March 10, 2025 • 38 mins
A shocking new whistleblower complaint reveals that Meta, formerly Facebook, went to extreme lengths to gain access to the Chinese market, even agreeing to censorship demands from the Chinese Communist Party. According to former global policy director Sarah Wynn-Williams, the company developed a censorship system, suppressed dissident voices, and planned to allow the CCP to … Continue reading Meta’s Censorship Deal with China #1805
The post Meta’s Censorship Deal with China #1805 appeared first on Geek News Central.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Lead story from Monday, March 10.
A shocking new whistleblower complaint reveals that Meta,
formerly Facebook, went to extreme lengths
to gain access to the Chinese market, even
agreeing to censorship demands from the Chinese
Communist Party.
According to former global policy director,
(00:22):
Sarah Wynne Williams,
the company developed a censorship system, a tool,
which allowed suppression
suppressed dissident
voices
to be silenced
and planned to allow the CCCP to oversee
content moderation.
The complaint filed with the SEC accuses made
(00:44):
of misleading
investors
and regulators
about its China dealings.
I dive into the explosive allegations and what
they mean
for future big tech
and global
free speech. Welcome to episode 18 o five.
Hey. I wanna get into this a little
bit before,
we get too
(01:05):
deep into the show.
But this is just crazy. This Washington Post
report
that is out and online and being reported,
all over the place, including a slash dot.
Basically saying, Mady was willing to go to
extreme lengths to censor content
and shut down political dissent.
(01:26):
They were willing to play ball with the
Chinese.
Said for many years, Meidu has been working
hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party,
briefing them on the latest tech developments
and lying about it.
Reached for a comment, media spokesperson,
Annie Stone, told the Washington Post it was
no secret they'd been interested in operating in
(01:48):
China.
This is widely reported beginning a decade ago.
We ultimately opted
not to go through
with ideas we explored,
which Zuckerberg announced in 02/2019.
Although the post shares new tape no details
about a what if about what a Facebook
privacy policy stuff or offers
(02:09):
offered China in negotiations in 02/2014.
Again, in exchange for the ability to establish
operations in China,
Facebook would agree to grant the Chinese government
access to Chinese users' data,
including Hong Kong
users as well.
This is just beyond
(02:29):
disturbing and it it really follows
a
trend and something that I saw that is
sign related
over the weekend.
There's this YouTube
series out.
There's there's some channels China Observer,
(02:51):
China uncensored.
There's a number of
YouTube channels that really talk about
what China has done in in what they
are doing
in regards to,
you know, basically putting pressure on people that
are reporting negatively
on China.
(03:12):
This
uncensored
live,
which is now eleven minutes long,
is is a worthy
is a worthy watch for those of you
that want to have a better understanding
on what's going on.
Because,
purportedly,
YouTube is now
(03:33):
basically
down ranking any negative
any negative
China content.
And what China is embarking on is a
PR plan or a, you know, basically go
out there and,
you know,
(03:54):
provide positive China messaging
through sponsorships
of travel channels and a whole bunch of
other things. It's quite eye opening
that channels that have been talking about
China in a negative way are now with
millions of views
with videos that in those channels get seven,
(04:16):
eight hundred thousand
views per episode
that have millions of subscribers has fallen off
the map on YouTube
and can no longer be found.
Just because they talk negatively
and they talk about what really happens
in China and the things that are going
on. It's also being reported that China is
(04:38):
investing heavily in SEM search results
so that these
sponsored
junkets,
these folks that have been paid to come
in and have story lines so they're almost
fed to them word from word,
end up
being highly rank.
(04:58):
So
China has a long play here.
A very, very long play.
They they want to put forward a China
positive
face
versus a China negative face, of course.
And they're putting dollars behind that. But the
question I would ask all of you,
(05:21):
obviously, Meta did not continue
with their
their conversation with
basically given the Chinese government, the Chinese government
communist government
access to a tool to
silence dissidents, remove threads, etcetera, etcetera.
But why is YouTube
(05:42):
now,
which they say technically they don't have an
issue just people not as interested in this
content, which I doubt.
Why are they down ranking any negative
Chinese news while at the same time
promoting
China positive content?
(06:02):
It makes one
question.
And again, it goes back to something I've
been saying for a very, very long time.
Is that really the only place that you're
gonna find
censorship free
content
that
cannot be manipulated, cannot be down ranked,
is podcast.
(06:23):
If you're subscribed to a podcast,
you're gonna get the content that you want
delivered to you at the time that you
want,
on demand.
And you're not gonna have to worry
about a YouTube agenda
or a Facebook agenda driving down content.
(06:46):
Creators at some point will need to wake
up and understand
that these platforms do not have their best
interest in hand.
So, with that, we'll get into,
the rest of the show. I wanna welcome
you
to episode 1,805.
Of course, I'm your host, Todd Cochran.
(07:08):
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(07:50):
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(08:12):
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Geek News Central and thank you for keeping
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Again, thank you to GoDaddy for being a
sponsor here at Geek News Central. So,
before we get into the red rest of
the stack here,
my little hub that I ordered showed up.
So now I have the ability to very
(10:01):
easily
switch back and forth with a touch of
a button or I bought one of the
Elgato
foot switches
that allows me just to tap my foot
and I can change the view that those
of you watching the show live can do
so. So
a little more handy from a
(10:25):
a switching standpoint,
and managing
the show.
So still having, you know, some little itty
bitty learning curves with OBS,
in specifically having glitching audio from time to
time.
And,
I'm not quite sure,
what the deal on that is,
(10:47):
but,
we'll continue to work at it. Alrighty, Brent.
So let's get into the stack here.
Yeah. It was a good weekend, but otherwise,
my sleeping
oh, this is a challenge. Well, you know,
I'm I'm working,
nights
and having everything
(11:09):
flip twelve hours and then at least being
able to have some semblance of being able
to eat and a normal time here.
I tell you, I'm having a little more
challenge than I have in the past in,
switching over to, the new schedule.
So,
anyway, doing the best I can.
(11:33):
Working days has its advantages, but, not in
the situation I can do right now.
