Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a love of all things tech. This is the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, August twenty one. Should be a
Speaker 1: pretty short and sweet episode. Let's get to it now.
Speaker 1: Last week, I reported the Only Fans, which is a
Speaker 1: content platform that is most famous for hosting adult content
Speaker 1: and sexually explicit content, was promoting a streaming video app
Speaker 1: that would strictly stick too Safe for work content because
Speaker 1: that was the only way the company was going to
Speaker 1: get the app through and accepted into the Google and
Speaker 1: Apple app stores. But following that was a roller coaster
Speaker 1: of a story. First, the company said it was planning
Speaker 1: to change its content policies, and namely Only Fans initially
Speaker 1: announced that it would no longer allow for sexually explicit
Speaker 1: content on the site, and it sounded as though nudity
Speaker 1: would not be forbidden, but anything expressly sexual would be.
Speaker 1: That precipitated a protest, which included content creators who essentially
Speaker 1: made the site what it is, the argument being this
Speaker 1: site wouldn't exist without that content. Sex workers were among
Speaker 1: those protesting and other supporters they were criticizing the company's decision.
Speaker 1: Well now only Fans has since reversed that decision and
Speaker 1: said this planned change in policy will not happen. After all,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to happen October one, and now it's
Speaker 1: not going to happen. Moreover, the company said the whole
Speaker 1: reason for this proposed change the first place wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: because the company had shifted towards a more conservative philosophy,
Speaker 1: but rather it comes down to money, or maybe more precisely,
Speaker 1: it comes down to payment processing. So, according to this
Speaker 1: argument at issue, our companies like MasterCard and Visa, these
Speaker 1: are payment processing companies that facilitate financial transactions, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously for thousands of companies, right, not just only Fans,
Speaker 1: but all around the world. Now, without these transaction services,
Speaker 1: it becomes increasingly difficult to handle financial transactions, particularly at scale,
Speaker 1: and so companies depend upon these very large entities to
Speaker 1: make the flow of money possible because obviously without money
Speaker 1: there's nothing, you know, creators want to be paid, the
Speaker 1: site needs to make money. So these processing services hold
Speaker 1: a lot of power and hold a lot of power
Speaker 1: over the payment processing services are various conservative groups that
Speaker 1: object to sexually explicit content. This is not the first
Speaker 1: time we've seen platforms, you know, either bow or attempt
Speaker 1: to bow to pressure from payment services. Patreon went through
Speaker 1: something very similar. There were also reports that Only Fans
Speaker 1: was struggling to secure investment money, and that the issue
Speaker 1: of sexually explicit material on the site was the reason
Speaker 1: for that challenge. But at any rate, the protests seemed
Speaker 1: to have swayed Only Fans to change course yet again
Speaker 1: and reject the requirement for content creators to follow a
Speaker 1: new policy. Now, the reason I wanted to cover the
Speaker 1: story was not for its salacious nature. It wasn't because
Speaker 1: of controversy or to you know, throw sex into the mix,
Speaker 1: but rather to highlight how politics and influence groups and
Speaker 1: money play a huge role in everything in including in
Speaker 1: the tech sector and on online platforms, and that we
Speaker 1: can't really look at any issue without taking the larger
Speaker 1: context into account, or else we miss important details. So
Speaker 1: while your personal stance on the appropriate or inappropriate nature
Speaker 1: of sexually explicit content is valid, like that's part of
Speaker 1: your philosophy, and I do not wish to put my
Speaker 1: own thoughts on there I would say that, you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately we're looking at a lot of people using a
Speaker 1: lot of influence to try and push things towards a
Speaker 1: specific agenda, and that's where the conflict comes out of.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was a lot of people reduced
Speaker 1: to this to essentially say that only FANS was turning
Speaker 1: its back on the people who had made the site
Speaker 1: what it was. I think there's an element of that
Speaker 1: that is true, but I think it is far more
Speaker 1: complicated than that summary. Moving on, Earlier this week, I
Speaker 1: talked about the ongoing semi conductor shortage and how we
Speaker 1: might see that issue affects stuff like, you know, the
Speaker 1: supply of various technologies and products. Well, the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal reports that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is
Speaker 1: the largest semi conductor chip manufacturer in the world, is
Speaker 1: going to increase its prices potentially by as much as
Speaker 1: twenty percent. Now, if you're gonna bump up your prices
Speaker 1: by a fifth, that's pretty significant. And most of these
Speaker 1: chips are not going to people like you and me.
