Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 03/19 – A Rebel Alliance, Led By Facebook, And Born In A Clubhouse Room?

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Friday, March 19th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. It's at Platform Product News Day. Instagram is working on a version of its service suitable for kids. Twitter wants you to watch YouTube in stream. Telegram is basically adding all the clubhouse

Starting point is 00:00:50 features I've been dreaming of. Was an anti-Apple Rebel Alliance born last night inside a clubhouse room, why China is banning Tesla in some cases, and of course the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. I didn't cover it this week, but Instagram recently introduced new policies to limit interactions between teenagers and adults, including banning adults from DMing teens who don't follow them. Which my first reaction was they didn't already do that, but of course, it's an open secret right about how tons of kids lie about their age to be able to use Instagram. Well, following that news, this is interesting. if Instagram moves to proactively section off a portion of Instagram for younger users.

Starting point is 00:01:42 BuzzFeed News is reporting that Instagram is working on a version of the service that might be suitable for kids under the age of 13. I'm excited to announce that going forward we have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list. Vishal Shah, Instagram's vice president of product wrote in an employee message board on Thursday. We will be building a new youth pillar within the community product group to focus on two things, accelerating our integrity and privacy work to ensure the safest possible experience for teens and building a version of Instagram that allows people under the age of 13 to safely use Instagram for the first time, end quote. The announcement lays the groundwork for how Facebook, whose family of products, is used by 3.3 billion people every month, plans to expand its user base, while various laws limit how companies can build products for and

Starting point is 00:02:32 target children. Instagram clearly sees kids under 13 as a viable growth segment, particularly because of the app's popularity among teens, end quote. I've got a couple more product news updates for you. Twitter says it is testing a way for its iOS users to watch YouTube videos inside their timelines, quoting TechCrunch. That means you'll be able to click and play a video without having to leave the conversation you're currently viewing. Before this change, YouTube videos wouldn't show a preview on iOS, so you'd have to click the link to start watching. This would take you out of the conversation to another screen where you could play the video or tap again to open the YouTube iOS app if you preferred. Now you'll be able to scroll and watch videos without losing your place on the Twitter timeline, end quote.

Starting point is 00:03:21 To which Casey Newton snarked, now do Instagram photos. And then over to Telegram, something, something, what if Clubhouse-like audio rooms become a feature of every platform? Telegram announced today it has expanded voice chats to channels with no limits on the number of listeners and admins can now record the audio, quoting XDA developers. Following the latest update, channel admins will get the ability to host voice chats. To do so, admins will have to open the profile of any group or channel, tap on the three-dot menu icon, and then select the new start voice chat option. The update also brings a new recorded chats feature that will let group and channel admins record audio from voice chats and publish them in the group channel for members who miss the live event. The recorded

Starting point is 00:04:13 chats will be available within saved messages. Furthermore, Telegram's voice chats are getting a new raise hand feature to help muted participants easily indicate that they want to speak. Admins will see a new animation. Whenever a participant uses the raise hand option, tapping on it will open a pop-up with an option to allow the participant to speak, open chat, or remove the participant. The update also brings an option to help admins share invite links to voice chats. The setting will let admins create separate links for speakers and listeners. Admins will also get an option to add titles to voice chats to help members see the topic of the conversation before joining, end quote.

Starting point is 00:04:52 Yes, I want all of these features available for Clubhouse and Twitter spaces like yesterday. Speaking of, you might have heard that Josh Konstine hosted a room on Clubhouse last night that included Mark Zuckerberg, Daniel Eck, and Toby Lutki. I listened to the whole thing. And P.S., the room is available to listen to as a podcast. Just search your podcast app for Press Club with Josh Konstine, and you can hear the entire conversation if you missed it. See, making these things into podcasts, it's got to be coming for everything soon, right? Anyway, while the topic of the conversation was ostensibly the creator economy. Remember, Spotify announced how much money they were paying artists yesterday. It was remarkable how quickly the discussion turned to a

Starting point is 00:05:45 round-robin-like pile-on on Apple's App Store rules and how bad they are for everyone, especially in the eyes of Mark Zuckerberg and Daniel Eck, on creators and small businesses. The headlines from the conversation were to quote CNBC. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday said he is confident the social media company, quote, will be able to manage through, and quote, Apple's upcoming plan privacy update to iOS 14, which will make it easier for iPhone and iPad users to block companies from tracking their activity to target ads. We'll be in a good position, Zuckerberg said in a clubhouse room Thursday afternoon. Zuckerberg explained that the change could benefit Facebook if more businesses decide to sell goods directly through Facebook

