Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 12/09 – Instagram To Return To A Chronological Feed

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

Instagram is going to bring back a version of its chronological feed, sort of. The congressional hearings about Instagram, but also crypto. I was wrong: we are seeing Novi in the wild as WhatsApp starts testing it in the US. Deep Mind unveils its language model, and say goodbye to… checks notes… Alexa? Sponsors: Schwab.com/plan Dataiku.com Links: Instagram Chief and Lawmakers Clash Over App’s Real World Harms (Bloomberg) Instagram will bring back a chronological feed in 2022 (Engadget) What we learned at Congress' much-anticipated summit of crypto execs (The Block) Epic v. Apple ruling put on hold after appeals court grants a stay (The Verge) Italy fines Amazon €1.13B for abusing market dominance (Politico.eu) WhatsApp launches cryptocurrency payment in the US with Novi (9to5Mac) Kickstarter Will Move Its Crowdfunding Platform to Blockchain (Bloomberg) DeepMind says its new language model can beat others 25 times its size (MIT Technology Review) Amazon is shutting down web ranking site Alexa.com (BleepingComputer) 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, December 9th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Instagram is going to bring back a version of its chronological feed, kind of, the congressional hearings about Instagram, but also crypto. I was wrong. We are seeing Novi in the wild for the first time as WhatsApp starts testing it in the U.S.

Deep Mind unveils its language model and say goodbye to Czech's notes, Alexa. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. There was a bunch of congressional testimony yesterday. For example, Instagram head Adam Moseri testified before a Senate subcommittee looking at whether or not Instagram had a negative effect on the mental health of teen users. Among other things, Mouseri proposed updating Section 230 so that tech companies are only protected if they follow kids' safety rules set by a new proposed government oversight body, quoting Bloomberg. The proposal from Maseri expands a previous call from Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg for lawmakers to update technology company's legal shield known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Critics say reforming the law would only benefit dominant platforms that have resources to devote to complying with the new legal requirements. Under Moseri's proposal, Congress would form, quote, an industry body that will determine best practices for how tech companies should keep children and teens safe online.

consultation with outside experts and advocates, that group would develop uniform standards for how internet platforms verify the ages of their users, design age-appropriate experiences, and include parental controls in their services, Mosseri said, end quote. But maybe the bigger news yesterday was made around the hearing, with news that Instagram plans to bring back a version of its chronological feed, and to do so as soon as the first quarter of next year, as it experiments with other options for users including a favorites feed. Quoting and Gadgett. Speaking to lawmakers at a Senate hearing on Instagram and teen safety, Maseri said that he supports, quote, giving people the option to have a chronological feed.

We're currently working on a version of a chronological feed that we hope to launch next year, Maseri said, adding that the company has been working on the feature for months. He didn't share additional details about how such a feed would work, but said that the company is, quote, targeting the first quarter of next year for a launch. launching an option for a chronological feed would be a major reversal for the photo sharing app, which has consistently defended its algorithmic feed despite persistent complaints and conspiracy theories from users about how their posts are ranked. In a blog post in June, Moseri wrote that a chronological feed made it, quote, impossible for most people to see everything, let alone all the posts they

cared about, end quote. He said the chronological feed resulted in people missing a majority of the posts in their feed in 2016. Since then, Instagram has faced even more scrutiny over how its rank and suggest content, particularly for teenagers and younger users. Congress has also been debating legislation to rein in social media platforms ranking systems, including a proposed bill that would regulate malicious algorithms. Elsewhere, Instagram is currently testing another change to the feed, the addition of suggested posts from accounts you don't follow into the main feed. Developer and reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi also recently spotted a feature that would allow users to sort their feeds by home, favorites, or follow.

though it's not clear if any of those refer to a chronological feed. We've reached out to Instagram for more information and we'll update if we hear back, end quote. Meanwhile, there was also a congressional hearing yesterday with six crypto executives. And while committee members voiced concerns about stablecoins and exchanges and the like, the takeaway from the crypto community after the hearing was largely positive. There were feelings that the legislators were better informed and maybe warming up to crypto generally. quoting the block. Interest in the hearing was large enough that the Financial Services Committee's stream was initially in the five digits for viewership, as the hearing extended to nearly five hours,

viewership declined. Nonetheless, it was a significant public moment for the crypto industry. This is the first cryptocurrency hearing this committee has had in 13 years since the Bitcoin white paper. The committee's leading Republican Patrick McHenry told the block, the most comparable event was the 2019 hearings for Libra, which at the time signified more of a condemnation of Facebook's plans. As representatives of the industry, the witnesses were on some level running defense against more aggressive regulation. But as has been the case throughout Congress lately, the reception has warmed. As several committee members observed in their questions, the fact of holding such a full committee educational hearing was indicative of a major shift

