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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the

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Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for

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Speaker 1: the week ending Friday September sixth, twenty twenty four, which

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Speaker 1: my math holds up means that next week is Friday

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Speaker 1: the thirteenth. But we got plenty of unlucky things to

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Speaker 1: talk about today, so I guess I should just hold

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Speaker 1: my horses for next week. First up, we got some

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Speaker 1: updates on some unfolding stories in the world of tech.

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Speaker 1: Pavel Diroff, the CEO of Telegram, has made a statement

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Speaker 1: following his arrest in Paris, France. So if you recall,

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Speaker 1: French authorities are accusing Telegram of harboring illegal activity and

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Speaker 1: doing nothing to stop it. In fact, there are concerns

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Speaker 1: that the platform actively shields criminal users by refusing to

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Speaker 1: cooperate with legal requests for user information. Telegram established itself

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Speaker 1: as a communications platform that was meant to be free

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Speaker 1: of censorship, but many countries have laws about content moderation

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Speaker 1: and if a platform refuses to moderate content and as

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Speaker 1: a result, users conduct illegal activities on the platform, well,

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Speaker 1: then the platform itself can be held at least partly

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Speaker 1: responsible for that, being complicit in that. Durov's statement acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that criminals have made use of Telegram and that this

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Speaker 1: is a problem. He maintained that his arrest was a

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Speaker 1: surprise and in his view, unfair, but he also admitted

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Speaker 1: that Telegram has areas that need attention and improvement. He

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Speaker 1: didn't go into a whole lot of detail, but I

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Speaker 1: inferred that he will be implementing a more active content

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Speaker 1: moderation policy, and that if the allegations that Telegram has

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Speaker 1: in the fact been too slow to respond to legal

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Speaker 1: requests in the past, that could be something that changes

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Speaker 1: as well. Like he pointed out, hey, we have an

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Speaker 1: established way to go through channels and make legal requests,

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Speaker 1: but a lot of government officials have said, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: did that and we didn't get a response. So my

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Speaker 1: guess is that's going to change too. Derov did double

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Speaker 1: down in one way, however. He pointed out that if

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Speaker 1: a country or region makes demands that are counter to

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Speaker 1: Telegram's values, he will not hesitate to pull up stakes

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Speaker 1: and leave that country or region. He has done so

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Speaker 1: in the past and would do so again. Another update,

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Speaker 1: So last week I talked about how a Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: judge in Brazil was threatening to shut X down X

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Speaker 1: formerly known as Twitter, at least in Brazil, and that

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Speaker 1: has happened. So essentially, internet service providers in Brazil are

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Speaker 1: supposed to block traffic to X. Now. All of this

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Speaker 1: also centers around the issue of moderation, similar to the

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Speaker 1: Telegram story. The judge has said that X is giving

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Speaker 1: a platform to hate speech and disinformation campaigns and has

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Speaker 1: demanded that X remove certain accounts, and X refused that,

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Speaker 1: and now we're here Now. Reportedly Brazilians have been flocking

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Speaker 1: to an alternative to X, slash Twitter. It's not Meta's threads,

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Speaker 1: although those have seen you. Downloads for Threads have seen

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Speaker 1: an uptick, But really the big one has been blue Sky. Apparently,

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Speaker 1: downloads for blue Sky spiked this week, with more than

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Speaker 1: two million users joining the service over a matter of days.

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Speaker 1: Now you might remember blue Sky was one of Jack

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Speaker 1: Dorsey's projects, and Dorsey came from the old version of Twitter.

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Speaker 1: As for X's status in Brazil, well, the full Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court weighed in on that. One judge's decision, and essentially

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Speaker 1: they said, yeah, no, that was the right call. So

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Speaker 1: I'm not really sure where things will go from here.

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Speaker 1: Presumably X will remain inaccessible in Brazil unless you're using

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Speaker 1: like a VPN or something until the company changes and

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Speaker 1: starts to comply with the government orders. I don't see

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Speaker 1: that happening necessarily with X. It just doesn't seem like

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Speaker 1: that it would be a thing. And yeah, this to

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Speaker 1: me is kind of icky, Like I'm not a big

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Speaker 1: fan of the entities that prompted this action in the

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Speaker 1: first place, that is, the hard right wing accounts that

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Speaker 1: have concerned the Supreme Court justice in Brazil. But I'm

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Speaker 1: also not a fan of like just a blanket ban

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Speaker 1: going on here. It's a tough situation and I honestly

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Speaker 1: I don't know how I would handle it. I also

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Speaker 1: don't know if the situation that's going on in Brazil

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Speaker 1: influenced the former head of Global affairs over at X,

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Speaker 1: because he just handed in his resignation. Nick Pickles is

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Speaker 1: his name. He has the absolute best name ever, and

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Speaker 1: he has been with Twitter slash X for like a decade.

