind of material, well, to do that,
(16:03):
it would have to scan messages that were being sent
between individuals on the platform to see if any of
that material was included in those messages. These could be
messages that people presumably come on as being private and secure.
It would also mean that end to end encryption would
be pretty much impossible or rendered meaningless. A solid end
(16:25):
to end encryption service would be created in such a
way that no one other than the parties communicating would
be able to see the contents of that communication. That
includes the communications platform itself. So in other words, if
company A allows true end to end encryption, company A
(16:46):
has no way of knowing what is being sent over
those messages. It cannot access those messages, it cannot scan them.
So the only way to get around this is to
do was called client side scanning. That means you would
actually have to scan the material on the end devices
once the material has been decrypted. So that would mean
(17:08):
all users in the EU would have various companies scanning
their personal devices for signs of this kind of material.
Apple had actually proposed doing this and then put the
plans on hold after receiving some pushback from civil rights activists,
and those activists have argued that this kind of surveillance
(17:30):
is really dangerous. It removes all privacy. Now, there is
no denying that child abuse is horrible and it needs
to be stopped and prevented. But researchers are suggesting that
it might be better to use other methodologies rather than
stripping away the possibility of true d end encryption, which
(17:50):
promotes human rights, and that those methodologies can be things
like analyzing metadata in order to detect criminal behavior and
to stop it. Obviously, this is one of those really
emotionally charged topics. It is hard to tackle. There are
no easy solutions, and it is very clear that a
(18:11):
solution is desperately needed, so it is a difficult situation
to kind of suss out. A couple of weeks ago,
we talked about how Netflix had a very rough call
with investors as the company reported its first net loss
and subscribers ever, and once again, you know, if numbers
go the wrong way, the stock market goes bananas. Anyway,
(18:33):
apart from this being another example of how reactionary things
are in the investment world, it pushed Netflix to talk
about the ways the company intends to drive up revenue
and reduce costs in the future. Two of those ways
involved clamping down on the practice of password sharing, and
the other was to introduce ads. Two create different tiers
(18:57):
of subscriptions now. The company says we might see both
of these practices begin by the end of this year,
and we have an idea of how this is probably
going to play out. For one thing, Netflix has been
experimenting with a model in a few countries in which
households can pay a little bit extra in their monthly
(19:17):
subscriptions and in return, they are authorized to share their
password with at least a person outside of their household.
So this this allows them for the case where someone
who is not living under the same roof is able
to access the service, so you pay a little bit
(19:37):
more per month and you get a kind of adjunct
household member who just happens to live outside the house.
As for advertisements, the general belief is that Netflix would
do something similar to what we've seen other platforms do
in the past, which is that they offer a less
expensive subscription model for folks who opt to have ads
(19:58):
included in their service, and those who don't want ads
will just have to pay a little bit more per
month for a premium service. Whether this will address the
issue of subscriber loss remains to be seen. Okay, I've
got a couple more stories to go through before we
get to those, let's take another quick break. One service
(20:25):
that did not have Netflix's problems was Disney Plus. The
mouse House reported that nearly eight million people joined as
new subscribers to Disney Plus over the first quarter of
twenty two, which was better than anticipated. This makes Disney
Plus a leading company when it comes to growth. Keep
in mind, like there are other services that are bigger,
(20:48):
they're just not growing at the same rate as Disney
Plus growth. Like again, this is why I think growth
is a bad metric for success, because you could be
growing really fast, but the reason for that might be
that you're pretty small. So if you have two people
on your service and then six more people sign up,
(21:10):
you know that if you if you convert that over
to percentages, looks really impressive, but when you look at
the actual numbers, maybe not so much. Anyway, despite the
fact that Disney Plus is growing very fast, faster than
services like Hbo Max, the division is losing lots of money.
In fact, it's losing money faster than it was before. This,
(21:31):
by the way, is again one of the things that
really puzzles me about business. It convinces me that all
money is fake and we're all just playing pretend until
it all falls apart. But yeah, Disney Plus is growing
super fast and pulling in more money per subscriber on average,
but it's also losing money faster because the cost of
producing exclusive content for the platform is really high. We've
(21:55):
seen this with other services as well. Netflix, in particular
streaming platforms attracts subscribers primarily by securing exclusive content. Sometimes
that is involved by signing deals with specific studios so
that you have the exclusive right to stream that studio's content.