in congressional interest in crypto. The firms represented Bitfury, Circle, Coinbase, FTX, Paxos, and the Stellar Development Foundation were not necessarily the largest by valuation, but were among those most engaged with U.S. politics, end quote. Quick note that the U.S. appeals court hearing the case granted a stay in the Epic versus Apple case, letting Apple keep its in-app purchasing system as the sole source of iOS in-app payments, as the appeals case proceeds, quoting the verge. The stay issued Wednesday afternoon does not reverse the earlier ruling that puts enforcement on hold until the appeals court can fully hear the case, a process that will likely take months. Apple has demonstrated at minimum that its

appeal raises serious questions on the merits of the district court's determination, the ruling reads, therefore we grant Apple's motion to stay part of paragraph one of the permanent injunction. The stay will remain in effect until the mandate issues in this appeal, end quote. Notably, the stay does not extend to the second part of the injunction, which dealt with user communications outside iOS. Specifically, the court ordered Apple to allow communicating with customers through points of contact obtained voluntarily from customers through account registration within the app. That order will remain unaffected by the stay, end quote. And Italy's Competition Authority has fined Amazon 1.13 billion euro for allegedly abusing its market

position and harming competitors in e-commerce logistics, quoting from politico.e.u. The Autorita Garante della Concoenza L-Decado, or AGCM, said on Thursday that Amazon was giving sellers using its logistic service called Fulfillment by Amazon, advantages in terms of visibility and sales, including access to its prime label. Amazon said it strongly disagrees with the AGCM's decision and will appeal. The large fine comes amid increased antitrust scrutiny of big tech worldwide. The European Commission has opened an investigation, similar to the Italian one, that focuses on the rest of the EU. Amazon holds a position of absolute dominance in the Italian market for intermediation services on marketplaces, which has allowed it to favor its own logistic service. The Italian regulator said in a statement, adding that Amazon's conduct was, quote, particularly serious, end quote.

The AGCM also imposed behavioral measures, including ordering Amazon to set, quote, fair and non-discriminatory standards for third-party sellers to get advantages in terms of sales and visibility. A monitoring trustee will review these measures. The watchdog launched its probe in 2019 over concerns that Amazon was giving sellers using its logistics service a better chance to appear as Amazon's pick for user searching a product featured in a separate section of its website, the so-called buy box. This is a pop-up window that shows customers' additional products when they proceed with a purchase. In saying the company plans to appeal the regulator's decision in Ames, Amazon spokesperson said, quote, the proposed find and remedies are unjustified and disproportionate, end

quote. All right, a little bit of eating crow for me. I guess we're seeing this in the wild after all. WhatsApp has begun a limited test of meta's Novi Digital Wallet in the U.S. letting users send and receive crypto within a chat after launching a pilot back in October, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. As announced by WhatsApp CEO, Will Kathcart and Novi's CEO, Stefan, Kaz, Kaz, Riell, WhatsApp now lets a small number of people in the U.S. send and receive money using Novi on the on the Messenger app. According to Novi's webpage, the service is a, quote, new way to send and receive money without fees. It gives users the ability to transfer money without ever leaving your WhatsApp chat. To start using Novi on WhatsApp, just follow these steps. On WhatsApp, find the contact

you'd like to send money to and open the chat. Tap the plus icon on your iPhone. Select payment in the menu. Follow the on-screen instructions to log into your Novi account or create a new one and then start sending and receiving money, end quote. Kickstarter has announced plans to transition its crowdfunding site to a newly created blockchain-based protocol in 2022 and will offer tools for others to build on top of that, quoting Bloomberg. Kickstarter is hatching a standalone company to build a crowdfunding system much like Kickstarter's own, but based on blockchain technology.

When it's ready, Kickstarter will switch its own website to the new infrastructure and the new company will make the tools available for anyone to create a competitive. repeating crowdfunding site. The new company does not yet have a name. Development is slated to begin in the first quarter of next year, and Kickstarter expects to transition its site to the new protocol sometime in 2022. The change will take place entirely behind the scenes and shouldn't affect how people use the site, the New York-based company said. Today, money that might have once gone to Kickstarter campaigns is flowing through blockchains into what are known as distributed autonomous organizations or Dow's. Last month, a group dubbed Constitution Dow mounted a crowdfunding campaign

to buy a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution. It raised $46.3 million from thousands of contributors, but failed to win the auction. The Dow offered refunds and disbanded. The embrace of crypto could help Kickstarter regain some relevance. A raft of startups, as well as companies over a century old, are searching for ways to decentralize their digital infrastructure, often in a bid to lower costs. Twitter, for example, has been working on an open-source decentralized social media system called Blue Sky since at least 2019. Kickstarter's open source protocol will be built on the blockchain platform Selo, which counts Andreessen Horowitz and Jack Dorsey among its backers. Sello says its network is carbon negative, partly through the purchase of carbon offsets. A common criticism of