Starting point is 00:06:28 and Instagram, quote, it's possible that we may even be in a stronger position, if Apple changes encourage more businesses to conduct more commerce on our platforms by making it harder for them to use their data in order to find the customers that would want to use their products outside of our platforms, Zuckerberg said, end quote. But what I was thinking while I was listening to the room was, hmm, the CEOs of Facebook, Shopify, and Spotify all came together for a clubhouse room. Facebook has long wanted to capture commerce, right? Shopify is all about commerce outside the platform that is Amazon. Spotify is ostensibly about

Starting point is 00:07:10 artists and creators getting paid, at least in theory, right? So maybe it's hard not to connect the dots here and see the potential making of a rebel alliance of Facebook, Shopify, and Spotify, that could be pretty powerful with their guns aimed out in all directions at the likes of Apple, Google, and Amazon, right? The anti-dominate platform alliance or something? like that? It's funny how if you view things through that lens, Facebook could very plausibly be the leader of some sort of anti-platform group. We've discussed many times how Chinese-made drones have faced bans here in the U.S. because the U.S. government is afraid those drones could be used to spy on U.S. interests inside U.S. borders. Well, how's this for turnabouts? China has announced

Starting point is 00:08:02 plans to restrict the use of Tesla's cars by Chinese military and state personnel. for basically the same reasons they're afraid of being spied on, quoting the Wall Street Journal. The move follows a government security review of Tesla's vehicles, which Chinese officials said raised concerns because the car's cameras can constantly record images, the people said, as well as obtain various data such as when, how, and where the cars are being used, and the contact list of mobile phones that are synced to the cars. The government is concerned that some data could be sent back to the U.S., the people said. The Chinese government has informed some of its agencies,

Starting point is 00:08:37 to ask their employees to stop driving Tesla cars to work, the people said. Some of the people said Tesla cars were also banned from driving into housing compounds for families of personnel working in sensitive industries and state agencies. They were told by their agencies that among the government's concerns is that Tesla vehicles can be constantly in record mode using cameras and other sensors to log various details, including short videos, end quote. Time for the weekend long-read suggestions. and first up, let's do a couple of deep thinks from a couple of noted tech deep thinkers.

Starting point is 00:09:17 Tim O'Reilly wades into the question of if Silicon Valley is over, and he identifies, as he puts it, four ways the party might indeed be coming to an end. Number one, consumer internet entrepreneurs lack many of the skills needed for the life sciences revolution that he feels is coming. Number two, internet regulation is upon us. Number three, climate response is capital intensive and inherently local, and number four, the end of what he calls the betting economy. Let me quote from point number one, though. Prediction. The nexus of machine learning and medicine, biology, and material science will be to the coming

Starting point is 00:09:55 decades what Silicon Valley has been to the late 20th and early 21st century. Why might this mark the end of Silicon Valley as we know it? First, the required skills are different. Yes, machine learning, statistical analysis, and programming are all needed, but, so is deep knowledge of relevant science. The hubs where that knowledge can be found are not the special province of Silicon Valley, suggesting that other regions may take the lead. Second, many of the markets where fortunes will be made are regulated. Navigating regulated markets also takes skills that are conspicuously missing in Silicon Valley. Finally, as Theranos demonstrated so

Starting point is 00:10:31 vividly, it is harder to sustain a hype balloon in a scientific enterprise than in many of the markets where Silicon Valley has prospered. Many Silicon Valley investors have been lucky rather than smart. They may not do so well in a world where capital must be directed towards solving hard problems rather than toward winning a popularity contest, end quote. And next, Sam Altman has an essay up saying that advances in AI could lead to a Moore's law-like revolution for basically everything. Quote, The best way to increase societal wealth is to decrease the cost of goods, from food to video games. Technology will rapidly drive that decline in many categories. Consider the example of semiconductors and Moore's law. For decades, chips became twice as powerful for the same price about every two years.

Starting point is 00:11:21 In the last couple of decades, costs in the U.S. for TVs, computers, and entertainment have dropped, but other costs have risen significantly, most notably those for housing, health care, and higher education. Redistribution of wealth alone won't work if these costs continue to soar. AI will lower the costs of goods and services because labor is the driving costs at many levels of the supply chain. If robots can build a house on land you already own, from natural resources mined and refined on-site, using solar power, the cost of building that house is close to the cost to rent the robots. And if those robots are made by other robots, the cost to rent them will be much less than it was when humans made them. Similarly, we can imagine AI doctors that can

Starting point is 00:12:02 diagnose health problems better than any human, and AI teachers that can diagnose and explain exactly what a student doesn't understand. Moore's Law for Everything should be a rallying cry of a generation whose members can't afford what they want. It sounds utopian, but it's something technology can deliver and in some cases already has. Imagine a world where for decades, everything, housing, education, food, clothing, etc., became half as expensive every two years, end quote. That would be certainly big if it turns out to be true. Next, though, how about sort of a shot chaser sort of deal to Sam's piece? This piece in Bloomberg looks at how AI and robots are starting to kill the world's call center industry

