Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 10/04 – Facebook Whistleblower On 60 Minutes

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

The Facebook whistleblower reveals her identity on 60 Minutes. You can preorder the Apple Watch Series 7 this week. New MacBook Pros could still be coming “this month.” Apple is actually the biggest force in the gaming industry, by far. And signs of a product shipping renaissance at YouTube. Sponsors: Overland.com/techmeme KiwiCo.com promocode: ride Links: The Facebook Whistleblower, Frances Haugen, Says She Wants to Fix the Company, Not Harm It (WSJ) Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew (NYTimes) Apple Watch Series 7 Pre-Orders to Start This Friday, Available on October 15 (MacRumors) Gurman: M1X MacBook Pro still on track for this year, likely ‘in the next month’ (9to5Mac) Apple Doesn’t Make Videogames. But It’s the Hottest Player in Gaming. (WSJ) Amazon Prime members can now send gifts with just a phone number or email address (The Verge) YouTube․com adds ‘Continue watching’ to resume unfinished videos on your phone (9to5Google) 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, October 4th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. The Facebook whistleblower reveals her identity on 60 Minutes.

You can pre-order the Apple Watch Series 7 this week. New MacBook Pros could still be coming this month. Apple is actually the biggest force in the gaming industry by far, and signs of a product shipping renaissance at YouTube. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Last night, an ex-Facebook product manager named Francis Huff. Hogan came forward as the key source behind the Wall Street Journal's Facebook files series, giving an interview to 60 minutes and saying she became alarmed by how profits increasingly

came before public safety at Facebook, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Francis Hogan, a former product manager hired to help protect against election interference on Facebook, said she had grown frustrated by what she saw as the company's lack of openness about its platform's potential for harm and unwillingness to address its flaws. She is scheduled to testify before Congress on Tuesday. She has also sought federal whistleblower protection with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a series of interviews, Ms. Howgan, who left the company in May after nearly two years, said that she had come into the job with high hopes of helping Facebook fix its weaknesses. She soon grew skeptical that her team could make an impact, she said. Her team had few resources, she said, and she felt the company put growth and user engagement ahead of what it knew through its own research about its platform's ill effects. Toward the end of her time at Facebook, Ms. Hogan said she came to believe that people outside the company, including lawmakers and regulators, should know what she had discovered. Quote, if people just hate Facebook more because of what I've done than I've failed, she said. I believe in truth and reconciliation. We need to admit reality. The first step of that is documentation, end quote.

So not to say I called it, but isn't that pretty much the profile of the type of person I suspected it would be? a researcher or a do-gooder inside Facebook that thought that they could make the product better, only to run into brick walls. I'm not sure what new information Ms. Hogan shared on 60 Minutes last night, at least if you're a regular listener to the show. Though I would imagine that 60 Minutes has more of a normie audience than the show does, so who knows the impact of this overall. But I thought that Kevin Ruse had an interesting point in the New York Times this morning. If you step back and look at this whole brouhaha from afar, does this sort of paint Facebook as a company in a slow decline, evidenced by its recent frenetic pivots, executive paranoia, talent attrition, quote.

What I'm talking about is a kind of slow, steady decline that anyone who has ever seen a dying company up close can recognize. It's a cloud of existential dread that hangs over an organization whose best days are behind it, influencing every managerial priority and product decision and leading to increasingly desperate attempts to find a way out. This kind of decline is not necessarily visible from the outside, but insiders see 100 small disquieting signs of it every day. User hostile growth hacks, frenetic pivots, executive paranoia, the gradual attrition of talented colleagues.

If these leaked documents proved anything, it is how un-Godzilla-like Facebook feels. Internally, the company worries that it is losing power and influence, not gaining it, and its own research shows that many of its products aren't, thriving organically. Instead, it is going to increasingly extreme lengths to improve its toxic image and to stop users from abandoning its apps in favor of more compelling alternatives. You can see this vulnerability on display in an installment of the journal series that landed last

week. The article, which cited internal Facebook research, revealed that the company has been strategizing about how to market itself to children, referring to preteens as a, quote, valuable but untapped audience, unquote. The article contained plenty of fodder for outrage, including a presentation in which Facebook researchers asked if there was, quote, a way to leverage playdates to drive word of hand slash growth among kids, end quote. It's a crazy sounding question, but it's also revealing. Would a confident, thriving social media app need to leverage playdates or concoct elaborate growth strategies aimed at 10-year-olds?

