Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 10/03 - These Two Content Recommendation Companies Merged… You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!

Episode Date: October 3, 2019

Instagram launches Threads, the iPhone SE might ride again, the biggest content recommendation players have merged, Vice Media and Refinery 29 have merged, and why has Apple banned an app for users in Hong Kong? Sponsors: PixelUnion.net Manscaped.com, code: "ride" Links: Instagram launches Threads, a Close Friends chat app with auto-status (TechCrunch) Facebook Can Be Forced to Delete Content Worldwide, E.U.’s Top Court Rules (NYTimes) Kuo: Apple to release ‘iPhone SE 2’ in Q1 2020 with iPhone 8 design, A13 processor (9to5Mac) What the Taboola-Outbrain combination means for publishers (Digiday) Vice Media to Acquire Refinery29, as Both Digital-Media Players Seek Scale (Variety) Google using dubious tactics to target people with ‘darker skin’ in facial recognition project: sources (NY Daily News) Here's that hippie, pro-privacy, pro-freedom Apple y'all so love: Hong Kong protest safety app banned from iOS store (The Register) 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 Thursday, October 3, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Instagram launches threads. The iPhone SE might ride again. The biggest content recommendation players have merged. Vice Media and Refinery 29 have merged. And why has Apple banned an app for users in Hong Kong?

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Instagram has officially launched threads that rumored close friends only messaging app with auto status updates based on location, accelerometer, and battery level. Threads is live globally today on iOS and Android, quoting Josh Konstien, of course. This is Facebook and Instagram's next big swing at Snapchat, specifically targeting its top use case, rapid fire camera and text messaging with your best friends. Sick of randos in your inbox. Only people in your Instagram close friends list can show up in threads so you can trust its notifications are important. You can still just use Instagram Direct in the main app, or the two

in parallel, though. What's most unique is that Threads finally sees the launch of the Facebook your emoji status feature we reported it was prototyping 18 months ago. Threads status and auto status offer conversation starters, contextual clues to why someone might not respond, and opportunities to meet up offline. But importantly, it leaves out a map or any exact location show. bearing to avoid being creepy and instead focus on what close friends are up to, which determines if they can chat or hang out more than where they are. Threads offer, quote, persistent connection. Instagram's director of consumer product management, Robbie Stein tells me. It was designed with three priorities, the ability to, quote, fully control who can reach you, speed, because, quote,

if most of your messages only go to a couple of people, why isn't the experience built around that? and quote, having more of a connection through the day, even if you don't have time for a conversation, end quote. So another swipe from Facebook at Snapchat, but this tweet was snark after my own heart, quoting Lori Voss. So now Instagram has a messaging app that is separate to Messenger and WhatsApp. Have they hired one too many Googlers and acquired infinity messaging apps disease? End quote. The European Union's top court has ruled that an individual country can order Facebook to take down defamatory content and crucially restrict global access to that same material, quoting the New York Times. The European Court of Justice decision came after a former Austrian politician sought to have Facebook removed disparaging comments about her that had been posted on an individual's personal page, as well as, quote, equivalent messages posted by others.

The politician, a former leader of Austria's Green Party, argued that Facebook needed to delete the material in the country and limit worldwide access. The decision is a blow to big internet platforms like Facebook, placing more responsibility on them to patrol their sites for content ruled illegal. The case has been closely watched because of its potential ripple effects for regulating internet content. The enforcement of defamation, libel, and privacy laws varies from country to country, with language and behavior that is allowed in one nation, prohibited in another. The court's decision highlights the difficulty of creating uniform standards to govern an inherently borderless web and then enforcing them. Facebook and other critics had warned before the decision that letting a single nation force an internet platform to delete material elsewhere would limit free speech. Implementing such a global ban would likely require the use of automated content filters, which civil society groups and others have cautioned would lead to the takedown of legitimate material because filters cannot detect nuances used in satire and some political. commentary, end quote. So, yeah, this is essentially a step backwards after that step forwards