Well, a little more news on the Chinese
front.
A hidden feature,
quote unquote,
was found in a Chinese made Bluetooth
chip.
That this Bluetooth chip is installed
(11:55):
in a hundreds of millions
of IoT devices.
So this hidden feature,
although a malicious actor could access a device
and sense of data
through this hidden feature and I it's wonder
it's kind of, you know, TechRadar. I'm a
little disappointed.
(12:15):
It sure to me smells
like
something that
was put there on purpose.
But cybersecurity researchers
have claimed
that ESP 32 chips, which allow connectivity via
Wi Fi or Bluetooth, have hidden commands
not documented by the manufacturer.
Those commands
(12:36):
would allow modifying the chips arbitrarily to unlock
additional features,
infecting these chips with a malicious code and
even carrying out attacks
of identity theft of devices.
So the ESP 32 chip is built by
a quote unquote Chinese semiconductor
(12:58):
company
in Shanghai
called Espressif.
It costs approximately $2 per unit and according
to the manufacturer has been sold 8,000,000,000
times from its inception in 2023.
Said its affordability is one of the main
reasons. Well, maybe it's backed by
Chinese government.
They first described defining as a backdoor, but
(13:21):
later backtracked on that terminology.
I said, we'd like to clarify.
It is more appropriate to refer to the
presence of proprietary
commands,
which allow operations such as reading and modifying
memory in the controller as a hidden feature
rather than a backdoor.
Still, threat actors could use these commands to
(13:42):
run supply chain attacks, hide backdoors
in the chipset, or execute more sophisticated
attacks.
Harlock added they could impersonate known devices
that connect to mobile phones, computers, and smart
devices even when they're offline.
So
the company has not
(14:02):
responded to this.
But say you,
Chinese backdoor into Wi Fi and Bluetooth
and IoT devices.
I would not be surprised.
Call me a conspiracy
theorist.
Big outage over x. They've been going under
a massive cyberattack.
(14:23):
Twitter's been going down.
I did not see it here. I was
on and off,
x all day.
But some of you may have seen this,
but, Elon Musk basically said that,
they've had a huge, huge outage. The first
outage occur around 02:30AM
(14:43):
Pacific time
with a further more significant spike in reports
around 7AM.
And,
Elon says there's a massive
cyber attack going against x said company.
We we've got attacked we get attacked every
day, but this was with a lot of
resources. Either a large coordinated group
(15:04):
and or a country is involving,
so
I'm not surprised.
You know, more generally, a number of major
Internet just caused significant disruption over the past
year.
We know that Slack went down a few
weeks ago.
We know that CrowdStrike
(15:25):
issue that happened with flights and so forth.
So these cyber attacks per se,
and this one in particular seems to be
pretty big.
Now if you use Zelle,
Chase will soon block certain Zelle charges and
here's what you need to know.
They're cracking down on social media scams with
(15:48):
its new Zelle policy. And I think we've
seen this,
in other
device or other would do other banks do
this as well.
Zelle and digital payment apps such as Venmo,
Cash App make it easy for scammers to
get your money.
And many scammers target people on social media
according to Chase. Nearly 50% of fraud reports
(16:08):
that we see between June
of twenty twenty four and December 31 came
from the media with a $870,000,000
lost
through Zelle payments,
since the app launch in 02/2017.
So with this new policy, Chase hopes to
start it fraud before it happens,
(16:30):
and its updated Zelle service agreement will allow
it to decline or block payments it believes
are originated on social media.
The bank may also delay or hold payment
so it can request information from you to
authenticate the transaction.
So,
I use an app called Paysend
(16:51):
to to pay my bills and send money
and I recently been having trouble with it.
It's tied to my debit card and my
bank is currently working on the issue.
Hasn't been an issue up to this date,
but all of a sudden, boom,
it just started happening. And
so
my bank seems to know what's going on
even though
(17:12):
the
transactions weren't declined. It's something part of the
process. So
be careful out there. Hey, Nvidia at Tesla
have been slammed over the stock market today.
A lot of uncertainty
going on with
with the tariffs
causing investors to be, be skittish.
(17:32):
But, all the big ones were down.
Nvidia, Tesla, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple,
and Microsoft
all fell with Tesla falling a whopping 15%
to lead losses.
And five of the seven mega cap names
also saw drops of 4%. Only Microsoft was
down 3.3
(17:53):
and Amazon down 2.3.
So,
you know, I think there's going to be
more of this
as,
as new policies put in place and things
will even out over time.
Google's
Pixel four a update was due to battery
overheating. So if you remember this,
(18:16):
Google didn't explain exactly why it shipped a
mandatory software update for the Pixel four
on, which is basically a very early Android
phone.
But the nature of the update gave some
models all but unstable battery life provided some
clues as did later software analysis. But now
Australian authorities
(18:36):
have provided a more concrete answer.
And their safety arm has issued a recall
for the Pixel four a last week.
The reason the commission said is that Google's
firmware update and battery chain changes serve to
mitigate the risk of overheating
because an overheating battery could pose a risk
of fire, but they're recalling that.
(18:59):
So
this is something where Google kind of thread
the the needle here and,
basically,
you know,
they've they've said at this point, hey, it's
seems to be bad enough. We should recall,
the phone.
So there's a good article.
(19:24):
Little h two o here folks. Sorry.
By Ron Wyden.
And that name should be familiar.
Ron Wyden says, why the Internet still needs
section two
thirty.
And there's been a lot of debate about
section two thirty
and whether it should be revoked
(19:45):
and whether it should be amended.
And its its controversy
has crossed multiple administrations
at this point.
But, you know, it's been fashionable to blame
nearly all the Internet's
ills on section two thirty
of the Communication Decency Act. Everyone from the
president
(20:05):
to some Democratic
folks have argued that section two thirty has
let major tech platforms
moderate too much or too little.
Here's the deal.
If you're privately held
platform, you should be able to do whatever
you want
within your terms of service.
(20:26):
And people have to understand where they wanna
hang out.
People don't like censorship.
