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 Tuesday,
Speaker 1: April eleventh, twenty three, and we've got a ton of
Speaker 1: news to cover today, with a big chunk dedicated to Twitter.
Speaker 1: It's been a while, as Stained once said, since I
Speaker 1: dragged Twitter over the coals. But we've got a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of Twitter news. But first, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about an intelligence leak in the United States, which kind
Speaker 1: of leads itself to all sorts of snarky jokes. But no,
Speaker 1: this is about top secret documents that have been leaked.
Speaker 1: And apparently this is a thing that's been going on
Speaker 1: since at least January. And you may have heard that
Speaker 1: images of top secret documents, some of them apparently edited,
Speaker 1: have escaped out into the world and they're causing some
Speaker 1: real problems among them. Ukraine reportedly had to change some
Speaker 1: of its strategy with regard to Russia's ongoing war with Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and Russia expressing how upset they are that the West
Speaker 1: and NATO have been supporting Ukraine, which seems like a
Speaker 1: really poorly kept secret in the first place. But whatever.
Speaker 1: But the text side of this is really what I
Speaker 1: want to focus on. Because these documents weren't submitted to
Speaker 1: wiki leaks or anything like that. They appear to have
Speaker 1: initially emerged on a Discord server. Now, y'all may know
Speaker 1: that the original concept behind Discord was to act as
Speaker 1: a means of communication, primarily voice chat for gamers, because
Speaker 1: in game voice systems are frequently not very good. But
Speaker 1: obviously Discord has grown beyond the gaming community, and apparently,
Speaker 1: in a Discord server that appeared to at least partly
Speaker 1: be dedicated to a YouTube figure from the Philippines, someone
Speaker 1: started sharing top secret documents. Who that person is and
Speaker 1: how they got access to the documents and why they
Speaker 1: felt the need to share them is unknown, at least
Speaker 1: to me, though there's speculation that it might have been
Speaker 1: a low level official who had access to such documents
Speaker 1: through their job and also was a member of this
Speaker 1: particular server. Anyway, the leaks expanded beyond that one Discord server,
Speaker 1: which has since been deleted. There were new leaks that
Speaker 1: surfaced in a Discord server that was dedicated to Minecraft,
Speaker 1: of all things, and then it spread to other platforms
Speaker 1: like four Chan. Now, obviously this is a huge concern
Speaker 1: to the US government. It could potentially be a threat
Speaker 1: to national security. So the Department of Justice and the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense are really interested to learn more about
Speaker 1: the source of that leak. Now, clearly the fault does
Speaker 1: not lie with the platforms themselves. Rather it lies with
Speaker 1: whomever was responsible for posting images of the documents in
Speaker 1: the first place. You can read more about the story
Speaker 1: in the New York Times, and Eric Tohler has a
Speaker 1: great article on Bellingcat and it's titled from Discord to
Speaker 1: four Chan, The Improbable Journey of a US Intelligence leak.
Speaker 1: So I highly recommend checking that out if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more, and I'm sure we'll continue to cover
Speaker 1: it as the story develops. Okay, now I've got a
Speaker 1: whole suite of Twitter updates to deliver my guesses they'll
Speaker 1: take up the bulk of this episode. And before I
Speaker 1: really jump into it, I have to give a shout
Speaker 1: out to Casey Newton's newsletter called Platformer, which grouped together
Speaker 1: a ton of these resources. Now I've talked about Casey's
Speaker 1: work on this show before, and he continues to do
Speaker 1: an amazing job. Platformer is well worth the subscription. It
Speaker 1: is a newsletter you subscribe to. It's a paid subscription.
Speaker 1: And I do not personally know Casey. I have no
Speaker 1: connection to him, and I also don't have any connection
Speaker 1: to Platformer other than the fact that I'm a subscriber myself.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that if you're really into tech news
Speaker 1: and like a deep dive into it, it's a good resource. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Casey gives his opinion on Twitter, and he thinks that
Speaker 1: we might be seeing sort of the middle of the
Speaker 1: end for Twitter. You could argue the beginning of the
Speaker 1: end was even before Elon Musk made his move to
Speaker 1: acquire it, but Elon is certainly a big part of
Speaker 1: why Casey feels that the platform could potentially be heading
Speaker 1: to an ignominious end, mostly due to Musk's tendency to
Speaker 1: make mercurial changes to the platform and then frequently reverse
Speaker 1: those changes after facing harsh criticism, and then the platform
Speaker 1: itself seems to be failing with various functions and features.
Speaker 1: So let's cover some of the stories about Twitter and
Speaker 1: how that forty four billion dollar investment is going first.
