Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 08/03 – The TikTok, Microsoft, Trump Ban Saga Explained

Starting point is 00:00:00 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, August 3rd, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. TikTok has not been banned by Trump, but it came close this weekend. While Microsoft almost walked away from buying TikTok this weekend, but it looks like it's back on board now and might buy non-Chinese TikTok operations soon. Google invests in ADT. The new Pixel 4A's are here and a profile of the alleged teenage Twitter hack mastermind who has now been arrested. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So this is another one of those stories where it turns out it was a good thing that we missed the story initially so that we could avoid the whole back and forth over the weekend.

Starting point is 00:01:16 And now I can give you a nice, clean summary of everything that's happened. Since we last spoke, late on Friday, word came down that President Trump was indeed planning to sign an executive order directing China's bite dance to divest itself of ownership of TikTok or the app would be banned in the U.S. The next day, Word also came down that President Trump told reporters he would be signing that order on Saturday, though that never ended up happening. In the meantime, Word leaked out that ByteDance had agreed to sell its U.S. operations of TikTok to Microsoft, which had a lot of people saying, Microsoft, why would Microsoft want TikTok? Yes, Microsoft does have a social network with LinkedIn, but TikTok, teen social media, none of this seems to be up Microsoft's alley, right? Like, no one could see how

Starting point is 00:02:11 they could fit TikTok well into their existing business. But my thinking was, maybe it's just a thing of a major social network doesn't become available every day for acquiring, and maybe Microsoft can't pass up the opportunity to immediately become a major player in the space, especially by acquiring what seems to be the next generation major player. And also, look, this is a way for Microsoft to have some sort of presence in mobile as well beyond just, you know, office apps. As Dan Primack tweeted, quote, maybe this is such a way of making sure he's invited to the next congressional hearing, end quote. Well, then it turned out that sources were saying that Microsoft had indeed been in advanced talks to buy TikTok, but they paused their negotiations with TikTok because President

Starting point is 00:03:03 Trump also let slip that he opposed Microsoft doing the deal. President Trump said he preferred an outright ban of the app as opposed to sale to a U.S. company. Sources told the Wall Street Journal that before Trump's comments, Microsoft and BightDance had hoped to have the broad strokes of a TikTok deal in place by today, Monday, quoting the Wall Street Journal. The comments, when reported, floored those involved in the talks. Bight Dance quickly made some concessions saying CEO Zhang Yaming would sell his stake in TikTok. It wasn't clear in the moment whether Mr. Trump was set on shutting TikTok out of the U.S. completely or simply negotiating. Have you read the art of the deal? One national security official responded when asked. Mr. Trump recently heard from advisors

Starting point is 00:03:47 inside and outside the White House about a need to save TikTok in the U.S. The app, filled largely with dance-offs and jokey skits has become ingrained in the lives of millions of teenagers, some of them potential voters, end quote. And now here's where we are, at least as of this morning. It seems that Microsoft Sachin Adela spoke on the phone with President Trump, and now Microsoft says, an official blog post, that it will continue discussions to explore a TikTok acquisition in the U.S. with talks slated to end September 15th. If a deal is not reached by that date, everything is off. Microsoft's preliminary proposal is to buy TikTok in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Starting point is 00:04:30 Not sure why the UK is not on that list, but quoting Microsoft's official blog post, this new structure would build on the experienced TikTok users currently love while adding world-class security, privacy, and digital safety protections. The operating model for the service would be built to ensure transparency to users as well as appropriate security oversights by governments in these countries. Among other measures, Microsoft would ensure that all private data of TikTok's American users is transferred to and remains in the United States. To the extent that any such data is currently stored or backed up outside the United States, Microsoft would ensure that this data is deleted from servers outside the country after it is transferred. Microsoft appreciates the U.S. governments and President Trump's personal involvement as it continues to develop strong security protections for the country, end quote. And actually, Reuters has some more reporting on that September 15th deadline date. Quote, this is a deadline that was put to Bite Dance and Microsoft by the committee on foreign

Starting point is 00:05:29 investment in the United States, otherwise known as Seifius, which scrutinizes deals for potential national security risks, according to the sources. Trump changed his mind following pressure from some of his advisors and many in his Republican Party, one of the sources said. Banning TikTok would alienate many of its young users ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November and would likely trigger a wave of legal challenges. Several prominent Republican lawmakers put out statements in the last two days urging Trump to back a sale of TikTok to Microsoft, end quote. So, I guess at this point, TikTok could still go away if the talks fall apart. And notice that

Starting point is 00:06:05 no one's been saying anything about TikTok in Europe. In fact, Microsoft specifically has not mentioned Europe, only those four countries that I read to you earlier. I have, heard some rumors on Twitter that possibly a separate TikTok Europe operations might be getting shopped around to potential bidders at the moment, but we shall see. And let's come back to Microsoft for a second. Tom Warren at The Verge takes a stab at answering the original question of why Microsoft wants this. He says acquiring TikTok would let Microsoft access younger users who have been tending to grow up on iOS and Android almost exclusively. It also allows Microsoft to expand its AR and Xbox offerings, and, as with everything else these days, would give them access to

