Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 12/16 – I Lied. More Twitter News Today.

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

Elon Musk has once again proven that the flesh is weak because there’s a new Twitter controversy and I can’t help but tell you about it. Is it a good look when the accounting firm writing reports to prove crypto companies are solvent says it will no longer work with crypto companies? Is Netflix’s ad-supported tier not signing up as many eyeballs as advertisers hoped? And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Sponsors: InternetSociety.org/techmeme Storyblok.com/ridehome Links: Twitter suspends Mastodon’s account and bans links to Mastodon servers (TechCrunch) Twitter suspends journalists who have been covering Elon Musk and the company (NBCNews) Accountant That Vetted Binance Reserves Halts Crypto Work (Bloomberg) Netflix lets advertisers take their money back after missing viewership targets (Digiday) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Spotify’s grand plan to monetize developers via its open source Backstage project (TechCrunch) YouTube Stars Cash In Video Rights for Millions of Dollars (WSJ) ChatGPT and the Imagenet moment (Ben Evans) 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 TechMeme right home for Friday, December 16th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Elon Musk has once again proven that the flesh is weak because there's a new Twitter controversy that I can't help but tell you about. Is it a good look when accounting firms writing reports

to prove crypto companies our solvent says it will no longer work with crypto companies? Is Netflix's ad-supported tier not signing up as many eyeballs as advertisers hoped? And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in. I know I told you I didn't want to cover any new Elon Twitter controversies, especially around who he would or wouldn't ban. But I guess I have to carve out exceptions for controversies that might affect this show directly. More on that in a second. But also, it's probably unlikely I could have resisted telling you about all this anyway. First up, late yesterday, Twitter suspended Mastodon official Twitter account and prevented links to Mastodon servers from being tweeted or added to profile bios. Twitter called them harmful and malware, which, okay, capricious, but also not nonsensical. Mastodon is a Twitter competitor. Elon owns the platform. No one says he has to help a competitor on his platform. Then Twitter started suspending the accounts of several journalists, including

the New York Times' Ryan Mack and CNN's Donnie Oswald. Elon Musk later said that the, quote, same doxing rules apply to journalists, end quote. Quoting NBC News. The accounts of Ryan Mack of the New York Times, Donio Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of the Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Michael Lee of The Intercept, Steve Herman of Voice of America, and independent journalists, Aaron Rupar, Keith Olberman, and Tony Webster had all been suspended as of Thursday evening. Musk said the suspension stemmed from the platform's new rules banning private jet trackers, responding to a tweet from Mike Solana, a vice president of the venture capital firm Founders Fund, who noted that the suspended accounts had posted links to jet trackers on their websites, end quote. Well, okay, they weren't actually tweeting private jet things. They were just linking to people tweeting about private jet things.

Also, the thing that all of those journalists have in common is that they've covered Twitter and Elon News recently. It's part of their beat for a lot of them. And they had, in fact, been covering a lot of them the whole Elon Jet account controversy. Quoting NBC News again, criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not. Musk said in a tweet. Musk retweeted that the accounts banned Thursday posted, quote, my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates in obvious direct violation of Twitter terms of service, end quote. NBC News was unable to verify that allegation, end quote. And then later last night, a lot of these banned journalists discovered that

while their accounts were banned, they could still somehow get into Twitter spaces, and so thousands of people piled into a space to discuss all of this, and Elon briefly joined the space, then abruptly left it, and then the space mysteriously went dark. And now the entire Twitter space's product seems to have been taken down entirely. I'm going to let BuzzFeed give you the minute by minute on what happened last night. Quote, Musk showed up in the space titled Save Ryan Mack Mac, after former BuzzFeed turned New York Times reporter Ryan Mack, one of the suspended reporters, more than two hours after it started. Showing real-time information about somebody's location is inappropriate, and I think everyone on this call would not like that to be done for them, Musk said.

Musk attempted to claim that reporting that linked to Elon Jet was doxing, which is when private and personal information such as addresses or phone numbers is published because it could give live information about his and his family's location. He added that Twitter won't make a distinction between journalists and, quote, regular people going forward. You're just a Twitter citizen. So no special treatment, Musk said. You docks, you get suspended. End of story, end of quote. Musk, who has long spoken out about his distaste of the media and reporters on Twitter said that, quote, ban of or trying to be clever about it like, oh, I posted a link to the real-time information wasn't okay on the platform. Journalist Katie Natopoulos, who was hosting the space, pushed back and said that the journalist had simply reported about the ElonJet account. Quote, you consider that like a tricky attempt at ban evasion, she asked. You post a link to the real-time information, ban evasion, obviously, Musk said. Washington Post tech reporter Drew Harwell, one of the suspended reporters, said that he hadn't posted Musk's address on Twitter. You posted a link to the address, Musk shot back. Quote, in the course of reporting about ElonJet, we posted links to ElonJet, which are now not online and