Speaker 1: Up is a story that Casey actually didn't cover in
Speaker 1: the most recent platformer, as I believe the news broke
Speaker 1: after he had already sent that newsletter out to be published.
Speaker 1: And that's the fact that Twitter Incorporated doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: So Twitter the service still exists, but the company doesn't
Speaker 1: because some court documents revealed that on the corporate back end,
Speaker 1: another one of Musk's company's x Corps has absorbed Twitter Incorporated.
Speaker 1: This is according to Natish Pawa and Mark Joseph Stern,
Speaker 1: who jointly published a piece in Slate yesterday afternoon. And
Speaker 1: here's how the whole story unfolded. A woman named Laura Lumer,
Speaker 1: who's known for her right wing politics and social presence,
Speaker 1: sued Twitter for banning her account a few years ago.
Speaker 1: She claims that this is an abuse of racketeering laws.
Speaker 1: The Slate authors say that, in their opinion, her case
Speaker 1: has no merit, and based upon just the very surface
Speaker 1: level glance I got, I am inclined to agree with them.
Speaker 1: This seems like a case that really has no teeth
Speaker 1: to it. But one thing that the case does is
Speaker 1: it requires Twitter to disclose corporate disclosure statements to the court,
Speaker 1: and then by looking at court filings, you can actually
Speaker 1: see those and one of those statements revealed the fact
Speaker 1: that the Twitter company doesn't exist anymore. But anyway, even
Speaker 1: though Twitter is now part of xcort, the lawsuit still
Speaker 1: remains viable. It just transfers to xcort instead of Twitter Incorporated.
Speaker 1: And you could argue that the corporate move really doesn't
Speaker 1: change anything other than the name of the company that's
Speaker 1: running Twitter the service, all the debt, all the lawsuits,
Speaker 1: all of the troubles still exist. They just transfer to
Speaker 1: this other entity. Apple Insider further goes on to suggest
Speaker 1: that perhaps this move is another sign that Musk intends
Speaker 1: for Twitter to become an everything app, that Twitter will
Speaker 1: eventually become x and this app will support all sorts
Speaker 1: of transactions beyond just posting about lunch and alienating advertisers,
Speaker 1: be handling stuff like shopping and payment transfers and all
Speaker 1: this other kind of stuff. So Twitter Incorporated is dead
Speaker 1: all hail x Coort. I guess let's cover one of
Speaker 1: the things that's going wrong at Twitter. Over the last
Speaker 1: week or so, according to tech Crunch, several users have
Speaker 1: reported seeing Twitter circle messages popping up in the for
Speaker 1: U tab on Twitter, and you might be wondering what
Speaker 1: all that means, because I sure was, which just shows
Speaker 1: you how out of the loop I've been with Twitter
Speaker 1: in general. So a Twitter circle is like a group
Speaker 1: of close friends or trusted acquaintances. Twitter circles are meant
Speaker 1: to allow you to post too smaller, more private groups
Speaker 1: of people. The messages are not meant to go out
Speaker 1: to Twitter's general population, and yet apparently some Twitter circle
Speaker 1: messages have done just that. So if you were browsing
Speaker 1: the for you tab in Twitter, you might actually see
Speaker 1: some messages that you weren't ever meant to see. And
Speaker 1: you could imagine how that could be a big problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, if the same thing were to happen to
Speaker 1: direct messages, all sorts of shenanigans could follow. Tech crunches.
Speaker 1: Amanda Silberling points out that getting a response from Twitter
Speaker 1: is pretty much impossible because Elon Musk famously set the
Speaker 1: pr email address to auto reply to requests by sending
Speaker 1: a poop emoji because that's professional and mature. Oh and
Speaker 1: just assume for all the Twitter stories I'm talking about
Speaker 1: today that at some point within that story the author
Speaker 1: pointed out that it's impossible to get an official response
Speaker 1: from Twitter that isn't a poop emoji, because trust me,
Speaker 1: almost every story I read while writing this includes that,
Speaker 1: let's call it nugget of information. Some former Twitter executives,
Speaker 1: including the former CEO of the company, are now suing Twitter,
Speaker 1: or rather excres now, I guess, because they have been
Speaker 1: saddled with legal fees that I guess the company should
Speaker 1: have covered. This includes legal fees for various government and
Speaker 1: investigations into Twitter that we're leading up to Musk's purchase
Speaker 1: of the company, which, as I'm sure you all remember,
Speaker 1: was in itself a total chaotic mass filled with legal wrangling. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it should come as no surprise that Twitter slash x
Speaker 1: Corps has not paid these legal fees, because well, the
Speaker 1: company pretty much stopped paying all of its bills. It
Speaker 1: stopped paying for rent with the office space, it stopped
Speaker 1: paying for contract work, and stopped paying for janitorial staff, etc.
