Tech Brew Ride Home - Tuesday, Apr. 10, 2018 - Mr. Zuckerberg Goes to Washington

Episode Date: April 10, 2018

Mr. Zuckerberg goes to Washington, taking the temperature of Facebook employees, a fake Black Lives Matter page, YouTube videos vandalized, an Instagram portrait mode, and a museum of lost sounds. Stories from: @georgia_wells, @dseetharaman Tweets: @marshallk, @cwarzel Links:Some Facebook Workers Feel Outrage Is Misplaced (WSJ)Bots in the Twittersphere (Pew Research)Conserve the Sound 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 TechMeme ride home for Tuesday, April 10th, 2018. Today, Mr. Zuckerberg goes to Washington, taking the temperature of Facebook employees, a fake Black Lives Matter page, YouTube video vandalization, a new Instagram portrait mode,

and a museum of lost sounds. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress today, in fact, as I'm recording this, The testimony is still ongoing. Most observers on Twitter, as I was watching, seemed to think that he did reasonably well, and instead were mostly appalled by the senator's general lack of understanding of basic ways that the Internet functions. Former advisor to President Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, tweeted, quote, the congressional staff that prepped these senators for this hearing didn't do a great job.

These questions are ill-informed and nonsensical, end quote. But investors seem to think. that Zuckerberg did well? Facebook stock closed up four and a half percent at the end of trading today. In his opening statement before the Senate committee, Zuckerberg said, quote, it's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what

happens here, end quote. Echoing talking points from previous statements, Zuckerberg continued later on, quote, it's not enough to just connect people, we have to make sure those connections are positive. It's not enough to just give people a voice. We have to make sure people aren't using it to hurt people or spread misinformation. It's not enough to give people control of their information. It's not enough to give people control of their information. We have to make sure developers they've given it to are protecting it also. Zuckerberg fielded questions about Cambridge Analytica, of course, Russian trolls, and even about Facebook's status as a possible monopoly. Senator Lindsay Graham asked Zuckerberg if Facebook welcomed regulation from the government. I think if it's the right regulation,

then yes, Zuckerberg told him. Senator Patrick Leahy asked if Zuckerberg personally had been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller, quote, I have not, Zuckerberg said, but then went on to say, quote, our work with the special counsel is confidential, and then suggested that he didn't want to pursue the line of questioning too deeply. There were some interesting moments of theater, as when Senator Graham brandished a printed up version of Facebook's terms of service, which is quite thick when you put it all down on paper. Senator Dick Durbin seemed to catch Zuckerberg in a bit of a rhetorical trap when he asked him if he would care to mention the name of the hotel he was staying at. Zuckerberg declined, and Durbin made a point about people having control over their own privacy and what

details of their life they are willing to share. And of course, there was plenty of snark from all of you. On Twitter, writer Jason O. Gilbert pointed out, quote, remember that in exactly four years, Mark Zuckerberg is going to get one of those, hey, check out this awesome memory, Facebook posts, and it's going to show 15 photos of him looking sweaty and miserable while being shouted at by Chuck Grassley, end quote. Again, at the time of recording this segment, the hearing is still ongoing, though I think they just took a break. This is obviously an evolving story, so to get a sense of the reaction to today's testimony, check in with techmeme.com all tonight. In other Facebook-related news, the company today announced a data abuse bounty program to reward people for reporting the misuse of data by app developers.

Bounty start at $500 and can rise to more than $40,000 for big discoveries. Facebook currently says it has 10 people on its bounty team and plans to hire more because the way that it will work is that cases of abuse brought to Facebook's attention will be vetted by the team who will then decide the value of the reported case. Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos told CNBC, quote, it will help us find cases of data abuse not tied to security vulnerability. This will cover both hemispheres and help surface more cases like Cambridge Analytica so we can know about it first and take action, end quote.

