Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday,
Speaker 1: June twenty second, twenty twenty three. And let's start off
Speaker 1: with a dumb, juvenile story involving billionaires fronting on each
Speaker 1: other in an effort to determine which one is the alpha.
Speaker 1: By the way, just saying that made me feel gross.
Speaker 1: But let's get to the story. Elon Musk, always the
Speaker 1: picture of rationality immaturity, tweeted out that he'd be up
Speaker 1: for a cage fight with Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: and then Zuckerberg replied on Instagram because of course these
Speaker 1: billionaires are going to to their own platforms send me location,
Speaker 1: indicating that he too was interested in fisticuffs. Musk then
Speaker 1: posted again on Twitter Vegas Octagon. So why is their beef? Well,
Speaker 1: it's probably because Meta is in the process of launching
Speaker 1: a Twitter alternative, currently rumored to be called Threads. The
Speaker 1: Verge quoted Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox as saying,
Speaker 1: quote We've been hearing from creators and public figures who
Speaker 1: are interested in having a platform that is sanely run
Speaker 1: that they believe that they can trust and rely upon
Speaker 1: for distribution end quote. And in a podcast with Lex Friedman,
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg threw some more shade in Elon's direction, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: I've always thought that Twitter should have a billion people
Speaker 1: using it end quote, and seeing the popularity of Meta's
Speaker 1: Facebook platform there, I imagine whether this will actually escalate
Speaker 1: into some real fight remains to be seen, though. I
Speaker 1: think we're not likely to get that. I think it's
Speaker 1: just going to be posturing. But if we do get
Speaker 1: that fight, well, Zuckerberg has actually been training in martial
Speaker 1: arts for a while and participating in tournaments and even
Speaker 1: winning a few, and Elon is Elon. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it would be a good fight, but I'd be dishonest
Speaker 1: if I said I found the concept of billionaires pitted
Speaker 1: against each other for our entertainment to be you know, bad.
Speaker 1: I'm all for it beat the rich, as it were.
Speaker 1: I've got more to say about both Twitter and Meta today,
Speaker 1: so let's stick with Twitter first. Australia's Online Safety Commissioner
Speaker 1: Julie Inman Grant says that one third of all complaints
Speaker 1: about online hate that her office receives relate to Twitter. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, Twitter is not as big a platform
Speaker 1: as some others out there, like Facebook and TikTok. It's smaller,
Speaker 1: so to be the source of one third of all
Speaker 1: complaints of online harassment that is significant. And then Grant
Speaker 1: goes on to say that not only is Twitter failing
Speaker 1: to rein in hate speech and abuse, but the service's
Speaker 1: decision to reverse several account bans means that there's now
Speaker 1: a rise of hate groups returning to Twitter, and that
Speaker 1: gives those groups more momentum, which is not great for society.
Speaker 1: Twitter has had a hard time holding on to trust
Speaker 1: and safety leadership. Two trust and safety leaders have left
Speaker 1: the company in the last year, and at least from
Speaker 1: an outsider's perspective, the company doesn't seem terribly concerned about
Speaker 1: trust and safety. They pretty much wiped out those offices,
Speaker 1: leaving leaders with like no one to lead. The company
Speaker 1: has twenty eight days to respond to Inman Grant's request
Speaker 1: here to answer for this problem of online harm on
Speaker 1: their platform, or else they could face a fine of
Speaker 1: up to seven hundred thousand dollars Australian. Now that's about
Speaker 1: four hundred and seventy five thousand, three hundred bucks American.
Speaker 1: And y'all, let's be serious. In the corporate world, that's
Speaker 1: not much. I mean, that's a huge amount of money
Speaker 1: to someone like you or me, probably definitely me, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming you maybe not, in which case, hey, good job.
Speaker 1: But it's not a whole lot for big companies like Twitter.
Speaker 1: And moreover, as we're going to learn in just a moment,
Speaker 1: Twitter hasn't exactly been current on its bills in general,
Speaker 1: so the odds of collecting that money aren't certain even
Speaker 1: if the regulators do decide to find Twitter. This is
Speaker 1: part of the big problem with regulatory agencies around the
Speaker 1: world is that they have a limit to their authority.
Speaker 1: Which makes sense. You don't want them to have limitless authority.
Speaker 1: That would be chaos. But the problem is that the
Speaker 1: amount they are able to find companies or to hold
Speaker 1: them accountable is tiny in comparison with those companies' capacity
Speaker 1: to just pay it, to go away, or to ignore it.