Speaker 1: These are being purchased by other companies which are then
Speaker 1: using those chips as components in other products, which can
Speaker 1: include anything from advanced technology to simple gadgets. But if
Speaker 1: the semi conductor companies are raising their prices and these
Speaker 1: other secondary companies are going to have to pay more
Speaker 1: money to buy a basic component, I bet you can
Speaker 1: guess where that bumping cost is gonna go next. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this very likely means that for a fairly wide range
Speaker 1: of products, we're likely to see prices start to go up. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: the companies that are selling this stuff will have to
Speaker 1: do so at a loss, and that's, you know, not
Speaker 1: great in the business plan. You don't want to sell
Speaker 1: things for less than what you paid to make them.
Speaker 1: And we've definitely seen this already happen in the automotive world,
Speaker 1: although that's a more complicated issue. You've got a limited
Speaker 1: supply of cars and you've got steady demand, and by
Speaker 1: the laws of supply and demand, if the supply is
Speaker 1: low and the demand is high, then prices tend to
Speaker 1: go up. Just kind of how it works in in
Speaker 1: that free market sort of approach. However, it would not
Speaker 1: surprise me to see this tent trend kind of affect
Speaker 1: a wider variety of technology in the months to come,
Speaker 1: which is not great new especially as we move towards
Speaker 1: the holiday season, we will have to see. One group
Speaker 1: of policies that has had an enormous impact on business
Speaker 1: in general, but the tech world in particular, is the
Speaker 1: g d p R, or General Data Protection Regulation in
Speaker 1: the European Union. These rules restrict how companies can collect
Speaker 1: and use personal information of EU citizens, and it includes
Speaker 1: numerous protections for citizens of the EU in an era
Speaker 1: where data collection is pretty much the name of the game.
Speaker 1: This is why a lot of sites include those little
Speaker 1: pop up notifications about cookies and tracking and whatnot and
Speaker 1: allow you to opt out of that or to leave
Speaker 1: the site before you know the data collection begins. Well,
Speaker 1: the UK famously said peace out to the EU, and
Speaker 1: now Oliver doubt In, the Culture Secretary for the UK,
Speaker 1: says that the nation is going to take a slightly
Speaker 1: different path from the EU and leave at least parts
Speaker 1: of the g d p R regulations behind. However, this
Speaker 1: is all much easier said than done, because while the
Speaker 1: UK might not be part of the EU anymore, it
Speaker 1: definitely has lots and lots and lots of transactions with
Speaker 1: the EU. Frequently, I mean as as much as a
Speaker 1: small subsection of Brits might like to think that they
Speaker 1: are a world unto themselves, something that a lot of
Speaker 1: Americans can identify with the fact is there are actually
Speaker 1: a lot more people outside of the UK than there
Speaker 1: are in it. Anyway, whatever new rules take the place
Speaker 1: of g d p R in the UK, we'll have
Speaker 1: to meet EU approval or else the UK might see
Speaker 1: various data channels connecting it to the continent, kind of
Speaker 1: shut down. The UK has named John Edwards, who currently
Speaker 1: is the Privacy Commissioner of New Zealand, as a potential
Speaker 1: candidate to take over the job of Information Commissioner, which
Speaker 1: would start in November of this year, and that he
Speaker 1: would then oversee the drafting of new rules. It will
Speaker 1: likely be a pretty complicated process to make certain that
Speaker 1: the new rules are compatible enough with g DPR and
Speaker 1: protect British citizens adequately, and to you know, kind of
Speaker 1: remove some of the stuff that the UK sees as
Speaker 1: being unnecessary or counterproductive. And I wish them luck in
Speaker 1: those endeavors. I have a few more news stories, but
Speaker 1: before we get to that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed News published an article that reveals that twenty four
Speaker 1: countries have made use of clear View ai s facial
Speaker 1: recognition technology, and you may have heard me talk about
Speaker 1: clear View AI before. That company has actually run into
Speaker 1: some trouble with various online platforms after using technology to
Speaker 1: scrape those platforms for publicly posted images in order to
Speaker 1: build out an enormous facial recognition database without the consent
Speaker 1: of the people who's you know, images they collected. And
Speaker 1: you might say, well, if someone posts a photo publicly
Speaker 1: on their Facebook profile, like if their profile is public
Speaker 1: and they post it to the public, you know, setting,
Speaker 1: then it's fair game because it's all public, right, But
Speaker 1: what if that photo includes other folks in it? It's
Speaker 1: not like just a selfie. What if a friend of
Speaker 1: yours takes a photo that has you in it, and
Speaker 1: then they post that photo on their public Facebook profile,
Speaker 1: and then clear View AI scoops up that photo and
Speaker 1: now your face is also in that database, even though
Speaker 1: you never gave consent. You don't publicly post pictures, at
Speaker 1: least in this hypothetical situation, and so you never had
Speaker 1: an option to opt in or opt out of this.
