Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 04/26 – Listen To The Podcast On Facebook, I Guess?

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Facebook rolls out that Spotify integration. Roku accuses Google of making anticompetitive demands for YouTube TV. iOS 14.5 rolls out, and with it that App Tracking Transparency tool. Apple plans a big new campus in North Carolina. And DoNotPay’s latest service helps protect your selfies from the global panopticon.  Sponsors:   CalderaLab.com use code TECHMEME (all caps one word) at checkout Kiwico.com, Promocode ride for 30 percent off Links: Facebook introduces a new miniplayer that streams Spotify within the Facebook app(Tech Crunch) Zoom launches Immersive View to unify participants in the same virtual room (Venture Beat) Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands (Axios) OnlyFans feels the lockdown love as transactions hit £1.7bn (Financial Times) German groups file Apple antitrust complaint as it makes privacy changes (Financial Times) To Be Tracked or Not? Apple Is Now Giving Us the Choice. (New York Times) Apple will spend $1 billion to open 3,000-employee campus in North Carolina (CNBC) DoNotPay's new tool makes your photos undetectable to facial recognition software (Input) 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 Monday, April 26, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Facebook rolls out that Spotify integration we were expecting. Roku accuses Google of making anti-competitive demands for YouTube TV. iOS 14.5 rolls out. And with it, that app tracking transparency tool. Apple plans a big new campus in North Carolina and do not pay's latest service helps protect your selfies from the global Panopticon. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Facebook is rolling out a mini player that will allow Facebook users to stream music and podcasts from Spotify through the Facebook app on iOS and Android, quoting TechCrunch.

The mini player itself is an extension of the social sharing option already supported within Spotify's app. Now, when Spotify users are listening to content they want to share to Facebook, they'll be able to tap the existing share menu, the three dot menu at the upper right of the screen, and then tap either Facebook or Facebook news feed. When a user posts an individual track or podcast episode to Facebook through this sharing feature, the post will now display in a new mini player that allows other people who come across their post to also play the content as they continue to scroll or reshare it. Cue the MySpace vibes.

Spotify's paid subscribers will be able to access full playback. The company says, free users, meanwhile, will be able to hear the U.S. full shared track, not a clip, but afterwards, they'll continue to listen to add supported content on shuffle mode, just as they would in Spotify's own app. One important thing to note here about how all this works is that the integration allows the music or podcast content to actually play from within the Spotify app. When a user presses play on the mini player, an app switch takes place so the user can log into Spotify. The mini player activates and controls the launch and playback in the Spotify app, which is how the playback is able to continue, even as the user scrolls on Facebook

or if they minimize the Facebook app altogether. This setup means users will need to have the Spotify mobile app installed on their phone and a Spotify account for the mini player to work. For first-time Spotify users, they'll have to sign up for a free account in order to listen to the music shared via the mini-player. The partnership allows Spotify to leverage Facebook's reach to gain distribution and to drive both sign-ups and repeat usage of its app, just as the COVID bump to subscriber growth may be wearing off. However, it's still responsible for the royalties paid on streams, just as it was before. The company told TechCrunch because its app is the one actually doing the streaming. It's also fully in charge of the music catalog and audio ads

that play alongside the content. For Facebook, this deal means it now has a valuable tool to keep users spending time on its site, a metric that has been declining over the years, reports have indicated, end quote. So I'm only interested in this news to the degree that it could potentially expand the reach of podcasts. Podcasts simply don't go viral. There has really been no mechanism to do so until now, and then that ties into the whole problem of actual discovery for podcasts. Joe Rogan, for example, supercharged his podcast audience by getting clips to go viral on YouTube. If any of you want to play around with this and let me know what you find, I would be much obliged. You find the player? Can you share tracks? Can you see tracks? Others have played and shared.

My Facebook feed is a ghost town these days, and the only people sharing anything on there still aren't the types that tend to listen to podcasts. So it'll be difficult for me to measure this unless I suddenly see a surge in Spotify plays in the analytics or something like that. Anyway, if you can learn anything, I'm all ears. You can email me at podcast at techmeme.com or tweet at me at Brian MCC. Zoom has officially launched what it calls Immersive View, which assembles up to 25 video conference participants in one scene for all free and individual ProZoom accounts, quoting Venture Beat. In a nutshell, video hosts can use Emmercive View to arrange participants, anyone from employees to panelists, in a single virtual environment. This deviates from the established norm of displaying participants in a grid-like format with each individual's personal background showing. Immersive View supports up to 25 participants and they can be placed in any number of environments including a boardroom, auditorium, or classroom, depending on the event.