We just talked about what Facebook was gonna
do with China.
That's their choice if they decide to do
that, and they have to live with the
ramifications
of what they do.
But
I think
(20:47):
in the most part,
companies like mine
have benefited
benefited from section two thirty.
We look at media when it's being reported
that it has there's concerning content.
And
(21:08):
but we don't have to basically
go through and,
you know, monitor. That would be very difficult
and very expensive
to do that.
We have to think about when Section two
thirty came online, there was only about 20,000,000
people that had internet,
because it was written in 1995.
So
(21:30):
and also the Communication
Act was being of 1934
was being
rewritten.
So, you know, I don't know where you
may think about
section two thirty.
It's good and bad at the same point,
but he contends
(21:51):
that section two thirty is still needed.
What do you say? What do you think
in that regard when it comes to section
two thirty?
Geeknews@gmail.com.
A lot of people are complaining about Apple's
Apple Intelligence
and attributing it to is Apple Intelligence the
(22:13):
new Apple Maps.
And you know Apple Maps when it first
came out did not have that good of
a run. They had some challenges in those
early early days. And
I think now most of us know that
Apple Maps
are pretty good.
But I don't think this spells doom or
(22:36):
gloom
for Apple that they're behind in AI.
Why?
There's lots of tools out there. Lots and
lots of tools.
And do we need AI on our smartphones
at this point?
I don't think so. But people are are
in a feeding frenzy right now and want
(22:57):
more.
More, more, more
in regards
to AI.
And I think it's,
you know, it's it can be it can
be a little bit concerning here,
that they want to push Apple to have
deeper intelligence
at this point on their phones. I I
(23:19):
don't think Apple's gonna get hurt on this,
on these delays in contextual AI development.
I don't I don't think it's going to
dilute Apple's brand. I think people buy Apple
because of the devices not because
of AI.
So
I don't know. Right? To me,
(23:40):
I can use ChatGPT.
I can use Claude. I can use
Perplexity. I can use a large number of
AI tools
on my Mac without
needing Apple intelligence.
My Mac still works, does everything it needs.
I'm not impacted by this.
So I don't necessarily agree with the author's
(24:02):
intention here that this is going to set
Apple back.
Now we know that Apple's Smart Home Hub
has reportedly been postponed
due to AKA the Siri slowdown
giving advantage to Alexa.
But, again, I don't need Alexa Plus
to live my life.
(24:24):
The hub has to be or Alexa plus
has to have some
function
that really makes me go, Wow,
I can't live without this.
And I don't think I'm at that point.
What say you? What do you think
is giving you advantage?
What is tactically making it worth $20 a
(24:46):
month to have Alexa Plus?
Has anyone done that?
Has anyone bought it? I'll say that the
the OpenAI
Pro
for me up to this point has been
pretty well worth it.
Am I getting a full $200
value out of it? I don't know. We'll
see at the end of the month.
(25:08):
On a more fun topic, there's a 2,000
piece Mario kit Lego set available.
And,
if you are a Lego fan or Mario
Kart fan, it looks like this is a
must have for those of you that are
looking for this. It's a hundred and $70.
And, what does it look like? I guess
(25:29):
that's the front.
Yeah.
They didn't put a picture
of what it looks like,
but it's the Mario in
standard kart set. Again, available for preorder
and depicts Mario on his iconic
red and blue cart. So that gives you
a little bit of an answer
(25:51):
of what this Lego set is going to
be.
If you're a Chromecast user,
some of you are getting increasingly angry about
a weird and trusted device bug. So if
you have an early version of the Chromecast,
specifically
second gen,
they prevent
they're preventing these devices from from casting normally.
(26:12):
In other words, throwing,
something to the screen.
As reported by nine to five and Android
Authority, the bug surfaced over the last few
days, throwing a couple of error messages.
So,
you know, these devices are cheap enough
that if you're having problems with the second
gen, which is launched in 2015,
(26:34):
go out and grab yourself another
Chromecast. They're not very expensive
at all.
Of course, lots of doom and gloom articles
about what's going to happen with the tariffs
and they're saying expect pain at the cash
register. PC insider weighs on
the tariffs. We all know that we're gonna
(26:55):
see increases
in prices.
This is a well known.
We're gonna see,
a jump. It won't be as as as
bad as people think in some cases and
maybe worse than others.
So I warned all of you to go
out if you had a big purchase coming
to make sure you you you grab that
(27:16):
early
so that you could get it from available
inventory and not be impacted.
I'd really like to hear from all of
you. When you start seeing
increases in prices or something that's affecting you,
let me know. I really wanna know.
More outages.
(27:37):
A mayor a major Oracle outage has hit
US Federal health record system.
This was going on for about five hours.
Six veteran affairs hospitals were affected.
DOD, US Coast Guard and NOAA also affected
by the downtime.
VA plans to use
federal EHR in even more sites. So hopefully,
they,
(27:58):
get these outages
figured out.
In the sign of the times, Google paid
out $12,000,000
via their bug bounty programs in 2024.
I know that we probably paid out several
thousand dollars in big
bug bounties.
Nothing like a $12,000,000
worth of bounties being paid
(28:19):
but it does show you that they're getting
quite a few
significant bugs to pay,
that much money out. At the same time,
the Department of Justice latest proposal wants Google
to cut Chrome loose.
Google is tangled was, you know, they're tangled
in this antitrust mess.
And, you know, since a judge ruled last
(28:40):
year that it unfairly dominated the online search
market. So
the current actions are looking like
they want Google to sell off its web
browser and maybe even Android.
A group of 38 state attorneys have teamed
up to file the updated proposal laying out
the final steps to break Google's illegal stranglehold
(29:01):
on the search engine market.
In its latest filings, it says arguing that
forcing Google to sell Chrome would break the
grip on a key search gateway opening it
for real competition.
You really wanna fix this
and make them
bust out Google Ads?
(29:22):
That's where the real competition
is.
And I guess the browser is is a
first step.
They have such a domination
in in online advertising.
It's it's really really difficult.
