Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 12/17 - Actually, It's Instagram That's The Problem?

Episode Date: December 17, 2018

Facebook got all the press but the Russians really loved Instagram to spread misinformation, more tech real estate moves, the CEO of HQ Trivia passes away, and how to break into somebody’s phone with a 3D-printed head.Sponsors:Techmeme.Robinhood.comMetalab.coLinks:Instagram Was Bigger Russian Election Tool Than Facebook, Senate Report Says (Bloomberg)Google Details Major New York Expansion (WSJ)Colin Kroll, 34, HQ Trivia and Vine Co-Founder, Is Found Dead (NYTimes)We Broke Into A Bunch Of Android Phones With A 3D-Printed Head (Forbes)Robinhood Will Retool Checking Product Following Scrutiny (Bloomberg)Apple hires designer Andrew Kim away from Tesla (The Verge)My Talk at Google (Me) 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 Ride Home for Monday, December 17th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough today. Facebook might have gotten all the press, but the Russians really loved Instagram to spread misinformation. More tech real estate moves. The CEO of HQ trivia passes away.

And how to break into somebody's phone with a 3D printed head. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. A report prepared for the U.S. Senate has leaked out. The report is analyzing the Russian disinformation campaign around the 2016 election, and it looked at millions of posts on YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, not just on Facebook, which I'm sure you expected to be the primary focus. But actually, and this is what I found interesting in the report, apparently Instagram turned out to be the biggest disinformation channel the Russians used, dwarfing all other social networks, including Facebook in terms of the number of posts and engagements with the posts.

So perhaps we've been focusing on the wrong platform. Quoting from Bloomberg, Instagram was a significant front in the IRA's influence operation, something that Facebook executives appear to have avoided mentioning in congressional testimony, the report says. IRA activity shifted there after the media began to write about Russian activity on Twitter and Facebook. our assessment is that Instagram is likely to be a key battleground on an ongoing basis, end quote. There were 187 million interactions with Instagram content compared with 77 million on Facebook and 73 million on Twitter,

according to a data set of posts between 2015 and 2018, analyzed by new knowledge, Columbia University, and Canfield Research, end quote. So the IRA that they're talking about in the piece is the Russian Internet Research Agency, the so-called troll farm that was largely behind the 2016 election campaign. Quoting again from Bloomberg, the fact that Instagram outperform Facebook for the IRA could be an indicator of the platform being more ideal for memetic warfare, changing people's minds using viral memes, the researchers said. Instagram is organized by interest in hashtags and is based on photos and videos more than text. It could also mean the IRA used click farms to boost their numbers. Facebook has given Instagram only passing mention in its disclosures about Russian activity on its platform.

At the company's first congressional testimony on Russian influence last November, it didn't include Instagram in its count of how many Americans were reached by Russian content until specifically asked, end quote. Also, I want to note these paragraphs from the Washington Post, quote, Facebook, for example, provided the Senate with copies of posts from 81 Facebook pages and information on 76 accounts used to purchase ads. But it did not share posts from other user accounts run by the IRA, the report says. Twitter, meanwhile, has made it challenging for outside researchers to collect and analyze data on its platform through its public feed, the researchers said. Google submitted information in an especially difficult way for the researchers to handle providing content such as YouTube videos but not the related data that would have allowed a full analysis. The YouTube information was so hard for the researchers to study, they wrote, that they instead tracked the links to its videos from other sites in hopes of better understanding YouTube's role in the Russian effort, end quote. So everyone be aware they are, all of them, all of them, all.

of the big tech platforms implicated in this Russian disinformation campaign, they are all still dragging their feet on this and hoping that this problem just somehow goes away, I guess. If you had told me 10 months ago when we started this podcast that one of the biggest stories of the year would be tech real estate, I'm not sure I would have believed you, but here we are. Google has announced that it will invest more than a billion dollars in a new 1.7 million square foot campus in the West Village in Manhattan. I actually thought that this was already a done deal because I know we've talked about it before.

The building in question is at 550 Washington Street right on the water. In my opinion, the Times is being generous in calling this the West Village since it's just south of Houston Street. And as far as I'm concerned, Houston is the bottom border of the West Village. I technically say that this new building will be in what the Men and Blazers podcast calls the crap part of Soho. There is a ton of office space in this neighborhood. It's sometimes called Hudson Square.