Speaker 1: And heck, we also know the company laid off or
Speaker 1: drove away about seventy five percent of its workforce since
Speaker 1: late last year, and according to this lawsuit, the company
Speaker 1: is contractually bound to pay these legal fees for former
Speaker 1: executives these are the executives that Elon Musk famously fired
Speaker 1: the day he took possession of the company. So this
Speaker 1: matter has now gone to court and we'll see how
Speaker 1: long it sits there while Twitter continues to not pay
Speaker 1: the bills. All right, So now let's talk about a
Speaker 1: couple of instances where Elon Musk Institute to change and then,
Speaker 1: upon receiving backlash, reversed or at least altered that change.
Speaker 1: And first up is how Musk handled NPR. So, for
Speaker 1: those who don't know, NPR, National Public Radio is a
Speaker 1: media outlet here in the United States. So late last week,
Speaker 1: Twitter appended the label state affiliated media to the NPR
Speaker 1: Twitter account, which I think is a pretty blatant attack
Speaker 1: on NPR's reputation. The phrase state affiliated media typically refers
Speaker 1: to a media outlet that is under the direct control
Speaker 1: of a government, often with the implication that the media
Speaker 1: outlet is biased and the government in question is, to
Speaker 1: at least some degree authoritarian. Think about China and its
Speaker 1: state sponsored media outlets, NPR's Bobby Allen was not about
Speaker 1: to let this go, and so Allen challenged Musk, pointing
Speaker 1: out that the US government has no control over the
Speaker 1: content or editorial voice of NPR, and Musk really had
Speaker 1: nowhere to go on that he could not disagree with
Speaker 1: the statement, so instead he just had Twitter changed the
Speaker 1: label so that it then read that MPR is quote
Speaker 1: unquote government funded, which, while less of an outright lie,
Speaker 1: is still not entirely accurate. NPR receives only about one
Speaker 1: percent of its funding directly from the government. The rest
Speaker 1: comes from lots of other sources, including listeners like you.
Speaker 1: As NPR often includes in their messages, receiving a single
Speaker 1: percent of funding from the government doesn't sound like the
Speaker 1: term government funded should really apply to NPR, and Alan
Speaker 1: pointed out again that one of Musk's other companies, Tesla,
Speaker 1: has received literally billions of dollars in government subsidies, and
Speaker 1: yet the Tesla Twitter account does not include the government
Speaker 1: funded label when it seems like conciderning the amount of
Speaker 1: money that company has received in the form of subsidies
Speaker 1: and such. It certainly should if we're being fair about labels.
Speaker 1: So I think it's pretty clear that Musk's intent was
Speaker 1: to try and discredit or dismiss INPR, because well, the
Speaker 1: organization has this irritating habit of calling Musk out on
Speaker 1: his own bs. Okay, I've got a lot more stories,
Speaker 1: including more Twitter ones, but first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back, and we're back with a couple more Twitter
Speaker 1: news items. Next we have the substack brew Haha brew haha,
Speaker 1: ha ha ha. Shout out to any firestiying theater fans
Speaker 1: out there anyway. So substack is a platform that lets
Speaker 1: people create and monetize subscription newsletters. So platformer, the Casey
Speaker 1: Newton newsletter that I mentioned at the beginning of all
Speaker 1: this Twitter mess is actually built on top of substack.
Speaker 1: Casey Newton builds platform or using substack. Well, one thing
Speaker 1: that substack is working on is a product called notes,
Speaker 1: which works a bit like Yeah, you guessed it. It
Speaker 1: works a bit like Twitter does, and it at least
Speaker 1: appears that Musk isn't very fond of such potential competition.
