Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 07/19 – Amazon Sues Facebook (Group Admins)

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 Tuesday, July 19th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Amazon is stepping up its war against bogus product reviews. Netflix is testing more crackdowns on password sharing. Slack is raising prices. ESPN Plus is raising prices, but one streaming service is actually lowering prices and mark your calendars because the fall product launch season is upon us. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Amazon has filed a lawsuit against the administrators of more than 10. 10,000 Facebook groups that offer cash or goods to people willing to post bogus product reviews on Amazon, quoting TechCrunch. The global groups served to recruit would-be fake reviewers and operated in Amazon's online storefronts in the U.S., the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Italy.

Starting point is 00:01:26 If 10,000 Facebook groups sounds like a lot, it's apparently the sum total of groups Amazon has reported to Facebook since 2020. The company notes that past legal action it's taken has been effective and, quote, shut down multiple major review brokers, and yet here we are. They've been suing people for this stuff since all the way back in 2015. The company named one group Amazon Product Review, which boasted more than 40,000 members until Facebook removed it earlier in 2022. That one evaded detection through the time-honored AI alluding strategy of swapping a few letters around in phrases that would get it busted. Amazon says that it will leverage the discovery process to, quote, identify bad actors and remove fake reviews commissioned by these fraudsters that haven't already been detected by Amazon's advanced technology, expert investigators, and continuous monitoring, end quote. The monitoring may be continuous, but it's clear that thousands and thousands of illegitimate reviews push products across the online retailer's massive digital storefront every day all around the world. And regulators are taking notice, something that's bound to light a little fire under everyone's favorite online shopping monolith.

Starting point is 00:02:31 Amazon has been plagued with reviews that artificially boost product ratings for years. A Washington Post investigation back in 2018 found that obviously fake reviews dominated some product categories, including Bluetooth headphones and health supplements. At the time, the Post found a thriving cottage industry selling fake reviews on Facebook. Sellers court Amazon shoppers on Facebook across dozens of networks, including Amazon Review Club and Amazon Reviewers Group, to give glowing feedback in exchange for money or other compensation. according to the post. Amazon acknowledged the scope of the problem in a blog post last year. Due to our continued improvements in detection of fake reviews and connections between bad

Starting point is 00:03:10 actor buying and selling accounts, we have seen an increased trend of bad actors attempting to solicit fake reviews outside Amazon, particularly via social media services, the company wrote. Amazon said that it reported more than a thousand review selling groups to social media platforms in the first quarter of 2021, up threefold from the same period the prior year, end quote. Netflix is apparently testing new charges for users in five Latin American countries if they use their accounts outside of their home, quoting Bloomberg. Customers in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic will be asked to pay an extra fee if they use an account for more than two weeks outside of their primary residence, the company said Monday. This won't affect the use of Netflix on mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, or laptops, nor will it affect people on vacation. The additional home will cost $219 pesos or around $170 in Argentina and $2.99 in the other countries.

Starting point is 00:04:10 Netflix has said that more than 100 million households are using accounts paid for by other people and blamed password sharing as one of the primary reasons for its flagging subscriber growth. The company lost 200,000 customers in the first quarter and forecasted it would lose 2 million more in the second. Its share price has dropped more than 65% this year as investors fret that the streaming business is in trouble. Today's widespread account sharing between households undermines our long-term ability to invest in and improve our service. Jang Yi Long, a director of production innovation said in a blog post, password sharing has been particularly high in Latin America where Netflix is conducting its first two tests to see if people will pay for access. The company is trying to limit sharing without punishing people who already pay for Netflix or alienating viewers.

Starting point is 00:04:53 The effort has been portrayed at times as a crackdown, which has caused some customers to worry they will lose access to their account, end quote. A proposed class action complaint by Affinity Credit Union filed in California accuses Apple of illegally profiting from payment card issuers through Apple Pay. Quoting Bloomberg, iPhone users must use Apple Pay if they want to buy something by tapping the phone against a terminal in a store. Other iPhone payment services such as PayPal and Square, as well as financial institutions like Chase, City, and American Express can't launch tap-to-pay iPhone apps with their own features and interface. By excluding competition, Apple can charge, quote, payment card issuers fees that no other mobile wallet ventures to impose the Des Moines-Iowa-Based Payment Credit Card Union that issues payment

