Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/14 – Fortnite Banned! The Epic/Apple/Google Battle Royale

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

What do you think we’re going to talk about? Apple and Google ban Fortnite. Epic Games turns around and sues Apple and Google for antitrust. Also: Adobe commits to fighting Deepfakes, Streaming is now a quarter of all tv viewing, and, of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: LiftOff.to JoinFightCamp.com/techmeme Links: Fortnite for Android has also been kicked off the Google Play Store (The Verge) Epic is suing Google over Fortnite’s removal from the Google Play Store (The Verge) Epic rallies Fortnite players against Apple with a warning that they’ll miss the next season (The Verge) Epic's 1984 Parody Video Photoshop Will Help ID Images That Have Been … Photoshopped (Wired) Disney+ Gains Foothold in Streaming Battlefield, Nielsen Says (The Hollywood Reporter) Weekend Longreads Suggestions The Secret SIMs Used By Criminals to Spoof Any Number (Motherboard) How We Got the Favicon (The History of the Web) The Black Internet Gold Rush That Wiped Away $75 Million in 18 Months (Level) A college kid’s fake, AI-generated blog fooled tens of thousands. This is how he made it. (Technology Review) The Return of Anonymous (The Atlantic) 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 Right Home for Friday, August 14th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. What do you think we're going to talk about?

Apple and Google banned Fortnite. And Epic Games turns around and sues Apple and Google for antitrust. Also, Adobe commits to fighting deepfakes. Streaming is now a quarter of all TV viewing. And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Well, it all popped off yesterday, didn't it? When I told you yesterday about a...

how Epic Games had enabled a direct payment option in Fortnite on iOS and Android. It sort of felt like they were daring Apple and Google to ban them. Like maybe they wanted to get punished. They wanted something to happen. It's a trap. Well, it turns out it was an elaborate, if somewhat obvious, in retrospect, trap laid by Epic Games, and Apple and Google walked right into it. First, Apple removed Fortnite from the app store saying, quote,

Epic enabled a feature in its app which was not reviewed or approved by Apple, and they did so with the express intent of violating the App Store guidelines regarding in-app payments that apply to every developer who sells digital goods or services, end quote. Then Google did the same, removing Fortnite from its Play Store, arguing that though its Android ecosystem is more open than Apple's App Store, Epic's move nonetheless violated store policies. This is from The Verge, quote, A Google spokesperson emphasized to the verge that Android is an open ecosystem that allows multiple stores and that Google Play's policies need to apply equally to all developers. It has no problem with these other stores existing nor with Epic distributing its game on them, the spokesperson said, and you can still install Fortnite on Android using these other stores. Epic itself points visitors to its website where they can either download Fortnite through the Epic Games app or via the Samsung Galaxy store on Samsung. devices. This is different from iPhone and iPad where it's now impossible to install the game if you

hadn't already done so, end quote. Now, the reason why I said this was a premeditated ambush is because Epic Games immediately filed antitrust suits against Apple and Google, and in the case of Apple, arguing that the App Store is a monopoly and seeking no damages, just injunctive relief in the name of fair competition. Quote, Epic brings this suit to end Apple's unfair and anti-competition. competitive actions that Apple undertakes to unlawfully maintain its monopoly in two distinct multi-billion dollar markets. One, the iOS app distribution market and two, the iOS in-app payments processing market, each as defined below, the complaint reads.

Epic is not seeking monetary compensation from this court for the injuries it has suffered, nor is Epic seeking favorable treatment for itself a single company. Instead, Epic is seeking injunctive relief to allow fair competition in these two key markets that directly affect hundreds of millions of consumers and tens of thousands, if not more, of third-party app developers, end quote. In the case of Google, Epic said that the Play Store is also a monopoly because payment restrictions there are anti-competitive, quoting the Verge, where the Apple complaint opened with a description of the company's iconic 1984 ad, Epic's complaint against Google focuses on that company's

now infamous don't be evil mantra. Quote, 22 years later, Google has relegated its motto to nearly an afterthought, the complaint alleges, quote, and is using its size to do evil upon competitors, innovators, customers, and users in a slew of markets it has grown to monopolize, end quote. Outside of the colorful openings, the two primary charges are identical to Epic suit against Apple, monopoly control over the distribution of software to phones, and monopoly control over payment systems within that software, end quote. So yeah, I forgot to mention the video. I've got a link in the show notes. If you want to watch it. Alongside its complaint about Apple, Epic released A Shot for Shot remake of the

