Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 11/14 – The FBI (!) Investigating Polymarket

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Buckle up cause it’s going to be a regulation heavy day. Meta is served up its first big EU fine. The FBI is investigating Polymarket? The CFPB might require regular inspections of Google? A new AI agent from OpenAI in about a month? And forget the streaming wars, are we entering the age of the puzzle wars? Sponsors: Notion.com/ride Links: Meta fined nearly €800mn for breaking EU law over classified ads practices (FT) Polymarket Investigated by DOJ for Allegedly Letting US Users Bet on Platform (Bloomberg) CFPB looks to place Google under federal supervision, setting up clash (WashingtonPost) OpenAI Nears Launch of AI Agent Tool to Automate Tasks for Users (Bloomberg) Live Scam Detection in calls rolling out to Pixel 6-9 Phone app (9to5Google) Apple Releases Updates to Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for the Mac and iPad (MacStories) Meta to Launch Ads on Threads in Early 2025 (The Information) Words With Friends takes on Wordle with new single-player daily puzzles (The Verge) AI Avatar YouTube Experiment 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 TechMe right home for Thursday, November 14th, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough today. Buckle up because it's going to be a regulation heavy day. Meta is served up its first big EU fine. The FBI is investigating polymarket. The CFPB might require

regular inspections of Google, a new AI agent from OpenAI in about a month. And forget the streaming wars. Are we entering the age of the puzzle wars? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. EU has fined META 797.72 million euro for tying Facebook marketplace to Facebook and, quote, imposing unfair trading conditions on rival websites, the first such fine for META. Quoting the FT, META said it would appeal against the fine levied by regulators. We built marketplace in response to consumer demand. This decision ignores the market realities and will only serve to protect incumbent marketplaces from competition. It added, the European Commission's decision provides no evidence of competitive harm to rivals or any harm to consumers, end quote. The EU's long-running antitrust probe in the meta was launched in 2019 following accusations from rivals that the tech giant was abusing its dominant position by offering free services while profiting from data it collects on the platform.

In December 2020, the European Commission issued initial charges against Facebook for allegedly using the data it gathered for free, mostly from businesses, to then sell ads to users. The EU Commission on Thursday said META is, quote, dominant in the market for personal social networks, as well as in the national markets for online display advertising on social media. Facebook Marketplace launched in 2016 is a popular platform to buy and sell secondhand goods, especially household items such as furniture. Meta has argued that it operates in a highly competitive environment in a post published on Thursday. The tech giants said marketplaces in Europe continue, quote, to grow and dominate in the EU, pointing to platforms such as eBay, Lebanon coin in France,

and marked plots in the Netherlands as, quote, formidable competitors, end quote. Polymarket says the FBI has seized CEO Shane Copland's phone and his electronics. A source says the DOJ is investigating Polymarket for allegedly accepting bets from U.S. users. Quoting Bloomberg, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant on Shane Coplin, Polymarket's chief executive officer, and seized his phone and electronics, according to a person who asked for anonymity to discuss non-public matters. Under an agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reached in 2022, Polymarket is to prevent U.S.-based traders from making transactions on the platform.

Polymarket surged in popularity in the lead-up to the November 5th U.S. presidential elections, touting itself as a more accurate predictor of political outcomes than traditional polling. The platform's users are able to wager an unlimited amount of money on their favorite candidates, whereas competing platforms have betting limits. Massive trades in the final days before November 5th by a French whale in Trump's favor brought additional scrutiny of the platform. Opponents of political prediction markets accused the wagerers potentially manipulating the underlying market by skewing public perception in Trump's favor.

Polymarket said in a statement that the company would, quote, stand up for ourselves in our community and allege that the FBI search was politically motivated. Quote, Polly Market is a fully transparent prediction market that helped Everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections, the company said. Copland posted on the social media platform X on Wednesday saying, quote, new phone who dis? The company led by Coplin settled an enforcement action with the CFTC two years ago and paid a $1.4 million penalty in addition to agreeing to block U.S. users. The company has said in recent weeks that it's taken additional measures to verify and block users it suspects may be U.S. citizens or based in the U.S., end quote. The Washington Post is reporting that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving to place Google under formal federal supervision, an extraordinary move that may lead to regular inspections.