crypto architecture is how energy intensive it can be, end quote. Deep Mind claims its language model retro matches the performance of neural networks 25 times its size, cutting the time, and costs to train large language models significantly. Quoting MIT Technology Review. In the two years since OpenAI released its language model GPT3, most big-name AI labs have developed language mimics of their own. Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, as well as a handful of Chinese firms, have all built AIs that can generate convincing text, chat with humans, answer questions, and more. Known as large language models because of the massive size of the neural networks underpinning them, they have become a dominant trend in AI, showcasing both

its strengths, the remarkable ability of machines to use language, and its weaknesses, particularly AI's inherent biases and the unsustainable amount of computing power it can consume. Until now, DeepMind has been conspicuous by its absence, but this week, the UK-based company, which has been behind some of the most impressive achievements in AI, including Alpha-Zero and AlphaFold, is entering the discussion with three large studies on language models. DeepMind's main result is an AI with a twist. It's enhanced with an external memory in the form of a vast database containing passages of text, which it uses as a kind of cheat sheet when generating new sentences.

Called retro for retrieval enhanced transformer, the AI matches the performance of neural networks 25 times its size, cutting the time and cost needed to train very large models. The researchers also claim that the database makes it easier to analyze what the AI has learned, which could help with filtering out bias in toxic language, Being able to look things up on the fly instead of having to memorize everything can be useful in the same way that it is useful for humans, says Jack Ray at DeepMind, who leads the firm's research in large language models. With retro, DeepMind has tried to cut the cost of training without

reducing the amount of AI learns. The researchers train the model on a vast set of news articles, Wikipedia pages, books, and texts from GitHub, an online code repository. The data set contains Text in 10 languages, including English, Spanish, German, French, Russian, Chinese, Swahili, and Urdu. Retro's Neuron Network only has 7 billion parameters, but the system makes up for this with a database containing around 2 trillion passages of text. Both the database and the neural network are trained at the same time. When Retro generates text, it uses the database to look up and compare passages similar to the one it is writing, which makes its predictions more accurate. Outsourcing some of the neural network's memory to the database lets Retro do more

with less. The idea isn't new, but this is the first time a lookup system has been developed for a large language model, and the first time the results from this approach have been shown to rival the performance of the best language AI around, end quote. And finally today, a long time mainstay of the web is going away. Alexa. No, not the Alexa you're thinking of. Though they are sort of related. Amazon says it will shut down its global website ranking system, Alexa.com. on May 1st, 2022, after 26 years of operation, quoting bleeping computer. Alexa.com is a subsidiary company of Amazon,

and it's widely known for its global ranking system which uses web traffic data from its partners to list the most popular internet companies. In addition to the global website ranking system, Amazon's Alexa.com also offers a full suite of SEO and competitor analysis tools with its paid subscriptions. In a new support document, Amazon says it will be discontinuing the Alexa.com.

platform in May 2022, and no new monthly stats will be released going forward. 25 years ago, we founded Alexa Internet. After two decades of helping you find, reach, and convert your digital audience, we've made the difficult decision to retire Alexa.com on May 1st. Thank you for making us your go-to resource for content research, competitive analysis, keyword research, and so much more of the company stated. Amazon has already stopped offering new subscriptions, and customers with existing subscriptions will continue to have access to the Amazon data and SEO tools.

existing subscriptions will remain active until May 1st, UTC, and access will be revoked after the deadline. Likewise, Amazon APIs will be retired on December 8, 2022. According to data from Semrush, which is an online visibility management SaaS platform, Alexa.com's organic traffic has been on a constant decline, so it is possible that Amazon is sunsetsetting the service because of a significant drop in its popularity, end quote. or, you know, just to clear up any lingering brand confusion. So you'll notice we did not do a Twitter space last night. We will have a bonus episode this weekend, but it won't be a space.

More on that tomorrow. Instead, Chris and I are planning to record the last space of the year next week, and we'd like your help. Chris and I need to confer on how we're going to do this, but we're going to put up some sort of forum or something to collect what you all think were the biggest tech news stories of this year. What we'd like to do is have people tell us the biggest stories of the year. And if you submit one, we'll get in touch. And we'd love to have you come on and nominate it on air and then stay on air with us and discuss it. Like I said, we're working out the details. But start thinking about what you think were the biggest tech news narratives or stories or items of 2021.

More info when I have it. Talk to you tomorrow.