now banned on Twitter, Harwell said. Quote, you docks, you get suspended, end of story, Musk said again, and then left the space in the middle of Natopoulos trying to ask him a question. Shortly after Musk's appearance, the space suddenly ended without warning. Sorry, it appears the space cut out. Screen went suddenly blank on my end and everybody got booted. Netopoulos, end quote. And as of this morning, Twitter Spaces remains disabled. Elon said that Twitter was fixing a, quote, legacy bug, which the bug might be the fact that band accounts can still get into spaces, but I don't know. So this is what I meant by this news actually affecting this show directly. Chris and I weren't planning on hosting another Twitter space until the new year, but will spaces

even be around by then? I feel like the team behind Twitter Spaces was one of the first teams let go. I guess we'll have to dust off our clubhouse accounts, maybe. Also, what it looks like is that Twitter has banned the accounts of journalists who were talking about and reporting on the whole Elon Jet account getting banned controversy. So there have been legit discussions in the TechMeme editors Slack overnight. Like, if we tweet about the journalists who have been banned for talking about Elon Jet getting banned, would we get banned through some sort of transitive property? All right, I just want to state two things for the record. Number one, I am not a journalist. Never claim to be. Journalism is a profession and a craft that requires years of training, which I do not have. And number two, I respect Elon Musk. I believe he's a business visionary, if not a business genius. I find him warm, generous. I actually find his unique brand of dad humor quite funny. I'd go so far as to say he's an attractive man. I have no personal experience with this,

but I'd imagine he's a gentle, attentive, but also probably quite a vigorous lover. Am I doing this free speech thing, right? His hair is full and lustrous. He has a lot on his mind, but he's always thoughtful. This is convenient. Remember I told you about how that auditing firm Mazars was producing proof of reserves reports for Binance, Crypto.com, and other crypto platforms, well, no longer, they're not working with any crypto clients going forward. Quoting Bloomberg. Mazars Group, the accounting firm used by Crypto Giant Binance Holdings and other big players in the industry to vouch for their assets held in reserve, has halted all work for crypto clients dealing a blow to an industry seeking to shore up confidence in the wake of FTX's collapse.

The French firm suspended work for cryptocurrency firms because of indications that markets haven't been reassured by the proof of reserves reports it had published so far. according to an email from the firm seen by Bloomberg News. The firm was also concerned about intense media scrutiny, the email said. Quote, Mazars has indicated that they will temporarily pause their work with all of their crypto clients globally, a spokesperson for Binance said in a statement to Bloomberg News on Friday. Unfortunately, this means that we will not be able to work with Mazars for the moment, end quote. A Mazars spokesperson said the firm will issue a statement in due course, declining to comment further. The decision is a setback for an industry that's been trying to bolster its credibility

with investors following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, which has been accused of misusing customer funds. Auditors have faced similar backlash in recent weeks, given that FDX itself had engaged such services prior to its collapse that seemingly missed any warning signs. Cryptocurrencies fell after the report with Bitcoin down as much as 2.7% in early Europe trading. B&B, the native token of Binance smart chain, fell as much as 4.5%. Paris-based Mazars has been at the forefront of the crypto industry's rush to conduct proof of reserves reports for the likes of finance and other large exchanges, including crypto.com and Qcoin, a spokesperson for crypto.com said it would, quote, continue to engage with reputable audit firms in 2023, end quote,

while Qcoin didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, a website hosting Mazars reports for crypto clients is currently inactive, end quote. Advertising industry insiders say that Netflix is only delivering around 80% of the expected viewers for its ad-supported tier, but for now that's okay because they've structured the ad deals in such way as to release any unspent money. Still, doesn't sound good. Quoting Digidae. Netflix is falling short of ad-supported viewership guarantees made to advertisers and allowing advertisers to take their money back for ads that have yet to run, according to five agency executives. These specific shortfall amounts vary by advertiser, but in some cases,

Netflix has only delivered roughly 80% of the expected audience, said the executives. A Netflix spokesperson declined a comment. They can't deliver. They don't have enough inventory to deliver, so they're literally giving the money back, said one of the agency executives. Netflix structured its initial ad deals on a pay-on delivery basis in which advertisers would end up only paying for the viewers they actually reached, and Netflix would release any unspent ad dollars at the end of the quarter per the agency executives. That contrasts with the traditional TV ad commitment that has TV networks keeping committed ad dollars on the books and owing advertisers so-called make-goods or future ad inventory to satisfy viewership

guarantees. The agency executives credited Netflix for allowing advertisers to take back their money and said that not all advertisers have done so. Those advertisers that have taken their money back have generally been advertisers that were running marketing pushes specifically timed to the fourth quarter and the holiday shopping season, and they asked to get their money back to reallocate it elsewhere before the year is up. Other advertisers have asked instead to move their ad dollars to the first quarter of 2023 or later in the year, because they believe Netflix's ad-supported audience will continue to grow, and the service will be able to deliver on its guarantees then. There have been several ways they have approached missing delivery targets and clients want

