Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 8/6 - Everyone Bans Alex Jones

Episode Date: August 6, 2018

Nearly every major tech platform bans Alex Jones to one degree or another, does Facebook really want to know your bank balance, MoviePass comes with another subscription pivot, Apple’s plans for India and why $1,000 smartphones might only be the beginning. Links:Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify ban Infowars' Alex Jones (The Guardian)Facebook to Banks: Give Us Your Data, We’ll Give You Our Users (WSJ)Facebook taps banks, but for chatbots not purchase data like Google (TechCrunch)MoviePass Abandons Price Hike, But Will Limit Films to Three a Month (Variety)iPhone Chipmaker Races to Recover After Crippling Computer Virus (Bloomberg)Here’s Apple’s Plan to Keep From Losing the World’s Fastest-Growing Smartphone Market (Bloomberg Businessweek)Why iPhone and Android phone prices will get even higher (CNET) 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 from Monday, August 6, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, nearly every major tech platform banned Alex Jones to one degree or another. Facebook wants to know your bank balance.

Movie Pass has another subscription pivot. Apple has plans for India and why $1,000 smartphones might only be just the beginning. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. As of today, nearly every major tech content platform has banned Alex Jones and or InfoWars from their platforms to one degree or another. This began late last week when Spotify started taking down selected episodes of the Alex Jones show from its podcasting platform. Then, this morning, Apple completely removed the Alex Jones show from its podcast directory. Apple also removed five podcasts produced by Jones's InfoWars organization. Only one InfoWars podcast remains on iTunes at the time of this recording,

Real News with David Knight. Hot on the heels of all this at 3 a.m. local time, which is an unusual time for Facebook to release news. Facebook said that it had also banned four pages run by Alex Jones for, quote, repeated violations of community standards, end quote. The four pages in question were the Alex Jones channel page, the Alex Jones page, the InfoWars page, and the InfoWars Nightly News page. Facebook had previously imposed a 30-day ban on Jones personally, quote, for his role in posting violating content to these pages, end quote. Then, not wanting to be the odd man out, despite getting the ball rolling, Spotify announced that it too had taken down all episodes of the Alex Jones Show podcast. Three other InfoWars podcasts are still live on the platform at the time of this recording. And finally, as I'm recording this, it's looking like Google has taken down the Alex Jones channel on YouTube.

Here's what the various companies had to say. Facebook, quote, more content from the same pages has been reported to us. Upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims, and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies, end quote. Apple to BuzzFeed News, quote, Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow

to ensure we provide a safe environment for all our users. Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory, making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming. We believe in representing a wide, range of views so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions, end quote. I laid out the timeline of who did what because I find it interesting. Let me read you some of the reactions on Twitter to give you a sense of why I think so. Derek Powazek tweeted,

Note that Apple is the first to actively give him a good proper boot. Also note, unlike all the other players, Apple is not an ad-supported company, end quote. Dare Obasanjo said, When your primary business isn't driving user engagement at any cost so you can show them ads, it gives a certain moral clarity. Kevin Ruse said, quote, Facebook follows Apple and banning Info Wars, giving up the game after weeks of sanctimonious lectures about free speech.

This was always about being too scared to go first. And Jason Kent said, quote, All business for Facebook. No sponsor. Well, this should be fine. People should be absolutely fine with this. No one should be nervous. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is looking to add new financial service products to its main platform. And in order to do so, it is asked large U.S. banks to share customer financial info with the company, including bank balances and credit card transactions. According to the journal, Facebook wants to be a platform for buying and selling goods and services, as we saw with the expansion.

of their marketplace product a few months ago, but now, quote, Facebook has talked about a feature that would show its users their checking account balances, the people said. It also pitched fraud alerts, some of the people said. Facebook has told banks that the additional customer information could be used to offer services that might entice users to spend more time on Messenger, a person familiar with the discussions said, end quote. Facebook has reportedly told the banks it would not use bank data.

for ad targeting purposes or share it with third parties. But, quote, one large U.S. bank pulled away from talks due to privacy concerns, some of the people said, end quote. That's a lot of anonymous people saying a lot of things to the Wall Street Journal. So, yeah, I don't know why Facebook thinks that I would need or want to check my bank balance inside of Facebook when I can just go to my bank's website to do this.