Quote, Google has fiercely resisted the idea over months of highly secretive talks, according to two people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them, setting up what may ultimately be a major legal clash with vast implications for the CFPB's powers in the digital age. The exact scope of the CFPB's concerns is not clear, and its order does not appear to be final. The political fate of the Bureau's work under Director Rohit Chopra is also in doubt as the watchdog agency braces for potentially significant changes to its leadership and agenda with the return of President-elect Donald Trump to the White House. Formed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB has broad powers to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or predatory financial practices, That includes the ability to place certain firms under supervision, a status that can afford regulators direct access to the company's internal records to ensure their activities are sound

and seek fixes if they are not. The CFPB already conducts these inspections at large banks and credit unions, which have been subject to supervision by other state and federal regulators for many years. But Chopra has expressed recent alarm that the government does not always apply the same oversight to technology companies, even at a time when the financial tools they provide are similar to the bank accounts and payment systems long under close watch. Google, for example, offers financial services including Google Wallet, which stores credit cards digitally and allows users to pay at registers with their mobile phones. It previously offered another app called Google Pay,

which allowed U.S. users until this June to send each other cash. Hundreds of customers have complained about Google services in comments to the CFPB in recent years, alleging that they experienced trouble with unauthorized charges on their accounts. To supervise Google, the agency must identify the company's activities as a risk to consumers. Simultaneously, the CFPB has also worked to finalize a broader set of rules that could allow it to impose supervision across the tech industry, covering not only the search giant but other large firms, including Amazon, Apple, and PayPal-owned Venmo. The companies have fiercely lobbied against the proposal, arguing the oversight is unnecessary,

exceeds the CFPB's legal authorities, and threatens to harm small and medium-sized firms, which pose no threat to consumers. Many in Silicon Valley have expressed particularly, concern that CFPB inspections could permit the government to scrutinize entire businesses, not just their financial offerings. Digital payment apps and non-bank entities differ from banking institutions in their function, characteristics, and capabilities. The Computers and Communication Industry Association, a lobbying group for companies including Amazon, Apple, and Google, told the CFPB in January. Hence, they should not be subject to the same supervisory authority as banks and credit unions, end quote. The scrutiny of Google underscores the CFPB's broader focus on the power and reach of the tech

industry, particularly as some companies already in possession of vast troves of consumers' data, have looked to harness more information about users' spending habits, end quote. Bloomberg says, OpenAI plans to launch a new AI agent codenamed operator, which can use a computer to take actions on a person's behalf soon. Quote, in a staff meeting on Wednesday, OpenAI's leadership announced plans to release the tool in January as a research preview and through the company's application programming interface for developers, said one of the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. The planned release is part of a broader industry push toward agents or AI software that can complete multi-step tasks for users with

minimal supervision. Anthropic unveiled a similar agent that can process what's happening on the user's computer in real time and take actions on their behalf. Opening Eyebacker Microsoft also recently launched a set of agent tools designed to send emails and manage records for workers, and Alphabet's Google is said to be preparing to release an AI agent according to the information. OpenAI has been working on several agent-related research projects, according to three people. The one nearest completion will be a general purpose tool that executes tasks in a web browser, one of the people said. OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman hinted at the shift to agents in response to a question last month during an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit.

We will have better and better models, Altman wrote, but I think the thing that will feel like the next giant breakthrough will be agents, end quote. Google says real-time protections against scam calls and malicious apps are rolling out on pixel 6 or newer devices and coming soon to more Android phones. Quoting 9 to 5, Google. Scam detection listens for, quote, conversation patterns commonly associated with scams. Once recognized, an audio and haptic alert will prompt you to look at your phone for a likely scam visual warning, Suspicious activity detected for this call is accompanied by an end call button or the ability to mark not a scam. For example, if a caller claims to be from your bank and asks you to urgently transfer funds due to an alleged account breach, scam detection will process the call to determine whether the call is likely spam.

On the Pixel 9 series, scam detection is powered by Gemini Nano. This safety feature is also available on the Pixel 68A thanks to other robust Google on-device machine learning models. Google says no conversation audio or transcription is stored on the device sent to Google servers or anywhere else or retrievable after the call. Scam detection is off by default and has to be enabled by the user. It can be disabled from phone app settings with the option to turn it off during a particular call. Scam detection is rolling out now to English speaking phone by Google public beta users in the U.S. with a pixel 6 or newer device. Enable it from Google phone app settings, then scam detection, end quote.

Apple has released updates to Final Cut Pro adding AI-generated closed captions and Visual Pro Spatial Video Editing, as well as Logic Pro for Mac OS and iPadOS, quoting Mac Stories. Final Cut Pro 11 for the Mac has added magnetic masks extending the magnetic metaphor used for clips placed on your timeline. Apple says the new feature will allow you to quickly mask people and objects in a shot to color-grade them or add effects separately from the rest of a scene. can automatically generate closed captions now to, the feature which was briefly shown off in a video published alongside the announcement of the new Mac Mini, uses artificial intelligence to convert dialogue into text. Final Cut Pro 11 is also now capable of editing spatial video for the Apple Vision Pro. In its press release, Apple says, Final Cut Pro 11 now supports spatial video editing,

