Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 09/16 - Did Amazon Change its Algorithms to Make Itself More Profitable?

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

If Amazon wants to tip-toe past the regulators, headlines like those from today can’t help, October is going to be filthy with major tech launch events, is TikTok showing us the future of the Chinese web in worrying ways, and let’s pour one out for MoviePass! Links: OpenVPN.net/ride Mealime.com Links: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products (WSJ) Facebook and JP Morgan meet with global central banks to discuss cryptocurrencies (CNBC) Google announces October 15th hardware event for Pixel 4 (The Verge) Iger Departs Board of Apple, Disney’s New Streaming Competitor (NY Times) Wi-Fi 6 officially launches today, ahead of iPhone 11 availability on Friday (9to5Mac) Wi-Fi 6 certification is here to make next-gen speeds a widespread reality (CNET) Multiple camera simultaneous recording coming to iPhone XS and iPhone XR, not just iPhone 11 (9to5Mac) TikTok’s Beijing roots fuel censorship suspicion as it builds a huge U.S. audience (The Washington Post) MoviePass will shut down for good on Sept. 14 (CNBC) AD FREE FEED SIGNUP! 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, September 16th, 2019. I'm Brian McCalla today. If Amazon wants to tiptoe pass the regulators' headlines like those from today, can't help.

October is going to be filthy with major tech launch events. Is TikTok showing us the future of the Chinese web in worrying ways? And let's pour one out for good old movie pass. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So when you're under deep antitrust scrutiny already, in an environment where regulators are rattling their sabers, headlines like this are just not helpful. The Wall Street Journal is this morning reporting that Amazon changed the search algorithm

on its website in ways that would allegedly boost its own products and or products that would be more profitable for Amazon itself. According to sources, these changes met with pushback from engineers and lawyers inside the company, but Amazon went ahead with the changes to the algorithm nonetheless. Quote, late last year, these people said. Amazon optimized the secret algorithm that ranks listings so that instead of showing customers mainly the most relevant and best-selling listings when they search, as it had for more than a decade, the site also gives a boost to items that are more profitable for the company. The adjustment, which the world's biggest online retailer

hasn't publicized followed a years-long battle between executives who run Amazon's retail businesses in Seattle and the company's search team dubbed A-9 in Palo Alto, California, which opposed the move, the people said. Any tweak to Amazon's search system has brought implications because the Giants rankings can make or break a product. The site's search bar is the most common way for U.S. shoppers to find items online, and most purchases stem from the first page of search results, to marketing analytics firm Jumpshot, end quote. According to the sources, the reasons the engineers pushed back against the change was because they felt that it, quote, violated the company's principle of doing what is best for

the customer, the people familiar with the project said. This was definitely not a popular project, said one. The search engine should look for relevant items, not for more profitable items, end quote. The lawyers apparently pushed back fearing that this would invite. you guessed it, antitrust scrutiny. A9 again is the unit and Amazon responsible for search, which is based in Silicon Valley, not Seattle, and thus had seemingly had a large degree of autonomy from the mothership for a long time. But, quoting from the piece one more time, after the journal's inquiries, Amazon took down its A9 website, which had stood for about a decade

and a half. The site included the statement, quote, one of A9's tenants is that relevance is in the eye of the customer and we strive to get the best results for our users, end quote. In Basel, Switzerland, Libra representatives apparently met today with officials from 26 central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. The agenda, please, please let us do this. The European Central banks Benoit Corre apparently chaired the meeting. Quote, as a new technology, stable coins are largely untested, especially on the scale required to run a global payment system, Coray said. They give rise to a number of serious risks related to public policy priorities. The bar for regulatory approval will be high, end quote.

And quoting from CNBC, following the meeting with policymakers, David Marcus, the executive leading Facebook's cryptocurrency initiative, defended the project saying Libra wouldn't, quote, threaten the sovereignty of nations when it comes to money, end quote. We will continue to engage with central banks, regulators, and lawmakers to ensure we address their concerns through Libra's design and operations, Marcus said in a tweet, end quote. If I remember correctly, we spoke about this off air, but when John Voorhees and I recorded last weekend's bonus episode, we were comparing notes about how busy October was suddenly shaping up to be. There's all of those Apple software release.