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Speaker 1: So he sent a message to the company alerting staff

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Speaker 1: that he has resigned in his last days today, and

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Speaker 1: he didn't really give any details regarding the reason behind

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Speaker 1: his departure. And I'm sure there are actually a lot

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Speaker 1: of factors involved. I don't want to suggest that one

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Speaker 1: thing convinced him, oh, it's time to go. And in fact,

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Speaker 1: I don't even know if the situation in Brazil was

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Speaker 1: a contributing factor. I just imagined that being the head

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Speaker 1: of global affairs when an entire country has decided to

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Speaker 1: ban your company's service has to be a rough way

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Speaker 1: to start your day. CNN's Hannah Ziadi posted an article

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Speaker 1: titled advertisers plan to withdraw from X in record numbers

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Speaker 1: And that might sound a little familiar to a lot

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Speaker 1: of y'all. We've seen this actually a few times. Since

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk acquired Twitter in twenty twenty two, advertisers have

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Speaker 1: shown concern that X slash Twitter isn't really a safe

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Speaker 1: place to advertise. Most brands are not keen about the

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Speaker 1: possibility that their ads could show up next to posts

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Speaker 1: containing like hate speech or misinformation. It's not really a

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Speaker 1: good look if there's a screenshot showing truly horrific content.

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Speaker 1: And meanwhile, there's also an ad for like athletic shoes

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Speaker 1: or maybe a family friendly streaming service or something right

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Speaker 1: next to it. Ziadi references a survey conducted by a

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Speaker 1: market research firm called Cantar and Kantar reported that more

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Speaker 1: than twenty five percent of marketers have plans to decrease

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Speaker 1: spending on X next year. And I think this is

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Speaker 1: really damning. Apparently only four percent of marketers view X

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Speaker 1: as being brand safe, meaning you can be reasonably certain

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Speaker 1: that your advertisers were not going to just show up

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Speaker 1: next to posts from like white supremacists or Russian funded influencers.

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Speaker 1: More on those just a second. Actually, honestly, I think

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Speaker 1: this is really a continuation of a trend we saw

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Speaker 1: not long after elimsk first took control of Twitter. Twitter

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Speaker 1: slash X is no longer a publicly traded company. That

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Speaker 1: means we don't get SEC filings like we would for

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Speaker 1: other organizations, where we could take a really close look

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Speaker 1: at things like revenue vers cost. But I have to

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Speaker 1: imagine the revenue sheets over at X have to look

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Speaker 1: pretty grim unless they've sold a whole lot more of

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Speaker 1: those blue check marks. Now, I just referenced that I

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Speaker 1: would talk about Russian funded influencers, and now we're at

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Speaker 1: that point. So the US Department of Justice unveiled an

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Speaker 1: indictment this week that alleges two Russian nationals have been

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Speaker 1: coordinating with right leaning influencers in the United States in

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Speaker 1: order to publish and distribute content that's aligned with Russia's

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Speaker 1: global goals. So essentially, this is a story about how

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Speaker 1: a group of US influencers are allegedly the paid spokespeople

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Speaker 1: of the Russian government when you really get down to it,

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Speaker 1: so as the saying goes, you gotta follow the money,

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Speaker 1: and some of these influencers landed some really lucrative deals

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Speaker 1: to produce relatively small amounts of work. Not all of them,

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Speaker 1: I mean all of them are making crazy bank compared

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Speaker 1: to someone like I don't know me. But then I

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Speaker 1: also I would like to think that if I were

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Speaker 1: approached to become the mouthpiece of a propaganda arm for

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Speaker 1: a country like Russia, I would have the good sense

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Speaker 1: to say, no, thank you, I appreciate the offer, but

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Speaker 1: this is not in alignment with my own values. However,

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Speaker 1: the money given to these influencers that traces back to

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Speaker 1: a media company in Tennessee, which is believed to be Tenant.