Starting point is 00:05:44 card said in the lawsuit filed Monday in the federal court in San Jose, California. Apple charges issuers 0.15% on credit card transactions and 0.05% on debit cards. Google Pay and Samsung Pay operating on the Android system don't charge card issuers any fees. The Apple Pay fees, quote, generated a reported $1 billion for Apple Pay. Apple in 2019, and this revenue stream earned from card issuers, is predicted to quadruple by 2023. Affinity Credit Union said in the lawsuit, if Apple face competition, it could not sustain those substantial fees. The credit union claims Apple is violating the Sherman Act, designed to protect competition, by tying its mobile devices and mobile wallet together and by excluding

Starting point is 00:06:24 all competitors. Affinity Credit Union is represented in the California lawsuit by Hagen's Berman, a frequent class-action lawsuit opponent of Apple. The law firm, helped plaintiffs reach a $400 million settlement in 2016 over e-books price fixing, a $100 million deal in 2021 for small app store developers, and a $95 million settlement this year over product warranties, end quote. On September 1st, Slack plans to update its free plan to show the last 90 days of messages and raise its pro-pricing tier to $87 per user per year or $8.75 per user per month, quoting TechCrunch. If you pay for the pro plan by the month, the price will increase from $8 per

Starting point is 00:07:13 user per month to $8.75 per user per month. If you pay for the pro plan by year, the price will increase from $6.67 per user per month to $7.25 per user per month. If you're on the free plan, they're changing the way and slash duration. Messages are saved. Previously, free slacks would show the last 10,000 messages and five gigabytes worth of uploads. Moving forward, it'll be based on time rather than amount with Slack showing the last 90 days of messages and uploads, regardless of how much or how little is sent. Slack notes that the pricing changes only impact pro-plan users, so teams on the Business Plus plan,

Starting point is 00:07:50 which currently costs $12.50 or $15 per user per month, or custom enterprise plans do not seem to be impacted. Slack says the pricing change, which it says is the first price increase since Slack first launched in 2014, will go into effect as of September 1, 2022. The company's blog post also notes that you can lock in the existing price for an additional year by renewing before September, end quote. And Disney has announced plans to raise ESPN Plus's monthly subscription from $699 to $999,

Starting point is 00:08:25 and its annual price from $6999 to $9999, a 43% increase. This will all start on August 23rd, quoting variety. Disney has continued to spend heavily on sports rights and a subscription hike would give the massive media company new revenue to offset the cost of new contracts with the NHL, PGA Tour, and others. Indeed, some of the games it now offers were previously available on a standalone basis at costs that were either greater than the new ESPN Plus price or that offered significantly less content. The NHL TV package of out-of-market games was priced at $2499 per month and did not include the scope of professional hockey games ESPN now shows. PGA Tour Live, a golf package provided

Starting point is 00:09:07 by that league, was priced at $9.99 per month. has also expanded rights with the NFL, Wimbledon, and the Australian Open, and struck agreements with LaLiga and college sports providers. The price of what is known as the Disney Bundle, a broader subscription that encompasses ESPN Plus, Disney Plus, and Hulu, will not change at present, nor will the current price tag for the UFC pay-per-view events ESPN shows, end quote. As part of moving my cell plan to Verizon, I recently signed up for the Disney bundle, which, quite frankly, is quite the deal. I no longer have to worry about missing F-A-Cut matches and can

Starting point is 00:09:44 get a lot of the other European leagues too, and Hulu. For that once or twice a year, there's something I want to watch on Hulu. That's probably what this is all about to begin with, making it more of a no-brainer to just up-buy to the, what is it, $15 a month Disney Bundle deal. But let's buck this trend of pricing increases by going in the opposite direction. The anime-focused streaming service Crunchyroll is dropping prices in nearly 100 countries and territories, cutting the mega fan plan by 25% in the UK, cutting it by nearly 50% in the United Arab Emirates, and nearly 90% in India, quoting in Gadget. In the UK, the mega fan plan, which allows for offline viewing and up to four simultaneous streams, now costs six pounds per month instead of eight. The lower tier

Starting point is 00:10:37 fan plan is five pounds per month, down from 650. Users in India will see a far more significant price decrease instead of $10 U.S. per month for a mega fan subscription, they'll pay $99 rupees, which converts to around $1.25. Meanwhile, users in Brazil will save around 37 and a half percent each month, and those in the United Arab Emirates will pay nearly 50 percent less on a monthly basis. Crunchy Rules announcement includes a full list of countries and territories where it's lowering prices, including European, Caribbean, South American, African, and Middle Eastern regions. There are some notable emissions, however, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Zealand. Sony bought Crunchyroll from AT&T in 2021 and folded content from Funimation into it earlier this

