Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 06/29 – Reddit Bans r/The_Donald and The Facebook Ad Boycott, Explained

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

Reddit bans r/The_Donald and I try to break down the almost hour by hour, day by day timeline of the whole Facebook/social media ad boycott situation. Apple might not include a charger (!) in the iPhone 12 box, much less earbuds. Amazon cuts back on waste in India. India cuts off Tik Tok completely. And some news you can use if you need to recover lost files in Windows. Sponsors: Metalab.co Tovala.com/ride Links: Reddit bans r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse as part of a major expansion of its rules (The Verge) Exclusive: Facebook ad boycott campaign to go global, organizers say (Reuters) The hard truth about the Facebook ad boycott: Nothing matters but Zuckerberg (CNN Business) Kuo: Apple will not include earbuds or charger in iPhone 12 box (9to5Mac) Amazon eliminates single-use plastic in packaging in India (TechCrunch) Govt bans 59 Chinese apps including TikTok as border tensions simmer in Ladakh (India Today) Microsoft’s new Windows File Recovery tool lets you retrieve deleted documents (The Verge) 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 Monday, June 29th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, I try to break down the almost hour-by-hour day-by-day timeline of that whole Facebook slash social media ad boycott situation. Apple might not include a charger in the iPhone 12 box, much less earbuds. Amazon cuts back on waste in India, while India cuts off TikTok completely and some news you can use if you need to recover lost files and windows. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. This is another one of those things where this literally just broke, so I'll tell you what I can now.

But the headline here is that Reddit has banned the subreddit R-slash the Donald, as well as 200 other communities today after updating its content policy to more explicitly ban hate speech. Quoting The Verge. I have to admit that I've struggled with balancing my values as an American and around free speech and free expression with my values and the company's values around common human decency. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a call with reporters. In a blog post that cites the company's new rules, Huffman said users of the R-slash the Donald subreddit

had violated the site's policies for years. The site has no official connection to President Donald Trump, although he did do and ask me anything there as a candidate in 2016. Quote, The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average, Rule 1, antagonized us and other communities, rules 2 and 8, and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations, Huffman said.

Reddit's new policy begins with a first rule that requires users to consider the human. It reads, quote, remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and people that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned, end quote. Among the 2000 subreddits also banned today are the subreddit for the left-wing podcast, Chappo Trap House. But only about 200 of these other subredits band had more than 10 daily users on average. Among the other newly verboten subredits, and these are ones with significantly more than 10 daily users on average,

R-slash dark humor and memes, R-slash-consume product, R-slash-Dark J-Joke Central, R slash gender critical, R slash comptown, R slash I'm going to hell for this too, R slash Wojack, and R slash Soy Boys. So usually I get all pissed off when a major story breaks late on Friday right after I post the show. Because more often than not, that means that by Monday the story is sort of old news. But in this case, I'm sort of glad that we can get into this now because I can give you the full TikTok as the story has sort of evolved over the weekend. Remember all those companies that were either pausing or stopping their ads on social media

generally and on Facebook and Facebook properties specifically? Well, you can add Coca-Cola and Starbucks to that list and actually a whole bunch of others. But really, Coca-Cola, that's as big as you can get. Coca-Cola says it will be pausing all of its advertising on social media for a time. and actually think about it. Starbucks is kind of pretty huge on mobile too, right? So maybe Starbucks could be more significant in terms of dollars and cents. Well, Facebook seemingly knew that this was coming because Friday afternoon into the evening that day, it was like watching a PR crisis and PR crisis management unfold in real time because hour by hour, Facebook just kept making

announcement after announcement. First, Mark Zuckerberg posted on his personal. account to say that Facebook would now label content that violates its rules, but that it nonetheless leaves up because it thinks it's newsworthy and in the public interest. So labeling questionable content, which is, of course, a major about face because Facebook said it was never going to do this, and also because Facebook and Zuckerberg made clear that this would specifically and explicitly apply to politicians, which Facebook definitely said it would never do. In fact, Remember how when Twitter did this sort of labeling to posts from President Trump, was it only two weeks ago now? Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview that that was absolutely the wrong move, that Facebook didn't believe in that.

So Facebook is now doing the thing that it sort of sub-tweeted Twitter for doing mere weeks ago. And believe me, Jack Dorsey noticed. He retweeted a tweet from Will Aramis that said, quote, This is news. Zuckerberg just announced Facebook will follow Twitter and putting warning labels on posts by public figures. that violate its rules but are deemed newsworthy enough to remain on the platform, end quote. Then after that, word came down that Facebook would also ban ads that claim people from a specific race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, gender, sexual orientation, or immigration origin