I don't know if you've opened up
any of your DVDs
(29:42):
recently,
but it might be a good idea to
take a look at your inventory. If you
have DVDs that just been sitting on the
shelf,
they're having some what's called disc rot and
basically, DVDs that are getting older
are starting to have playback issues.
So if you
have a Warner Brother
(30:03):
disc
that were released in 02/2006
and 02/2008,
just be aware that you could get a
replacement if they are still making
the,
the release.
Otherwise, you might be just kind of screwed
here.
A statement shared by movie site Joe Blow,
(30:25):
that's j o b l o. I'm not
kidding. That's what it's called.
Warner Brothers says where potential issues affecting select
DVD titles and
the company has been actively working with consumers
to replace defective disc
Where possible, defective disc have been replaced with
the same title. However, some of the affected
titles are longer print. A rights to expired
(30:47):
consumers have been offered exchange
for a title of like value.
So,
you can contact them at whv@wbd.com.
So take a look at your disc out
there and see if you've got any disc
routers
disc that are not playing well.
(31:07):
For NASA astronauts, a ten day space mission
that lasted nine months and landing date is
in sight.
So you know, they've been up there since
June 5
and,
they're
going to be coming back. What is the
date?
(31:28):
Is it announced?
What the return date is? We knew it
was gonna be in March to begin with.
Yeah. They don't actually call out the exact
date that they're coming back. But very, very
soon, why would they write the article and
not
actually put the date out on when they're
(31:51):
going to return?
It's kind of funny. Yeah? That they would
do that.
So link will be in the show notes.
That was really effective. Wow. Build the punchline.
Speaking of report that agentic
Ai has profound issues with security and privacy
signal
president
says,
(32:11):
which is very
interesting that they would announce that
The present popular messenger app single has warned
AI agents come with a significant
risk to privacy and security.
Speaking South by Southwest,
Meredith Whitaker argued AI agents are being marked
like a magic genie
(32:31):
bot, which thinks many steps ahead and completes
tasks for for you.
Your brain can just sit in a jar
and you're not doing any of that yourself.
Well, they say this comes at a cost.
And although the use of AI agents is
providing popular,
he expresses a real danger with these spots
because they require extensive access to data. I
think we all kinda know that.
(32:56):
Look at what DeepSeek is doing
and how dangerous it is. But anyway, so
you say you're gonna ask an a a
AI agent to book a concert for you.
This should be fairly straightforward task. It does
mean the AA agent would need access to
your browser, your credit card information, your calendar
and even your messages
to let friends know that means that just
(33:17):
one task, the agent now has access to
your financial details, your day to day plans,
your messages,
which could be extremely damaging if the data
fell into the wrong hands.
So
I think we have to be very, very
careful
with all of this stuff that's out there
and determine at what level we feel
comfortable for allowing
(33:38):
these agents to have access to our data.
YouTubers have been targeted a in a blackmail
campaign to promote malware
on their channels and I'm wondering how they're
actually being
blackmailed.
Well, oh, they're they're being threatened with copyright
claims claims.
(34:00):
And the way to resolve the problem is
to share a download link. The link distributes
trojanized programs install a crypto
miner.
So
cyber researchers at Kaspersky,
which is banned in The US right now,
recently spotted the campaign
in a while claiming the majority of the
victims are Russian.
(34:21):
It's spotted a video with more than 400,000
views sharing the malicious link and that the
campaign resulted in more than 40,000 downloads
before being pulled down.
So it's called Windows
Packet Diverter, which is a very, very naughty
naughty naughty application
and, can do some serious damage,
(34:43):
when someone's connected to your computer. So,
interesting that YouTubers
are using
blackmail to get them to promote something.
Very, very curious.
I've been getting a lot of emails on
toll road usage. It was kind of weird
because I hadn't seen any in a while
(35:04):
and I went on a toll road about
three days before I
left for The Philippines.
But now people also get fake parking tickets.
So if you're getting an SMS message for
a fake parking ticket or a toll,
be very, very careful. If when in doubt,
go to your local municipality
parking website
and check and make sure your vehicle is
(35:25):
not impacted. These are
a ways for people to get micropayments from
you, 20 to $35
at a whack.
And,
you send that out to a hundred thousand
people and a hundred people react well, you've
done well.
Reaches continue 560,000
people impacted across four health data breaches.
(35:49):
Hillcrest convalescent center, Gastroenterology
Associates of Central Florida
and Community Care Alliance in Sunflower Medical Group
were affected.
Data breach happened on January 7. So you
do give them credit for fast reporting.
Show that hackers had access since December 15,
But,
(36:09):
they've got access to a lot of data
out there. So just if you're one of
those groups, you'll probably
be getting a letter from folks.
Also, don't fall for a Trump coin
offers being used as in a malware campaign.
Beyonce is being spoofed in an email campaign
that uses up to 2,000 free Trump coins
(36:30):
as lure leading to installation of
ConnectWise
RAT and remote takeover the victim's computer.
So again, you're gonna get something for free.
That's probably too good to be true.
So just be careful. Alright.
So we continue to wonder what's gonna be
the fate of TikTok. We're
fifty
days or so into the reprieve.
(36:53):
And apparently, there's four different groups talking to
TikTok.
So we'll see.
They have
70
yeah. The fifth they're they got twenty five
days left.
So we're gonna see. We're gonna see what
happens here. And,
(37:13):
if that,
if that's a deal
that gets that gets done.
So folks here at Geek News Central, it's
always important for you to consider dropping us
a note geeknews@gmail.com.
Don't forget to use one of those modern
podcast apps and
stream sats to the show. If you're still
having issues streaming sats, let me know.
(37:34):
Also, we accept boost and also one time
donations at geekinaccentral.com/insider.
I'm going to wrap things up here. I'll
be back with you on Thursday for another
edition of the Keto Central podcast. You all
be safe. Take care. Let me know if
you like how I'm doing the new format
for the show with the kickoff article being
(37:55):
gone into
in quite some detail before we get into
any of the administrative
stuff. Everyone take care. We'll see you next
time. Thank you for being here.
Stay safe. Alright. Bye bye.