Hosts can manually move people around on the screen or let Zoom do it automatically. Immersive View is available now in Zoom's desktop client, version 5.6.3 or higher, for Windows and MacOS and is activated by default for all free and individual pro accounts, end quote. Roku says anti-competitive demands from Google, including requests for preferential treatment of apps like YouTube TV, may force YouTube TV off of Roku's platform entirely, quoting Axios. The carriage agreement between the two companies is set to expire imminently. Unlike most streaming TV carriage fights, Roku says it's not asking for more money, but for better terms around anti-competitive demands from Google, such as being asked to

Google products in Roku's search results. Roku says Google is threatening the removal of YouTube TV to force Roku to grant preferential access to its consumer data moving forward. It says Google has asked Roku to do things that it does not see replicated on other streaming competitors' platforms like creating a dedicated search result row for YouTube within the Roku's smart TV interface and giving YouTube search results more prominent placement. Roku says Google has also required it to block search results from other streaming content providers while users are using the YouTube app on Roku's system. Roku alleges Google has asked it to favor YouTube music results from voice commands made on the Roku remote while the YouTube app is open, even if the user's

music preference is set to default to another music app like Pandora. Roku says Google has threatened to require Roku to use certain chipsets or memory cards that would force Roku to increase the price of its hardware product, which competes directly with Google's Chromecast. A key issue for Roku, other than that Google is asking it to manipulate search results that favor Google's products, is that it believes Google is trying to tie the renewal of YouTube TV's distribution contract with Roku to force additional anti-competitive benefits for Google's separate YouTube app, end quote. If true, that's pretty gutsy of Google to make such aggressive demands in this regulatory climate. Although, as we've noted before, in this regulatory

climate, making antitrust claims against your rivals is just another shiv in the knife fight that is the zero-sum game that is modern tech platform warfare. C.C. Chris Messina's Tech World War Theory. From the keeping an eye on the crater economy file, OnlyFans says its revenues rose 553% in the last year to 281 million pounds, and pre-tax profits rose from 6 million pounds to 53 million pounds, while transactions overall on the platform reached 1.7 billion pounds, quoting the Financial Times. The size of revenues and growth rate suggests only fans could have a multi-billion pound valuation if it went public, making it one of the UK's leading tech companies. Little Sex-based company remains closely held.

Chief Executive Tim Stokely, 37, and his father, Guy, 77, a former Barclays investment banker, established the website in 2016. The pair declined to name the biggest earners on the platform, but said the platform had more than 300 creators who earned more than $1 million. Those that have more recently joined the platform include celebrities such as U.S. rapper Cardi B and English rugby player Chris Rob Shaw looking to monetize their vast social media followings. The fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff joined only fans this year to show behind-the-scenes footage of New York Fashion Week. Thousands of students and out-of-work freelancers have also turned

to the website to make an income during the pandemic, prompting criticism from campaigners that the site has moved the boundary of what constitutes sex work, end quote. A group of Germany's largest media tech and advertising companies have filed an antitrust complaint against Apple as it makes those widely anticipated private. changes to iPhones, quoting the Financial Times. Nine industry associations representing companies including Facebook and Axel Springer, the owner of Build, Die Welt, and Insider, filed the complaint on Monday with Germany's competition regulator. The German complaint predicted a 60% fall in advertising revenues for app developers as the changes make it harder for third parties to gather

the data they need to place ads. Thomas Hopner at law firm Hussfeld, which is representing the complainants said more apps will have to switch to charging consumers instead of the current advertising-based business model. He added, quote, consumers will be harmed by higher transaction costs. If the relevance of ads decreases, consumers will have to spend more time searching to find offerings that are relevant to them, end quote. Yes, word on the street is those privacy changes are expected to roll out today by the time you hear this. You might already be able to download iOS 14.5, which should include the app tracking transparency tool that everybody is talking about. But 14.5 does some other things, too, like allowing Siri to play audio with third-party apps

and even enabling the unlocking of your phone with a mask on. For a rundown of the other headline changes coming in 14.5, Brian X-C-Chen in the New York Times has us covered, quote, Siri has generally worked only with Apple Music for Music Playback since 2015, which has been annoying and inconvenient for those who want to use the voice assistant to play songs using other music apps. The change comes as antitrust scrutiny mounts over whether Apple stifles competition by favoring its own apps. To make Siri work with other audio services, you won't have to change any settings. If you normally listen to music with a third-party app such as Spotify, Siri will simply learn over time that you prefer that app and react accordingly.