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Speaker 1: In fact, we might as well just say it is Tenant,

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Speaker 1: but it's not overtly named in the indictment. In turn,

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Speaker 1: Tenant was allegedly receiving money from various shell corporations that

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Speaker 1: ultimately were drawing cash from a state backed Russian media

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Speaker 1: outlet called RT. So the DOJ released this indictment that read,

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Speaker 1: in part quote. Many of the videos published by US

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Speaker 1: Company one contain commentary on events and issues in the

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Speaker 1: United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related

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Speaker 1: to domestic and foreign policy. While the views expressed in

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Speaker 1: the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content

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Speaker 1: of the videos are often consistent with the Government of

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Speaker 1: Russia's interest in amplifying US domestic divisions in order to

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Speaker 1: weaken US opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such

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Speaker 1: as its ongoing war in Ukraine end quote. So the

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Speaker 1: indictment again, it doesn't name specific organizations or people. It

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Speaker 1: uses things like, you know, founder one and founder two

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Speaker 1: or company one to designate the different parties. But it

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Speaker 1: is insanely easy to read between the lines, because, for

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Speaker 1: one thing, the indictment uses a description of this Tennessee

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Speaker 1: based company. That description is literally word for word, the

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Speaker 1: same description that shows up on Tenant media website. A

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Speaker 1: day after the indictment, made News YouTube announced it was

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Speaker 1: quote terminating the Tenant Media channel and four channels operated

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Speaker 1: by its owner, Lauren Chen as part of our ongoing

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Speaker 1: efforts to combat coordinated influence operations end quote. Several of

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Speaker 1: the influencers who were working for Tenant Media have since

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Speaker 1: come forward to claim that they were unaware of the

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Speaker 1: business relationship between Tenant and RT, though it sure is

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Speaker 1: convenient that the videos they were told to produce and

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Speaker 1: share aligned so neatly with the talking points that the

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Speaker 1: Kremlin has been pushing out. I guess if the dollar

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Speaker 1: figure on the piece of paper is big enough, it's

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Speaker 1: really easy to ignore everything else and to not employ,

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Speaker 1: i don't know, some common sense and judgment. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: that also includes ignoring the fact that you could be

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Speaker 1: complicit in violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is

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Speaker 1: what this indictment is all about. The investigation appears to

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Speaker 1: show that Tenant Media's founders figured something was up as

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Speaker 1: the continue to receive pressure to share more videos supporting

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Speaker 1: narratives that were favorable to Russia. Like it may not

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Speaker 1: have been overtly understood, but it certainly appears that they

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Speaker 1: kind of knew where the money was coming from. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure we'll talk about this story a lot more as

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Speaker 1: it develops. Okay, we're going to take a quick break

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Speaker 1: and come back with more tech news after these messages.

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Speaker 1: We're back and turning to AI. Now. Reuter's reports that

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Speaker 1: this week nations had the opportunity to sign on to

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Speaker 1: the AI Convention. This is an international treaty that's aimed

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Speaker 1: at establishing safety measures and best practices for artificial intelligence.

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Speaker 1: It is intended to protect human rights in an era

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Speaker 1: in which more organizations and corporations are integrating AI into

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Speaker 1: their processes, their products, and their services. However, Reuters also

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Speaker 1: talked to a legal expert named Francesca Ferucci about this treaty,

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Speaker 1: and Finucci expressed some concerns. She said, quote, the formulation

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Speaker 1: of principles and obligations in this convention is so overbroad

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Speaker 1: and fraught with caveats that it raises serious questions about

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Speaker 1: their legal certainty and effective enforceability end quote. Honestly, that

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Speaker 1: sounds pretty much on par for how governments typically attempt

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Speaker 1: to legislate technology. They often use language that ends up

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Speaker 1: being so vague or so broad there ends up being

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Speaker 1: no meaningful way to implement or enforce rules. Further, the

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Speaker 1: treaty builds in various exceptions to those rules, and the

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Speaker 1: more exceptions you have to rules, the less useful the

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Speaker 1: rules are. It's kind of like if you were to

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Speaker 1: offer a back door to an otherwise secure communication line.

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Speaker 1: The very presence of a back door means the line

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Speaker 1: is not secure. So, on the one hand, I think

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Speaker 1: it is important that leaders try to understand AI, to

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Speaker 1: understand its potential applications, and specifically to understand any possible

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Speaker 1: negative consequences that we should be on the lookout for,

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Speaker 1: with the implementation of AI, perhaps even being able to

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Speaker 1: prevent those negative consequences, that's the best case scenario, right.