Facebook already has a bug bounty program to find actual security flaws in its code and pays out a reported $1 million a year for that program. On another tip, have you ever wondered how Facebook's employees are feeling about the events of the last few weeks? although no doubt many of you listening are Facebook employees yourself. Well, last night the Wall Street Journal tried to take the temperature of Facebook's rank and file and found that by and large, Facebook employees seem to be rallying around the company. Quote, thus far, many employees appear to have adopted a siege mentality with some saying they feel the outrage towards Facebook is misplaced,

according to interviews with a number of current and former staffers. One common refrain, the issues are mostly being hyped by the, the news media, end quote. According to the journal, many within Facebook believe that the company is being made into a high-profile scapegoat for larger societal and even political grievances. If Facebook has aired, they believe, that problem is one of incompetence and not one of malice. Still, the morale remains high, according to the piece. Facebook's rating on Glass Door, which allows employees to rate their workplace, remains at a relatively lofty 4.6 out of a possible 5. The piece also notes that the biggest concern to Facebook's 25,000-odd employees would probably

be the 10% or so drop in Facebook stock from a recent all-time high. But for the company overall, the concerns about outside reputation might be even more critical than internal morale. Quoting from the piece, there are signs the crisis is having an effect on luring talent. Since the disclosures, more candidates for jobs in some units at Facebook have withdrawn from consideration. than during any other period in memory, according to a person familiar with the company's recruiting, end quote. A spokesman for Facebook told the journal that it had looked at employee departure statistics and found that, quote, the numbers are consistent over time and we are currently in line with prior averages. The problem is the controversies around Facebook can seem to tumble together in the public's mind and seem all of a piece,

even when certain things are out of Facebook's control. An example came yesterday with headlines about how Facebook suspended the account of the largest Black Lives Matter Facebook page after reports appeared which indicated the page might be run by a middle-aged white man in Australia. The page in question was simply called Black Lives Matter and had racked up 700,000 followers, which is reportedly more than twice as many as the official Black Lives Matter page. The page in question hosted online fundraisers that it said would benefit Black Lives Matter causes in the U.S. And the page had raised around $100,000. CNN is reporting that at least some of that money was transferred to Australian bank accounts. CNN Tech called the page a, quote, scam, and fundraising accounts tied to the page were suspended by PayPal and Patreon after being contacted by CNN. A co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrice Cullors,

told CNN that Black Lives Matter had contacted Facebook about removing the suspicious page a few months ago. The page reportedly linked to websites claimed by or related to an Australian national who CNN identifies as Ian McKay. BuzzFeed's Charlie Worsal tweeted about these revelations saying, quote, many things at play here, including straight up grifting. But the bigger issue is, what happens to platforms after enough of this stuff happens. When people can't trust anything they see online, do people just give up?

The prominent activist Derey McKesson told CNN how the amorphous nature of grassroots movements in the modern era makes it possible for messages to be potentially co-opted by unknown actors. Quote, it's important to remember the movement was organic and no organizations started the protests that spread across the country. The consequences of that, is it hasn't been easy to think about authenticity in the digital space. Speaking of authenticity in the digital space, several outlets are reporting that high-profile artist accounts

and popular music videos on YouTube have been hacked and defaced. Videos for artists including Taylor Swift, Katie Perry, Selena Gomez, Shakira, and Chris Brown were among those reportedly affected and the most viewed YouTube video of all time, the music video for the song Despacito, was taken down overnight after hackers altered the video to show images of masked gunmen,

and the video description was changed to name hackers, calling themselves Pro Sox and Coriosh. A Twitter account seemingly from the hacker Pro Sox claimed responsibility for the hacking and defacing, tweeting, quote, It's just for fun, I just use script YouTube change title video, and I write hacked. Don't judge me. I love YouTube. As of this morning, all of the hacked videos had been restored to their original conditions. Pew Research Center is reporting that after an analysis of over a million tweets, researchers claim that two-thirds of links posted on Twitter are posted by bot accounts,

and that the 500 most active suspected bot Twitter accounts are responsible for 22% of links to the most prominent news and media sites. By comparison, the 500 most active human users on Twitter are responsible for only an estimated 6% of tweeted links to those outlets. Overall, the study found 66% of all tweeted links to popular websites are shared by accounts with, quote, characteristics common among automated bots rather than human users. Some categories of websites are tweeted more by bots than others. According to the study for adult websites, 90% of tweets can. from bots. For sports sites, the number is 76%. And for celebrity websites, the percentage is 62.

