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 iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending Friday September sixth, twenty twenty four, which
Speaker 1: my math holds up means that next week is Friday
Speaker 1: the thirteenth. But we got plenty of unlucky things to
Speaker 1: talk about today, so I guess I should just hold
Speaker 1: my horses for next week. First up, we got some
Speaker 1: updates on some unfolding stories in the world of tech.
Speaker 1: Pavel Diroff, the CEO of Telegram, has made a statement
Speaker 1: following his arrest in Paris, France. So if you recall,
Speaker 1: French authorities are accusing Telegram of harboring illegal activity and
Speaker 1: doing nothing to stop it. In fact, there are concerns
Speaker 1: that the platform actively shields criminal users by refusing to
Speaker 1: cooperate with legal requests for user information. Telegram established itself
Speaker 1: as a communications platform that was meant to be free
Speaker 1: of censorship, but many countries have laws about content moderation
Speaker 1: and if a platform refuses to moderate content and as
Speaker 1: a result, users conduct illegal activities on the platform, well,
Speaker 1: then the platform itself can be held at least partly
Speaker 1: responsible for that, being complicit in that. Durov's statement acknowledges
Speaker 1: that criminals have made use of Telegram and that this
Speaker 1: is a problem. He maintained that his arrest was a
Speaker 1: surprise and in his view, unfair, but he also admitted
Speaker 1: that Telegram has areas that need attention and improvement. He
Speaker 1: didn't go into a whole lot of detail, but I
Speaker 1: inferred that he will be implementing a more active content
Speaker 1: moderation policy, and that if the allegations that Telegram has
Speaker 1: in the fact been too slow to respond to legal
Speaker 1: requests in the past, that could be something that changes
Speaker 1: as well. Like he pointed out, hey, we have an
Speaker 1: established way to go through channels and make legal requests,
Speaker 1: but a lot of government officials have said, yeah, we
Speaker 1: did that and we didn't get a response. So my
Speaker 1: guess is that's going to change too. Derov did double
Speaker 1: down in one way, however. He pointed out that if
Speaker 1: a country or region makes demands that are counter to
Speaker 1: Telegram's values, he will not hesitate to pull up stakes
Speaker 1: and leave that country or region. He has done so
Speaker 1: in the past and would do so again. Another update,
Speaker 1: So last week I talked about how a Supreme Court
Speaker 1: judge in Brazil was threatening to shut X down X
Speaker 1: formerly known as Twitter, at least in Brazil, and that
Speaker 1: has happened. So essentially, internet service providers in Brazil are
Speaker 1: supposed to block traffic to X. Now. All of this
Speaker 1: also centers around the issue of moderation, similar to the
Speaker 1: Telegram story. The judge has said that X is giving
Speaker 1: a platform to hate speech and disinformation campaigns and has
Speaker 1: demanded that X remove certain accounts, and X refused that,
Speaker 1: and now we're here Now. Reportedly Brazilians have been flocking
Speaker 1: to an alternative to X, slash Twitter. It's not Meta's threads,
Speaker 1: although those have seen you. Downloads for Threads have seen
Speaker 1: an uptick, But really the big one has been blue Sky. Apparently,
Speaker 1: downloads for blue Sky spiked this week, with more than
Speaker 1: two million users joining the service over a matter of days.
Speaker 1: Now you might remember blue Sky was one of Jack
Speaker 1: Dorsey's projects, and Dorsey came from the old version of Twitter.
Speaker 1: As for X's status in Brazil, well, the full Supreme
Speaker 1: Court weighed in on that. One judge's decision, and essentially
Speaker 1: they said, yeah, no, that was the right call. So
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure where things will go from here.
Speaker 1: Presumably X will remain inaccessible in Brazil unless you're using
Speaker 1: like a VPN or something until the company changes and
Speaker 1: starts to comply with the government orders. I don't see
Speaker 1: that happening necessarily with X. It just doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: that it would be a thing. And yeah, this to
Speaker 1: me is kind of icky, Like I'm not a big
Speaker 1: fan of the entities that prompted this action in the
Speaker 1: first place, that is, the hard right wing accounts that
Speaker 1: have concerned the Supreme Court justice in Brazil. But I'm
Speaker 1: also not a fan of like just a blanket ban
Speaker 1: going on here. It's a tough situation and I honestly
Speaker 1: I don't know how I would handle it. I also
Speaker 1: don't know if the situation that's going on in Brazil
Speaker 1: influenced the former head of Global affairs over at X,
Speaker 1: because he just handed in his resignation. Nick Pickles is
Speaker 1: his name. He has the absolute best name ever, and
Speaker 1: he has been with Twitter slash X for like a decade.