allowing editors to import their footage and add effects, make color corrections, and enhance their projects with titles. The depth position of titles and captured footage can also be adjusted, during the editing process, spatial video clips can be captured directly with Vision Pro or on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, and Canon's new RFS7.8mm F4STM dual lens paired with Canon R7. Final Cut Pro for the iPad has been updated to version 2.1 with several new features. I've been using Final Cut Pro more regularly since we started the MacStory's YouTube channel, and one of the limitations I noticed immediately is that the color correction tools in the the iPad version weren't nearly as good as on the Mac. The iPad's color tools still aren't

as sophisticated as what's available on the Macs, but this update does add new color grading presets as well as a new enhanced light and color feature that intelligently applies color, contrast, brightness, and color balance to a video and works with SDR, HDR, Rowe, and log encoded media. Live drawing on a video has been expanded with new brushes too. There are new watercolor, crayon, fountain pen, and monoline pen brushes, letting users create a greater variety of looks for their videos. Other new effects include a picture and picture effect, callouts, and a set of built-in soundtracks. I am eager to try picture and picture, which should be a good way to create tutorials and other types of videos and callouts. It's an effect available for

multiple third-party effects vendors on the Mac, but new to the iPad, end quote. Sources say Instagram's ad unit plans to launch ads on threads in early 2025. Meta's public statements imply that any threads ad rollout will be slow, however. Quoting the information, A team inside Instagram's advertising division is leading the effort, which is still in the early stages of the people said. Threads is planning to kick off the effort by letting a small number of advertisers create and publish ads on the app starting in January, one of those people said. Meta's leaders have said in the past that they planned to eventually introduce ads to threads without giving a specific timeline. Executives have stressed that their short-term focus was adding new features to get more people using the app and to make it more engaging. At the end of October, Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Threads,

had nearly 275 million monthly active users and that a million people were signing up per day. That means Threads is closing in on Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, which had an estimated 332 million monthly active users on its mobile apps in the third quarter, according to data from research firm Censor Tower. Meta's public statements imply any ad rollout for Threads next year will be slow. In an earnings call, in October, Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Lee, stated that, quote, we don't expect threads to be a meaningful driver of 2025 revenue, end quote.

Finally today, the puzzle wars question mark. Words with Friends is going directly after Wordle with a new daily puzzle game, quoting the verge. Wordle's success has caused an explosion in newspaper-style puzzle games, and now Words with Friends is getting in on the action. The long-running word game is adding four solo modes that can be played daily, and they'll sound familiar to those who use the New York Times' gaming app. The new games include a mini-crossword podcast,

puzzle, a word search, word wheel, which is about connecting letters to create words, and a word guessing game called guess word. Zinga, which owns Words with Friends, says that each of the games will have new puzzles daily and can be played either solo or in multiplayer. Our players asked if they could do even more, so we've added a whole new layer of personally fulfilling solo mini-games where you can disconnect from the world and play word games with or without friends. Zingas chief executive vice president of mobile games said in a statement, the news comes as plenty of of different outlets are trying to replicate or build on Wordle's breakout success. The New York Times continues to test new games, including a sports-themed take-on connections and a puzzler called

Zorce, while the Hearst-owned Pusmo is steadily building out an impressive library of games, including recent releases like a weather-based version of Sudoku. Meanwhile, Netflix is about to launch its own daily word game, and even LinkedIn has launched its own collection of puzzles, end quote. The very bottom link in the show notes today is to a YouTube video, as you'll see, It is my words from a segment from the show from earlier in the week, but you'll notice that the person speaking isn't me. Yes, I found a solution to the hive mind ask that I asked for earlier in the week. It's called Hey Jen.

As you can see, I uploaded the MP3 version of the segment from earlier in the week, picked an avatar, and it mostly did a great job of lip syncing with my voice from the audio. Now, I can also use Hey Jen to train an avatar on my own. face, so I don't have to use this random dude speaking for me all the time. Sounds good, right? Most of the way to what I asked for. Except, no. I generated that first video, the one you see on YouTube, and then I quickly signed up for a subscription. It's not cheap. It's $80 a month. And then every subsequent time I tried to do the same thing for another segment, guess what? I got flagged for content violations every single time. I guess what it's saying is they have no way of knowing if I am the owner of copyright to the audio that I'm trying to use, which fair enough, but guess what? There's no way to get in contact with them and ask them to make an exception for me. No email address on the

website, no get in touch with us contact center. I tried disputing the content warning flags, and again, they shut them down. I assume that's automated. I've tried tweeting at HeyGen and even the HayGen founder. Nothing. Annoying that this only happened after I started paying. Anyone know anyone at Hey Jen? Because seriously, I'd do a ton more experiments with this if I could, if it would let me. Tweet at Hey Jen underscore official on my behalf and tell them get in touch with me at Brian MCC. I'm so close to what I was looking for, but so far. Talk to you tomorrow.