Lead story from Monday, March 10.
A shocking new whistleblower complaint reveals that Meta,
formerly Facebook, went to extreme lengths
to gain access to the Chinese market, even
agreeing to censorship demands from the Chinese
Communist Party.
According to former global policy director,
(00:22):
Sarah Wynne Williams,
the company developed a censorship system, a tool,
which allowed suppression
suppressed dissident
voices
to be silenced
and planned to allow the CCCP to oversee
content moderation.
The complaint filed with the SEC accuses made
(00:44):
of misleading
investors
and regulators
about its China dealings.
I dive into the explosive allegations and what
they mean
for future big tech
and global
free speech. Welcome to episode 18 o five.
Hey. I wanna get into this a little
bit before,
we get too
(01:05):
deep into the show.
But this is just crazy. This Washington Post
report
that is out and online and being reported,
all over the place, including a slash dot.
Basically saying, Mady was willing to go to
extreme lengths to censor content
and shut down political dissent.
(01:26):
They were willing to play ball with the
Chinese.
Said for many years, Meidu has been working
hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party,
briefing them on the latest tech developments
and lying about it.
Reached for a comment, media spokesperson,
Annie Stone, told the Washington Post it was
no secret they'd been interested in operating in
(01:48):
China.
This is widely reported beginning a decade ago.
We ultimately opted
not to go through
with ideas we explored,
which Zuckerberg announced in 02/2019.
Although the post shares new tape no details
about a what if about what a Facebook
privacy policy stuff or offers
(02:09):
offered China in negotiations in 02/2014.
Again, in exchange for the ability to establish
operations in China,
Facebook would agree to grant the Chinese government
access to Chinese users' data,
including Hong Kong
users as well.
This is just beyond
(02:29):
disturbing and it it really follows
a
trend and something that I saw that is
sign related
over the weekend.
There's this YouTube
series out.
There's there's some channels China Observer,
(02:51):
China uncensored.
There's a number of
YouTube channels that really talk about
what China has done in in what they
are doing
in regards to,
you know, basically putting pressure on people that
are reporting negatively
on China.
(03:12):
This
uncensored
live,
which is now eleven minutes long,
is is a worthy
is a worthy watch for those of you
that want to have a better understanding
on what's going on.
Because,
purportedly,
YouTube is now
(03:33):
basically
down ranking any negative
any negative
China content.
And what China is embarking on is a
PR plan or a, you know, basically go
out there and,
you know,
(03:54):
provide positive China messaging
through sponsorships
of travel channels and a whole bunch of
other things. It's quite eye opening
that channels that have been talking about
China in a negative way are now with
millions of views
with videos that in those channels get seven,
(04:16):
eight hundred thousand
views per episode
that have millions of subscribers has fallen off
the map on YouTube
and can no longer be found.
Just because they talk negatively
and they talk about what really happens
in China and the things that are going
on. It's also being reported that China is
(04:38):
investing heavily in SEM search results
so that these
sponsored
junkets,
these folks that have been paid to come
in and have story lines so they're almost
fed to them word from word,
end up
being highly rank.
(04:58):
So
China has a long play here.
A very, very long play.
They they want to put forward a China
positive
face
versus a China negative face, of course.
And they're putting dollars behind that. But the
question I would ask all of you,
(05:21):
obviously, Meta did not continue
with their
their conversation with
basically given the Chinese government, the Chinese government
communist government
access to a tool to
silence dissidents, remove threads, etcetera, etcetera.
But why is YouTube
(05:42):
now,
which they say technically they don't have an
issue just people not as interested in this
content, which I doubt.
Why are they down ranking any negative
Chinese news while at the same time
promoting
China positive content?
(06:02):
It makes one
question.
And again, it goes back to something I've
been saying for a very, very long time.
Is that really the only place that you're
gonna find
censorship free
content
that
cannot be manipulated, cannot be down ranked,
is podcast.
(06:23):
If you're subscribed to a podcast,
you're gonna get the content that you want
delivered to you at the time that you
want,
on demand.
And you're not gonna have to worry
about a YouTube agenda
or a Facebook agenda driving down content.
(06:46):
Creators at some point will need to wake
up and understand
that these platforms do not have their best
interest in hand.
So, with that, we'll get into,
the rest of the show. I wanna welcome
you
to episode 1,805.
Of course, I'm your host, Todd Cochran.
(07:08):
A shout out to our incredible sponsor at
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And to all of you, our listeners, you
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We're not yet lit and live. The cable
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Follow or scribe via
(07:50):
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The newsletter is available on the website at
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And, of course,
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(08:12):
And you can even catch me on
Facebook. That's the important thing. And of course,
if you're a Geek News Central,
listener here, we're gonna want to save you
some money and and to do so,
it's it's very very simple.
And if you're ready to save, GoDaddy has
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Let's start with a website
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We have GoDaddy website builder available as well.
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Geek News Central and thank you for keeping
us online
and going
strong.
Again, thank you to GoDaddy for being a
sponsor here at Geek News Central. So,
before we get into the red rest of
the stack here,
my little hub that I ordered showed up.
So now I have the ability to very
(10:01):
easily
switch back and forth with a touch of
a button or I bought one of the
Elgato
foot switches
that allows me just to tap my foot
and I can change the view that those
of you watching the show live can do
so. So
a little more handy from a
(10:25):
a switching standpoint,
and managing
the show.
So still having, you know, some little itty
bitty learning curves with OBS,
in specifically having glitching audio from time to
time.
And,
I'm not quite sure,
what the deal on that is,
(10:47):
but,
we'll continue to work at it. Alrighty, Brent.
So let's get into the stack here.
Yeah. It was a good weekend, but otherwise,
my sleeping
oh, this is a challenge. Well, you know,
I'm I'm working,
nights
and having everything
(11:09):
flip twelve hours and then at least being
able to have some semblance of being able
to eat and a normal time here.
I tell you, I'm having a little more
challenge than I have in the past in,
switching over to, the new schedule.
So,
anyway, doing the best I can.
(11:33):
Working days has its advantages, but, not in
the situation I can do right now.
