Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 06/12 – Why Chris Cox Returning to Facebook is Such A Big Deal

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

Twitter takes down a bunch of accounts it says are government propaganda. UK regulators are gonna take a hard look at Facebook’s Giphy acquisition. I explain, in depth, why Chris Cox returning to Facebook is such a big deal. The big PlayStation 5 reveal, and of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: ApolloNeuro.com/ride Metalab.co Links: Twitter deletes China-linked accounts that spread false information about Hong Kong and Covid-19 (CNN Business) UK competition watchdog launches investigation into Facebook's $400M acquisition of Giphy (TechCrunch) Chris Cox is returning to Facebook as chief product officer (The Verge) Zuckerberg Lieutenant Returns to Facebook, a Year After Departure (WSJ) This is the PlayStation 5 (The Verge) The Weekend Longread Suggestions: With Real-Life Games Halted, Betting World Puts Action on E-Sports (NYTimes) Advertisers eye in-game ads as audiences swell in lockdown (Digiday) This Is How Much More Money Artists Earn From Bandcamp Compared to Streaming Services (Pitchfork) The most interesting man at Microsoft (Protocol) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Ride Home for Friday, June 12th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Twitter takes down a bunch of accounts. It says are government propaganda. UK regulators are going to take a hard look at Facebook's Giffy acquisition. I explain in depth why Chris Cox returning to Facebook is such a big deal, the PlayStation 5 reveal, and of course the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Twitter has removed more than 32,000 accounts that it says engaged in propaganda linked to Russia,

China and Turkey, describing the accounts as state-linked information operations. To be specific, 23,750 accounts linked to China were taken down, 1,152 Russian-linked accounts were taken down, and 7,340 accounts targeting domestic audiences in Turkey were taken down. But then this morning, Twitter also said that it had shut down an additional 180,000 accounts, all of them, quoting from CNN here, tied to the Chinese government. Experts working with Twitter who reviewed the accounts said they pushed deceptive narratives around the Hong Kong protests, COVID-19, and other topics. The company said the accounts were, quote, spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the

Communist Party of China, end quote, and were removed for violating its platform manipulation policies. Twitter is officially blocked in China, though many people in the country are able to access it using a VPN. Among the targets of the Chinese campaign were overseas Chinese, quote, in an effort to exploit their capacity to extend the party state's influence, end quote, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a group that Twitter worked with to analyze the accounts. Twitter said the accounts tweeted, quote, predominantly in Chinese languages, end quote. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, the country's antitrust watchdog, has launched an investigation into Facebook's acquisition of Jiffy, quoting TechCrunch. The CMA is considering whether it is or may be the case that this transaction has resulted in the creation of a relevant merger situation under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act of 2002, and if so, whether the creation of that situation may be expected to result in a substantial lessened. of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services, end quote. That was the CMA announcement. The CMA is now opening up the case for comments from third parties

to be submitted by July 3, 2020, end quote. Note that the CMA has never given any Facebook acquisitions a hard time before, but then again, regulators around the globe seem to be having regulator regret about their previous hands-off approach to all things Facebook. But the really interesting, really big Facebook news came late yesterday when it was announced that Chris Cox is returning to Facebook as its chief product officer one year after sensationally quitting Facebook over differences with Mark Zuckerberg about that company's direction. Quoting The Verge. A longtime company executive, who had been seen as a potential heir to the CEO job,

Cox left the company last March after Zuckerberg announced the company would enable end-to-end encryption across its suite of products. Quote, this will be a big project and we will need leaders who are excited to see the new direction through, Cox wrote at the time. When he left, Cox walked away from more than $170 million in unvested stock options, according to a profile last year in Yahoo Finance. In the profile, he cited artistic differences with Zuckerberg as his reason for leaving. quote, but I respect and care about Mark so deeply that I would never really want to get into more detail than that, he told Roger Parloff. Cox originally joined Facebook in 2005 as the company's 13th software engineer. He played a key role in designing the original news feed, which helped turn Facebook into

the world's biggest social network. He began to oversee all Facebook products in 2008, and a decade later, his portfolio expanded to include Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, end quote. So there are a bunch of reasons why this is interesting. Lots of people called Cox the conscience of Facebook, the company. Let me quote this section from the Wall Street Journal write-up of this story, quote. Mr. Cox, 37 years old, told people that he worried that the shift to encryption would impede detection of such criminal activity as terrorism and child trafficking.