Speaker 1: So he sent a message to the company alerting staff
Speaker 1: that he has resigned in his last days today, and
Speaker 1: he didn't really give any details regarding the reason behind
Speaker 1: his departure. And I'm sure there are actually a lot
Speaker 1: of factors involved. I don't want to suggest that one
Speaker 1: thing convinced him, oh, it's time to go. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if the situation in Brazil was
Speaker 1: a contributing factor. I just imagined that being the head
Speaker 1: of global affairs when an entire country has decided to
Speaker 1: ban your company's service has to be a rough way
Speaker 1: to start your day. CNN's Hannah Ziadi posted an article
Speaker 1: titled advertisers plan to withdraw from X in record numbers
Speaker 1: And that might sound a little familiar to a lot
Speaker 1: of y'all. We've seen this actually a few times. Since
Speaker 1: Elon Musk acquired Twitter in twenty twenty two, advertisers have
Speaker 1: shown concern that X slash Twitter isn't really a safe
Speaker 1: place to advertise. Most brands are not keen about the
Speaker 1: possibility that their ads could show up next to posts
Speaker 1: containing like hate speech or misinformation. It's not really a
Speaker 1: good look if there's a screenshot showing truly horrific content.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, there's also an ad for like athletic shoes
Speaker 1: or maybe a family friendly streaming service or something right
Speaker 1: next to it. Ziadi references a survey conducted by a
Speaker 1: market research firm called Cantar and Kantar reported that more
Speaker 1: than twenty five percent of marketers have plans to decrease
Speaker 1: spending on X next year. And I think this is
Speaker 1: really damning. Apparently only four percent of marketers view X
Speaker 1: as being brand safe, meaning you can be reasonably certain
Speaker 1: that your advertisers were not going to just show up
Speaker 1: next to posts from like white supremacists or Russian funded influencers.
Speaker 1: More on those just a second. Actually, honestly, I think
Speaker 1: this is really a continuation of a trend we saw
Speaker 1: not long after elimsk first took control of Twitter. Twitter
Speaker 1: slash X is no longer a publicly traded company. That
Speaker 1: means we don't get SEC filings like we would for
Speaker 1: other organizations, where we could take a really close look
Speaker 1: at things like revenue vers cost. But I have to
Speaker 1: imagine the revenue sheets over at X have to look
Speaker 1: pretty grim unless they've sold a whole lot more of
Speaker 1: those blue check marks. Now, I just referenced that I
Speaker 1: would talk about Russian funded influencers, and now we're at
Speaker 1: that point. So the US Department of Justice unveiled an
Speaker 1: indictment this week that alleges two Russian nationals have been
Speaker 1: coordinating with right leaning influencers in the United States in
Speaker 1: order to publish and distribute content that's aligned with Russia's
Speaker 1: global goals. So essentially, this is a story about how
Speaker 1: a group of US influencers are allegedly the paid spokespeople
Speaker 1: of the Russian government when you really get down to it,
Speaker 1: so as the saying goes, you gotta follow the money,
Speaker 1: and some of these influencers landed some really lucrative deals
Speaker 1: to produce relatively small amounts of work. Not all of them,
Speaker 1: I mean all of them are making crazy bank compared
Speaker 1: to someone like I don't know me. But then I
Speaker 1: also I would like to think that if I were
Speaker 1: approached to become the mouthpiece of a propaganda arm for
Speaker 1: a country like Russia, I would have the good sense
Speaker 1: to say, no, thank you, I appreciate the offer, but
Speaker 1: this is not in alignment with my own values. However,
Speaker 1: the money given to these influencers that traces back to
Speaker 1: a media company in Tennessee, which is believed to be Tenant.