Speaker 1: It just happened because a friend of yours decided that
Speaker 1: that picture just needed to go up on that Facebook profile.
Speaker 1: All of that just stinks, right, I mean this affects
Speaker 1: people who aren't even on Facebook. Right. You've got people
Speaker 1: who just know people who are on Facebook, and they
Speaker 1: happen to show up in pictures and they had no
Speaker 1: saying any of this. This is just one of the
Speaker 1: many problems that privacy rights advocates have with clear view AI.
Speaker 1: Another big one is that facial recognition technologies are notoriously
Speaker 1: prone to bias, and that this frequently means the tech
Speaker 1: is just playing bad at recognizing images, specifically of non
Speaker 1: white people, and this can lead to false positives. That
Speaker 1: has actually happened in numerous cases around the world where
Speaker 1: police have acted upon uh incorrect facial recognition hits. So
Speaker 1: this disproportionately affects people of color. It is, It is bad.
Speaker 1: Buzzfeeds report shows how widely used this tech is within
Speaker 1: various institutions around the world, old including agencies that are
Speaker 1: funded by taxpayers. So in other words, we're all paying
Speaker 1: to be spied upon and potentially misidentified. There's been a
Speaker 1: growing movement around the world to restrict facial recognition technology use,
Speaker 1: especially in investigations, and some communities outright ban police use
Speaker 1: of that technology. Honestly, I'm all for banning facial recognition
Speaker 1: tech for those kinds of investigations. And I've said this before.
Speaker 1: Relying on technology to solve a social problem when the
Speaker 1: tech just isn't there yet, that's just a recipe to
Speaker 1: make a bad social problem even worse, or to create
Speaker 1: new social problems that interact with existing ones. Not a
Speaker 1: good thing. Tech is not a solve all approach to
Speaker 1: all of our problems, and relying on tech to be
Speaker 1: that is a recipe for disaster. I see the same
Speaker 1: thing playing out with climate change, where people are saying,
Speaker 1: I'm not worried the as we're gonna come up with
Speaker 1: tech to solve this problem. There's no guarantee will do that.
Speaker 1: There's no guarantee it will be on a timeline that
Speaker 1: will actually make a difference. You cannot use the you
Speaker 1: know tech as some sort of literal deos X makena
Speaker 1: to come in and rescue us. All right, soap box
Speaker 1: set aside, but sticking with facial recognition tech, The Register
Speaker 1: reports that a South Korean government agency called the Personal
Speaker 1: Information Protection Commission or p i p C, found that
Speaker 1: Facebook created facial recognition templates for two thousand South Koreans
Speaker 1: without first securing proper consent, and that this happened between
Speaker 1: April two thousand eighteen and April two thousand nineteen. The
Speaker 1: government has then find Facebook six point four six billion one. Now,
Speaker 1: that's about five and a half million dollars, and let's
Speaker 1: be honest, that is a lot of money. Five and
Speaker 1: a half million dollars, that's a ton of money. I
Speaker 1: would I would be gob struck to get five and
Speaker 1: a half million dollars, But for Facebook, that probably doesn't
Speaker 1: even amount to a catered dinner at Facebook anyway. The
Speaker 1: organization also told Facebook that it would need to destroy
Speaker 1: the facial recognition info the company had developed for South Koreans,
Speaker 1: and then if it wanted to rebuild it, it it would
Speaker 1: first have to obtain consent from each person before starting
Speaker 1: back into that process. It also issued a warning to
Speaker 1: Google and told the company to make its privacy policies
Speaker 1: and settings more transparent. And Netflix got hit with a
Speaker 1: two million one or are just under a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: in fines for collecting the data of users without first
Speaker 1: gaining their consent. So we're seeing more pushback in this field.