If Facebook is so unstoppable, would it really be promoting itself to tweens as, and please read this in the voice of the Steve Buscemi, How Do You Do Fellow Kids meme? a life coach for adulting. The truth is that Facebook's thirst for young users is less about dominating a new market and more about staving off irrelevance. Facebook use among teenagers in the United States has been declining for years and it is expected to plummet even further soon. Internal researchers predicted that daily use would decline 45% by 2023. The researchers also revealed that Instagram whose growth offset declining interest in Facebook's core app for years

is losing market share to faster growing rivals like TikTok and younger users. aren't posting as much content as they used to. Facebook is for old people. Was the brutal verdict delivered by one 11-year-old boy to the company's researchers, according to the internal documents. A good way to think about Facebook's problems is that they come in two primary flavors, problems caused by having too many users, and problems caused by having too few of the kinds of users at once. Culture-creating, trend-setting, advertiser-coveted young Americans. The Facebook files contain evidence of both types, end quote. Well, Good point, I suppose, but I don't know. A lot of people said the same thing about Google,

even five, ten years ago, and they've just, you know, had their best years in terms of profit growth recently. So has Facebook, so I don't know. Try telling all of that to Wall Street. Remember how at the last Apple event, Apple didn't let us know when the watch Series 7 was actually coming? Well, now we know that Watch Series 7 pre-orders start on October 8th, shipping on October 15th. Quoting Mac rumors for a reminder of what this involves. Quote, the Series 7 compared to the Series 6, features a larger display with slightly more rounded corners, which allows the display to appear to curve on the sides.

The new Series 7 also sports IPX6 certification for dust resistance in addition to WR 50 water resistance. The new watch, however, keeps the same CPU as the Series 6. The Series 7 comes in five aluminum case finishes, including a refined blue case, product red, midnight, starlight, and green. Stainless steel options in silver, graphite, and gold. Stainless steel alongside Apple Watch Edition in titanium and black titanium will also be available. The Series 7 starts at $399 and joins the Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 3 in the lineup, end quote.

And of course, I'm hyper-focused on new actually usable MacBook Pros. and Mark German said over the weekend that MacBook Pros with M1X chips, including eight high-performance cores, two high-efficiency cores, and 16 or 32 graphics cores will launch, quote, in the next month. Quoting 9 to 5 Mac. The M-1-X has been developed in two different variations, according to the report. Both versions of the chip feature a 10-core design with eight high-performance cores and two high-efficiency cores. The differentiating feature between the two variations will be the graphics cores.

with Apple offering both 16 and 32 graphics cores configurations. Bloomberg also continues to report that Apple is working on higher performance chips for a new MacPro, as well as an M2 for future MacBook Airs, IMAX, and low-end MacBook Pros, end quote. German writes, quote, The new MacBook Pro didn't appear at Apple's September product unveiling, but it should still be launching in the coming weeks. Apple typically does its major new Mac introductions in October, so stay tuned, end quote. The new MacBook Pro lineup has been rumored for the entirety of 2021.

The machines are expected to be available in 14-inch and 16-inch configurations with mini-l-D-D displays, a redesigned chassis, an SD card slot, an H-DMI port, and MagSafe for charging. Apple is also expected to remove the controversial touchbar, end quote. By the way, over the weekend, I also read some analysis from the Wall Street Journal that I think sheds more light on why Apple is clinging on to the App Store status quo for Dear Life. We've spoken before about how it's gaming that has become the wedge to potentially crack the app store open, and this could help explain why. Apparently, Apple's operating profits from games in fiscal year 2019 totaled $8.5 billion. That's $2 billion more than the combined profits of Sony, Activision, Nintendo, and Microsoft, at least in games.

Quote, many digital activities from search to social to shopping to live events could take place. inside of games in the coming years. Industry global revenue from video games is expected to almost double to $198 billion in 2024 compared with 2016, according to estimates by technology consulting firm Activate Inc. The biggest chunk of that growth is from mobile games, which Activate predicts will generate $103 billion in 2024. The risk for Apple is that its role as the gatekeeper between the gaming world and its more than 1 billion iPhone users, as well as the fee it collects as the middleman could be disrupted. whether by legislation, court order, or regulatory action. Epic sued the company in 2020,

alleging that it stifled competition. Because of Epic's lawsuit and increased scrutiny of Apple's sway, lawmakers and regulators from Washington to Brussels are considering ways to potentially upend the company's power, which some fear hurts rivals. Another threat to Apple's profit engine comes from China. New rules in that country aim to decrease the number of hours young people can play games. Three of the top five grossing mobile games in the app store are from China, the number one title, Honor of Kings from Tencent, which generated an estimated $2.5 billion last year from users, according to analytics firm, Censor Tower. Globally, customers spent a total of $45 billion on mobile games through the App Store in fiscal 2020. According to Censor Tower,