famous 1984 Apple ad, this time with a Tim Cook-looking character as Big Brother, and complete with the hashtag free Fortnite. As Dieter Bone said in his processor newsletter this morning, of course there's a hashtag, but also there are real and immediate stakes. Apple and Google banned Fortnite from their stores, but they still work on every device they're already installed on. So a bunch of users might just shrug at this as a fight that will be over before it affects them. Epic is making even those people realize that this is a problem for them as well, end quote. That is because Epic is warning Fortnite players that they might miss out on the next season of Fortnite. Quoting Jay Peters in The Verge, because Apple has blocked your ability to update when Fortnite Chapter 2 season 4 releases,

you will not be able to play the new season on iOS, Epic said, in a blog post titled, hashtag free Fortnite. Fortnite chapter 2, season 4 is scheduled to begin on August 27th. If nothing changes between Apple and Epic by then, that means the games many iOS players will lose out on the chance to play Fortnite's next major update in just a couple of weeks. New seasons typically introduce a significant amount of content such as unique skins, notable changes to the game's ever-evolving map, and gameplay features like driveable cars, end quote.

So to sum up, this is all way more popcorn-worthy than we thought it was. even yesterday, mainly because Epic Games seems to have more Hutzpah than we thought. They're not just poking Apple and Google in the eye. They're actively forcing a showdown. I wondered on Twitter last night why Google didn't just sit this one out and let Apple take the heat for a while. I also wondered to what degree Google might be tempted to give in first in the interest of letting Apple dangle in the wind a bit. But then again, would doing that actually help Apple? Because clearly the audience for this move is the regulators around the world. Epic is working the refs. So if Google gave in to what Epic wants to do, would that allow Apple to argue that, see, there's competition. We're not a monopoly.

Now, a lot of the consensus seems to be that the actual cases against the two companies are pretty flimsy. Actually, the Apple case is flimsy, and it's probably even more flimsy in the case of Google, because the Play Store is famously less restrictive than the App Store. But Alex Hearn pointed this out on Twitter. One reason I think Epic has a really good case compared to a lot of others is that they pass the discount on to consumers. American monopoly law is laser focused on cost to consumer, and Epic can now explicitly point to a case where the consumer is paying more in a monopoly. To which Charles Arthur tweeted, good point, though Apple would probably argue that the market where one can do the purchasing is broader than just iOS. It is, after all, if one company charges a

Vig in a market, users and companies are free to use other outlets. If iOS isn't a monopoly, it's a tough case. To which Alex responded, that's all true, but look at eyebooks to see quite how dim a view the U.S. system takes of anything that raises consumer prices, end quote. John Gruber pointed out that Apple didn't actually use the nuclear option that it still has at its disposal, quote, playing on hard mode would have Apple flipping the kill switch to disable already installed copies of Fortnite on iOS devices. I don't think that was on the table as Apple's opening move, and even now that Epic has revealed itself to be playing hardball, it would be heavy-handed to say the least. What makes this a fair fight is that Fortnite is already installed on so many

millions of iOS devices, and popularity is power. Removing Fortnite from the App Store, which, again, also blocks existing users from getting app updates is a big move, but most iOS users who are in Fortnite's target audience already have it installed. That's not tenable in the long run, but it gives Epic and Apple time to spar without disrupting existing iOS Fortnite users from continuing to play. Epic, in a very savvy way, is waging this war as much or more in the court of public opinion as they are in any court of law. And ultimately, Apple stands to lose more in brand equity than in dollars, no matter how this turns out, end quote. There was some other news today, and I'll try to squeeze in what I can before we get to the long reads.

First, Adobe is confirming that it is adding tech to Photoshop later this year to cryptographically tag images with metadata to help identify deepfakes and verify the authenticity of images and videos, quoting Wired. Adobe's photo editing flagship Photoshop is so successful that the brand is a synonym for digital fakery. Later this year, it will become a standard bearer for a proposed antidote, technology that tags images with data about their origins to help news publishers, social networks, and consumers avoid getting duped. Adobe started working on its content authenticity initiative last year with partners including Twitter and the New York Times. Last week, it released a white paper laying out an open standard for tagging images, video, and other media with cryptographically signed data such as locations, timestamps, and who captured or edited it.

Adobe says it will build the technology into a preview release of Photoshop later this year. That will be the first real test of an ambitious or perhaps quixotic response to concerns about the democracy corroding effects of online misinformation and fake imagery. We imagine a future where if something in the news arrives without CIA data attached to it, you might look at it with extra skepticism and not want to trust that piece of media, says Andy Parsons, who leads Adobe's work on the standard, end quote. And one more data point about how the COVID crisis is accelerating the death of media as we've understood it for decades. According to Nielsen, streaming now makes up 25% of total TV usage in the U.S. up from 19% just six months ago. But also, I thought these numbers were interesting.