Speaker 1: Though you could argue that some of the problems that
Speaker 1: popped up, maybe those were coincidental. Maybe those problems were
Speaker 1: more evidence that Twitter itself is breaking as a posted
Speaker 1: to an outright decision to try and penalize substack. For
Speaker 1: one thing, the ability to embed tweets into a post
Speaker 1: on substack appeared to be broken. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: were to try and embed a tweet in a substack
Speaker 1: entry at that time, you would get the message quote
Speaker 1: Twitter has unexpectedly restricted access to embedding tweets in sub
Speaker 1: posts end quote. I'm not sure how unexpected it was
Speaker 1: on Twitter's side, honestly, anyway. On top of that, it
Speaker 1: seemed that Twitter was restricting visibility and the promotion of
Speaker 1: tweets that contained links to posts on substack, and users
Speaker 1: who tried to like or retweet a post that linked
Speaker 1: to substack itself also received error messages. So it seemed
Speaker 1: like Musk was trying to pull a similar tactic that
Speaker 1: he used to head off people jumping ship from Twitter
Speaker 1: to Mastodon a few months back. You might remember he
Speaker 1: began banning links to Mastodon and some other platforms, saying
Speaker 1: that saying all sorts of things to justify the decision,
Speaker 1: none of which really held much water. Anyway. After numerous
Speaker 1: folks raised a stink about Twitter's new direction with substack,
Speaker 1: the service appeared to do a one eighties So links
Speaker 1: are now working again, and it just seems like Musk
Speaker 1: has backed down a little bit on his stance on
Speaker 1: how to handle this but yeah, I mean, considering his history,
Speaker 1: it's again not exactly shocking. Moving right along, Politico's Jessica
Speaker 1: Piper reports that Twitter has failed to disclose political ads,
Speaker 1: despite the service outlining a transparency policy saying it would
Speaker 1: do that. So, Twitter, according to its own rules, is
Speaker 1: supposed to label posts that are part of a paid
Speaker 1: political campaign so that you can see as a user
Speaker 1: that the post is a paid political advertisement. But it
Speaker 1: turns out that several ads that were running on Twitter
Speaker 1: in March, you know, just last month, were not labeled
Speaker 1: that way, even though they were clearly actual paid for
Speaker 1: campaign ads. And so I'm not sure exactly what's happening here.
Speaker 1: It turns out that, you know, Politico asked Twitter to
Speaker 1: comment on this, and Twitter sent over a spreadsheet that's
Speaker 1: supposed to track these things, like, supposed to track all
Speaker 1: the instances of paid political ads, and they failed to
Speaker 1: include at least three instances of different campaigns running ads
Speaker 1: on the platform. So to me, that suggests that Twitter's
Speaker 1: own internal systems may be failing here. That you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a case of the right hand being unaware
Speaker 1: of what the left hand is doing, because obviously someone
Speaker 1: had to sell that ad space, right, that had to
Speaker 1: be an actual transaction that happened on Twitter's end, But
Speaker 1: somehow that data didn't make it to the proper place
Speaker 1: for disclosure, It didn't make it into this spreadsheet, and
Speaker 1: therefore the tweets were never labeled. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: there's not necessarily a law that's been broken here. This
Speaker 1: is Twitter failing to live up to its own policies.
Speaker 1: But it is important for citizens to be able to
Speaker 1: detect and track things like political ads and political spending.
Speaker 1: For one thing, knowing that something's an AD helps you
Speaker 1: separate it from being, say, an unbiased news source, or
Speaker 1: even a purported unbiased news source. If it says add
Speaker 1: on there, you know, all right, well this is this
Speaker 1: is a message that has a specific agenda, otherwise it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be an ad. For another, it helped different groups
Speaker 1: keep tabs on campaigns and campaign spending, as well as
Speaker 1: the activities of not for profit organizations that may not
Speaker 1: be subject to really strict campaign laws. Actually using the
Speaker 1: term really strict as being far too generous in the
Speaker 1: United States, but campaign laws really it all comes down
Speaker 1: to tracking money and using that info to determine whom
Speaker 1: you can trust. And it all gets really cynical from
Speaker 1: that point forward. Honestly, I feel like this is an
Speaker 1: indication that systems within Twitter are not working as intended,
Speaker 1: rather than a potential indication that the company is actively
Speaker 1: trying to hide that some political tweets are in fact
Speaker 1: paid advertising. I don't think Twitter was trying to get
Speaker 1: one over on users. I just feel like this was
Speaker 1: a failure. So this feels more like a case where
Speaker 1: it's incompetence rather than malevolence. That just is how it
Speaker 1: feels to me. I admit, you know, I could be
Speaker 1: totally wrong about that, but it doesn't I don't see
Speaker 1: where the gain is for Twitter to not be transparent
Speaker 1: about this stuff. So I think, to me, this feels
Speaker 1: like an indication that things at Twitter are breaking, and
Speaker 1: Twitter no longer has the engineering staff on hand to
Speaker 1: prevent or repair that stuff in a timely fashion. Something
Speaker 1: else that happened on Twitter last week with several Kremlin