Ted headquarters are there. Actually, the Men and Blazers podcast records there, too. Anyway, Google intends to use this new building to double its New York-based workforce to more than 14,000 over the next decade. Google already has nearly 7 million square feet of owned or leased office space here in the city, which is already enough for 46,000 total employees. And of course, there is this angle, quoting from the Wall Street Journal, the expansion puts Google's ambitions for the city on par with tech rival Amazon.com,

which recently selected New York as one of its two East Coast locations for major satellite offices expected to employ 25,000 new workers each by 2028. Unlike Amazon, which pitted cities against each other in a contest for favorable tax breaks and incentives, Google has favored a quieter approach. to expansion saying it hasn't pursued incentives from New York, end quote. So a couple of things here. Again, isn't it fascinating how much Amazon misjudged that whole HQ-2 thing from a PR perspective? It's actually opened up a lane for other tech behemists to take some pot shots at them

and look like good corporate citizens in comparison. But second, as a member of the New York City tech community and good standing for the better part of two decades. Tech has always been strong in New York, going back to the dot-com days, to the so-called Silicon Alley, and of course plenty of Web 2.0 companies have flowered here, especially in Brooklyn. But we in New York have always, always had the sense that we were very much a tech second city. I wonder if we'll be able to say that 10 years from now. I've joked on this podcast and to friends about taking in refugees from San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but that's kind of not a joke anymore, is it?

Colin Kroll, the CEO and co-founder of HQ Trivia, also the co-founder of Vine, has died at the age of 34. Police officers found his body face-down in his Soho apartment yesterday here in New York City. The police reportedly found what appeared to be cocaine and heroin in the apartment as well, so a drug overdose is suspected as the cause of death. Last night on HQ trivia, the usual game was not held, but instead host Scott Rogowski led a small eulogy for Kroll, saying, quote, Colin or CK, as we called him, was a true visionary who changed the game twice, first with Vine and then with this very app. HQ donated what would have been Sunday night's $25,000 prize money to the Humane Society and Kroll's memory.

Crowell apparently had a dog, tater, that he would bring into the office on occasion. Quoting from the New York Times, The entrepreneur's father, Alan Kroll said in a phone interview, He had so much talent and he had accomplished so much at a young age. It truly is a waste. At 34, imagine the things he'd done and the skills he had. It would have been really fun to watch him at 50. Alan Kroll said his son had recently stopped drinking

and did not have a drug problem, although he was aware that his son took drugs recreationally. He worked too many hours and too hard, he said. I think New York City got to him a little bit, end quote. Obviously, the tributes and messages poured in over social media, but let me just share these three. From H.Q writer Jamie Lutz, Vine was, and HQ is a bright spot on an increasingly S-E-Sword internet.

I'm very sad and shocked about Colin, who in addition to being a great boss was always so kind to me, end quote. From Nick Sharma, I hope people look past the headline and remember how much joy and community he brought to so many millions of people, not to mention how many careers were built off of vine and lives were changed for the better, end quote. And from Yoda, Drew Olenoff on Twitter, quote, if somebody you know is overdoing anything that's not good for them, please try and do something. Another story that's been interesting to follow all year has been the back and forth arms race between law enforcement and facial recognition tech that is increasingly being used to unlock and lock phones. Well, the race goes on because Forbes recently did a test that showed that certain Android phones

that use face ID to unlock, including the LGG7 Think Q, 1.6 and the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Note 8 can be unlocked via facial recognition using 3D printed heads. That's right, 3D printed head models. The head was printed at Backface in Birmingham, United Kingdom, where I was ushered into a dome-like studio containing 50 cameras. Together, they combine to take a single shot that makes up a full 3D image. That image is then loaded up in editing software where any errors can be ironed.

out. I, for instance, had a missing piece of nose. Backface then constructs the model with a 3D printer that builds up layers of a British gypsum powder. Some final touch-ups and colorings are added, and the life-size head is ready within a few days, all for just over 300 pounds. You're then the proud owner of an uncanny, almost spectral version of your own visage, end quote. The Forbes staff showed the fake head to all of the Android phones and were successfully able to unlock them. Notably, the fake heads did not fool the iPhone 10 or Microsoft's new Windows Hello facial recognition feature. So anyone concerned about their phone's security, security experts, only recommend using face ID as a secondary feature. The best way to lock down any device

remains a strong alpha-numeric passcode. I do want to follow up on a story from last week because this is something. Remember when Robin Hood last week said it was launching checking and savings accounts in the U.S. with 3% interest rates and no minimum balance or fees for overdrafts? Yeah, so the SIPC, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the organization that insures bank accounts, said, yeah, they did not believe that those bank accounts would be insured, like normal, proper savings accounts are.