Audio app developers need to program their apps to support Siri, so if they haven't done so yet, this won't work. That means if you always use Spotify to play music, you will be able to say, hey, you know who, play the Beatles to start playing a Beatles playlist on Spotify. The other new feature helps solve a pandemic issue. For more than a year,

wearing a mask has been extra annoying for owners of newer iPhones that have face scanners to unlock the device. That's because the iPhone camera has not been able to recognize our covered mugs. Apple's iOS 14.5 finally delivers a mechanism to unlock the phone while masked, though it requires wearing an Apple Watch.

Here's how that works. When you scan your face and the phone determines it can't recognize you because your mouth and nose are obstructed, it will check to see if your Apple Watch is unlocked and nearby. The Apple Watch, and effect acts as a proof to verify that you are the one trying to unlock your phone. To make this work, update the software on your iPhone and Apple Watch, then open the Settings app on your iPhone. Scroll down to Face ID and Passcode.

In this menu, go to Unlock with the iPhone. Apple Watch and toggle on the option to use your Apple Watch to unlock when the image scanner detects your face with a mask, end quote. By the way, the piece that I just quoted from also has a full rundown of how the whole app tracking transparency tool works, how you can turn that on as well. So hit the link in the show notes if you want a refresher on all of that. Apple says it will spend more than $1 billion to open a 3,000 employee campus in North Carolina as part of a $430 billion U.S. investment plan in fields like Silicon Engineering and 5G. I wanted to mention this real quick because this is how you do it.

This is how you do a major campus announcement. You don't pit cities against each other, Hunger Games style. You don't extort states and municipalities for tax breaks. You just identify a place you want to be and you just do the damn thing, quoting CNBC. The campus is a sign of Apple's continued expansion beyond its headquarters in Cupertino, California, where most of its engineering has been based. Apple's $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas is expected to open next year. Apple's expansion will be located in North Carolina's Research Triangle area, which gets its name from nearby North Carolina State University,

Duke University, and the University of North Carolina. Apple's CEO Tim Cook and C.O. Jeff Williams have MBAs from Duke, and Apple's senior vice president, Eddie Q, who is in charge of the company's online services, also graduated from Duke. Apple also said, said Monday it was rapidly expanding in other cities where it has engineering operations. It plans to employ 5,000 people in San Diego, 3,000 people in Culver City in Los Angeles, and 700 in Boulder, Colorado by 2026. Apple also said it employs 1,000 people in Seattle and plans to double that. In total, Apple says it plans to add 20,000 jobs in the U.S. over the next five years, end quote. Finally today, you know, Do Not Pay is one of my favorite startups every time they release

some off-the-wall new service that it never occurred to me that someone should offer. It tickles me. So get this one. Quoting input. Do Not Pay charges $3 a month, and in exchange we'll do everything from contest parking tickets to cancel free trials before their renewal date, basically anything that can be easily automated. Do Not Pay wants to take care of it for you. Do Not Pay is now rolling out a new feature that slightly alters photos so that artificial intelligence

apps can't identify who you are. Called Photo Ninja, the feature is intended to prevent photos of you uploaded online from being used for malicious purposes. With the new Photo Ninja feature, users upload a photo of themselves to do not pay, and its algorithms insert hidden changes that confuse facial recognition tools. This type of masked picture can be referred to as an adversarial example, exploiting the way artificial intelligence algorithms work to disrupt their behavior. It's a growing area of research as the role of AI continues to grow and the technology is exploited for potentially dangerous or at least privacy eroding purposes. A.I. Systems are trained to analyze pictures by looking at the pixel level data and adversarial examples can trick them

by changing the pixel colors in a subtle enough way that the human eye doesn't notice anything different, but a computer fails to categorize the image as it usually would or interprets it as a wholly different image. There are various reasons why you might want to use Photo Ninja before joining a data service like Bumble. You could run your pictures through Photo Ninjas so that weirdos can't upload them to Google's reverse image search and find your social media profiles without getting your consent, for instance. As police agencies and retailers increasingly use facial recognition to surveil for criminal activity, they rely on databases of pictures called from the internet to find suspects. Such invasive surveillance is controversial, not least because it's often inaccurate and

disproportionately harms minorities and women. So if you run all of your pictures through Photo Ninja, do not pay claims programs like Tin Eye and Google's reverse image search will be unable to match you. Hopefully, Clearview AI won't be able to either, end quote. I think I've said before, I find do not pay fascinating because their entire business model is essentially fighting bureaucracy and time-wasting red tape as a service. But it's also sticking it to the man as a service, which, who else does that? Hey, look at that. This is the 900th episode of this podcast.

We're breaking off a new hundo, as Scott Ackerman likes to say, as ever, when we reach a new milestone like this, I must thank you all from the bottom of my heart for humbly bringing me into your lives every day. here's to passing the 1,000 episode milestones sometime later this summer, or maybe actually fall, I guess. Talk to you tomorrow.