Speaker 1: related Twitter accounts, including Vladimir Putin's presidential account, became reinstated
Speaker 1: on the service. So last year, last April, Twitter chose
Speaker 1: to restrict the promotion and reach of Russian state media
Speaker 1: accounts and Kremlin linked accounts in the wake of Russia's
Speaker 1: invasion of Ukraine. Obviously, Russia was leaning heavily on social
Speaker 1: platforms to spread propaganda and misinformation, but The Telegraph reports
Speaker 1: that those restrictions seem to no longer be in place,
Speaker 1: and that when searching for certain topics, the Kremlin linked
Speaker 1: accounts were frequently in the results, sometimes at the tippy
Speaker 1: top of search results. And The Telegraph also reported that
Speaker 1: they created a brand new Twitter account, they didn't have
Speaker 1: it following anyone in particular, and they noticed that when
Speaker 1: they went to the four utab, the curated tab to
Speaker 1: check and see what accounts were showing up there, some
Speaker 1: of the Kremlin linked accounts were showing up in the
Speaker 1: four U tab, even though this brand new account had
Speaker 1: not followed any of those. So hey, apparently Musk thinks
Speaker 1: NPR should not be trusted, but actual state backed accounts
Speaker 1: from Russia and also from China are AOK. Agree. Twitter
Speaker 1: sounds more and more like a dystopian nightmare to me.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you want to suggest topics, you
Speaker 1: can use Twitter and send a message to tech Stuff
Speaker 1: HSW though, I think I need to come up with
Speaker 1: an alternative for getting in touch with me and wrapping
Speaker 1: up the Twitter section of our news. Finally, is a
Speaker 1: report that Twitter appears to have acquiesced to the Government
Speaker 1: of India's demands that objectionable messages, that is, messages that
Speaker 1: the Government of India objects to, should be suppressed not
Speaker 1: just in India, but around the entire world. And if
Speaker 1: this is true, then it means that Twitter is actually
Speaker 1: censoring itself globally at the direction of the Government of India.
Speaker 1: You know, typically in the past, when Twitter would agree
Speaker 1: to government demands in India, they would suppress a message,
Speaker 1: but it would just be within India itself. If you
Speaker 1: are outside of India, you could still see the tweets
Speaker 1: in question. But apparently journalist and activist sarov Dos posted
Speaker 1: some messages and when they went back to look over
Speaker 1: their Twitter history, saw that the tweets had been tagged
Speaker 1: with the phrase that the content was quote withheld in
Speaker 1: worldwide in response to a legal demand end quote. So
Speaker 1: DAWs included screenshots of these tweets, which were made in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, and they said that they couldn't remember
Speaker 1: the context of those messages or why they would be
Speaker 1: suppressed worldwide. A website the Hindu dot Com attempted to
Speaker 1: use a virtual Private network or VPN to see if
Speaker 1: those suppressed tweets could be viewed in the United States, because, again,
Speaker 1: typically these sort of suppressions only would happen within India itself.
Speaker 1: But the Hindu discovered that even if they were looking
Speaker 1: at Twitter from a United States server, they would not
Speaker 1: be able to see those messages, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: huge deal, particularly for a company led by someone who
Speaker 1: proclaimed to be all about free speech. I'll just gets
Speaker 1: worse and worse. But thankfully we are done with Twitter.
Speaker 1: So when we come back from this break, we will
Speaker 1: move on to something else. Okay, we're back. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: moving on to something else. And that something else is Tesla,
Speaker 1: son of a All right, let's get through this and
Speaker 1: then we'll get on to something else. All right. So
Speaker 1: last week Reuters reported that from twenty nineteen through mid
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two and possibly beyond, some folks in Tesla,
Speaker 1: including management, would occasionally pull images captured by Tesla car cameras. Remember,
Speaker 1: Tesla has used optical systems, in fact, to the point
Speaker 1: where they've started to remove things like ultrasonic systems and
Speaker 1: just rely on optical systems for the purposes of collision detection, navigation,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Well, these cameras can also work
Speaker 1: as part of the security system. When you're charging your vehicle,
Speaker 1: those cameras can be active, and it turns out that
Speaker 1: Tesla employees were sometimes just peeking in on what these
Speaker 1: camera systems were able to see, whether the car was
Speaker 1: in operation or was in recharge mode, and then they
Speaker 1: were sharing images and videos captured by those cameras. So
Speaker 1: it's as if these Tesla employees had implanted cameras in
Speaker 1: the homes of Tesla customers essentially, and this includes stuff
Speaker 1: that clearly the owners of those Tesla vehicles would not
Speaker 1: want to share with the outside world. Now, some of
Speaker 1: the photos were fairly mundane, like it might be a
Speaker 1: funny road sign. So someone for some reason in Tesla
Speaker 1: started to look at the video feed created by this
Speaker 1: particular person's car and see a funny road sign, and
Speaker 1: they might clip that and share it with other people.