The Wall Street Journal reported in April. Mr. Cox also championed a push within Facebook to examine its culpability. in spreading misinformation and divisive content in the years before he left, work that the company deprioritized the journal reported last month. It isn't clear if the men, and the journals referring to Zuckerberg and Cox, have resolved their disagreements, but Mr. Cox said in his return announcement that he has been, quote, encouraged by progress on so many of the big issues facing us, end quote. Mr. Cox, who spent part of his time away from the company working on progressive causes, could help shore up Mr. Zuckerberg's support among some employees who have expressed

frustration with Facebook's policies regarding political speech, and specifically the platform's hands-off approach to President Trump, end quote. So, Kremlinologists get ready, because we're going to run down some of the more tantalizing angles that are possible here. Cox was widely respected and admired inside of Facebook, beloved even. His departure at the time last year was seen by many as Facebook management potentially taking a turn for the worse. So given the unremembered, that we've been hearing about inside of Facebook this month, among the rank and file, in the light of all of the protests and whatnot, was this a move on Zuckerberg's part to pacify some inside the company that had grown perhaps morally restless?

But also, note the other political considerations possible here. Cox is very plugged in to left-wing fundraising and political causes, quoting Scott Lucas of BuzzFeed. For Cox, a critic of Trump who has said, said he disagrees with Facebook's policy on not fact-checking political ads. To rejoin the company is a big bet on a Democratic White House and Congress next November. It's not dissimilar to how major lobbying shops will bring on partisans of one or the other side in anticipation of electoral results. Facebook can't afford not to have a pipeline to Democrats in D.C. to be the Republican

social network. And one read of this move is that this gives them that, end quote. But also, the reading of the tea leaves when he left was that Cox was, shall we say, discomfited by the strategic direction Facebook was taking? So have all of those considerations changed? From the outside, it doesn't really look like anything's changed at all. So what could Zuckerberg have told Cox about the strategic future of Facebook? Or what might he have promised Cox to entice him to come back. Well, Cox is essentially being given all of the power he had before and then some. All of the largest products in Facebook's entire portfolio will now report directly to Cox. That includes Facebook proper, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.

Recently, all of those products had been reporting to Mark Zuckerberg directly, quoting from the journal again. In addition to guiding the development of new features, the role requires Mr. Cox to help address the unforeseen problems arising from existing products. In response to vitriol and misinformation on Facebook during the 2016 campaign, he championed an approach to products that examined the impact of the company on society rather than just growth. Quote, for people who want to see Facebook succeed, this is Christmas morning, said Donald Graham, a former Facebook board member who has known Mr. Cox for years. Quote, Chris's return is the best news I could imagine for the company, end quote. But there's one more thing to that.

Another big reason that people assumed Cox left last year was that if anyone was basically the most likely candidate to succeed Mark Zuckerberg someday as CEO of Facebook, it was Cox. Lots of us assumed that he left because he had made the determination that Zuckerberg didn't have any intention of leaving the CEO role anytime soon. So was some sort of agreement made in that regard between Cox and Zuckerberg? Tasset or otherwise was some sort of timetable agreed upon? What I'm basically asking is, did Mark Zuckerberg promise Chris Cox the CEO role someday? Or was the thing that brought Cox back? Was some sort of promise that he could right now today essentially be CEO of Facebook in everything but name. I have to try to squeeze this one in here if I can because it is a pretty big deal.

Sony yesterday revealed the new hardware design for its upcoming PlayStation 5, which will come in two different versions. One will have a 4K Blu-ray drive, and one will be a so-called digital addition with no optical drive at all, quoting the verge. The PS5 variant without the optical drive looks substantially thinner than the regular model, thanks to the removal of the drive. removal of the drive should mean the digital edition of the PS5 is cheaper too, but Sony hasn't mentioned pricing just yet. Sony simply revealed the design during its live stream, but the company hasn't provided any firm release date or exact pricing for either variance of the PS5. Just like the Xbox Series X, the PS5 can be placed vertically or horizontally underneath a TV or monitor.

Sony has built a stand that works for either orientation, and the company is using what looks like a slightly different stand for the digital edition of the PS5.com. 5. The top of the PS5 unit also appears to include vents for heat dissipation with USBA and USBC ports at the front, end quote. As always, if you want a full rundown of everything on this blockbuster of a gaming story, pop over to Kyle at the Gaming Ride Home podcast, as I'm sure most of today's show will be about this. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. First up, sports are coming back. to us at long last. I think La Liga starts in Spain this weekend, and I know the Premier League begins next week, and then the NBA is going to start doing that weird sort of Disney World experiment at some point, we think. But in the meantime, what have the sports gamblers been doing?