On Twitter, Sprinkler's Marshall Kirkpatrick tweeted, Historically, bots have shared links to top blogs in an unspoken deal. The links to okay blogs make bot accounts look legit enough to pass through spammy links later. And bot reshare numbers make the blogs look more popular, end quote. Again, I'm reminded of Charlie Wurzel's earlier question. When people can't trust anything they see online, do people just give up? Last week, Backpage, the classified ads site that is known for hosting adult personal ads, and which many accused of being the dominant online marketplace for sex workers,

was taken down after being seized by the federal government. late yesterday seven top officials affiliated with the website were arrested after a grand jury in Phoenix issued a 93 count indictment, alleging conspiracy, facilitating prostitution, and money laundering. Among those charged are the site's founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin. Quote, virtually every dollar flowing into Backpage's coffers represents the proceeds of illegal activity, according to the indictment, which, again, accuses Backpage of facilitating prostitution, specifically citing 17 victims of sex trafficking. The indictment states, quote, many of the ads published on Backpage depicted children who were victims of sex trafficking. Although Backpage has sought to create the perception that it diligently attempts to prevent the publication of such ads, the reality is that Backpage has allowed

such ads to be published while declining, for financial reasons, to take necessary steps to address the problem, end quote. The indictment also alleges that the company laundered an estimated $500 million in prostitution-related revenue. You may remember a recent story I did on the allow states and victims to fight online sex trafficking act of 2017 or Fosta, which Congress recently passed, which many felt was specifically targeting Backpage, but had the effect of prompting Craigslist to take down all of its own classified ads. There's also a related bill known as Sesta. It's worth noting, though, that yesterday's arrests came even though the Fasta Sesta laws have technically not come into effect yet as they have not been signed by the president.

You know how a phone maker spent a lot of money improving their cameras and often tout all the new lenses and technologies that make their phones take better pictures? Well, it seems like a lot of improvements these days can be made via software alone. Today, Instagram announced a portrait mode feature called Focus that will automatically blur the background of both photos and videos while keeping faces in the foreground sharp for that nice professional-looking portrait. You'll be able to find the new Focus mode in Instagram Stories, alongside Boomerang and SuperZom, in both the selfie and rear-facing cameras. And phones that can take advantage of it today include the iPhone 6S, 6S+, 7, 7+, 8,000,

8 plus and 10, as well as select Android devices. Of course, portrait modes made possible via a combination of hardware and software have been heavily touted by smartphone makers when they release their high-end models, such as the iPhone 10 and Pixel 2 and 2xel. An Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch's Josh Konstine that Instagram achieves this new portrait format by leveraging, quote, background segmentation and face detection technology. Finally today, hat tip to Devin Coldway at TechCrunch for pointing me to a website called conserve the sound. As we all know, with everything moving to digital, people are having to take great care to preserve media recorded on things like old records, tapes, and films. But a cool project that I just learned about is conservethesound.de, which is a project

that is looking to do just that. preserve the sound that legacy devices make during their use. For example, a viewmaster. What did it sound like to pull the lever and advance a slide? The keyboard of an old Apple eyebook. What did that sound like when you typed on it? What did it sound like to insert a cartridge into a classic NES console? Yep, go to conserve the sound.

I have a link in the show notes, and you can hear what old rotary phones sounded like to dial, what old typewriters sounded like when you typed on them, what a Sony Walkman sounded like when you rewound a tape. As Coldway says in the TechCrunch piece that turned me onto this site, quote, though the items themselves are banal, listening to the sounds of a bygone age is strangely addictive.

The site is apparently funded by a German art institute and is maintained by the creative agency, Chundersen. Check it out. It really can deliver a Proustian remembrance of things past. That's all for today. Again, check back. with Techmeme.com for rolling commentary and context about the Facebook hearings today. I've been your host, Brian McCullough.

You can follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. Talk to you tomorrow.