Starting point is 00:06:51 a huge new trove of user data. Quote, running TikTok separately could allow Microsoft to leverage its all-important data and integration points, but also positioned TikTok as the YouTube and Facebook rival Microsoft has always wanted. Microsoft teamed up with News Corporation and NBC Universal back in 2006 to launch its soapbox on MSN video service. It failed to compete with YouTube and was shut down a few years later, leaving Microsoft to adopt YouTube as the primary way it shares its own videos. Microsoft also experimented

Starting point is 00:07:21 with its own social network, Sokol, back in 2012, before shutting down the service five years later. And remember, Microsoft always understood the potential for Facebook's growth after initially investing $240 million in Facebook back in 2007. TikTok is rapidly turning into the next big consumer social media space, acting as a direct competitor to Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook, both in terms of scale and the features involved in sharing and commenting on videos, end quote. And one more very important point to make on all of this comes from Given Edward, quote, it's important for anyone following this saga to understand that this is not about privacy or whatever. It's about power and where it lies in the future.

Starting point is 00:08:02 Whoever controls the digital world controls the world economy. That's why Trump would rather TikTok is in the hands of an American. and that's why Facebook has been after TikTok for such a while, and when they failed, they turned to the politics of freedom of speech. All of this goes way back to 2006, end quote. Here's an out-of-left-field story that makes a ton of sense once you actually read the headlines. Google is investing $450 million in smart home security company ADT for a 6.6% stake in that company. As part of the deal, ADT will begin selling and installing Nest Smart Home products, quoting TechCrunch. Both companies have also committed $150 million each, provided they reach certain milestones, for co-marketing, product development, and investment in technology and employee training.

Starting point is 00:08:57 Over time, Nest devices will enhance ADT's security monitoring and become the cornerstone of ADT's smart home offering, said Rishi Chandra, Vice President NGM at Nest in a blog post. The goal is to give customers fewer false alarms, more ways to receive alarm events, and better detection of potential incidents inside and around the home. It will also provide people with more helpful notifications that make everyday life more convenient like package detection. ADT customers will also have access to Nest Aware, a service that keeps people informed about important events at home, including intelligent alerts and event history recording for up to 30 days, he wrote. ADT's shares more than doubled in the pre-market trading on the announcement, end quote. New phone alert. Google has announced the $349 pixel 4A, available for pre-order today and shipping August 20th. At the same time in the same announcement, Google also announced the Pixel 4A 5G, which will run you $499, and will, as the name implies, get you 5G. But that phone won't be shipping till sometime in the fall.

Starting point is 00:10:09 Google also announced that the Pixel 5 is coming sometime in the fall, and so that's all kind of weird, quoting the verge. In other words, Google is just up and admitting that it has two more phones to release at the very same time as it's actually releasing a separate phone. It's messy, but necessary because this month's Pixel 4A is coming out significantly later than expected. Google says that issues relating to the pandemic kept the 4A from hitting virtual store shelves earlier. The Pixel 4A being released this month is not a 5G phone, and all signs point to U.S. carriers foregoing putting significant support behind it. It'll work on any carrier, but it will primarily be sold online. U.S. carriers seem to have little appetite for any phone without 5G, and none have ever had

Starting point is 00:10:55 much appetite to push the pixel in the first place. It's helpful for prospective 4A buyers to know that more pixels are coming, but the reality is that all three are going to hit different buyers. since the 4A won't get much carrier support pre-announcing the Pixel 5 is a face-saving measure. Historically, the flagship pixel phones have been announced and released in October. However, Google wasn't able to get the 4A out in a timely manner, and even Apple is signaling that it won't release the iPhone 12 on time this year. So even though Google says that it will release the Pixel 5 this fall, it's worth remembering that technically fall ends on December 21st this year, end quote. By the way, Dieter Bone at the Verge already has a Pixel 4A review up, and he says,

Starting point is 00:11:39 For the price, you get a decent phone, 128 gigabytes of storage, decent battery life, a 5.8-inch 1080p screen, and a flagship tier set of cameras. His summation, quote, I have called the Pixel 4A Basic, and I'm well aware that that word is used as an insult. But the thing I'm getting at is the 4A does a good job. job of handling all of the basics people expect out of a phone. Good battery life, good camera, good software, acceptable speed. Another word that gets used as an insult is cheap. And at $349, the pixel 4A definitely has a cheap price, but it doesn't feel cheap. An iPhone SE is probably a better

Starting point is 00:12:20 value in the long term. But if you want either Android or best in class photos, then the 4A will be worth a look, end quote. There's a new group whose members include Adobe, Twitter, and the New York Times that has released a white paper detailing an open standard for media authentication that could be built into both hardware, such as cameras and smartphones and software, programs like Photoshop. In other words, this new body called the Content Authenticity Initiative wants to do battle with deep fakes, quoting Axios. The system would record a digital signature when a photo or video is taken and then again

Starting point is 00:13:01 each time it's edited in any way. Users would be able to see that record of the imagery's origin. and any changes that have been made to it. The idea is a flexible standard aimed at protecting privacy and safety. Photo journalists, for instance, could tag themselves as the creator of a photo and geotag it to a specific location. The system could also simply authenticate that a photo was taken with a standard compliant device without identifying who took it or where.