recently around Google right to be forgotten stuff in Europe. And additionally, what was that about banning equivalent posts? Like, might that enable a country to cast a wide net for libel that would sweep up thousands of people? Here is Facebook's statement on the ruling, which I have to say I agree with. Quote, this judgment raises critical questions around the freedom of expression and the role that internet companies should play in monitoring, interpreting, and removing speech that might be illegal in any particular country. It undermines the longstanding principle that one country does not have the right to impose its laws on speech on another country. It also opens the door to obligations being imposed on internet companies

to proactively monitor content and then interpret if it is equivalent to content that has been found to be illegal, end quote. Might the iPhone SE live again? Ming Chi Kuo says Apple is going to, after all, release an iPhone SE2, probably in Q1 of 2020, but it will have an iPhone 8-like design, but also an A-13 chip. Quoting 9 to 5 Mac. The Q1 time frame lines up with a previous report from Niki, which said to expect a cheaper iPhone with iPhone 8-esque design in the spring. This would mean it would feature a 4.7-inch LCD display and touch ID home button. Quote does not predict an exact price for the new phone.

Before the 4-inch iPhone SE was discontinued, Apple sold it for $349 in a 32-gigabyte storage configuration. The current iPhone product range at Apple stores spans the iPhone 11 series, iPhone 10R, and the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 plus. The 4.7-inch iPhone 8 is currently on sale for $449 for 644.6. presumably when the new SE launches, Apple will stop selling the iPhone 8 altogether. Given its current pricing of the 8, you could easily see how Apple could sell an iPhone SE to 32 gigabytes for around the same price as the old SE in the $349 to $399 range. Quote notes that the key target market for the new iPhone SE would be iPhone 6 owners, end quote. Now, some segment of you out there, what you really, really wanted was a smaller form factor.

You wanted the iPhone SE back because you wanted, say, a four-inch screen back. So this will not be the answer to your prayers. But the iPhone 8 is smaller in comparison, right? And, you know, getting one of those top-of-the-line A-13 chips would be great. And in the end, maybe this could, in a sort of convoluted way, bring a smaller iPhone back. As Jason Snell said on Twitter, now's the moment of truth where Apple finds out how much of SE demand was for price and how much was for size, end quote. P.S. Ming Chi Kuo also said that Apple will probably skip the iPhone 11S naming cycle, and next year's iPhone

will go directly to being called the iPhone 12. Now, that's not the biggest news in the world, but it's still interesting. And I'd still love it if Apple just started naming phones by years, like car companies do. This would be the perfect year to do it. The iPhone, 2020. And think about it. By attaching the year to a phone name, Apple would be psychologically reminding people just how old their phones actually are, right? Might actually juice the upgrade cycle. Content recommendation company Tabula has bought its rival Outbrain for $250 million in cash and 30% equity. If those two names are unfamiliar to you, trust me, you do know Tabula and Outbrain. There, those little post-recommendation boxes at the

of a lot of websites. They want you to click on things like how the Game of Thrones cast was really supposed to look, or doctors say this destroys diabetes. Do it immediately. These so-called content recommendation companies are actually not an insignificant independent force facing off against the online ad duopoly of Facebook and Google. Combined, the two companies say they will do $1 billion in revenue in 2019. And from what friends in the industry have long told me, your favorite website probably leans on these companies for a larger portion of their own ad revenue than you might think. Quoting Digidae. The combination could have a big impact on publishers which have long leaned heavily on content recommendation companies that appear at the

bottom of articles for a sizable and reliable portion of their online ad revenues. Tabula and Outbrain, both founded in Israel, just a year apart in the mid-2000s, have been fierce rivals, cutting large, seemingly un-economic guarantee and revenue share deals to gain exclusive partnerships with the world's largest publishers. The risk for us is that we see a downward price pressure, said a publishing executive at a national newspaper company. Another executive at a different newspaper said his initial reaction was less about the money, but more about the quality of ads that would make it through the filter onto article pages. My concern would be that by coming together and an inability to pitch their quality control or safeguards against each other,

we end up with a race to the bottom, the publishing executive said. The situation could also go the other way, with more engineers tackling the issue. Fewer low-quality ads could slip through the net, end quote. But I wouldn't hold my breath for that. Yes, neither Tabula nor Outbrain are exactly known for, shall we say, the quality of their content. As Daniel Bentley tweeted, can't think of two companies that have done more to completely crap up the web. So perhaps the title for this segment should be,

these two content recommendation companies merged. You won't believe what happened next. Staying in the digital media waters for a minute further, the much anticipated consolidation in the digital media space continues, as Vice Media has agreed to acquire Refinery 29 in a deal expected to close before the end of the year. Sources say Vice is issuing mostly stock to Refinery 29 shareholders at a rumored valuation less than the $500 million refinery 29 was last valued at.