Disney Plus accounted for 4% of streaming usage in the quarter. The first time Nielsen's streaming meter measurement, a subset of its national TV panel, has broken out the service, which launched in November 2019. That's the smallest share among the five platforms Nielsen measures individually, but it's also not that far behind Amazon's prime video service at 8%. Netflix is by far the largest of the group, accounting to 34% of streaming time per Nielsen's figures. YouTube ranks second at 20% followed by Hulu, also controlled by Disney, at 11%. All other streaming platforms, including Apple TV Plus, CBS, All Access, and niche services together make up

23% of time spent. Warner Media's HBO Max launched May 27th, four days before the end of the second quarter, end quote. Time as ever for the weekend long read suggestions. But once again, in interest of not giving you a 30-minute show today, I've got the usual amount of long reads suggested for you, but I might not quote as extensively as I sometimes do from each of them. First up, motherboard takes a look at so-called secret sims or white sims. SIM cards used by criminals to spoof any phone number, to add voice manipulation to their calls, and generally just stay ahead of law enforcement. Quote, want to look like you're calling from a bank in order to scam a target? Easy. Want to change it to a random series of digits so that the recipient's phone won't record your real number?

That just takes a few seconds to set up, according to tutorials of how to use the cards available online. Russian sims, encrypted sims, white sims, these cards go by different names in the criminal underground, and very widely in quality and features, but all are generally designed to give the user some sort of security or privacy benefit, even if what that particular SIM does is more theater than substance. Beyond spoofing phone numbers, some Sims let a caller manipulate their voice in real time, adding a baritone or shrill cloak to their phone calls that is often unintentionally funny. Other cards have the more worthwhile benefit of being worldwide unlimited data sims that criminals source anonymously from suppliers without having to give up identifying information and paying in

Bitcoin. The SIM cards themselves aren't inherently illegal, but criminals certainly make a noticeable chunk of the company's consumer bases, end quote. The history of the web website tells you the story of how we got the Favicon. It came with Internet Explorer 5 and, well, quote, Shyam chose the dot ICO format because it was the standard Windows format for icons and was used extensively by the Windows operating system. And since browsers were at the time, devalued in what were essentially vacuums, that made some kind of sense. So did the subsequent choice of having developers drop the icon in a server's root folder, since this was typically an easy task on Windows web servers, end quote. And Level has an oral history of something that I've always

wanted to explore on an episode of the internet history podcast. It wasn't just pets.com and e-toys in the dot-com era, there was actually a bit of a black internet gold rush in the late 90s as well. Quote, between 1999 and 2001 with the greater dot-com era just beginning to spiral, hip-hop and so-called urban websites and startups proliferated, flush with investment cash. And one by one, they all unceremoniously shuddered, wiping out $75 million in investment money in 18 months. Just as with the larger dot-com bubble, the causes of debt. were many. Gross mismanagement, bloated salaries, unchecked spending, buggy site design that ignored the fact that most users were accessing the internet by dial-up modem, end quote.

Then MIT Technology Review takes a look at a college kid's fake AI generated blog that fooled tens of thousands of people. TLDR, the student used GPT3, quote, the trick to generating content without the need for editing was understanding GPT3's strengths and its weaknesses. It's quite good at making pretty language and not very good at being logical and rational, says poor. So he picked a popular blog category that doesn't require rigorous logic, productivity and self-help. From there, he wrote his headlines following a simple formula. He'd scroll around on Medium and Hacker News to see what was performing in those categories

and put together something relatively similar. Feeling unproductive, maybe you should stop overthinking, he wrote for one. Boldness and creativity, Trump's intelligence, he wrote for another. On a few occasions, the headlines did. work out. But as long as he stayed on the right topics, the process was easy, end quote. Finally, the Atlantic says that, after some years of relative quiet, Anonymous might be re-emerging from the shadows, and it might be doing so prompted by the current political environment. Quote, my sources affiliated with Anonymous all told me the same thing. People were flowing back

into the chat rooms to coordinate new operations. This is how Anonymous has always worked, A viral video generates a wave of enthusiasm, then the leaderless collective debates on what to do. Sometimes it settles on performative acts of protests such as hacking police scanners or briefly downing a website. But as occurred with blue leaks, sometimes more skilled hackers steal and leak documents intended to buttress a political cause with substantive evidence. However, both the group of people and the movement have changed over the years. And to track Anonymous's trajectory, it's necessary to understand how the entire project began. as a joke by teenagers, end quote. I swear to God, the last few weeks have been so news intensive.

I don't know what happened to the slow dog days of summer, but certainly haven't had them this year. We do, in fact, have a weekend bonus episode for you this week, after many weeks of research. I finally got someone on to do the deep dive into Reliance Geo that I've been threatening to do for a while now. we take a look at not only why everyone wants a part of Reliance Geo, but also the whole history of the company and why it's been so successful. So look out for that, and enjoy your weekend. Talk to you on Monday.