Speaker 1: It's still rings the question why did they access the
Speaker 1: video feed in the first place. And also there must
Speaker 1: be policies at Tesla that say, you don't do this right,
Speaker 1: you don't take images from someone's vehicle and just share
Speaker 1: it within the company. Apparently a lot of the messages included, hey,
Speaker 1: don't share this, or don't talk about this, or delete
Speaker 1: after you see it, And it was just people who
Speaker 1: just thought it was such a good picture or video
Speaker 1: or funny idea that they had to share it. But
Speaker 1: no one else should do that because you'll get in trouble.
Speaker 1: So some of the stuff as being captured was not
Speaker 1: just simple funny road signs or a pet behaving in
Speaker 1: a goofy way. There were cases of people being say,
Speaker 1: in the garage stark naked, but you know, I have
Speaker 1: no clue why they were in their garage and they
Speaker 1: were naked, but I don't have any business knowing that.
Speaker 1: It's none of my business, and I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: the owner in question wasn't thinking that they were at
Speaker 1: risk it being in a candid camera like situation at
Speaker 1: the time. Anyway, I think the whole sending photos and
Speaker 1: videos around is an incredibly deep violation of trust, and
Speaker 1: again it has to be violating some Tesla policies. So
Speaker 1: now there is a class action lawsuit that's been brought
Speaker 1: against Tesla about this very issue to hold the organization
Speaker 1: accountable for this behavior and to force a change. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we're going to hear a lot more about
Speaker 1: this as the case continues. It would shock me if
Speaker 1: Tesla does not settle out of court. I am certain
Speaker 1: that that's going to be the ultimate end of this,
Speaker 1: because I don't think the company has a leg to
Speaker 1: stand on. Even if they argue that this is the
Speaker 1: behavior of a few outlying bad apples, it appears that
Speaker 1: it was widespread enough to really be an issue within
Speaker 1: the company, and ultimately the company does have to be
Speaker 1: held accountable. And plus Tesla where this particular lawsuit is
Speaker 1: being filed the state of California. Tesla is not a
Speaker 1: big hero in the state of California right now among
Speaker 1: the government, and also the state of California has some
Speaker 1: really tough privacy laws, some of the toughest in the
Speaker 1: United States. So I suspect that Tesla is going to
Speaker 1: be trying to negotiate some sort of settlement and then
Speaker 1: potentially create a policy where people who do this will
Speaker 1: face some heavy consequences for behaving in this way in
Speaker 1: the future, or one can hope. Anyway, Now, I do
Speaker 1: have some other news to talk about that is not
Speaker 1: Twitter or Tesla related. So, while this episode is longer
Speaker 1: than I had hoped it would be, I'm gonna kind
Speaker 1: of summarize some of the next few news items. So
Speaker 1: first up, there's a growing movement in the US government
Speaker 1: to look into ways to deal with the evolution and
Speaker 1: proliferation of AI, largely by concerns about chat GPT in particular. Now,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to have to dedicate an entire
Speaker 1: episode to this topic because I think it's actually incredibly
Speaker 1: complicated and it requires a lot more thought and analysis
Speaker 1: than I could ever deliver in a news episode, So
Speaker 1: be on the lookout for that in the future. I'll
Speaker 1: just say that while the recent emergence of tools like
Speaker 1: chat GPT creates concerns, legitimate concerns, the matter of AI
Speaker 1: is far more broad than a chat bought built on
Speaker 1: a large language model, and so we really need to
Speaker 1: have a full discussion. Also, I have very little hope
Speaker 1: that the government will come up with anything really meaningful
Speaker 1: or useful on this topic, not because I have a
Speaker 1: total lack of faith in government. I do not. I
Speaker 1: have faith in government. It's that a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who are in government positions don't understand AI. Not
Speaker 1: on a level that would make it useful. So my
Speaker 1: guess is that any legislation or regulation that was created
Speaker 1: would be painted with a very broad brush and not
Speaker 1: be as effective as it needs to be because of
Speaker 1: a lack of understanding among government officials. But again, I'll
Speaker 1: have to do a full episode about this to really
Speaker 1: dive into it. Also, I want to recommend an amazing
Speaker 1: article written by BENJ. Edwards. Let's Bee and J Edwards,
Speaker 1: and this is at ours Technica. So if you go
Speaker 1: to Ours Technica you should look up why chat GPT
Speaker 1: and bing chat are so good at making things up?