Starting point is 00:11:21 year. Given that Crunchyroll is the go-to streaming service for anime fans, it wouldn't have been surprising to see Sony bump up the monthly fees. Instead, it's making Crunchyroll more competitive against the likes of Netflix and Hulu, each of which have anime offerings but have increased prices over the last year, end quote. The autumn product unveiling season is almost upon us, as signaled by some cryptic puzzles posted on Twitter by Samsung, which appear to confirm the date of its next unpacked event as August 10th, quoting the verge. The first image presents a grid of letters, numbers, and symbols, while the second shows the same grid replaced with colored circles, match the characters to the colors, and you can decode the message on the third image as 81022,

Starting point is 00:12:10 a.k.a. August 10, 2022. This date lines up with a recent leak from Evan Blass, who published an image from Samsung that also suggested a launch event on August 10th. The encoded message, which can be seen at the top of the story, is accompanied by a rhetorical question. When will something greater arrive? As for what we'll actually see at the event, currently rumors point towards the announcement of Samsung's next generation foldables and smartwatches. They'll reportedly be a Galaxy Fold 4 and a Galaxy Flip 4, apparent designs for both of which have already been posted online, as well as the Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 pro, end quote. Finally today, long-time listeners will know. I've got a soft spot for storage stories. I guess it's because of my age. I'm so old. I can remember

Starting point is 00:12:58 booting DOS from an A drive and then running applications from your B drive or swapping discs entirely when you had to. No hard drive existed. I also remember zip drives when they were only 100 megabytes. I remember when I got a computer with 100 gigabyte hard drive and thought I'd never be able to fill it. Well, time marches ever on, Quoting Club 360. Storage giant WD has three new product lines. WD. Gold, WD. Red Pro, and WD. Purple Pro. All are getting the 22-terabyte treatment starting today with each targeting a specific use case. Gold HDDs are geared for data center environments. Red Pro champions network attached storage, while Purple Pro continues to cater for video surveillance. All three new additions incorporate a 10-platter design leveraging a bevy of cutting-edge WD technologies, including Optinand, Energy-assisted PMR,

Starting point is 00:13:55 triple-stage actuator, and helio-seal to help achieve a leading, a real density of 2.2 terabytes per platter. Gold Enterprise Class drives now range from 1 terabyte to 22 terabytes, with WD keen to point out that higher capacities help reduce total cost by increasing storage in the same footprint. Industries with huge storage requirements can reduce racks, cabling, and power consumption, with ultra-high-capacity drives, and Red Pro echoes these sentiments on a smaller scale. The 22-terabyte Red Pro is designed specifically for Nas systems carrying up to 24 bays. How does a total of 528 terabytes grab you? While Purple Pro, now available in 8 terabytes to 22-terabyte capacities,

Starting point is 00:14:38 continues to feature optimizations for up to 64 HD video streams at 3.2 mbPS apiece. All three models are backed by a five-year warranty, and while we await confirmation of you, Pricing, the 22-terabyte Purple Pro is already available to order in the U.S. at a cost of $599.99, end quote. I know these are not for me to use in a consumer way yet, but $600 for 22 terabytes of storage, mind-blowing, though it would also probably blow my mind if I tried to figure out what a similar amount of SSD storage would cost. So our Dali experiment was, I don't know, inconclusive, underwhelming. Not because of you all. You all had some great, innovative, inventive suggestions, but they often just didn't pan out most of the time when I entered them in. For

Starting point is 00:15:37 example, in artificial intelligence painting the dreams of deceased time travelers in the style of H.R. Geiger is a great idea, but it didn't really produce anything fun. On the opposite coin, a stained glass window depicting a man fighting a giraffe ended up looking pretty much exactly how you'd want and expect it to. And if you do black and white portrait of a man smoking a cigarette in the style of Chuck Close or a black and white photograph of a Joshua tree surrounded by fog, large format camera, you get exactly what you ask for. So my first takeaway from doing this is,

Starting point is 00:16:14 the more specific you can be, the more satisfied you'll be. It's when you try to get creative that you really can't tease the creativity out of the system unless you get really kind of lucky. Check my Twitter timeline to see what I'm talking about. I am, of course, at Brian MCC on Twitter. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 07/19 – Amazon Sues Facebook (Group Admins)

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