Tech Brew Ride Home - Thursday, Mar. 22, 2018 - The Zuckerberg Interviews

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

Zuckerberg's interviews analyzed, Instagram updates the feed, IBM accused of age discrimination, early Oculus Go reviews and a wi-fi wine bottle bites the dust. Credits: Produced by @brianmcc and the @techmeme staff Music by @jpschwinghamer 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 Thursday, March 22nd, 2018. Today, Zuckerberg's interviews analyzed, Instagram updates the feed, IBM accused of age discrimination, early Oculus Go reviews, and a Wi-Fi wine bottle bites the dust. Here's what you missed in the world of tech.

So no doubt you've watched or read interviews with Mark Zuckerberg over the last 24 hours. That was by design, of course. Facebook PR really flooded the channels, as it were, to make sure at the very least that all of those, where is Zuck's stories can't be written anymore. Really, the substance of the interview was all pretty much in keeping with the talking points of Zuckerberg's Facebook post yesterday, as well as the official statement Facebook released. We're outraged. We've taken steps to make sure this doesn't happen, but we're also taking more steps.

We're auditing apps. We're giving you tools to see what apps can know about you, and there's plenty more work to be done. In his CNN interview, Zuckerberg teared up when saying, quote, that's what is kind of my guiding philosophy at this point, is, you know, when I come and work on a lot of hard things during the day and go home and just ask, will my girls be proud of what I did today? End quote. In an interview on Recode with Kara Swisher and Kurt Wagner, Zuckerberg said he was, quote, open to appearing before Congress to discuss the Cambridge Analytica matter, but didn't actually say that he would. When asked about Facebook's role moderating content, Zuckerberg said, quote, the thing is like, where's the line on hate speech? I mean, who chose me to be the person to do that? to which a lot of people said, yeah, great power, great responsibility, you know the line.

Several people pointed out that while Zuckerberg went to great lengths to take responsibility over the several interviews, he did not actually apologize in any of them. So where are we at this point? It seems to me that this press tour by Zuckerberg will probably calm the furor a bit, because at least we have actual sound bites to mall over now. but whether the controversy will fade into the background is unclear, I think. Facebook's problem, as the verges Russell Brandom pointed out on Twitter, is that it's sitting smack dab in the center of three major society-wide debates

that people are really up in arms about. There's data privacy, there's fake news and information integrity, and there are the social changes that technology is foisting on all of us in society. And actually, I would add a fourth to that, the controversy and angst around the 2016 election. So that's one heck of a Venn diagram of contention to be the focal point for. To even address any one of those would require Facebook to at least reconsider some fundamental premises of its entire reason for being. I want to sum up by quoting extensively from Owen Williams' excellent newsletter charged.

Owen says, quote, I'm more interested in if Zuckerberg is able to understand what his job and role as the CEO of Facebook really is at this point as he reaches more than 2 billion people. Sometimes the job is about unveiling futuristic technology, but his responsibility as CEO of the company is also defining where the line about hate speech lies, and it's owning up when things go wrong. social unrest from all of these networks and the realization that billions of differing opinions in one place might not work, the ultimate gaming of the algorithm and how that's affecting the product itself, are showing that what Facebook is today is not what it can continue to be for another decade. Whether or not Zuckerberg can step up to the plate and take the reins wholeheartedly as these issues continue to escalate will be the defining moment of his lifetime, or perhaps will witness the,

the dismantling of the largest digital empire ever built. Are you one of those people upset by the fact that your Instagram feed is a jumbled mess? Well, you're in luck, sort of. No, reverse chronological is not coming back, but Instagram did announce today a couple of changes that might make your feed more manageable. First, Instagram will be updating its algorithm to show more newer posts at the top of your feed, but it will still try to balance that with what it considers to be important, post that it doesn't want you to miss. It will also debut a new post button that will let you

choose when you would like to refresh the feed. This would replace the current system whereby the feed could refresh seemingly anytime it pleased and you'd find yourself back at the top of the feed without any warning. Now you can tap the new posts button, Instagram says, and you'll be taken to the new posts at the top of the feed. Don't tap and you'll stay right where you are. In a blog post, Instagram wrote, quote, With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won't miss the moments you care about. So if your best friend shares a selfie from her vacation in Australia,

it will be waiting for you when you wake up. And on Twitter, Instagram's Kevin Wiles said, We're working every day to improve your Instagram feed, with your feedback, top of mind. We want to start talking more about what we're changing and why. Today is our first step, focused on making the feed fresher with newer posts closer to the top. Of course, as the Verge pointed out,

wouldn't the feed feel fresher if you could just see photos in the order they were posted? Probably, but it appears that all of our feedback can only go so far. Don't expect reverse chronological to return anytime soon. Sometimes, a headline just kind of sums up a piece perfectly. Fast Company has an article up with the title, Slack picked a weird time to make it easier for bosses to download your private chats. The article refers to the fact that Slack recently updated its privacy policy, which if you're a Slack user, you know because you got an email about this over the last couple of days.