There's a Microsoft Surface event, a possible smaller Apple event, as we discussed. And now this. Google this morning sent out invites to a hardware event to be held on October 15th here in New York City, where Google is expected to announce the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones, as well as a new Pixelbook 2 and possibly new Google Home speakers. If you'll recall, this event will be a bit unusual because we basically know all the deets. already, at least when it comes to the pixels, quoting Chris Welch in The Verge. Google made an unusual move among tech companies in June when it confirmed the Pixel 4's existence

months prior to its planned release. We all know it's coming, so Google decided to offer an early glimpse at the new devices design. Google has also already revealed that the Pixel 4 will include its own take on face ID with an array of sensors that scan a person's face for secure authentication. The Pixel 4 will also support hand gesture commands that utilize the company's project solely technology. Those early previews have been followed by a wave of leaks in recent weeks, with early Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL devices appearing in hands-on videos and a seemingly endless assortment of photos, end quote. Just don't expect any new pixel slates at this event, because remember Google has washed its hands of being a tablet manufacturer.

going forward. According to an SEC filing, Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Eiger has resigned from Apple's board of directors, quoting the New York Times. When Mr. Iger became an Apple director, the company was still fully focused on computers, smartphones, and tablets. More recently, as iPhone sales have slowed, Apple has started to look more seriously at the entertainment business, Disney's Ballywick. Mr. Eager told Bloomberg television in April that he was careful to step out of Apple board, whenever the topic of an Apple streaming service came up. He said at the time that those moments were relatively infrequent because the board primarily focused on Apple's biggest businesses.

So far it's been okay, Mr. Agar told Bloomberg. I'm in constant discussion about it, end quote. Mr. Agar declined to comment on his resignation beyond a statement, quote, I have the utmost respect for Tim Cook, his team at Apple, and for my fellow board members, he said in the statement. Apple is one of the world's most admired companies known for the quality and integrity of its products and its people, and I am forever grateful to have served as a member of the company's board, end quote. A couple of stories relating to the iPhone 11 release.

Wi-Fi 6 officially launched today in order to get ahead of General iPhone 11 availability on Friday, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. As of today, manufacturers can have compatible devices certified to use the Wi-Fi 6 certified label, the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro slash. Max will qualify. In addition to offering faster speeds, Wi-Fi 6 also offers longer range, reduced battery consumption, and greater security, as well as better management of multiple devices connected to a single Wi-Fi router or hotspot. This latter feature is of particular benefit to enterprise networks, end quote. Actually, the Samsung Galaxy S-10 Plus will also have Wi-Fi 6 support. In addition, so will many Wi-Fi 6 routers already on the market.

Again, the headlines of Wi-Fi 6 are that it will reportedly be 40% faster than Wi-Fi 5, but if you want more, at least more in the weeds, here's Rai Christ in CNET. Along with OFDMA, Wi-Fi 6 certified devices are verified to support the latest generation of WPA3 Wi-Fi security, multi-user, multiple input, multiple output that lets your router send and receive multiple signals at once. 160 megahertz channels that increase your router's bandwidth, 1024 quadrature amplitude modulation, 1024 QM, which lets your router send more data at once,

transmit beamforming for better Wi-Fi performance at range, and Target Wake Time, which puts Wi-Fi gadgets that regularly need to ping the router on a schedule in order to eliminate simultaneous pings and conserve their battery life, end quote. And also, from 9 to 5 Mac, Remember that demo of the new version of an app called Filmic Pro at the iPhone event, which showed the ability to record from multiple cameras simultaneously. Like you would just set an iPhone on a tripod or something, and then you could use the new ultra-wide and standard-wide cameras on the iPhone 11 at the same time to be able to pick from multiple versions of video. But also recording the front and back cameras simultaneously as well.

Well, good news. That sort of multi-cam recording, at least the front and back multi-cam recording, will also be available to iPhone 10S, 10R, and 2018 iPad Pro devices as well. Quote, the multi-cam recording relies on new APIs introduced in iOS 13. At the WWDC sessions on the subject, Apple stressed that this required significant reworking of the hardware pipeline of their devices, but that the necessary changes have been made in the iPhone 10S, iPhone 10R, and the new iPad Pro models. The new APIs allow developers to initiate multi-cam sessions while being conscious of performance and power costs. This is great news for prospective customers of iPhone 11 and existing iPhone 10R-10S owners. If you own the 2018 flagships, you will be able to take advantage of the new multiple

camera apps hitting the store in the coming months. This app ecosystem should be strong as Apple announced the API back in June, giving developers the entire summer to work on incorporating the feature into their camera apps, so it shouldn't be a long wait before iPhone buyers can start trying it for themselves. For its part, Filmik Pro said that their multicam app update will be launching later this year, end quote. In the Washington Post, Drew Harwell and Tony Rom have something worth considering. As the protests in Hong Kong make headlines around the world, like anything else these days, those protests live on social media, are driven by social media to one degree or another.