Speaker 1: But again, like those amounts I mean, they might probably
Speaker 1: make sense within the context of South Korea, but they
Speaker 1: are so small in the grand scheme of these come
Speaker 1: as that while you know, no one ever wants to
Speaker 1: pay a fine, it's barely an inconvenience. The EU is
Speaker 1: looking to chip away at some of the features that
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency enthusiasts happen to like a lot, namely that whole
Speaker 1: bit about privacy, you know, being able to make transactions
Speaker 1: without everyone knowing your business. The EU wants companies like
Speaker 1: coin base and cracking, so essentially companies that handle like
Speaker 1: digital wallets and stuff, to collect information on people who
Speaker 1: are conducting cryptocurrency transactions. And this gets really interesting to
Speaker 1: me because it actually shows how how there's some conflicting
Speaker 1: philosophies at play in the EU when it comes to
Speaker 1: digital information. Because on the one hand, you have some
Speaker 1: fairly extensive data protection laws on the books that are
Speaker 1: meant to help citizens protect their privacy and their security
Speaker 1: and to know who has their data and how they
Speaker 1: are using that. But on the other hand, well, you know,
Speaker 1: they want to keep track of these transactions, and thus
Speaker 1: that means giving up some privacy in order for that
Speaker 1: information to be traceable. Uh. And there's a couple of
Speaker 1: reasons for that. One is that you clearly are thinking
Speaker 1: about taxation, right if you want to tax transactions that
Speaker 1: otherwise are going hidden. Another is that a lot of
Speaker 1: criminals use cryptocurrency in an effort to launder money from
Speaker 1: illicitly gained sources. That's something clearly the authorities would want
Speaker 1: to know about. They'd want to be able to trace that,
Speaker 1: So there are some legit reasons for countries to want
Speaker 1: to do this. This rule would require crypto companies to
Speaker 1: make these transactions traceable, and it would bring cryptocurrency kind
Speaker 1: of in line with the rules that guide other banking
Speaker 1: and financial institutions, including the fact that you would not
Speaker 1: be allowed to have an anonymous digital wallet. Like digital
Speaker 1: wallets would have to be tied to specifick individuals and
Speaker 1: that would need to be traceable. And finally, the search
Speaker 1: business is seriously big business, like like wicked big. And
Speaker 1: one way to try and wrap your head around how
Speaker 1: big search is in the sense of like how much
Speaker 1: money it makes is to look at how much Google
Speaker 1: will pay Apple to allow Google Search to be the
Speaker 1: default search engine for Safari and thus the default search
Speaker 1: engine for Mac and iOS devices. Now. Back in Google
Speaker 1: reportedly coughed up ten billion dollars for that privilege, and
Speaker 1: this year, according to an analyst firm called Bernstein, the
Speaker 1: amount might be closer to fifteen billion dollars and it
Speaker 1: would just increase from there, so next year would probably
Speaker 1: be closer to eighteen to twenty billion dollars. That is
Speaker 1: a princely sum. Indeed, now the analysts say this isn't
Speaker 1: set in stone, and Google might ultimately decide that the
Speaker 1: expense it pays is not worth the benefit it gets,
Speaker 1: or you might have a regulatory agency step in and say, hey,
Speaker 1: this doesn't seem like it's a good practice. It seems
Speaker 1: anti competitive, and that would mean that you're falling into
Speaker 1: some you know, trends of monopolies and you start getting
Speaker 1: into illegal territory. But what it really shows you is
Speaker 1: that Google is definitely an ad company, right, Like that
Speaker 1: is Google's business. Search just happens to be the prime
Speaker 1: way that Google gets eyeballs on advertisement and that's what
Speaker 1: generates revenue for the company. So, yeah, Google provides a
Speaker 1: search service, but it's business is in advertising. So I
Speaker 1: guess it's true that you've got to spend money to
Speaker 1: make money, and that applies even when you're looking at
Speaker 1: multibillion dollar corporations. Now, if like me, you're wondering how
Speaker 1: much Google pulls in from its search business, like, what
Speaker 1: is justifying this incredible expense, Well, in the company reported
Speaker 1: revenues of a hundred four billion dollars in the search
Speaker 1: and other category, and that in turn was more than
Speaker 1: all of Google's revenue for that year. So yeah, these
Speaker 1: are the big leagues we're talking about. Still blows my
Speaker 1: mind that it's that big, though. And that's it for
Speaker 1: the news that I have for you guys on Thursday,
Speaker 1: August one. Will be back next week with more tech
Speaker 1: news and episodes. If you have suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me on
Speaker 1: Twitter to handle is tech Stuff hs W, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. GW