Speaker 1: So this article is really great at explaining how chat
Speaker 1: GPT works at a very high level and how that
Speaker 1: basic mode of operation results in stuff that you can't
Speaker 1: always trust. Now, I have frequently said that one of
Speaker 1: the problems you have is that chatbots like chat GPT
Speaker 1: don't necessarily know the difference between a good source of
Speaker 1: information and a bad source of and that is part
Speaker 1: of it. But Edwards points out that it actually goes
Speaker 1: beyond this. It's a little more complicated than that, and
Speaker 1: the explanation is fantastic. The argument is very well done,
Speaker 1: so definitely check out that article why Chat, GPT and
Speaker 1: being chat are so good at making things up. I'll
Speaker 1: probably have to do a full episode about that as well,
Speaker 1: and talk about the phenomena of chat bought quote unquote hallucinations. Now,
Speaker 1: a quick note about Meta's verification process. So Meta rolled
Speaker 1: out this a few weeks ago. Of course, Meta's the
Speaker 1: parent company to Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, and this
Speaker 1: new policy allows users to pay for verification, so they
Speaker 1: have to not just pay a fee to do this,
Speaker 1: they also have to submit information about themselves to prove
Speaker 1: to Meta that they are who they claim to be,
Speaker 1: and if their qualifications meet Meta's standards and the payment
Speaker 1: goes through, they get a little check next to their
Speaker 1: name showing that they are verified. And this ends up
Speaker 1: being one a social status thing, but two verified accounts
Speaker 1: get access to some other perks, including better customer service
Speaker 1: and also some stuff that I think should just be
Speaker 1: freaking standard for everyone on Meta's platforms. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: one of those things is like being protected against impersonators.
Speaker 1: And if I'm told, hey, if you pay, us will
Speaker 1: help make sure that folks pretending to be you are stopped.
Speaker 1: That's that's a message that screams to me that I
Speaker 1: don't want to be on that platform if users have
Speaker 1: to pay to receive that kind of baseline protection or
Speaker 1: what I think should be baseline protection, Like, to me,
Speaker 1: that's that's something that should just go without saying, and
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be oh, well, you know, if you pay
Speaker 1: then we'll we'll take care of you. But you know me,
Speaker 1: I'm a grouch anyway. Crunch reports that a big issue
Speaker 1: among some of met as users is that as part
Speaker 1: of the system, the company is requiring users to use
Speaker 1: their real names as their user name in their profiles.
Speaker 1: That the name of their profile has to reflect their
Speaker 1: actual legal name, and that can be a real problem
Speaker 1: for folks and say the sex work industry or the
Speaker 1: trans community. These are people who may use names that
Speaker 1: are not their actual legal name as their public persona.
Speaker 1: And as some have said, this is like the company
Speaker 1: is asking you to pay it fifteen dollars and in return,
Speaker 1: it will dox you that you might remember that Google
Speaker 1: went through a very similar thing a few years ago
Speaker 1: when Google tried to align its former social platform of
Speaker 1: Google Plus with YouTube and other Google products. As part
Speaker 1: of that, Google was requiring people to use their legal name,
Speaker 1: and the thought process behind it was stuff like, oh,
Speaker 1: if people are using their legal names, especially on YouTube,
Speaker 1: then that's going to cut back on abuse because people
Speaker 1: will feel that they're being accountable right because they're no
Speaker 1: longer hiding behind a user name that's their real name.
Speaker 1: But Google also faced the same sort of objections. People
Speaker 1: said having to use our legal names sometimes puts us
Speaker 1: at danger depending upon who we are and what we do,
Speaker 1: and ultimately Google backed off of that policy. But so
Speaker 1: far we haven't seen meta budge. And while I understand
Speaker 1: the need to verify with meta that you are who
Speaker 1: you say you are, I mean, that's the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of verification in the first place, I don't actually see
Speaker 1: how that should pertain to the user name itself, particularly
Speaker 1: if people know you better by like a stage name
Speaker 1: or something. So yeah, I don't see where that part
Speaker 1: needs to come in. The only thing I under I
Speaker 1: see is that to get that verification check, you have
Speaker 1: to verify with the company who you are, But then
Speaker 1: that information should remain secure and not have to be
Speaker 1: publicly disclosed. Oh and hey, a couple more quick things.
Speaker 1: You know, those public charging USB stations you can find
Speaker 1: in some places like an actual little USB port you
Speaker 1: can plug your cable in and then charge your phone
Speaker 1: at airports or certain hotels or sometimes cafes. Well, the
Speaker 1: FBI says you shouldn't use those which honestly makes sense.