Quote, I disagree with the statement that these funds are protected by the SIPC, Stephen Harbeck, President and Chief Executive Officer of SIPC, said in an interview to Bloomberg on Friday, had they called us, I would have told them what I just told you, in that I have serious concerns about this. This has gigantic ramifications for the banking industry, end quote.

So did Robin Hood not jump through the appropriate regulatory hoops to launch or announce these new savings account products. It certainly is looking like that because late Friday Robin Hood deleted tweets announcing the checking and savings accounts, scrubbed the page announcing the accounts from its website and issued a blog post saying, JK, these aren't savings accounts. After all, their, quote, cash management accounts. So many people have made this point, but let me pile on. Moving fast and breaking things kind of doesn't work in the financial industry. Throwing a bunch of scooters on the streets of a municipality that doesn't yet have laws about scooters is one thing. But the financial

industry is regulated up the wazoo for, you know, actually very good reasons. Finally, today, in news that will make sure those rumors of Apple building or at least designing its own automobile don't die, Apple has apparently hired Andrew Kim away from Tesla where Kim was a senior designer. Kim previously worked at Microsoft on the design of the Windows 10 UI and products like HoloLens and Xbox 1S. At Tesla, he contributed to the design of the models 3SX and Y. In an interview in 2017, Kim also noted that he worked on designing the cabin space inside Tesla vehicles. What is notable here is that just months ago, Tesla's chief vehicle designer Doug Field returned to Apple after jumping ship to Tesla for a period of time.

And in August, CNBC reported that, quote, scores of employees had moved from Tesla to Apple this year. Though, as the Verge notes, quote, of course, with his UI design background for Microsoft, it's possible that Kim could just be working on the user experience of any self-driving software Apple plans to sell to carmakers. And his product design experience would fit neatly into a number of Apple's current hardware focuses. including that rumored AR headset, end quote. Frankly, I really just want Apple to do a car for one simple reason. We know how passionate Apple fanboys and fangirls are about their favorite company's products. The only fan base that rivals apples in terms of fervency and passion are the Tesla true believers.

So can you imagine the truly epic flame wars that would erupt between these partisans if they ever had to fight over which car was better. So the trip to Boston on Friday was successful-ish. I did a radio hit on Saturday, which was the main reason for the trip. But as for the book signings, somehow none of the bookstores knew I was coming, apparently. So while I did sign all the books after they found them and brought them out from the back, it was all very ad hoc.

But it was also super fun. Six listeners to this podcast showed up at the last bookstore in downtown Boston, and we all retired to a pub around the corner for some beers and a quick bite to eat. It was lovely to meet all of you, Jock, Jameson, there were others. Feel free to get in touch if you want me to say your names as well. It was so great to talk to all of you to find out what you were up to, learn about various corners of the tech universe that sometimes I'm not even aware of. And as I told everyone at the end of the night, it really actually helps me to see,

actual faces in real life. Some days, you know, I just kind of put this podcast out into the void. So it actually helps me to know that I'm speaking to real people. I can imagine I'm speaking to all of you directly. I can imagine all of your faces now. Helps me frame what I say. Oh, and speaking of putting a face to a voice, my talk at Google recently posted on the Talks at Google YouTube page.

If you want to actually see me speak about, tech stuff, check out the video. Link is in the show notes. So we spoke about Google and NYC on the show today. My thanks to Google in NYC for hosting my talk about the book in the last 25 years of tech history. And of course

thanks to the ride home listeners who also came out to that as well. Maybe in the new year we should do a New York based listener meetup. We'll wait until the weather is nicer, I suppose, though. Talk to y'all tomorrow.