And also at a valuation for the combined entity rumored to be $4 billion, which would be significantly under the $5.7 billion valuation for Vice alone from just two years ago, quoting variety. Brooklyn-based Vice has around 2,500 employees. Refinery 29, headquartered in Lower Manhattan, has under 400. Both companies in the past year have cut about 10% of their staffs, as they have faced the same challenges in hitting revenue and profitability targets that others in the digital media space have.

The new company will be called Vice Media Group. Refinery 29, which caters to a female audience, will continue to operate as an independent brand. It's not clear at this point how many layoffs will result from the combo, However, the companies said that together they will increase their investment in premium content production across all platforms by 20% on a year-over-year basis, end quote. Sources say that a Google contractor known as Randstad used dubious techniques to get facial scans of people of color in order to improve the face-unlocked system on pixel four phones. For a while, it has been well known that facial recognition tech has a harder time identifying people with darker skin. So apparently the word went out from Google to its contractors to help it build a more diverse database, quoting from the New York Daily News.

But several people who worked for the project spoke to the news in lengthy interviews and said Google's ravenous appetite for data led to questionable and misleading methods. They said teams were dispatched to target homeless people in Atlanta, unsuspecting students on college campuses around the U.S. and attendees of the BET Awards festivities in Los Angeles, among other places. The workers, known as Google TVCs, an acronym to specify temps, vendors, or contractors, told the news that they were paid through a third-party employment firm called RANstad. Some were told to gather the face data by characterizing the scan as a selfie game, similar to Snapchat, they said. One said workers were told to say things like,

just play with the phone for a couple minutes and get a gift card, and we have a new app, try it, and get five. end quote. One former employee said Ransstad sent a team to Atlanta specifically to target black people there, including homeless black people. Quote, they said to target homeless people because they're the least likely to say anything to the media, the ex-staffer said. The homeless people didn't know what was going on at all, end quote. So the reprehensibility of this is obvious. I don't need to underline that for you. Though I do want to stress that it seems that Google had no idea that this behavior from the contractors was going on. But I do want to again point out that this is yet another case of our personal data being so incredibly valuable to these larger projects that are worth potentially billions of dollars to these big companies, that the idea is to just go out and grab anything they can, pay as little for it as possible, strip mine it while paying nothing if at all possible. Seriously, can't there be some sort of union that we could all

collectively join, wherein we could be empowered to collectively bargain with these companies for the right to that data? Again, I'm increasingly entirely serious about this. Apple has banned an app from the App Store that allows people in Hong Kong to keep track of protests and police activity, claiming that the app facilitates illegal activity. Quoting from the Register, your app contains content or facilitates enables and encourages is an activity that is not legal. Specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement, the American tech giant told makers of the HKMAP Live app on Tuesday before pulling it. The makers, and many others, have taken exception to that argument by pointing out that the app only allows

people to note locations, as many countless thousands of other apps do. And so under the same logic, apps such as the driving app ways should also be banned, end quote, because as we know, Waze allows you to notify other drivers if there's a police car running a speed trap around the next bend. Quoting one more time from the article, Apple assumes our users are lawbreakers and therefore evading law enforcement, which is clearly not the case, the makers complained, end quote. No word at the time of this writing from Apple, further explaining the banning. That is all for today, which is apparently Mean Girls Day, just like May the 4th. Suddenly now, on this date every year, Mean Girls Day is something that lights up my Twitter feed, and I don't know why, because I've never actually seen the movie Mean Girls, so I miss the reference.

Don't actually know why I've never seen that movie. I was, I guess, just too far out of college for it to have been on my radar back then, I guess. Anyway, October 3rd is So Fetch or something, whatever that means. Talk to you tomorrow.