Speaker 1: So apparently some hackers have compromised some of these stations
Speaker 1: and they're using them to inject malware into stuff like
Speaker 1: phones and tablets. So the malware might do your typical
Speaker 1: identification theft stuff of logging passwords and user names. Maybe
Speaker 1: it even does stuff where it can access things like
Speaker 1: your microphone and your camera, and that is a pretty
Speaker 1: darn steep trade off for getting a few more minutes
Speaker 1: of battery life. So rather than use those ports, the
Speaker 1: FBI recommends that you use an actual like wall outlet
Speaker 1: and a plug that plugs into the outlet and then
Speaker 1: you know the cable to your device. Don't just plug
Speaker 1: a USB cord into a USB jack and then hook
Speaker 1: up your phone, which is fun times. Anyway, this advice
Speaker 1: is good advice. It's healthy to think about those public
Speaker 1: charging stations being similar to a USB drive that's been
Speaker 1: left on the floor. You wouldn't want to pick up
Speaker 1: that USB drive and just plug it into whatever device
Speaker 1: you happen to own because you're just you're playing roulette
Speaker 1: Russian roulette that that USB device doesn't have malware that's
Speaker 1: immediately going to install itself on your device. You've got
Speaker 1: to use that same sort of thought process when you're
Speaker 1: talking about USB charging stations. Finally, YouTube continues to add
Speaker 1: support for podcasts. There's now a podcast tab on channels,
Speaker 1: so when you go into channels you'll see things like
Speaker 1: videos and playlists and stuff like that. Well, podcast is
Speaker 1: a new tab that's going to be appearing on channel pages.
Speaker 1: So this way creators can classify videos as podcast episodes
Speaker 1: and use the podcast tabs, which can really help with discovery.
Speaker 1: If someone is interested in looking up a specific episode
Speaker 1: and they don't want to filter through all the different
Speaker 1: videos on a channel, then it makes it a lot easier.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty darn cool. I know there are
Speaker 1: quite a few podcasts out there that release part or
Speaker 1: all of episodes as video on YouTube. I think some
Speaker 1: of my colleagues are looking into doing something along those lines,
Speaker 1: and I think that's super awesome. I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: going to jump on that wagon myself, but only because
Speaker 1: tech stuff is most of the time a solo show,
Speaker 1: and I just can't imagine that any of you out
Speaker 1: there would be interested in just seeing me talk to
Speaker 1: a microphone by myself for forty minutes or whatever. I
Speaker 1: just don't see how that would be at all appealing
Speaker 1: to you. So I don't think I'm ever going to
Speaker 1: be using this particular feature unless you know, I get
Speaker 1: a co host or something. So for multi host shows,
Speaker 1: I think this is great. By the way, I'm also
Speaker 1: of the opinion that podcasters should try to get on
Speaker 1: all platforms in order to reach their audience. Like, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be platforms specific. You should try and be on
Speaker 1: all of them if you can, unless you're a superstar
Speaker 1: who can put their podcasts behind a paywall and folks
Speaker 1: will still flock to you. But you know, for the
Speaker 1: rest of us, I think making your show as accessible
Speaker 1: as possible is a great strategy. You're going to find
Speaker 1: a lot more listeners that way, and you're not going
Speaker 1: to prevent people from finding you, which is really good.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think this is a good thing overall. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't have my show on YouTube. I don't have
Speaker 1: any connection to YouTube. I just think that this is
Speaker 1: this is a cool thing for people who do like
Speaker 1: to consume podcasts through YouTube. I occasionally will look up
Speaker 1: clips from podcasts I subscribe to on YouTube, like i'll
Speaker 1: watch a clip of of a recording, but typically I
Speaker 1: listened to podcasts just in audio form. I don't tend
Speaker 1: to do that on YouTube exclusively. I usually rely on
Speaker 1: my phone, but sometimes shows that I like will also
Speaker 1: upload video clips, and I like to watch those just
Speaker 1: to see the people that I listened to actually go
Speaker 1: through the reactions they have. My bim BAM or my brother.
Speaker 1: My brother and me does this with the little clips
Speaker 1: from their shows, and I always enjoy that because they
Speaker 1: tend to be pretty entertaining. But yeah, I think it's cool.
Speaker 1: I love to see more support for podcasts across the board.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up this news episode. Lots of Twitter
Speaker 1: stuff in there, but like I said, it's been a
Speaker 1: while since I had really covered it, and a ton
Speaker 1: of information had come out over the last week, so
Speaker 1: I kind of want to barrel through it. Hopefully on Thursday,
Speaker 1: we won't have nearly as much to say about that,
Speaker 1: and we can look at other news in the tech
Speaker 1: space in the meantime. I hope you are all well
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.