In other cases, it involves funding productions directly, and this
(22:19):
stuff is expensive you. Disney is reportedly considering introducing an
ad supported subscription tier to Disney Plus in the future,
similar to what Netflix is considering. Yesterday, Google kicked off
its annual Io event. That's the one in which the
company reveals new products and invites developers to become familiar
(22:41):
with various platforms so that those developers can create stuff
that can work on those platforms. Like this is where
developers learn about increased features and and upcoming operating system updates,
that kind of stuff. Now, I've attended one io event
that was the year that they brought in Flight of
the con Chords to play the after party. But I
(23:02):
didn't know who Fly the Concords were at the time,
and now I kick myself because if I had known,
I would have been at the whole set instead of
just at the tail end of it. Anyway, none of
that matters. Let's talk about some of the stuff that
Google showed off this year. So it teased the Pixel seven.
This is going to be the next generation of the
Pixel line of smartphones, the Android phones. The company plans
(23:26):
to release a Pixel seven and a Pixel seven Pro,
which is in line with what it's done over the
last couple of years. Both of those phones will sport
Google Tensor chips, but that's about all the information that
the company was willing to part with at this stage.
Google also announced the Pixel six A, which is meant
to be a more budget friendly version of the Pixel
(23:47):
six smartphone. It'll be slightly smaller, might lack a few
other features. Uh, it will retail for four dollars, and
one thing that the Pixel six A will not have
is a headphone jack. Google has gone back and forth
when it comes to including a physical headphone jack, and
(24:08):
has even taken some potshots at Apple for having abandoned
the headphone Jack in the past, but it looks like
Google is doing the same thing, at least with the
six A. Maybe that's because of another announcement that the
company made, which is that the Pixel Buds Pro Earbuds,
a a two dollar set of earbuds with noise cancelation
and advanced microphones to allow for calls with a minimum
(24:31):
of interference, are coming out this year. At long last,
Google also unveiled the Pixel Watch, which will incorporate fitbit technology.
That fitbit connection is critical because it means Google can
rely upon tried and tested technology rather than developing everything
from scratch. The company said it would be available in
the fall, and it would be sold at a premium price,
(24:54):
which probably means if you have to ask, you can't
afford it, So I guess no Pixel Uch for me. Then.
Google also showed off a prototype of some smart glasses
that would be able to display translations in real time,
meaning if you had two people and each of them
had a pair of these glasses, they could have a
(25:15):
conversation with one another even if neither of them spoke
the other person's language, which is pretty cool. Uh, there's
no telling if this prototype will ever become an actual product,
but it is a nice demonstration of how augmented reality
technology could have some real world applications outside of gimmicky stuff.
The io event continues today, but usually we see all
(25:38):
the big reveals on day one. But if anything huge
gets announced today, I'll be sure to cover it in
an episode next week. Finally, Bethesda, the video game studio
and publisher, tweeted that upcoming video game titles Redfall and
Starfield will not be coming out this year. The company
has chosen to postpone the publication these games until the
(26:01):
first half of three, citing the need to quote ensure
that you received the best, most polished versions end quote.
Bethesda first announced Starfield at e three way back in
calling it a an all new i P, so not
a continuation of any of the franchises Bethesda is known for,
(26:21):
you know, stuff like Fallout and Skyrim or Elder Scrolls.
I should say, and that this game puts players in
the role of space explorers. Uh, there's not a whole
lot more detail available about Starfield. There's a bit, but
you know it's it's largely mysterious since it's a brand
new I P. Red Fall is actually an arcane Studios title.
(26:43):
Bethesda is the publisher, not the developer in this case,
and it's a first person shooter game similar to titles
like Left for Dead, in which players can assume one
of four playable characters and up to four people can
play cooperatively in a session x app. Instead of fighting
off zombie hordes like you do and Left for Dead,
(27:05):
where you're you know you're fighting off endless waves of
zombies on your way to a safe zone, the Red
Fall game is going to be about fighting off vampiric
hordes as you presumably try to make your way to safety.
I'm told there's more to it than that, and I'm
being a bit snarky. It's my reaction is mostly based
(27:25):
off of a teaser video about Red Fall that I
saw a couple of years ago, where I thought, ah,
it's Left for Dead, but with vampires. So I'm sure
it's more complicated and sophisticated than that. So my apologies.
It was just my initial reaction. And that's it for
the Tech News for today. That's Thursday May twelve, two
(27:46):
thousand twenty two. Hope all of you are well. If
you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
episodes of tech Stuff, Please leave me a note on Twitter.
The handle for the show is text Stuff. Hs W
definitely used the the tech show handle because I don't
check my own Twitter anymore. And I will talk to
you again really soon. Y tech Stuff is an I
(28:14):
Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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