Speaker 1: But now let's talk about those unpaid bills. Mark Schrobinger,
Speaker 1: who formerly was Twitter's senior director of compensation has filed
Speaker 1: a class action lawsuit accusing the company of withholding payments
Speaker 1: due to current and former employees. My guess is, when
Speaker 1: the former director of compensation is saying something's wrong about
Speaker 1: the company's compensation, we should probably listen. Anyway. According to
Speaker 1: the lawsuit, Twitter had promised employees that for twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two they would receive half of their target bonuses, which
Speaker 1: is better than nothing. Except employees got nothing. They never
Speaker 1: got the payout that they had been promised. So the
Speaker 1: lawsuit argues that this constitutes a breach of contract and
Speaker 1: Twitter should be held accountable to pay the promised amount,
Speaker 1: plus probably damages on top of that. If I were
Speaker 1: to guess, this is just the latest in an avalanche
Speaker 1: of lawsuits leveled against the company. Literally hundreds of lawsuits
Speaker 1: are forming against Twitter, and that includes lawsuits from the
Speaker 1: former bosses of Twitter, the people who ran Twitter before
Speaker 1: Elon Musk took over. They say the company owes more
Speaker 1: than a million dollars in legal fees to them. Plus
Speaker 1: there are various vendors and landlords who have accused Twitter
Speaker 1: of not paying bills. You know, they recently got an
Speaker 1: eviction notice out of Colorado due to not paying the
Speaker 1: bill for the office space there. So I'm very curious
Speaker 1: what Twitter's new CEO is going to do about all this,
Speaker 1: if she does anything about it at all. Switching over
Speaker 1: to Meta, the company's independent oversight board as a request,
Speaker 1: the board wants Meta to evaluate how it approaches prevention
Speaker 1: with regards to posts that call for political violence. This
Speaker 1: is in the wake of an incident from last year.
Speaker 1: There was a video showing a Brazilian military leader telling
Speaker 1: people they should quote unquote hit the street in an
Speaker 1: attempt to incite violence during the twenty twenty two Brazilian election.
Speaker 1: Meda kept the post up, but then the board selected
Speaker 1: that case as one for it to examine, and then
Speaker 1: Meta took the post down. So now the board is
Speaker 1: telling Meta that the company needs to reassure the public
Speaker 1: that it has the proper policies and processes in place
Speaker 1: to prevent that kind of stuff in the future, and
Speaker 1: to actually follow through on those policies, particularly as we
Speaker 1: head toward another election year here in the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: I should also add that the oversight board, which can
Speaker 1: review Meta's choices to remove or to allow posts, doesn't
Speaker 1: actually have the authority to force change. Can only make
Speaker 1: recommendations to Meta on courses of action, but the company
Speaker 1: cannot choose to either heed those recommendations or to ignore
Speaker 1: them because the board's suggestions are non binding. And you
Speaker 1: might say, why even have an oversight board if it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the authority to enforce change, And really the
Speaker 1: answer is because it's a form of self regulation that
Speaker 1: if Meta shows that it can self regulate, then that
Speaker 1: could potentially prevent government regulators from waiting into the whole matter.
Speaker 1: So you could view the oversight board as Meta's attempt
Speaker 1: to fix problems before government agencies start getting into things
Speaker 1: as well. Let's move on to Amazon. So the US
Speaker 1: Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, has filed a lawsuit against Amazon,
Speaker 1: alleging that the company uses various tactics to lure or
Speaker 1: trick people into signing up for Amazon Prime, and then
Speaker 1: the company does its darndest to prevent people from canceling
Speaker 1: their service. The FTC says that Amazon used insidious means
Speaker 1: to get folks to unknowingly sign up for Prime membership
Speaker 1: without their consent. That's pretty darn underhanded. If true, this
Speaker 1: would violate the restore Online Shopper's Confidence Act, which yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if a company is tricking people into paying
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty nine bucks a year and then
Speaker 1: doing its best to prevent people from backing out of that,
Speaker 1: then yes, consumers are going to lose confidence in online
Speaker 1: shopping with that company. Amazon representative Heather Layman denied the
Speaker 1: allegations and said the FTC is just playing wrong about
Speaker 1: both the facts and the law. The FTC countered that
Speaker 1: Amazon purposefully made choices to grab more subscribers and then
Speaker 1: hold them prisoner because it would impact the company's bottom
Speaker 1: line to allow them to back out easily. Also, Insider
Speaker 1: reports that an internal document from Amazon referenced the cancelation
Speaker 1: process as iliad. That's a reference to the epic poem
Speaker 1: by Homer about a span of time that happens during
Speaker 1: the Trojan War, and that doesn't exactly evoke images of
Speaker 1: a smooth and painless process. Also, why the heck would
Speaker 1: anyone use a name like that to describe a cancellation process,
Speaker 1: even internally, it just sounds like it's asking for trouble.