Speaker 1: In fact, we might as well just say it is Tenant,
Speaker 1: but it's not overtly named in the indictment. In turn,
Speaker 1: Tenant was allegedly receiving money from various shell corporations that
Speaker 1: ultimately were drawing cash from a state backed Russian media
Speaker 1: outlet called RT. So the DOJ released this indictment that read,
Speaker 1: in part quote. Many of the videos published by US
Speaker 1: Company one contain commentary on events and issues in the
Speaker 1: United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related
Speaker 1: to domestic and foreign policy. While the views expressed in
Speaker 1: the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content
Speaker 1: of the videos are often consistent with the Government of
Speaker 1: Russia's interest in amplifying US domestic divisions in order to
Speaker 1: weaken US opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such
Speaker 1: as its ongoing war in Ukraine end quote. So the
Speaker 1: indictment again, it doesn't name specific organizations or people. It
Speaker 1: uses things like, you know, founder one and founder two
Speaker 1: or company one to designate the different parties. But it
Speaker 1: is insanely easy to read between the lines, because, for
Speaker 1: one thing, the indictment uses a description of this Tennessee
Speaker 1: based company. That description is literally word for word, the
Speaker 1: same description that shows up on Tenant media website. A
Speaker 1: day after the indictment, made News YouTube announced it was
Speaker 1: quote terminating the Tenant Media channel and four channels operated
Speaker 1: by its owner, Lauren Chen as part of our ongoing
Speaker 1: efforts to combat coordinated influence operations end quote. Several of
Speaker 1: the influencers who were working for Tenant Media have since
Speaker 1: come forward to claim that they were unaware of the
Speaker 1: business relationship between Tenant and RT, though it sure is
Speaker 1: convenient that the videos they were told to produce and
Speaker 1: share aligned so neatly with the talking points that the
Speaker 1: Kremlin has been pushing out. I guess if the dollar
Speaker 1: figure on the piece of paper is big enough, it's
Speaker 1: really easy to ignore everything else and to not employ,
Speaker 1: i don't know, some common sense and judgment. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that also includes ignoring the fact that you could be
Speaker 1: complicit in violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is
Speaker 1: what this indictment is all about. The investigation appears to
Speaker 1: show that Tenant Media's founders figured something was up as
Speaker 1: the continue to receive pressure to share more videos supporting
Speaker 1: narratives that were favorable to Russia. Like it may not
Speaker 1: have been overtly understood, but it certainly appears that they
Speaker 1: kind of knew where the money was coming from. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll talk about this story a lot more as
Speaker 1: it develops. Okay, we're going to take a quick break
Speaker 1: and come back with more tech news after these messages.
Speaker 1: We're back and turning to AI. Now. Reuter's reports that
Speaker 1: this week nations had the opportunity to sign on to
Speaker 1: the AI Convention. This is an international treaty that's aimed
Speaker 1: at establishing safety measures and best practices for artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: It is intended to protect human rights in an era
Speaker 1: in which more organizations and corporations are integrating AI into
Speaker 1: their processes, their products, and their services. However, Reuters also
Speaker 1: talked to a legal expert named Francesca Ferucci about this treaty,
Speaker 1: and Finucci expressed some concerns. She said, quote, the formulation
Speaker 1: of principles and obligations in this convention is so overbroad
Speaker 1: and fraught with caveats that it raises serious questions about
Speaker 1: their legal certainty and effective enforceability end quote. Honestly, that
Speaker 1: sounds pretty much on par for how governments typically attempt
Speaker 1: to legislate technology. They often use language that ends up
Speaker 1: being so vague or so broad there ends up being
Speaker 1: no meaningful way to implement or enforce rules. Further, the
Speaker 1: treaty builds in various exceptions to those rules, and the
Speaker 1: more exceptions you have to rules, the less useful the
Speaker 1: rules are. It's kind of like if you were to
Speaker 1: offer a back door to an otherwise secure communication line.
Speaker 1: The very presence of a back door means the line
Speaker 1: is not secure. So, on the one hand, I think
Speaker 1: it is important that leaders try to understand AI, to
Speaker 1: understand its potential applications, and specifically to understand any possible
Speaker 1: negative consequences that we should be on the lookout for,
Speaker 1: with the implementation of AI, perhaps even being able to
Speaker 1: prevent those negative consequences, that's the best case scenario, right.