Well, a little more news on the Chinese
front.
A hidden feature,
quote unquote,
was found in a Chinese made Bluetooth
chip.
That this Bluetooth chip is installed
(11:55):
in a hundreds of millions
of IoT devices.
So this hidden feature,
although a malicious actor could access a device
and sense of data
through this hidden feature and I it's wonder
it's kind of, you know, TechRadar. I'm a
little disappointed.
(12:15):
It sure to me smells
like
something that
was put there on purpose.
But cybersecurity researchers
have claimed
that ESP 32 chips, which allow connectivity via
Wi Fi or Bluetooth, have hidden commands
not documented by the manufacturer.
Those commands
(12:36):
would allow modifying the chips arbitrarily to unlock
additional features,
infecting these chips with a malicious code and
even carrying out attacks
of identity theft of devices.
So the ESP 32 chip is built by
a quote unquote Chinese semiconductor
(12:58):
company
in Shanghai
called Espressif.
It costs approximately $2 per unit and according
to the manufacturer has been sold 8,000,000,000
times from its inception in 2023.
Said its affordability is one of the main
reasons. Well, maybe it's backed by
Chinese government.
They first described defining as a backdoor, but
(13:21):
later backtracked on that terminology.
I said, we'd like to clarify.
It is more appropriate to refer to the
presence of proprietary
commands,
which allow operations such as reading and modifying
memory in the controller as a hidden feature
rather than a backdoor.
Still, threat actors could use these commands to
(13:42):
run supply chain attacks, hide backdoors
in the chipset, or execute more sophisticated
attacks.
Harlock added they could impersonate known devices
that connect to mobile phones, computers, and smart
devices even when they're offline.
So
the company has not
(14:02):
responded to this.
But say you,
Chinese backdoor into Wi Fi and Bluetooth
and IoT devices.
I would not be surprised.
Call me a conspiracy
theorist.
Big outage over x. They've been going under
a massive cyberattack.
(14:23):
Twitter's been going down.
I did not see it here. I was
on and off,
x all day.
But some of you may have seen this,
but, Elon Musk basically said that,
they've had a huge, huge outage. The first
outage occur around 02:30AM
(14:43):
Pacific time
with a further more significant spike in reports
around 7AM.
And,
Elon says there's a massive
cyber attack going against x said company.
We we've got attacked we get attacked every
day, but this was with a lot of
resources. Either a large coordinated group
(15:04):
and or a country is involving,
so
I'm not surprised.
You know, more generally, a number of major
Internet just caused significant disruption over the past
year.
We know that Slack went down a few
weeks ago.
We know that CrowdStrike
(15:25):
issue that happened with flights and so forth.
So these cyber attacks per se,
and this one in particular seems to be
pretty big.
Now if you use Zelle,
Chase will soon block certain Zelle charges and
here's what you need to know.
They're cracking down on social media scams with
(15:48):
its new Zelle policy. And I think we've
seen this,
in other
device or other would do other banks do
this as well.
Zelle and digital payment apps such as Venmo,
Cash App make it easy for scammers to
get your money.
And many scammers target people on social media
according to Chase. Nearly 50% of fraud reports
(16:08):
that we see between June
of twenty twenty four and December 31 came
from the media with a $870,000,000
lost
through Zelle payments,
since the app launch in 02/2017.
So with this new policy, Chase hopes to
start it fraud before it happens,
(16:30):
and its updated Zelle service agreement will allow
it to decline or block payments it believes
are originated on social media.
The bank may also delay or hold payment
so it can request information from you to
authenticate the transaction.
So,
I use an app called Paysend
(16:51):
to to pay my bills and send money
and I recently been having trouble with it.
It's tied to my debit card and my
bank is currently working on the issue.
Hasn't been an issue up to this date,
but all of a sudden, boom,
it just started happening. And
so
my bank seems to know what's going on
even though
(17:12):
the
transactions weren't declined. It's something part of the
process. So
be careful out there. Hey, Nvidia at Tesla
have been slammed over the stock market today.
A lot of uncertainty
going on with
with the tariffs
causing investors to be, be skittish.
(17:32):
But, all the big ones were down.
Nvidia, Tesla, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple,
and Microsoft
all fell with Tesla falling a whopping 15%
to lead losses.
And five of the seven mega cap names
also saw drops of 4%. Only Microsoft was
down 3.3
(17:53):
and Amazon down 2.3.
So,
you know, I think there's going to be
more of this
as,
as new policies put in place and things
will even out over time.
Google's
Pixel four a update was due to battery
overheating. So if you remember this,
(18:16):
Google didn't explain exactly why it shipped a
mandatory software update for the Pixel four
on, which is basically a very early Android
phone.
But the nature of the update gave some
models all but unstable battery life provided some
clues as did later software analysis. But now
Australian authorities
(18:36):
have provided a more concrete answer.
And their safety arm has issued a recall
for the Pixel four a last week.
The reason the commission said is that Google's
firmware update and battery chain changes serve to
mitigate the risk of overheating
because an overheating battery could pose a risk
of fire, but they're recalling that.
(18:59):
So
this is something where Google kind of thread
the the needle here and,
basically,
you know,
they've they've said at this point, hey, it's
seems to be bad enough. We should recall,
the phone.
So there's a good article.
(19:24):
Little h two o here folks. Sorry.
By Ron Wyden.
And that name should be familiar.
Ron Wyden says, why the Internet still needs
section two
thirty.
And there's been a lot of debate about
section two thirty
and whether it should be revoked
(19:45):
and whether it should be amended.
And its its controversy
has crossed multiple administrations
at this point.
But, you know, it's been fashionable to blame
nearly all the Internet's
ills on section two thirty
of the Communication Decency Act. Everyone from the
president
(20:05):
to some Democratic
folks have argued that section two thirty has
let major tech platforms
moderate too much or too little.
Here's the deal.
If you're privately held
platform, you should be able to do whatever
you want
within your terms of service.
(20:26):
And people have to understand where they wanna
hang out.
People don't like censorship.