Speaker 1: You should name it something like beach day or coffee break, y'all.
Speaker 1: This is kind of like the folks at FTX allegedly
Speaker 1: naming an internal group chat wire fraud. It's funny until
Speaker 1: the Feds come a knock in. Anyway, the FTC is
Speaker 1: seeking civil penalties against Amazon, as well as a permanent
Speaker 1: injunction that would forbid the company to use those kinds
Speaker 1: of tactics in the future. And as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Amazon denies the charges entirely, so we will see where
Speaker 1: this goes. Meanwhile, the US Congress is also interested in
Speaker 1: holding Amazon accountable, this time for conditions at Amazon's distribution centers.
Speaker 1: The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions said
Speaker 1: that Amazon warehouse workers filed more serious injury claims than
Speaker 1: all other US warehouse workers combined. Yikes, that does sound
Speaker 1: like there's a serious systemic problem that is contributing to
Speaker 1: injuries and a negative impact on quality of life for
Speaker 1: Amazon warehouse employees. Senator Bernie Sanders says the problem is
Speaker 1: worse than it sounds. That Amazon funnels injured employees through
Speaker 1: an on site medical clinic at warehouses, and the clinical
Speaker 1: staff are encouraged to get workers back to work as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible while under reporting serious injuries. If true,
Speaker 1: this is approaching some of the truly awful work conditions
Speaker 1: you might hear about in something like a Charles Dickens novel.
Speaker 1: It explains why we've seen a couple of cases where
Speaker 1: distribution center employees have voted to unionize. It also helps
Speaker 1: explain Amazon's incredible turnover rate at these places. Sanders has
Speaker 1: called on Amazon CEO Andy Jasse to appear and address
Speaker 1: these allegations, and gave him a deadline of July fifth
Speaker 1: to do it. He also indicated it was possible that
Speaker 1: Congress would call upon Jassey or even Amazon's founder Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos to testify about warehouse safety and worker injuries in
Speaker 1: front of all of Congress. So we'll have to see
Speaker 1: if that happens. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors, but we'll be back with more
Speaker 1: news in just a moment. We're back, and we've got
Speaker 1: just a couple more stories to cover. The protests over
Speaker 1: on Reddit continue, though they've taken some odd turns. For
Speaker 1: those just joining this story, Reddit made a change to
Speaker 1: its API, its Application program interface, which is how third
Speaker 1: party developers can create tools that then access Reddit. The
Speaker 1: change is meant that developers will have to pay a
Speaker 1: fee as their tools reference Reddit, and the more popular
Speaker 1: and active apps could rack up considerable fees, perhaps in
Speaker 1: the millions of dollars per year, and that in turn
Speaker 1: has prompted several popular apps to close up shop and
Speaker 1: go dark. More than eight thousand subredits on the site
Speaker 1: protested reddits policy changes, as well as how Reddit CEO
Speaker 1: Steve Huffman has handled the situation, primarily by dismissing it
Speaker 1: and threatening moderators who have participated in the protest with
Speaker 1: a ban. Reddit generates revenue through advertising, so the protesters
Speaker 1: have tried to hit Reddit where it hurts the wallet.
Speaker 1: Some subreddits switched to private mode and essentially eliminated all
Speaker 1: traffic to the subreddit, which obviously cuts off ad dollars
Speaker 1: that way, but others went a different route. They went
Speaker 1: dark for a couple of days, but when they came back,
Speaker 1: they switched a tag on the subreddit community to turn
Speaker 1: it into an NSFW or not Safe for work subreddit,
Speaker 1: and Reddit does allowed those kinds of communities on its platform. However,
Speaker 1: it does not pair in SFW communities with advertising, and
Speaker 1: that makes sense because your typical company is probably not
Speaker 1: eager to have their products associated with pornography or OTHERFW material,
Speaker 1: and redditors have been flooding these communities with you know
Speaker 1: in SFW content which assures that no advertising is going
Speaker 1: to happen in those communities while this is going on.