but by and large, they do not live on TikTok because, of course, TikTok is a social media app that is very much a creature of the Chinese Internet. And so, as Mezzers Harwell and Rom, ask us to consider, is this giving us a glimpse of what the future holds, if indeed the future plays out on the Chinese Internet? They worry that TikTok could, quote, prove to be one of China's most effective weapons in the global information war, bringing Chinese-style censorship to mainstream. U.S. audiences and shaping how they understand real-world events. Compounding researchers' concerns are TikTok's limited public comments about the content it removes and its purported independence from censors in Beijing, end quote. Now, given that TikTok is a Chinese company, also with a huge Chinese audience, there is the possibility that users might be self-censoring out of fear, quoting Fergus Ryan,

quote, devil's advocate. Have Hong Kong protesters even been trying to use TikTok? Using the app would open them up to potential surveillance. Maybe that's the biggest reason why there isn't any of their content on the app, end quote. But the fact remains even basic hashtags about the protests that are common on other social networks are basically nowhere to be found on TikTok. From later in the piece, quote, TikTok closely resembles its Chinese counterpart, Dow Yin, which ByteDance makes available only to audiences in mainland China. The app has become one of the most popular conduits of news and entertainment in the world's second largest economy, and it has been celebrated in state media as a homegrown success story well-suited to disseminate the government's

ideology. State endorsed propaganda is commonplace, said Zagman, who compared it to the hidden medicine in a dog's food bowl, a heap of fun videos that make it easier to swallow a dash of nationalism. Bite dance must comply with China's great firewall, which blocks major news sources and censors what the party regards as objectionable facts and ideas. Social media platforms in China are required by law to purge political dissent, and TikTok's Chinese counterpart has banned a broad range of supposedly subversive topics, including any content that causes, quote, discomfort, end quote. Matt Schrader made this comment on Twitter, quote, TikTok isn't on most people's radar screen right now because it's most popular with people under 18.

Since that group doesn't vote, it's not an important political platform, but that will almost certainly change. Think about the Obama campaign on Facebook in 2012 or AOC on Instagram in 2018. Any platform with an audience of voters, politicians will seek to get their message out because, well, that's how democracy works. So come 2024 or 2028, we'll be looking at a situation where perhaps the most important platform for engaging young voters is run by a company based in Beijing that won't explain how it does censorship, end quote. Finally today, we do have an entry into the podcast Deadpool. Late Friday, Movie Pass said it was shutting down and ending service for all subscribers as of Saturday.

Quoting CNBC, MoviePass notified subscribers that it planned to close down the service because its, quote, efforts to recapitalize movie pass have not been successful to date. It had formed a strategic review committee made up of the company's independent directors to explore, quote, strategic and financial alternatives for the company, end quote. So, sadly, our long national fantasy, our long national love affair with movie pass is finally over. The thing that I always found the most endearing about movie pass was that the whole reason it was popular in large part, was that people knew it couldn't last. Like this wasn't some sophisticated product

that may or may not have confusing economics behind the scenes that people didn't understand, like ride hailing or we work. This was just a deal that consumers knew intuitively was too good to be true, too good to last. People signed up explicitly to take advantage while the taking advantage was good. So movie pass goes down and a long list of hallowed, failed companies that gave you something based on nothing but a wink in a prayer,

as well as the largesse of investment money that was more hopeful than it ever should have been. Movie Pass is only the latest in a long line, and while maybe it deserves a place in the selling dollar bills for 50 cents Hall of Fame, it's worth noting that failed ideas like this do have a tendency to recur because they have a tendency to inspire someone to come along later and find a way to make the original bad idea work eventually. That is all for today. As always, I've been your host, Brian McCullough. Follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC, the show subreddit, where you can tip me stories that I often end up using on this show is our slash right home.

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