We just talked about what Facebook was gonna
do with China.
That's their choice if they decide to do
that, and they have to live with the
ramifications
of what they do.
But
I think
(20:47):
in the most part,
companies like mine
have benefited
benefited from section two thirty.
We look at media when it's being reported
that it has there's concerning content.
And
(21:08):
but we don't have to basically
go through and,
you know, monitor. That would be very difficult
and very expensive
to do that.
We have to think about when Section two
thirty came online, there was only about 20,000,000
people that had internet,
because it was written in 1995.
So
(21:30):
and also the Communication
Act was being of 1934
was being
rewritten.
So, you know, I don't know where you
may think about
section two thirty.
It's good and bad at the same point,
but he contends
(21:51):
that section two thirty is still needed.
What do you say? What do you think
in that regard when it comes to section
two thirty?
Geeknews@gmail.com.
A lot of people are complaining about Apple's
Apple Intelligence
and attributing it to is Apple Intelligence the
(22:13):
new Apple Maps.
And you know Apple Maps when it first
came out did not have that good of
a run. They had some challenges in those
early early days. And
I think now most of us know that
Apple Maps
are pretty good.
But I don't think this spells doom or
(22:36):
gloom
for Apple that they're behind in AI.
Why?
There's lots of tools out there. Lots and
lots of tools.
And do we need AI on our smartphones
at this point?
I don't think so. But people are are
in a feeding frenzy right now and want
(22:57):
more.
More, more, more
in regards
to AI.
And I think it's,
you know, it's it can be it can
be a little bit concerning here,
that they want to push Apple to have
deeper intelligence
at this point on their phones. I I
(23:19):
don't think Apple's gonna get hurt on this,
on these delays in contextual AI development.
I don't I don't think it's going to
dilute Apple's brand. I think people buy Apple
because of the devices not because
of AI.
So
I don't know. Right? To me,
(23:40):
I can use ChatGPT.
I can use Claude. I can use
Perplexity. I can use a large number of
AI tools
on my Mac without
needing Apple intelligence.
My Mac still works, does everything it needs.
I'm not impacted by this.
So I don't necessarily agree with the author's
(24:02):
intention here that this is going to set
Apple back.
Now we know that Apple's Smart Home Hub
has reportedly been postponed
due to AKA the Siri slowdown
giving advantage to Alexa.
But, again, I don't need Alexa Plus
to live my life.
(24:24):
The hub has to be or Alexa plus
has to have some
function
that really makes me go, Wow,
I can't live without this.
And I don't think I'm at that point.
What say you? What do you think
is giving you advantage?
What is tactically making it worth $20 a
(24:46):
month to have Alexa Plus?
Has anyone done that?
Has anyone bought it? I'll say that the
the OpenAI
Pro
for me up to this point has been
pretty well worth it.
Am I getting a full $200
value out of it? I don't know. We'll
see at the end of the month.
(25:08):
On a more fun topic, there's a 2,000
piece Mario kit Lego set available.
And,
if you are a Lego fan or Mario
Kart fan, it looks like this is a
must have for those of you that are
looking for this. It's a hundred and $70.
And, what does it look like? I guess
(25:29):
that's the front.
Yeah.
They didn't put a picture
of what it looks like,
but it's the Mario in
standard kart set. Again, available for preorder
and depicts Mario on his iconic
red and blue cart. So that gives you
a little bit of an answer
(25:51):
of what this Lego set is going to
be.
If you're a Chromecast user,
some of you are getting increasingly angry about
a weird and trusted device bug. So if
you have an early version of the Chromecast,
specifically
second gen,
they prevent
they're preventing these devices from from casting normally.
(26:12):
In other words, throwing,
something to the screen.
As reported by nine to five and Android
Authority, the bug surfaced over the last few
days, throwing a couple of error messages.
So,
you know, these devices are cheap enough
that if you're having problems with the second
gen, which is launched in 2015,
(26:34):
go out and grab yourself another
Chromecast. They're not very expensive
at all.
Of course, lots of doom and gloom articles
about what's going to happen with the tariffs
and they're saying expect pain at the cash
register. PC insider weighs on
the tariffs. We all know that we're gonna
(26:55):
see increases
in prices.
This is a well known.
We're gonna see,
a jump. It won't be as as as
bad as people think in some cases and
maybe worse than others.
So I warned all of you to go
out if you had a big purchase coming
to make sure you you you grab that
(27:16):
early
so that you could get it from available
inventory and not be impacted.
I'd really like to hear from all of
you. When you start seeing
increases in prices or something that's affecting you,
let me know. I really wanna know.
More outages.
(27:37):
A mayor a major Oracle outage has hit
US Federal health record system.
This was going on for about five hours.
Six veteran affairs hospitals were affected.
DOD, US Coast Guard and NOAA also affected
by the downtime.
VA plans to use
federal EHR in even more sites. So hopefully,
they,
(27:58):
get these outages
figured out.
In the sign of the times, Google paid
out $12,000,000
via their bug bounty programs in 2024.
I know that we probably paid out several
thousand dollars in big
bug bounties.
Nothing like a $12,000,000
worth of bounties being paid
(28:19):
but it does show you that they're getting
quite a few
significant bugs to pay,
that much money out. At the same time,
the Department of Justice latest proposal wants Google
to cut Chrome loose.
Google is tangled was, you know, they're tangled
in this antitrust mess.
And, you know, since a judge ruled last
(28:40):
year that it unfairly dominated the online search
market. So
the current actions are looking like
they want Google to sell off its web
browser and maybe even Android.
A group of 38 state attorneys have teamed
up to file the updated proposal laying out
the final steps to break Google's illegal stranglehold
(29:01):
on the search engine market.
In its latest filings, it says arguing that
forcing Google to sell Chrome would break the
grip on a key search gateway opening it
for real competition.
You really wanna fix this
and make them
bust out Google Ads?
(29:22):
That's where the real competition
is.
And I guess the browser is is a
first step.
They have such a domination
in in online advertising.
It's it's really really difficult.