Well, it seems like they might have been betting on FIFA, but FIFA video games, quoting the New York Times. While football and basketball wagers still rely on living athletes, usually, humans have become optional to generating action. Some global sports books now offer betting on completely automated soccer matches within the FIFA 20 game made by electronic arts, computer versus computer. In the United States, draft kings and fan duel, which offer legal fantasy contests in just over 40 states, have each offered new free contests based on automated games of Madden NFL 20, another electronic arts title. Seth Shore, chief executive of the casino management company Fifth Street Gaming and founder of the Nevada

ESports Alliance set of the growth. I expect that within the next five to ten years in North America, e-sports will be third after the NFL and NBA in terms of total wagering, end quote. Digidae actually has a somewhat similar story about how advertisers are increasingly buying ads in game advertising in between the video games or I guess in the billboards behind the video games or whatever. Of course, audiences for gaming has swelled during the lockdown, and so, as always, advertising money goes where the eyeballs and attention are. Adidas recreated the canceled European championship in the FIFA PlayStation video game last month as a way to offset some of the inventory it lost from the live matches.

Matches between 12 footballers and 12 celebrities were live streamed across Adidas's Facebook Live, IGTV, and YouTube live profiles in Turkey. Aside from a all the players wearing Adidas branded apparel in those broadcasts. Its logo was also visible in the game, thanks to it being a kit manufacturer and sponsor for many of the teams recreated in the game. In other words, Adidas turned the FIFA game into a straightforward sponsorship opportunity, but found a way to amplify it across its main social networks. So far, the results have been encouraging for Adidas. Live audiences for the virtual matches have so far been twice the size of those for Turkey's top football league, according to Adidas. To date, the matches have

generated around 1.2 million viewers who watch between 20 and 40 minutes of a match. The popularity of the matches is also having a material effect on the business. Adidas shopping app downloads in Turkey have doubled since the beginning of the campaign. That's fueled a 25% rise in daily revenue from the app per Adidas, end quote. Next, if you've ever wondered why the joke that people make when something goes viral is, you know, check out my band camp. Well, check out this pitchfork article explaining how much more money artists can earn on bandcamp as opposed to, say, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and the like, quote, you won't find $75 bill anywhere on the billboard charts, but the New York Act's latest studio album nabbed the number one spot on Experimental Bible Wire

Magazine's best albums of 2019 list. Centered around guitarist Che Chen and percussionist Rick Brown, who keeps time by banging on a wooden crate, the collective specializes in droning, improvisations that are gritty, hypnotic, transcendent. On May 1st, they put out a digital-only album live at Tubbies exclusively on band camp. Documenting the group's last show before the coronavirus hit, the Pay What You Want release generated $4,200 from nearly 700 buyers in just two days. That's more than $75 bill have made through streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube over the entire last six years. Quote, streaming is a joke, Chen tells me. We might make $100 a year from streaming.

On a recent statement of mine, the royalties for one track that had 580 plays on Spotify was $0.20, end quote. Protocol profiles Brett Arsenault, Microsoft's CISO, who is working on Microsoft's ambitious project that I think we've mentioned before to make all 150,000 of Microsoft's employees stop using passwords by next year. That's interesting, and the article goes into how they're going to attempt to make that happen. But what is more interesting is Arsenal himself, who protocol calls the most interesting man at Microsoft. Arsenal used to be a professional skier.

He's broken 26 bones in his lifetime. And oh yeah, quote, scratching an itch dating back to his ski racing days, Arsenal took a sabbatical from Microsoft in late 2001 to join the endurance car racing circuit competing in races on famous tracks such as Watkins Glen and Laguna Seca. He won a spot on the podium in several races and learned some valuable lessons about security and management. One insight? Powerful brakes can be much more valuable than a bigger engine. They allow drivers to enter a turn traveling as fast as possible while choosing a line

that competitors can't match because they have to break earlier to maintain control. Security tools should operate the same way, Arsenal said. They should either allow the user to take action on their own when they see a problem like brakes or deploy automatically like an airbag, quote, the safest vehicles are the ones where you're unencumbered, he said in an interview at RSA in February. The idea of an airbag, that's how security should be. The user should be unencumbered by it, but it should be omnipresent, omniprotective, end quote. That's all for this week. No weekend bonus episodes again this weekend, though we will have one coming soon, either next weekend or definitely the weekend after. Small bit of podcast housekeeping news here. Chris Messina

is officially being named as the ombudsman for this podcast. Not only has Chris been a terrific sounding board lately for podcast content and strategic advice, but he's such a faithful and plugged in listener to the show that he has taken to actually copy editing the show notes for me now and again. So Chris is officially the ride home ombudsman. Direct all of your concerns about this podcast to him, and he'll advocate to me on behalf of you, the audience. I'm sort of kidding, of course, but also sort of not kidding at all. If you've not been following Chris on Twitter, what are you even doing? He invented the hashtag everybody, but also Chris, talk to you all on Monday.