And one of the changes to Slack's rules says that some Slack premium subscribers will now be able to download all the data from their workspaces. That includes all public posts as well as private ones, direct messages, and the like. Your boss would have to elect to make use of this new tool, but now, if she chooses to do so, Slack is offering that to her as a feature. Privacy and Infosec lawyer and former FTC employee Whitney Merrill tweeted, quote, This is not new. In the U.S. employees have no expectation of privacy in work-owned chats. These are in scope for the legal discovery process. Slack chats, DMs, hangouts, business Facebook messenger DMs.

They were all regularly included in document productions I received at the FTC. Often they were also the most damning, too. The New York Times' Mike Isaac simply tweeted, Congrats on everyone getting fired. Today, ProPublica, in association with Mother Jones Magazine, published a 10-month investigation that alleges that IBM flouted U.S. age discrimination laws, as it laid off more than 20,000 employees over the age of 40 during the past five years. According to the piece, as Big Blue struggled to keep pace with the changing tech landscape of the modern era,

it felt that its enormous headcount was preventing it from being nimble enough to compete with leaner, younger startups. from the piece, quote, the company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would, quote, correct seniority mix. It slashed IBM's U.S. workforce by as much as three quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less experienced,

and lower paid workers, and sending many positions overseas, end quote. According to ProPublica, 60% of the layoffs at IBM over recent years hit workers aged 40 and over. The piece alleges that IBM targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them as high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the departures went towards hiring younger replacements. It converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firing,

the moves reduce the number of employees counted as layoffs because high numbers of layoffs can trigger public disclosure requirements. And IBM told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits. For its part, IBM said it could not respond adequately to the story without access to all of the documents ProPublica used in researching the story. but ProPublica declined to share the documents for fear that that would identify its sources.

IBM issued a statement that said, quote, We are proud of our company and our employees' ability to reinvent themselves era after era, while always complying with the law. Our ability to do this is why we are the only tech company that is not only survived, but thrived for more than 100 years. The $200 Oculus Go mobile VR headset is rumored to hit the market, only after Facebook's F8 conference in May, but several folks recently got hands-on with some demo units at the game developers conference.

The Oculus Go is designed to be used just that on the go without having to be tethered to a computer or a gaming console. It has what is apparently a lightweight and comfortable headset, as well as a handheld controller slash joystick, that apparently functions like a simpler version of the Oculus Touch. Michael Andronico from Tom's guide said that graphics and performance on the Oculus Go were comparable to what you'd get from Samsung's gear VR. So essentially a mobile grade VR experience, not the full whiz-bang fidelity that you might expect from an Oculus Rift. Jessica Condit from Engadget said that the Oculus Go might be the virtual reality industry's best chance at pushing the medium into the mainstream.

She said gameplay was smooth and intuitive. and said that when it comes to VR games with head-directed motion controls, using an untethered system had distinct advantages because you weren't worried about getting caught up in wires or cables as you move and spin around playing the game. The Oculus Go is scheduled to launch with game titles including Anshar Online, Settlers of Catan, the action puzzle game, They Suspect Nothing, and Vacation Sim,

from the people who brought you the game job simulator. Three cool new updates to Google products that will probably make your life a little bit easier. First, you can now send peer-to-peer payments to your friends using Google Assistant. If you're on iOS or Android, you could say, send Brian $2, and Assistant would help you send the money through Google Pay.

The only caveat here, being the fact that both you and whoever you want to send money to, need to have an active Google Pay account. Second, the next update to Google's Chrome browser, version 66 if you're curious, will include a change that will prevent autoplay videos from playing with sound blaring automatically. Going forward, videos will only auto play if sound isn't on by default, or if you click to interact with the video, or have previously, quote, shown an interest in media on the site. As always with Chrome, you won't have to do anything to get this feature.

It will simply show up the next time Chrome auto updates. And third, the latest version of Google Maps for iOS introduced a new feature that will show you the average wait time to be seated at over a million restaurants during different parts of the day. Again, this is not real-time info, but averages. So if you're making spur-of-the-moment brunch plans, you might still show up and have to wait for a seat. But if the nearest brunch place by you typically has an hour wait at 10 a.m. on a Sunday, it would probably be useful to know that the place around the corner can usually get you seated faster. Finally, wine lovers are going to have to pour one out for Coovey, a startup that was once described as the curig for wine.

In an email to customers, Covee's CEO said that the company was looking for a partner to buy the remaining assets of the company. and the Kuvi technology. The Kuvi product was a wine bottle that promised to keep wine fresh for over 30 days even after you opened it. This is because the bottle was nothing more than a shell, and the actual wine came in replaceable cartridges inserted inside the shell.

A bottle and four cartridges of various wines retailed for $178, and the bottle itself was Wi-Fi enabled and had a touchscreen that would give you information on the wine you were drinking, The concept proved popular for wine lovers because it meant that there would be no pressure to finish a whole bottle right away simply because you had opened it. When the concept debuted on Indiegogo, pre-orders sold out in three hours and Coovey went on to raise $6 million in capital. But apparently last year's Napifiers affected Covey's ability to grow its customer base,

and it had been unable to raise the additional funding it needed to recover. That's all for today. The TechMeme Right Home was produced by Brian McCullough and the editors at TechMeme. We hope to speak at you again tomorrow.