I don't know if you've opened up
any of your DVDs
(29:42):
recently,
but it might be a good idea to
take a look at your inventory. If you
have DVDs that just been sitting on the
shelf,
they're having some what's called disc rot and
basically, DVDs that are getting older
are starting to have playback issues.
So if you
have a Warner Brother
(30:03):
disc
that were released in 02/2006
and 02/2008,
just be aware that you could get a
replacement if they are still making
the,
the release.
Otherwise, you might be just kind of screwed
here.
A statement shared by movie site Joe Blow,
(30:25):
that's j o b l o. I'm not
kidding. That's what it's called.
Warner Brothers says where potential issues affecting select
DVD titles and
the company has been actively working with consumers
to replace defective disc
Where possible, defective disc have been replaced with
the same title. However, some of the affected
titles are longer print. A rights to expired
(30:47):
consumers have been offered exchange
for a title of like value.
So,
you can contact them at whv@wbd.com.
So take a look at your disc out
there and see if you've got any disc
routers
disc that are not playing well.
(31:07):
For NASA astronauts, a ten day space mission
that lasted nine months and landing date is
in sight.
So you know, they've been up there since
June 5
and,
they're
going to be coming back. What is the
date?
(31:28):
Is it announced?
What the return date is? We knew it
was gonna be in March to begin with.
Yeah. They don't actually call out the exact
date that they're coming back. But very, very
soon, why would they write the article and
not
actually put the date out on when they're
(31:51):
going to return?
It's kind of funny. Yeah? That they would
do that.
So link will be in the show notes.
That was really effective. Wow. Build the punchline.
Speaking of report that agentic
Ai has profound issues with security and privacy
signal
president
says,
(32:11):
which is very
interesting that they would announce that
The present popular messenger app single has warned
AI agents come with a significant
risk to privacy and security.
Speaking South by Southwest,
Meredith Whitaker argued AI agents are being marked
like a magic genie
(32:31):
bot, which thinks many steps ahead and completes
tasks for for you.
Your brain can just sit in a jar
and you're not doing any of that yourself.
Well, they say this comes at a cost.
And although the use of AI agents is
providing popular,
he expresses a real danger with these spots
because they require extensive access to data. I
think we all kinda know that.
(32:56):
Look at what DeepSeek is doing
and how dangerous it is. But anyway, so
you say you're gonna ask an a a
AI agent to book a concert for you.
This should be fairly straightforward task. It does
mean the AA agent would need access to
your browser, your credit card information, your calendar
and even your messages
to let friends know that means that just
(33:17):
one task, the agent now has access to
your financial details, your day to day plans,
your messages,
which could be extremely damaging if the data
fell into the wrong hands.
So
I think we have to be very, very
careful
with all of this stuff that's out there
and determine at what level we feel
comfortable for allowing
(33:38):
these agents to have access to our data.
YouTubers have been targeted a in a blackmail
campaign to promote malware
on their channels and I'm wondering how they're
actually being
blackmailed.
Well, oh, they're they're being threatened with copyright
claims claims.
(34:00):
And the way to resolve the problem is
to share a download link. The link distributes
trojanized programs install a crypto
miner.
So
cyber researchers at Kaspersky,
which is banned in The US right now,
recently spotted the campaign
in a while claiming the majority of the
victims are Russian.
(34:21):
It's spotted a video with more than 400,000
views sharing the malicious link and that the
campaign resulted in more than 40,000 downloads
before being pulled down.
So it's called Windows
Packet Diverter, which is a very, very naughty
naughty naughty application
and, can do some serious damage,
(34:43):
when someone's connected to your computer. So,
interesting that YouTubers
are using
blackmail to get them to promote something.
Very, very curious.
I've been getting a lot of emails on
toll road usage. It was kind of weird
because I hadn't seen any in a while
(35:04):
and I went on a toll road about
three days before I
left for The Philippines.
But now people also get fake parking tickets.
So if you're getting an SMS message for
a fake parking ticket or a toll,
be very, very careful. If when in doubt,
go to your local municipality
parking website
and check and make sure your vehicle is
(35:25):
not impacted. These are
a ways for people to get micropayments from
you, 20 to $35
at a whack.
And,
you send that out to a hundred thousand
people and a hundred people react well, you've
done well.
Reaches continue 560,000
people impacted across four health data breaches.
(35:49):
Hillcrest convalescent center, Gastroenterology
Associates of Central Florida
and Community Care Alliance in Sunflower Medical Group
were affected.
Data breach happened on January 7. So you
do give them credit for fast reporting.
Show that hackers had access since December 15,
But,
(36:09):
they've got access to a lot of data
out there. So just if you're one of
those groups, you'll probably
be getting a letter from folks.
Also, don't fall for a Trump coin
offers being used as in a malware campaign.
Beyonce is being spoofed in an email campaign
that uses up to 2,000 free Trump coins
(36:30):
as lure leading to installation of
ConnectWise
RAT and remote takeover the victim's computer.
So again, you're gonna get something for free.
That's probably too good to be true.
So just be careful. Alright.
So we continue to wonder what's gonna be
the fate of TikTok. We're
fifty
days or so into the reprieve.
(36:53):
And apparently, there's four different groups talking to
TikTok.
So we'll see.
They have
70
yeah. The fifth they're they got twenty five
days left.
So we're gonna see. We're gonna see what
happens here. And,
(37:13):
if that,
if that's a deal
that gets that gets done.
So folks here at Geek News Central, it's
always important for you to consider dropping us
a note geeknews@gmail.com.
Don't forget to use one of those modern
podcast apps and
stream sats to the show. If you're still
having issues streaming sats, let me know.
(37:34):
Also, we accept boost and also one time
donations at geekinaccentral.com/insider.
I'm going to wrap things up here. I'll
be back with you on Thursday for another
edition of the Keto Central podcast. You all
be safe. Take care. Let me know if
you like how I'm doing the new format
for the show with the kickoff article being
(37:55):
gone into
in quite some detail before we get into
any of the administrative
stuff. Everyone take care. We'll see you next
time. Thank you for being here.
Stay safe. Alright. Bye bye.
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