Speaker 1: So on the other hand, I really worry that anything
Speaker 1: that comes across as a half measure will give leaders
Speaker 1: and citizens kind of a false sense of security, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we got that sorted, we signed a treaty, everything's fine,
Speaker 1: and then when the AI poop actually hits the fan,
Speaker 1: things will be really, really bad. The Attorney General of
Speaker 1: New Mexico has filed a lawsuit against Snap, the company
Speaker 1: behind Snapchat the lawsuit alleges that Snapchat, through its recommendation algorithm,
Speaker 1: facilitates and promotes quote illicit sexual material involving children end quote,
Speaker 1: and that it can quote facilitate sex torsion and the
Speaker 1: trafficking of children, drugs and guns end quote. Further, the
Speaker 1: lawsuit of ledges that Snapchat promotes a feature in which
Speaker 1: images shared on the platform delete themselves shortly after they've
Speaker 1: been opened, but that in fact it's quite possible to
Speaker 1: capture and save those images and videos, and people who
Speaker 1: prey upon children have effectively used this to create a
Speaker 1: kind of black market for child sexual abuse material. The
Speaker 1: lawsuit of ledges that snap has violated the state's unfair
Speaker 1: trade practices law. Now, I haven't seen a response from
Speaker 1: snap yet. In many ways, I feel this lawsuit resembles
Speaker 1: what's going on with Telegram. Over in France, Clearview AI
Speaker 1: has been hit with a fine of thirty and a
Speaker 1: half million euros or nearly thirty four million dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: in case you're not familiar with Clearview, it's a company
Speaker 1: that's largely known for compiling a truly massive database of
Speaker 1: people's faces for the purposes of developing facial recognition software,
Speaker 1: which gets used all around the world by different types
Speaker 1: of organizations and companies. The Dutch Data Protection Authority or DPA,
Speaker 1: charged that Clearview acquired those images without the permission of
Speaker 1: the people who are captured in the photos, and that
Speaker 1: Clearview's business practices violate EU privacy laws. The DPA said
Speaker 1: that Clearview would be banned from doing business in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands and that any entity in the Netherlands found to
Speaker 1: be working with Clearview would face severe penalties. Clearview has
Speaker 1: in the past argued that it doesn't do business in
Speaker 1: the EU, so it shouldn't be held accountable to this,
Speaker 1: but the DPA has said, yeah, well, you still have
Speaker 1: our photos in your database and you still didn't ask
Speaker 1: permission to get them from us, and that's still against
Speaker 1: the laws over here. Bucco. So I'm guessing that Clearview
Speaker 1: is not going to have a lot of success if
Speaker 1: they want to try and appeal this fine. Not long ago,
Speaker 1: Apple began allowing cloud based gaming apps on the App Store,
Speaker 1: but one notable example has yet to show up there,
Speaker 1: and that's Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming app. So why is
Speaker 1: it not on iOS? Well, I bet a lot of
Speaker 1: you out there already have guessed the answer, and it's
Speaker 1: largely because of how Apple takes a big old cut
Speaker 1: of transactions made on iOS devices, to the tune of
Speaker 1: up to thirty percent. More than that, however, Apple also
Speaker 1: demands that all subscriptions on iOS devices have to go
Speaker 1: through the in app purchase process, meaning you can't just
Speaker 1: port over an existing subscription to Microsoft Cloud Gaming and
Speaker 1: then use it on iOS. You would have to subscribe
Speaker 1: through the app itself so that Apple could get its cut.
Speaker 1: Microsoft has pointed out that this pair of policies mean
Speaker 1: it's not really feasible to offer a cloud based gaming
Speaker 1: service on iOS devices because the economics just don't work out,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty similar argument that we've heard from
Speaker 1: lots of other companies that Apple's policies cut far too
Speaker 1: far into revenue. Several years back, Apple made the move
Speaker 1: to become more services oriented, and while it obviously still
Speaker 1: produces hardware, and in fact hardware generates the majority of
Speaker 1: Apple's revenue, the services side is insanely profitable. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make up as much of the revenue, but it has
Speaker 1: a much higher profit margin that's largely thanks to policies
Speaker 1: like these, So I don't see Apple really changing anything
Speaker 1: soon unless regulators around the world decide that those policies
Speaker 1: are anti competitive and harmful to consumers. The Internet Archive
Speaker 1: was handed a legal loss this week that I think
Speaker 1: was a total mistake. It specifically relates to the archives
Speaker 1: Open Library, So the Internet Archive would allow people to
Speaker 1: digitally check out materials in the open library for free,
Speaker 1: you know, like a library does. The Open Library operated
Speaker 1: in a way that was meant to prevent unauthorized sharing.