are a threat. To which I say, and I know I'm supposed to be covering this stuff every single day, but to which I say that sort of ad was allowed up until now as, Terran Wada tweeted, quote, it took an advertiser boycott for Mark Zuckerberg to decide to stop accepting money for ads that promote hate speech. What a disgraceful way to make decisions, end quote. Yeah, and then Facebook also announced that for posts about voting, it will attach labels that will direct users to accurate election and voting information on its new voter information center. Well, all of this has been spearheaded by the so-called hashtag stop hate for profit campaign. Let me turn to Reuters to tell you about this group because right now they've been targeting advertisers in the U.S., but they say, starting this week, they're going to take this campaign global, starting with Europe,

quoting Reuters. Free press and common sense, along with U.S. civil rights groups' color of change and the Anti-Defamation League, launched the campaign following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed by Minneapolis police. Quote, the next frontier is global pressure, the campaign said in a statement, and adding, the campaign hopes to emboldened regulators in Europe to take a harder stance on Facebook. The European Commission in June announced new guidelines for tech companies, including Facebook, to submit monthly reports on how they are handling coronavirus misinformation. The global campaign will proceed as organizers continue to urge more U.S. companies to participate. Jessica Gonzalez, chief executive of Free Press, said she has contacted major U.S. telecommunications

and media companies to ask them to join the campaign. expanding the campaign outside the United States will take a bigger slice off of Facebook's advertising revenue, but is not likely to have a major financial impact. Unilever, for instance, on Friday, committed to pausing its U.S. spending on Facebook for the rest of the year. That only accounts for about 10% of its overall estimated $250 million it spends on Facebook advertising annually, according to Richard Greenfeld of Lightshed Partners, a media and tech research firm. Steyer said they will urge global advertisers such as Unilever and Honda, which have only committed to pausing U.S. ads to pool their Facebook ads globally.

Annually, Facebook generates $70 billion in advertising sales, but only about a quarter of that comes from big companies such as Unilever, with the vast majority of its revenue derived from small businesses, end quote. As Nancy Scola tweeted, interesting aspect on the other side of the boycott is a marriage of old school civil rights orgs with gravitas, like the NWACP and Internet activists. namely sleeping giants who have figured out how to leverage social media to trigger corporate action. That's new, end quote. But also note that so far these boycotts have actually followed through on, as that last quote from the piece said, would only result in sort of a drop in the bucket in terms of Facebook revenue.

Facebook makes the vast majority of its money from the hundreds of thousands of smaller advertisers on its platform. According to CNN, the top 100 brands globally contribute only an estimated 6% of Facebook's revenue. And also there's this, quoting CNN, Facebook is less susceptible to outside pressure than most businesses, experts say. It's led by a CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who exercises complete voting control over the company and can't be removed by shareholders. And that could vastly complicate the campaign to hit Facebook where it hurts. Quote, Disney couldn't do this, and Apple couldn't do this. They're run by committee, Martin said. If it was a company run by committee, they would have to react because the committee,

the board of directors, would be threatening to fire the CEO to protect revenue. That doesn't have to happen here, end quote. Yeah, indeed, Zuck could just decide, you know what, we don't need the big brands. There are, of course, plenty of examples of media entities that are too controversial sometimes or maybe too niche for major brands to spend a ton on regularly, like Fox News and CNBC come to mind as examples of each category. And both of those absolutely meant money. At the time of this writing, Facebook stock is down around 10% between Friday and this morning's early trading, and that's worth noticing, but also something that could be completely meaningless in a couple of trading sessions. In the source code newsletter this morning,

David Pierce makes a point that I have heard this weekend as well, and I heard this from someone who would know these things. Let me quote David. One big domino left to fall, Proctor and Gamble, the biggest advertiser in America. My theory has always been that Mark Pritchard, P&G's chief brand officer, is actually the most influential person in tech. From what I hear, these conversations are happening all over the company right now. My big question going forward, where is all this ad money going to go if not to Facebook? Ad sales teams at TikTok, YouTube, Google, and Snap must be champing at the bit right now. Heck, maybe even Quibi will be a winner, end quote. well that's going a bit far but you know a funny thing does happen when you actually do have

competition you have to you know make moves to be competitive snap and tick tock especially must be salivating heck maybe even youtube could strategically pivot to doing some hardcore virtue signaling with some sort of muscle behind it and somewhere the instagram guys must be having their hundred thousandth second thought you know imagine if instagram was still independent not only could Instagram be the sort of feel-good social alternative platform that it already kind of is, but it could now be the brand safe space that it sort of was always designed to be as well. The Facebook acquisition of Instagram continues to be one of the biggest what-ifs in all of, well, social history at this point, not just tech and business history.

We trust Minchi Kuo, don't we, to usually get his Apple Scoops correct? Well, I don't know how you feel about this one. In a recent report, Quo says that Apple will not only not include earbuds in the box when you buy a new iPhone 12. It might not even include a charger, but at the same time, it will introduce a 20-watt power adapter to be sold separately, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. Quo says that Apple wants to keep selling the iPhone 12 at a similar price to the iPhone 11, and removing inbox accessories will offset the cost of the 5G networking components. This will presumably reduce the size of the iPhone packaging considerably as well, helping lower Apple's freight costs and be better for the environment. It's not clear if the lightning cable is still included.