Speaker 1: And again, this is a direct strike against Reddit's revenue source,
Speaker 1: and as such, the platform has removed several moderators, although
Speaker 1: it did later reinstall some of those in an effort
Speaker 1: to fight back against this protest, and it's worked for
Speaker 1: some subredits which have dropped the NSFW tag. There have
Speaker 1: been cases where some of the subreddit moderators have said
Speaker 1: they acted without the actual support of the community, and
Speaker 1: I can understand a moderator changing it back then, because
Speaker 1: really you need to get the buy in of the
Speaker 1: community before you make a move like that. But other
Speaker 1: communities are still going on strong with this protest, and
Speaker 1: it's not like Reddit has an endless supply of replacement
Speaker 1: mods to put in the spot where they have banned
Speaker 1: other moderators. I'm not sure if Reddit is ultimately going
Speaker 1: to win or lose this battle. I just know the
Speaker 1: fight isn't over yet. Ford's CEO Jim Farley threw some
Speaker 1: more shade toward Elon Musk, who must be feeling pretty
Speaker 1: much in the dark by now. Anyway, this doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with Twitter. Instead, it focuses on one
Speaker 1: of Musk's other companies, namely Tesla, and it's long delayed
Speaker 1: cyber truck. Ford is preparing to launch its own, also
Speaker 1: delayed electric truck, the F one P fifty Lightning, and
Speaker 1: when he was asked if he felt that the cyber
Speaker 1: truck is a significant competitive threat to the Lightning, Farley
Speaker 1: was quick to dismiss such notions. He said, and I quote,
Speaker 1: I make trucks for real people who do real work,
Speaker 1: and that's a different kind of truck. Now I get
Speaker 1: what he's saying, but it does strike me as wrong
Speaker 1: to say that folks in Silicon Valley aren't real people.
Speaker 1: I mean they are, I think. I mean, some of
Speaker 1: the might be robots, and there's probably one or two
Speaker 1: who are holograms, but I bet most of them are
Speaker 1: real people. Anyway. Farley's point is that he feels the
Speaker 1: cyber truck fails to meet the needs that most truck
Speaker 1: owners have, like people who actually make practical use of
Speaker 1: their trucks, and it's not like just a status symbol
Speaker 1: or something. I think that's what he was getting at,
Speaker 1: and that conversely, Ford's upcoming truck meets all the needs
Speaker 1: of your typical truck driving you know, real person. However,
Speaker 1: all that being said, the Lightning will use testless specs
Speaker 1: for charging ports, and that could actually become the EV
Speaker 1: charging standard, at least here in the United States, or
Speaker 1: at least one of very few standards. Farley said that
Speaker 1: this was just a decision that was good because it's
Speaker 1: good for customers. And I agree. No one wants competing
Speaker 1: charging standards because just imagine you're driving your electric vehicle
Speaker 1: and you come up to a charging station because your
Speaker 1: car's juice is getting a little low, and then you
Speaker 1: see that the charging station isn't compatible with your electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: That would be a nightmare, right. It's not like when
Speaker 1: you drive up to a gas station and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: these pumps don't work with this car. You want something
Speaker 1: that is as much of a universal standard as it
Speaker 1: can be. So I think that it's a wise move.
Speaker 1: As for the ultimate fate of the cyber truck, I
Speaker 1: just don't know. I mean, it's been widely reported that
Speaker 1: the delays have more to do with design issues that
Speaker 1: have cropped up during development more than anything else, So
Speaker 1: my advice would be hold off on buying the first
Speaker 1: ones off the lot and see how things shake out
Speaker 1: over time. Okay, that's it for the news this week.
Speaker 1: I'm off next week on vacation, but I managed to
Speaker 1: record three new episodes in advance, so Monday through Wednesday
Speaker 1: or new episodes, you'll only be getting a rerun on Thursday,
Speaker 1: plus the classic episode on Friday. But that's a weekly thing.
Speaker 1: Fair warning. However, I wrote and recorded next week's episodes
Speaker 1: while I was under the influence of an over the
Speaker 1: counter headache medication, which normally wouldn't be an issue except
Speaker 1: I accidentally took the PM version of that medication, so
Speaker 1: I got real loopy. I'm gonna publish those episodes anyway,
Speaker 1: because you only live once, by Golly, so be prepared
Speaker 1: to learn about symbolic logic and the mighty boosh. I
Speaker 1: hope you're all well, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.