resolution in different ways. Not everyone wants cashback at the end of a fiscal year, said a fourth agency executive. The viewership shortfall isn't a great look for Netflix's fledgling advertising business, but the agency executive said they see it as symptomatic of how quickly the company launched that business rather than a signal of Netflix's long-term. prospects. I think we knew there was going to be a supply issue and they can only accommodate so much money, said a fifth agency executive, end quote. Time for the weekend long-rate suggestions. First up from TechCrunch, we know that Spotify makes its money through subscriptions and lately more and more from ads, but what I didn't know is that they might actually soon be a software

play. Quote, back in October, Spotify teased plans to commercialize a developer-focused project that it open source nearly three years ago, a project that has been adopted by engineers at Netflix, American Airlines, Box, Roku, Splunk, Epic Games, VMware, Twilio, LinkedIn, and at least 200 other companies. The project in question is Backstage, a platform designed to bring order to companies' infrastructure by enabling them to build customized developer portals, combining all their tooling, apps, data, services, APIs, and documents in a single interface. Through Backstage, Users can monitor Kubernetes, for example, check their CICD status, view cloud costs, or track security incidents.

While there are other similar-ish tools out there, such as Compass, which Atlassian introduced earlier this year, Backstage's core selling point is that it's flexible, extensible, and open source, enabling companies to avoid vendor lock-in. Spotify had used a version of Backstage internally since 2016 before releasing it under an open-source license in early 2020. And earlier this year, Backstage was accepted as an incubating project at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Most of the big technology companies have developed fairly robust open source programs

often involving contributing to third-party projects that are integral to their own tech stack or through donating internally developed projects to the community to spur uptake. And that is precisely what led Spotify to open source backstage, having previously been blindsided by the rise of Kubernetes in the microservices realm. For context, Spotify was an early adopter of microservices, an architecture that makes it easier for companies to compile complex software through, integrating components developed separately and connecting them via APIs. This is versus the traditional monolithic architecture, which is simpler in some regards, but difficult to maintain and scale.

Spotify was basically in the right place at the right time when the great transition from monolith to microservices was happening. Fast forward to today, and Spotify is now doubling down on its efforts to make backstage a stickier proposition for some of the world's biggest companies, and this will involve monetizing the core open source project by selling premium plugins on top of it, end quote. Then from the Wall Street Journal, buying up the rights to music back catalogs has been a thing for about 25 years now, and you've heard of those roll-up companies buying businesses that do business on platforms like Amazon and Spotify, but how about buying up the rights to YouTube stars, at least their back catalogs? Quote, Spotter Incorporated

and Kelly Network, which does business as Jelly Smack, are flooding the personalities behind top YouTube channels with offers to license their old videos, pitching the deals as timely infusions that can help them expand their businesses. The startups offer cash sums in exchange for future advertising sales generated by a YouTube creator's old videos, striking deals that can stretch for as long as five years. Spotter said it had spent $740 million on content licensing agreement since 2019, after announcing earlier this year that it planned to invest $1 billion by the middle of 2023. Jellysmack has put aside $500 million for similar deals.

SoftBank Group's Vision Fund invested in both companies, betting the videos would increase in value as YouTube stars attract larger audiences. Other smaller firms are also pitching deals to creators, end quote. And finally today, you know that I like to quote Ben Evans' essays when they're out. They're usually deep and thoughtful. So, of course, I noted his recent essay discussing Chat GPT, and all the other generative machine learning systems. Ben says that they represent a step change in AI use cases, prompting questions on content for pattern generation and tolerances for error,

among other things. One of the ways I used to describe machine learning was that it gives you infinite interns. You don't need an expert to listen to a customer service call and hear that the customer is angry and the agent is rude, just an intern. But you can't get an intern to listen to 100 million calls, and with machine learning, you can. But the other side of this is that machine learning gives you not infinite interns, but one intern with superhuman speed and memory. One intern who can listen to a billion calls and say, you know, after 300 million calls, I noticed a pattern you didn't know about. That might be another way to look at these new generative networks. They're 10-year-olds that have read every book in the library and can repeat stuff back to you, but a little garbled and with no

idea that Jonathan Swift wasn't actually proposing modestly a new source of income for the poor. What can they make then? It depends on what you can ask and what you can explain to them and show to them and how much explanation they need. This is really a much more general machine learning question. What are domains that are deep enough that machines can find or create things that people could never see, but narrow enough that we can tell a machine what we want, end quote. No bonus episodes this weekend, just another long rainy weekend here in Brooklyn. It's been raining here all week, actually, which prompted me to open the Apple weather app for the first time in, like, years. You know how Apple is shutting down Dark Sky? Which, you know, just this very moment

alerted me that rain was starting again in 10 minutes. It's the weather app that I've used basically since it existed. Well, I had assumed that since Apple acquired Dark Sky, Apple was going to incorporate all the good things about Dark Sky into their weather app, and sadly, no, Like, have you seen this thing? It's hard to make heads or tails of what it's actually trying to tell me in terms of what the weather is going to be today. Seriously, are there no good weather alternatives to dark sky out there? Can anyone give me any suggestions? Because otherwise, this is the first time in a long time that my quality of life,

my actual quality of life is seriously going to be degraded because one little app is getting sunsetted. Talk to you on Monday.