For comparison to Apple's other products, the Series 3 Apple Watch includes the magnetic charging cable but does not come with the wall plug slash power adapter. Quo says that the previously pictured 20-wattapter is legitimate but will not come with the iPhone 12. Instead, it will be sold separately as an optional purchase. The analyst believes Apple is discontinuing both the current 5 watt and 18 watt chargers in favor of the new 20-watt model. For Apple's upcoming iPad line consisting of a new 10.8-inch iPad later this year and 8-5-inch iPad mini in the first half of 2021, quote, thanks Apple will continue to bundle the power adapter with those, end quote.

So my take is, not even including a charger, is pretty bold. I mean, I assume most of us have a bunch of chargers lying around, and a lot of us, now have those Chi wireless chargers strategically around our house, but you still would have the absurd situation of, in theory, someone buying a product that they can only use until the battery runs out and then they have to wait for the charger that they were forced to order separately to arrive. There was a lot of chatter over the weekend about Apple nickel and diming people over accessories, though I would say is a charger really an accessory? It's not an accessory if you need it to operate the device. But also, at the same time, lots of folks were also tweeting about how this

is a good move because of how much it would cut down on e-waste. Speaking of waste-waste, not just e-waste, smallish sort of story here, but interesting. Amazon says it has eliminated all single-use plastic in its packaging across more than 50 fulfillment centers in India, quoting TechCrunch. The American e-commerce group said it had replaced packaging materials such as bubble wrap with paper cushions and was also using 100% plastic-free biodegradable paper tapes. All of Amazon's 50-plus fulfillment centers in India, one of its key overseas markets, are complying with the new guidelines, the company said.

Flipkart, which had made a similar pledge last year, said last month that its reliance on single-use plastic across its supply chain had dropped by 50%. Last year, the Walmart-owned marketplace said it intended to move entirely to recycle plastic consumption in its supply chain by March 2021. Amazon's announcement Monday follows India Prime Minister Narendra Modi's directive last year when he urged Indians to put an end to usage of single-use plastic by 2020, end quote. Question is, I guess, how quickly could or can Amazon roll this out globally? And speaking of India, remember not too long ago I did a story about the border clashes between

India and China and how the resulting rise in nationalism was affecting use and adoption of Chinese-made apps inside of India. There was even an app that was subsequently removed from the Play Store that would remove Chinese-made apps from your phone for you. Yeah, well, the Indian government announced that it is banning 59 Chinese-developed apps, including TikTok, including WeChat, including Weibo, Maytu, and Clash of Kings, quoting India today. A government press release announcing the ban stated, quote, The Ministry of Information Technology invoking its power under Section 69A of the Information

Technology Act, read with the relevant provisions of the information technology, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, rules 2009. And in view of the emergent nature of threats has decided to block 59 apps since in view of information available, they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of state and public order. The press release further said that the Ministry of Information Technology has received, quote, many representations raising concerns from citizens regarding security. of data and risk to privacy relating to operation of certain apps, end quote. It further says that the move to ban these Chinese apps will, quote, safeguard the interests

of Indian mobile and internet users. The decision is a targeted move to ensure safety and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace, it said, end quote. So I guess the headline here is that India bans TikTok, which is a pretty big deal, which also remember that story from last week about TikTok spying on your clipboard with every character you type. Finally today, from the news you can use right away file, Microsoft has released a new file recovery tool that will let you retrieve deleted documents if you're a Windows user. Here's how and why to use it from Tom Warren in the Verge. Windows File Recovery is a

command line app that will recover a variety of files and documents from local hard drives, USB drives, and even SD cards from cameras. Recovery of files on cloud storage or network file shares is supported, though. Like any file recovery tool, you'll need to use it as soon as possible on deleted files to ensure they haven't been overwritten. You'll be able to use Microsoft's new tool to recover MP3 files, MP4 videos, PDF documents, JPEG images, and typical Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Microsoft's File Recovery Tool has a default mode that's designed primarily for NTFS files. It will recover files from a corrupted disk or after you've formatted a disk. A second signature mode will likely be the more popular option, allowing users to recover specific file types across fat, X-FAT, and re-FS files.

This signature mode may also take longer to retrieve files, end quote. Windows File Recovery is a free tool available right now from the Microsoft website. That is all for today. I hope y'all had a good weekend, PS, on that weekend bonus episode. with Renee Ritchie. We recorded video as a further experiment with our whole YouTube experiment. So the YouTube version of that episode is just that, the raw video of our chat. When I do these going forward, I think I'm going to set up a whole backdrop and, you know, actually sit up with good posture and stuff like that. But hey, if you wanted to see what my

messy office looks like or check out the status of my quarantine haircut, there you go. YouTube channel can be found by searching TechMeme podcast on YouTube. If you haven't subscribed, by the way, to the YouTube channel, why not do that while you're there? Talk to you tomorrow.