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Speaker 1: So on the other hand, I really worry that anything

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Speaker 1: that comes across as a half measure will give leaders

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Speaker 1: and citizens kind of a false sense of security, like, oh,

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Speaker 1: we got that sorted, we signed a treaty, everything's fine,

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Speaker 1: and then when the AI poop actually hits the fan,

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Speaker 1: things will be really, really bad. The Attorney General of

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Speaker 1: New Mexico has filed a lawsuit against Snap, the company

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Speaker 1: behind Snapchat the lawsuit alleges that Snapchat, through its recommendation algorithm,

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Speaker 1: facilitates and promotes quote illicit sexual material involving children end quote,

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Speaker 1: and that it can quote facilitate sex torsion and the

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Speaker 1: trafficking of children, drugs and guns end quote. Further, the

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Speaker 1: lawsuit of ledges that Snapchat promotes a feature in which

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Speaker 1: images shared on the platform delete themselves shortly after they've

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Speaker 1: been opened, but that in fact it's quite possible to

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Speaker 1: capture and save those images and videos, and people who

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Speaker 1: prey upon children have effectively used this to create a

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Speaker 1: kind of black market for child sexual abuse material. The

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Speaker 1: lawsuit of ledges that snap has violated the state's unfair

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Speaker 1: trade practices law. Now, I haven't seen a response from

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Speaker 1: snap yet. In many ways, I feel this lawsuit resembles

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Speaker 1: what's going on with Telegram. Over in France, Clearview AI

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Speaker 1: has been hit with a fine of thirty and a

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Speaker 1: half million euros or nearly thirty four million dollars. Now,

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Speaker 1: in case you're not familiar with Clearview, it's a company

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Speaker 1: that's largely known for compiling a truly massive database of

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Speaker 1: people's faces for the purposes of developing facial recognition software,

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Speaker 1: which gets used all around the world by different types

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Speaker 1: of organizations and companies. The Dutch Data Protection Authority or DPA,

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Speaker 1: charged that Clearview acquired those images without the permission of

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Speaker 1: the people who are captured in the photos, and that

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Speaker 1: Clearview's business practices violate EU privacy laws. The DPA said

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Speaker 1: that Clearview would be banned from doing business in the

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Speaker 1: Netherlands and that any entity in the Netherlands found to

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Speaker 1: be working with Clearview would face severe penalties. Clearview has

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Speaker 1: in the past argued that it doesn't do business in

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Speaker 1: the EU, so it shouldn't be held accountable to this,

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Speaker 1: but the DPA has said, yeah, well, you still have

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Speaker 1: our photos in your database and you still didn't ask

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Speaker 1: permission to get them from us, and that's still against

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Speaker 1: the laws over here. Bucco. So I'm guessing that Clearview

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Speaker 1: is not going to have a lot of success if

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Speaker 1: they want to try and appeal this fine. Not long ago,

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Speaker 1: Apple began allowing cloud based gaming apps on the App Store,

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Speaker 1: but one notable example has yet to show up there,

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Speaker 1: and that's Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming app. So why is

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Speaker 1: it not on iOS? Well, I bet a lot of

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Speaker 1: you out there already have guessed the answer, and it's

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Speaker 1: largely because of how Apple takes a big old cut

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Speaker 1: of transactions made on iOS devices, to the tune of

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Speaker 1: up to thirty percent. More than that, however, Apple also

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Speaker 1: demands that all subscriptions on iOS devices have to go

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Speaker 1: through the in app purchase process, meaning you can't just

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Speaker 1: port over an existing subscription to Microsoft Cloud Gaming and

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Speaker 1: then use it on iOS. You would have to subscribe

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Speaker 1: through the app itself so that Apple could get its cut.

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Speaker 1: Microsoft has pointed out that this pair of policies mean

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Speaker 1: it's not really feasible to offer a cloud based gaming

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Speaker 1: service on iOS devices because the economics just don't work out,

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Speaker 1: which is a pretty similar argument that we've heard from

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Speaker 1: lots of other companies that Apple's policies cut far too

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Speaker 1: far into revenue. Several years back, Apple made the move

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Speaker 1: to become more services oriented, and while it obviously still

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Speaker 1: produces hardware, and in fact hardware generates the majority of

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Speaker 1: Apple's revenue, the services side is insanely profitable. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: make up as much of the revenue, but it has

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Speaker 1: a much higher profit margin that's largely thanks to policies

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Speaker 1: like these, So I don't see Apple really changing anything

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Speaker 1: soon unless regulators around the world decide that those policies

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Speaker 1: are anti competitive and harmful to consumers. The Internet Archive

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Speaker 1: was handed a legal loss this week that I think

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Speaker 1: was a total mistake. It specifically relates to the archives

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Speaker 1: Open Library, So the Internet Archive would allow people to

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Speaker 1: digitally check out materials in the open library for free,

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Speaker 1: you know, like a library does. The Open Library operated

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Speaker 1: in a way that was meant to prevent unauthorized sharing.