I guess this is another story where some reactions and snark are needed. M.G. Siegler tweeted, quote, Facebook's law. If you happen to find yourself embroiled in a data privacy fiasco, immediately do everything under the sun to make your users feel even more uneasy, end quote. Bank of America, if you're listening, I officially give you permission not to share any of my data with Facebook. Sincerely, Brian McCullough. I didn't get to cover this last week, but about a week ago, MoviePass announced that it was raising the price of its movie theater subscription plans

to $14.95 a month up from $9.95 a month. People were pissed over the weekend. So this morning, Movie Pass has backtracked. The price will now stay at $9.95 a month, but you will also now be limited to seeing a maximum of three movies a month, down from the original insane deal of one movie a day. Quote, because only 15% of MoviePass members see four or more movies a month, we expect that the new subscription model will have no impact whatsoever on over 85% of our subscribers,

MoviePass said in a press release. The news here seems to have had a positive impact on the share price of MoviePass's parent company, Helios and Matheson, which was trading up 28% this morning. at nine cents a share. So, continuing our ongoing updates on the movie pass situation. Monday, August 6, 2018 at around 2.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Movie Pass is still alive. Taiwan Semiconductor is recovering from a debilitating computer virus which forced it to shut down some chip fabs on Friday. As of this morning, the company is reporting that 80% of the impacted tools have recovered and it expects to be.

at full production later on today. Taiwan Semiconductor makes chips for a bunch of companies, but crucially, it is the sole supplier of Apple's A-series chips, which power the iPhone and other iOS devices. TSM blamed the virus infection on software, which was installed somewhere in its facilities, which then spread to the fab tools themselves when infected devices were connected.

This is apparently the first time a virus has brought down manufacturing production at a TSMC plant, but as David Shore pointed out on Twitter, fab tools are usually strictly quarantined from devices connected to the outside world for just this very reason. To avoid viruses.

Quoting from Reuters, Mark Lee, an analyst at Stanford C. Bernstein, said in a report on Sunday Technology giant Apple was one of the impacted customers, but a swift recovery in the fourth quarter should keep the impact minimal, end quote. Quoting from Bloomberg,

which is also quoting from Mark Lee, all of TSMC's 12-inch wafer fabrication plants had been infected and that many customers had been affected, though the impact would be very limited because the company can make up for the losses during the busiest holiday quarter. TSM makes apple chips in its 12-inch fabrication plants. At the time of this recording,

I have seen no reporting to indicate that the situation at Taiwan Semiconductor will lead to delays in iPhone production. Last week, we talked about Apple and how it was struggling in India and how one of the reasons Apple is struggling in India, the fastest growing smartphone market in the world, is because of the iPhone's high price point. This is a market where sales of feature phones are still growing, as I said.

Well, Bloomberg has another look at the situation and what Apple plans to do to grow its market share from a little under 2% where it sits right now. The prescription, according to Bloomberg, apps and services aimed specifically at Indian users, opening retail stores in the country, and, quote, instead of officially lowering its prices,

Apple is in talks with retailers and banks to offer holiday deals all year round, according to people familiar with the plans. Those people say Apple is also asking some individual stores to more than quadruple sales targets to 40 or 50 iPhones a week and plans to cut off retailers that consistently fail to hit the mark.

Retail sales staff will be trained to teach customers how to use their devices and Apple intents to overhaul in-store branding and product displays. Executives would conduct daily conference calls with stores to gauge progress, end quote. According to the Bloomberg piece,

Apple hopes to open three stores in New Delhi, Bangaluru, and Mumbai sometime next year. And the reason that Apple has not opened retail stores in India in the past is that the government has long required foreign companies that want to open shops in India to manufacture 30% of their products locally. However, in January, the Indian government said it would fudge a bit on that requirement if a company sources more of its global operations from India broadly. Apple now manufactures some low-end iPhones in India. probably not a coincidence.