almost 31% of that money was spent in China, while 26% was in the U.S. Apple's cut came out to an estimated $13.5 billion, or 5% of Apple's overall sales that year of $2,000.000. $75 billion. 50% of Apple's revenue came from hardware sales of iPhones. Apple doesn't break out revenue from the App Store. Instead, it includes the business as part of its services category, which it said generated $53.8 billion in sales last year. That category also includes music, ICloud, Apple TV, advertising, and extended warranties.

It doesn't say how profitable each of its product categories is, but disclosing an overall company operating profit of $66.29 billion during the period, end quote. Let's end today with two items from the news you can maybe use in everyday life file. First up, Amazon says that Prime members can now send gifts with merely a phone number or email address, no physical address required, and this feature is rolling out to mobile users in the continental U.S. today. So maybe you'll want to use this to easily and quickly gift someone else this holiday season. But the bigger question might be, do you want someone else using this to give something to you? because, quoting the verge, gift givers have to be Amazon Prime members. The program is limited to the

continental U.S., and it can only be used on mobile devices for the time being. And even though Amazon has built in some safeguards, the gift giver never gets access to the recipient's mailing address, this sounds like a bad idea that is ripe for abuse by scammers, stalkers, and those who take pleasure in the online harassment of others. Here's how the new feature works. Gift giver wants to surprise recipient with a present but doesn't know recipient's mailing address. Giftgiver does, however, have the recipient's email address or phone number. Giftgiver chooses the gift on his Amazon mobile app, selects the add gift receipt for easy returns option during checkout, and we'll see an option to, quote, let the recipient provide their address, end quote. The giver then adds the

recipient's email address or mobile number. At this point, the gift giver's card isn't charged, but a hold is put on their payment card for the amount of the purchase. Recipient then gets a notice via either a text message or email, that there's a present from gift giver waiting for her. Note that if recipient doesn't have an Amazon account, they can create one at this point, and the recipient has to have an Amazon account to accept the gift, but only the giver has to be a prime member. The recipient can click on the notice from Amazon to reveal what the gift giver sent. Then she can decide whether to decline the gift, accept the gift, but convert it to an Amazon gift card. The gift giver won't be notified. Or she can just accept the gift. If the recipient

accepts the gift, the giver's payment card. is charged. If the recipient ignores the gift notification entirely, it expires within a few days, and the gift giver gets his money back. I asked Amazon if there was a mechanism for its members to opt out of this new service? There is not. Amazon's stance is that if the recipient doesn't want the gift, they can just decline it or ignore the notification. What's to stop a troll slash harasser slash stalker from sending multiple gifts to a recipient just to spam them with the notifications when the giver knows the recipient won't accept. Technically nothing, although the recipient could notify Amazon customer service, which will decide what action to take. Such behavior would

appear to violate Amazon's community guidelines. Not everything Amazon sells is eligible for the new gifting feature, but millions of items are, the company said. The eligible items include products sold by Amazon and third-party sellers on its platform, end quote. And finally, finally, forget Twitter. We've gotten hints lately of a product iteration renaissance at YouTube. Remember how they were experimenting with letting you download videos for later? Now YouTube.com has added, continue watching, a feature that'll let you resume unfinished videos on your phone. Quoting 9 to 5 Google. If you're in the middle of viewing something and leave YouTube for Android or iOS, opening YouTube on the web, will display that video in the bottom right corner. The mini player is queued to a second or so before you pause,

and instead of the channel name, continue watching, is shown underneath the video title. Tapping the play button will automatically start in the shrunken down view, while a click anywhere will open the full video page. This straightforward continuity feature also works if you've paused what you're watching on YouTube for Android TV and presumably other television sets. It does not appear to function in the opposite direction, though, with no continue watching for the YouTube mobile apps. We first spotted this capability earlier in the week, but more users are now seeing it on their devices. You, of course, have to be logged into the same Google account for History to Sync, end quote. This is obviously neither here nor there, but this weekend was the weekend we actually officially took both the YouTube Kids app and the YouTube app itself off of our kids' iPads. We just have had enough with that.

Even YouTube Kids just riles our kids up with such garbage programming. It's back to only content made by actual professional content creators in this house. No more Ryan's world. No more Ninja Kids. It's just, it's too much. Talk to you tomorrow.