Starting point is 00:12:48 and how that's a threat to places like the Philippines, where 9% of the economy is call center-like support services, quote. The lockdowns of the past year have accelerated the shift to greater automation in responding to inquiries to lenders, insurers, and telecom operators. Callers looking for assistance with a bill or a bank statement increasingly communicate with artificial intelligence-powered bots. And when they do connect with a human, it's more frequently in a chat window with someone who's engaged in multiple conversations at once. Before the outbreak, clients use chat and AI bots less than 10% of the time, but that's climbed to almost 25 and could reach 35% by year end, says Mike Small, the executive responsible for U.S. and Canadian corporate clients for Miami's Citadel Group, an operator of call centers with more than 20% of its 100,000 employees in the Philippines. Because of COVID, plans that could have taken four years or five years to implement were implemented in months, says Small, who hasn't increased staffing since 2019. The shift away from voice operators threatens many of the 1.3 million people employed by outsourcing shops in the Philippines. About half of them call center operators.

Starting point is 00:13:56 The threat is building, as AI enables bots to be as efficient and empathetic as humans for many basic interactions. The Asian Development Bank predicts that by 2030 AI and similar technologies could displace 286,000 workers, or almost a quarter of the people in the Philippine outsourcing industry today, though the banks, Banks says productivity gains may create other jobs. The country's IT and business process association expects the sector to employ just 1.4 million people next year down from the 1.6 million people it had forecast before the pandemic. We are alarmed, says Mylene Cabalona, president of BPO Industry Employees Network, a union for call center workers. This will lead to massive displacement, she said, end quote. So, maybe read those two pieces in conjunction with,

Starting point is 00:14:46 with one another. And who, golly, we could have a whopper of a clubhouse debate just on those two, couldn't we? Sticking with India for a second, you know how loans work, right? You often have to put up something as collateral. Well, lenders in India are experimenting with loan apps that shut down your smartphone if you fall behind on payments. So your ability to function in modern society is the collateral here, basically, quoting from rest of the world. Despite widespread access to low-cost smartphones, the cheapest costing around $78, the average Indian still needs to work 63 days to afford one. It is why financing phones has become an important driver of sales. An estimated 40 to 60 percent of all high-end smartphones in the $100 to $400 range are sold on

Starting point is 00:15:31 installment-based plans, according to the Market Intelligence Company International Data Corporation. But in the last year, the easiest way for retailers and online stores to get high-end devices into working-class people's pockets has been through a new method. of lending, collateralizing smartphones. Vendors are selling smartphones to first-time borrowers on high-interest payment plans financed by loan companies, but only after the users install an undelatable app at the point of sale. The apps can then monitor repayment behavior throughout the duration of the loan. One late payment leads to instant blocking of the phone, rendering it useless. For loan providers and smartphone sellers, this form of lending opens their products to a new

Starting point is 00:16:11 class of consumers, but users purchasing phones on loan are bearing the brunt of the coercive repayment tactics built into their devices, end quote. And finally, one from the keeping our eyes open for maybe the next big thing file. I believe we might have mentioned it before, but Ubo is a new social app that you might not have heard of, but which has become quite popular with Gen Z teens, apparently, racking up more than 40 million users, quoting protocol. Ubo rejects almost everything about traditional social media. There are no ads, no likes, no algorithmically driven content discovery, and instead draws heavily on the culture and structure of gaming platforms. Gaming worlds like Fortnite and Minecraft are among the few virtual places where children reliably

Starting point is 00:16:57 make friends with people they don't know, and these platforms are equally rife with allegations of child predation. So Yubo built small rooms where people can video chat, live stream, and play games together get invited in and out of the conversation. and even buy add-ons to improve the group experience. It's Fortnite, but for actual life, end quote. Actually, I highly recommend you read this whole piece because it has a lot of interesting details around this idea of, you know, turning stranger danger on its head.

Starting point is 00:17:28 Yubo is an app that encourages users to make friends with strangers. Given the Instagram news from the start of the show, it's really at the intersection not only of generations, but at a lot of different trends that we've been discussing on this show, lately. So ride home plus subscribers, we've got an interesting raise episode coming at you. And everyone else, we probably will have a sort of hybrid bonus episode coming at you that will contain an interesting conversation about whether or not NFTs are good for artists. And also a little bit of a sampling of the interesting raise episode. I think that that's coming because

Starting point is 00:18:12 I actually haven't recorded the conversation about NFTs yet. So if it doesn't get recorded, then we won't have anything. But hopefully some combination of bonus episode will be coming to you. Look for that on Saturday. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 03/19 – A Rebel Alliance, Led By Facebook, And Born In A Clubhouse Room?

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