Starting point is 00:13:27 The group views authenticating images from their creation to the time they're seen online as a more promising approach than trying to detect deepfakes once they're already in circulation. even the best entry in Facebook's deep fake detection challenge was only able to detect them 65% of the time per results the company announced in June. That's only slightly better than a coin toss, Shereef Hannah, True Picks, vice president of research and development and a co-author of the paper told Axios. Instead of all of us trying to get to where we can detect what's fake, we should prove what's real, end quote. True Picks, by the way, is a C-A-I member, which is already in the business of D.D.E. digital authentication. Finally today, something else we missed last week because the news dropped late on Friday was the arrests of suspects in that big Twitter hijacking a few weeks ago. A 19-year-old in the

Starting point is 00:14:25 U.K. and a 22-year-old in Orlando, Florida were arrested, but the first arrest came of a Tampa, Florida 17-year-old named Graham Clark, who is allegedly the mastermind behind the entire hijacking. Late yesterday, the New York Times had a profile of Clark. up showing how he allegedly went from scamming on Minecraft to joining the hacker forum OG users. You might have remembered Chris Messina mentioning that forum in our weekend bonus episode from a few weeks back. Quote, at 15, he joined an online hackers forum. By 16, he had gravitated to the world of Bitcoin, appearing to involve himself in a theft of $856,000 worth of the cryptocurrency, though he was never charged for it, social media and legal record show. On Instagram posts,

Starting point is 00:15:11 afterward, he showed up with designer sneakers and a bling-encrusted Rolex. The teenager's digital misbehavior ended on Friday when the police arrested him at a Tampa, Florida apartment. Florida prosecutors said Mr. Clark, now 17, was the mastermind of a prominent hack last month, accusing him of tricking his way into Twitter's systems and taking over the accounts of some of the world's most famous people, including Barack Obama, Kanye West, and Jeff Bezos. His arrest raised questions about how someone so young could penetrate the defenses of what was supposedly one of Silicon Valley's most sophisticated technology companies. Mr. Clark, who prosecutors said worked with at least two others to hack Twitter, but was the leader,

Starting point is 00:15:51 is being charged as an adult with 30 felonies, end quote. As for the details of how the hijacking actually allegedly went down, according to the times, quote, according to a government affidavit, Mr. Clark convinced a, quote, Twitter employee that he was a co-worker in the IT department and had the employee provide credentials to access the customer service portal. For help, Mr. Clark found accomplices on OG users, according to the charging documents. The accomplices offered to broker the sale of Twitter accounts that had cool usernames like AtW, while Mr. Clark would enter Twitter's systems and change ownership of the accounts according to the filings and accounts from the accomplices. The hack unfolded on July 15th.

Starting point is 00:16:34 A few days later, one accomplice who went by the name, LOL, told the times that the person they knew as the mastermind began cheating the customers who wanted to covertly buy the Twitter accounts. The hacker took the money and handed over the account, but then quickly reclaimed it by using his access to Twitter systems to boot out the client. It was reminiscent of what Mr. Clark had done earlier on Minecraft, end quote. I want to point out that while Mr. Clark's bail has been set at $725,000, that Times profile, if you read it, says that he allegedly might already have $3 million worth of Bitcoin in his possession from previous activities, shall we call them? So, and as NBC's Kevin Collier tweeted, quote,

Starting point is 00:17:17 there's something almost weirdly assuring about the teen accused of hacking Twitter. APT groups have become so entrenched in every type of online malfeasance. It's easy to forget that the dude who might end up hacking at Joe Biden may just be a high school age Minecraft player, end quote. I did not get to experiment with, any Descript generated deep fake audio segments today because, first, it was such a heavy newsday that I had no time for that, but also because I tried to train Descript on my voice over the weekend, and it seems I did something wrong. I trained about 15 minutes of my voice, but I didn't

Starting point is 00:17:59 like the audio quality, so I tried to delete that voice data set to record a new one, and now when I try to set up a new one, all I get is error messages. I've got a support ticket out to the Descript team, so hopefully I'll be able to retrain on the system tonight. We shall see. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 08/03 – The TikTok, Microsoft, Trump Ban Saga Explained

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