Speaking of smartphone prices, CNET has an interesting piece up that suggests if you thought that paying $1,000 for an iPhone was crazy, you might not have seen anything yet. Flagship phone prices have been rising across the board, not just iPhones, but Android phones as well. The cost of a galaxy phone for U.S. buyers has gone up by more than 15%, for example. One-plus phones have increased in price by nearly 33%. Now, some of the cost increases come from higher component costs, of course. Quote, key factors include the cost of components, competitor pricing, carrier incentives, tariffs, tariffs, etc. Ken Hong, LG's Senior Director of Global Communication said in an email to CNET. Fact is, these input costs are rising, so we're forced to follow suit, end quote.

Quoting from later on in the piece, adding more sophisticated cameras like the iPhone 10's 3D depth, sensing front-facing camera or more lenses like the Huawei P20 Pro's three rear shooters costs more to do. And so do materials like glass or ceramic for a phone's backing or sturdy aerospace-grade aluminum for the frame. You can bet that the first phone to debut a diamond glass screen or the new smudge-resistant, vibrant satin-courning gorilla glass won't be cheap. It's also expensive for companies like Samsung to build a whole new manufacturing process for elements like curved glass and flexible OLED displays, end quote. So it costs more to add bells and whistles that are significant enough to make consumers feel like a new flagship smartphone is new enough to justify

a purchase. Fair enough. Short of some major new breakthrough smartphones have basically reached a technology plateau. Your next phone is basically going to be the same as your last phone, so companies have to invest to make it feel like a step up, even if it's just window dressing, But also, it turns out, according to Bloomberg, we're to blame for this. In short, as ultra-premium phones have come out, lots of naysayers warn that consumers would inevitably buck at the price tag, but so far, not so much. Remember, Tim Cook said that the iPhone 10 was the best-selling iPhone model.

So it seems like if we're all willing to pay more, the companies are more than happy to take our money. Quote, consumers are prepared to pay a premium for a mobile phone, because it is arguably the most important product in their lives, Ben Wood, the chief research analyst at CCS Insight, told CNET. Quote, when Apple announced the iPhone 10 for a thousand bucks, they did the whole industry a favor. That gave all the other manufacturers some breathing space,

and I can imagine there was a certain delight in the corners of Samsung and Huawei and others. So I think this might be the first time I've had to do this on the pod, but after recording and about halfway through editing, I saw a new wrinkle to the story about Facebook asking your bank account for your personal info, bubble up on tech meme. So let me add this as an addendum to that earlier piece. Thankfully, I was able to get it in before posting.

This story comes from Josh Konstine at TechCrunch, and he's quoting from Facebook spokesperson Elizabeth Diana, who Constine is quoting as saying, A recent Wall Street Journal story implies incorrectly that we at Facebook are actively asking financial services companies for financial transaction data. This is not true. Like many online companies with commerce businesses, we partner with banks and credit card companies to offer services like customer chat or account management. Account linking enables people to receive real-time updates in Facebook Messenger, where people can keep track of their transaction data like account balances, receipts, and shipping updates. The idea is that messaging with a bank can be better than waiting on hold over the phone and it's completely opt-in.

We're not using this information beyond enabling these types of experiences, not for advertising or anything else. A critical part of these partnerships is keeping people's information safe and secure, end quote. And I'll end by quoting from Constine's write-up. Diana says banks and credit card companies have also approached it about potential partnerships, not the other way around as the Wall Street Journal reports. She says any features that come from these talks would be opt-in rather than happening behind users' backs. The spokesperson stressed these integrations would only be built

if they could be privacy safe. For example, signing up to use the Citibank Messenger chatbot requires two-factor authentication through your phone. And that's all for today. Quick plug for my other podcast, the Internet History podcast. Are you familiar with the legendary disaster that was Dig version 4? It's sort of gone down in Silicon Valley lore as a site redesign that was so bad, it basically killed the company. Lots of people think that Reddit is Reddit today because basically the dig community fled over there en masse after the debacle of Dig version 4.

But what's the real story? I tracked down an engineer who was deeply involved in the redesign and, well, he argues that Dig, did the right thing, given the circumstances they were in at the time. If you've never listened before, search for the Internet History podcast and download the latest episode. The Epic Fail of Dig version 4 with Will Larson. Talk to you all tomorrow.