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Speaker 1: For one thing, each digital copy was linked to a

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Speaker 1: copy that had been purchased or gifted to the Internet Archive,

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Speaker 1: and the Archive kept it one to one. That means

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Speaker 1: the Archive couldn't just lend out digital copies of works

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Speaker 1: willy nilly. Each copy had to be linked to one

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Speaker 1: that was actually owned by the archive itself. So if

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Speaker 1: the Archive only had a single copy of a work

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Speaker 1: in its possession, it could only lend out one digital

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Speaker 1: copy of that work at a time. It would not

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Speaker 1: be able to lend it out again until that lending

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Speaker 1: time had elapsed. None of that seemed to matter when

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Speaker 1: publishers argued that the Internet Archive was going to remove

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Speaker 1: all incentive for authors to write anything in the first place,

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Speaker 1: because who would write if their work was just given

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Speaker 1: away for free? But that's obviously not what's happening here,

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Speaker 1: at least not in my opinion. The archive is just

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Speaker 1: serving as a library, you know, those things that already exist.

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Speaker 1: They give citizens access to works that they might otherwise

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Speaker 1: never encounter, whether it's because they couldn't afford to buy

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Speaker 1: their own copy or they just didn't even know it existed.

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Speaker 1: There's tons more about this story on tech Dirt. I

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Speaker 1: recommend you go there to read about it. It's written

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Speaker 1: by Mike Masnik. It's a really great article. It's thoroughly researched.

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Speaker 1: He goes into a lot more detail. The title of

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Speaker 1: the article is second Circuit says libraries disincentivize authors to

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Speaker 1: write books by lending them for free. Check that out

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Speaker 1: over at ours Technica. BENJ. Edwards has another fun article

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Speaker 1: titled FBI busts musicians elaborate AI powered ten million dollars

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Speaker 1: streaming royalty heist. And I can't quite decide if I

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Speaker 1: find this story amusing or infuriating. Anyway, here's the quick version.

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Speaker 1: A guy named Michael Smith used AI to create a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch of songs, and he assigned these songs to

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Speaker 1: various fake bands and then upload the material to different

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Speaker 1: streaming platforms. Then he created a essentially a bot army

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Speaker 1: to quote unquote listen to these streams and thus drove

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Speaker 1: up royal ty for those songs. So songs he didn't

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Speaker 1: write he used AI to create them were being listened

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Speaker 1: to bots, not people, and over the course of several years,

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Speaker 1: this scheme netted him somewhere in the neighborhood of ten

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Speaker 1: million dollars until he was found out, and now he

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Speaker 1: faces charges a fraud because using bots to make music

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Speaker 1: that other bots tune into isn't really the spirit of

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Speaker 1: streaming services, though it is increasingly what the Internet is

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Speaker 1: turning into. I mean, I've talked about that a lot,

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Speaker 1: but it's a real problem that generative AI is creating

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Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that no one other than other

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Speaker 1: bots that are scraping content are actually consuming. And that

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Speaker 1: just means that the next generation of generative AI is

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Speaker 1: worse than the one before it. Now, this case is

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Speaker 1: not generative AI in that regard. I mean, it was

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Speaker 1: for creating the songs in the first place, but the

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Speaker 1: bots weren't trying to scrape data to make future songs.

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Speaker 1: They were just there to drive the numbers up for

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Speaker 1: those listens. It's kind of like when people would pay

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Speaker 1: to get bots to boost their follower numbers on various

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Speaker 1: plays platforms like Twitter or whatever. But of course this

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Speaker 1: scam involves money changing hands and that's where the fraud

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Speaker 1: comes in. Anyway, I'm really curious to know how many

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Speaker 1: actual human beings listen to any of these songs, and

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Speaker 1: whether there are any human fans of this AI generated music,

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Speaker 1: or if this literally was just a case where bots

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Speaker 1: were listening to stuff made by bots. That's it for

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Speaker 1: this week. I hope all of you are doing well,

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Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff

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Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

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Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.