Speaker 1: For one thing, each digital copy was linked to a
Speaker 1: copy that had been purchased or gifted to the Internet Archive,
Speaker 1: and the Archive kept it one to one. That means
Speaker 1: the Archive couldn't just lend out digital copies of works
Speaker 1: willy nilly. Each copy had to be linked to one
Speaker 1: that was actually owned by the archive itself. So if
Speaker 1: the Archive only had a single copy of a work
Speaker 1: in its possession, it could only lend out one digital
Speaker 1: copy of that work at a time. It would not
Speaker 1: be able to lend it out again until that lending
Speaker 1: time had elapsed. None of that seemed to matter when
Speaker 1: publishers argued that the Internet Archive was going to remove
Speaker 1: all incentive for authors to write anything in the first place,
Speaker 1: because who would write if their work was just given
Speaker 1: away for free? But that's obviously not what's happening here,
Speaker 1: at least not in my opinion. The archive is just
Speaker 1: serving as a library, you know, those things that already exist.
Speaker 1: They give citizens access to works that they might otherwise
Speaker 1: never encounter, whether it's because they couldn't afford to buy
Speaker 1: their own copy or they just didn't even know it existed.
Speaker 1: There's tons more about this story on tech Dirt. I
Speaker 1: recommend you go there to read about it. It's written
Speaker 1: by Mike Masnik. It's a really great article. It's thoroughly researched.
Speaker 1: He goes into a lot more detail. The title of
Speaker 1: the article is second Circuit says libraries disincentivize authors to
Speaker 1: write books by lending them for free. Check that out
Speaker 1: over at ours Technica. BENJ. Edwards has another fun article
Speaker 1: titled FBI busts musicians elaborate AI powered ten million dollars
Speaker 1: streaming royalty heist. And I can't quite decide if I
Speaker 1: find this story amusing or infuriating. Anyway, here's the quick version.
Speaker 1: A guy named Michael Smith used AI to create a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of songs, and he assigned these songs to
Speaker 1: various fake bands and then upload the material to different
Speaker 1: streaming platforms. Then he created a essentially a bot army
Speaker 1: to quote unquote listen to these streams and thus drove
Speaker 1: up royal ty for those songs. So songs he didn't
Speaker 1: write he used AI to create them were being listened
Speaker 1: to bots, not people, and over the course of several years,
Speaker 1: this scheme netted him somewhere in the neighborhood of ten
Speaker 1: million dollars until he was found out, and now he
Speaker 1: faces charges a fraud because using bots to make music
Speaker 1: that other bots tune into isn't really the spirit of
Speaker 1: streaming services, though it is increasingly what the Internet is
Speaker 1: turning into. I mean, I've talked about that a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's a real problem that generative AI is creating
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that no one other than other
Speaker 1: bots that are scraping content are actually consuming. And that
Speaker 1: just means that the next generation of generative AI is
Speaker 1: worse than the one before it. Now, this case is
Speaker 1: not generative AI in that regard. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: for creating the songs in the first place, but the
Speaker 1: bots weren't trying to scrape data to make future songs.
Speaker 1: They were just there to drive the numbers up for
Speaker 1: those listens. It's kind of like when people would pay
Speaker 1: to get bots to boost their follower numbers on various
Speaker 1: plays platforms like Twitter or whatever. But of course this
Speaker 1: scam involves money changing hands and that's where the fraud
Speaker 1: comes in. Anyway, I'm really curious to know how many
Speaker 1: actual human beings listen to any of these songs, and
Speaker 1: whether there are any human fans of this AI generated music,
Speaker 1: or if this literally was just a case where bots
Speaker 1: were listening to stuff made by bots. That's it for
Speaker 1: this week. I hope all of you are doing well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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