Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 05/05 – Facebook Oversight Board Upholds Trump Ban

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 Wednesday, May 5th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Facebook's oversight board upholds the Trump account suspension. Signal trolls Facebook using its own ad system. An appeals court has ruled that Section 230 does not apply to app design, sort of, it's complicated,

Starting point is 00:00:52 and the not complicated reason why some exchanges can't tell you the price of Berkshire Hathaway stock right now. Think partying like it's 1999. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Facebook's Oversight Board has ruled and upheld the company's decision to suspend former President Trump's accounts. However, the Oversight Board is also asking Facebook to review the decision within six months to determine a penalty consistent with its rules. Well, when someone actually sums it up better than I ever could, maybe I should just go with that. This is Jeff Berkovici on Twitter, quote, created to absolve Facebook of ultimate responsibility for its ad hoc enforcement decisions, the oversight board basically said, you've got to take some responsibility

Starting point is 00:01:40 here, and it can't be ad hoc, end quote, quoting the verge. The board said that it, quote, was not appropriate for Facebook to impose an indefinite suspension on Trump and calls on the company to review this decision within the next six months to, quote, determine and justify a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users on its platform, end quote. That review opens the door to allowing Trump back onto the platform at some point this year, but leaves the ultimate decision in Facebook's hands. In a statement issued Wednesday, Facebook's VP of Global Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg, said that Facebook would consider the board's decision and determine a policy position regarding indefinite bans as requested by the board.

Starting point is 00:02:24 Quote, in the meantime Mr. Trump's accounts remain suspended, Clegg said. First announced in 2018, the Oversight Board is funded by a grant from Facebook, but politically independent from the company composed of independent experts from a range of countries and backgrounds. It was designed to serve as an international appeals court for high-stakes moderation cases, although the Trump ban is by far the highest profile case to come before the organization. The decision argues explicitly against the so-called world leader policy adopted by Twitter, which took a lighter moderation approach to political leaders. Instead, the Oversight Board found that leaders should be held to the same or higher standards. Quote,

Starting point is 00:03:04 is not always useful to draw a firm distinction between political leaders and other influential users, the decision reads. If a head of state or high government official has repeatedly posted messages that pose a risk of harm under international human rights norms, Facebook should suspend the account for a period sufficient to protect against imminent harm, end quote. The Overside Board's decisions are not technically binding, but so far Facebook has deferred to its judgment on individual appeals. The board made its first decisions in January, asking Facebook to restore four posts originally censored for nudity, hate speech, and COVID-19 misinformation. It agreed with Facebook on one case where a user posted a dehumanizing slur against Armenians. Facebook also responded

Starting point is 00:03:46 favorably to several optional recommendations agreeing to clarify some policies and test new features. It explicitly disagreed with only one suggestion, loosening its rules against posting pandemic-related false information, end quote. Messaging app Signal says that Facebook has shut down its Facebook ads account because Signal had coded up and attempted to run an ad campaign that showed the user data Facebook collects to sell ads. Maybe the best way to explain what Signal was trying to do here is to quote some of the ads that they tried to run. Here's the first one. You got this ad because you're a K-pop-loving chemical engineer. This ad used your location to see your inbox.

Starting point is 00:04:34 Berlin, and you have a new baby, and just moved, and you're really feeling those pregnancy exercises. Here's another one. You got this ad because you're a teacher, but more importantly, you're a Leo and single. This ad used your location to see you're in Moscow. You'd like to support sketch comedy, and this ad thinks you do drag, quoting Gizmodo. Signal was able to create some super targeted ads that were branded with the exact targeting specs that Signal used. If an ad was targeted towards K-pop fans, the ad said so. If the ad was targeted towards a single person, the ad said so. And if the ad was targeted towards London-based divorcees with degrees in art history, the ad said so. Apparently, Facebook wasn't a fan of this sort of transparency into its system.

Starting point is 00:05:17 While the company hasn't yet responded to Gizmodo's request for comment, Signals blog post explains that the ad account used to run these ads was shut down before many of these ads could reach their target audiences. Personally, I think it's a shame. I'd have loved to see an ad that showed what Instagram really thinks of me, end quote. And I agree. This is kind of genius, actually. The best adjut prop is the adjutop that uses the system against itself to reveal things the system would rather not admit to. More Facebook news. Facebook says that workplace, Facebook's sort of version of Facebook that wants to be like Slack or maybe Microsoft Teams, more generally, has 7 million paid subscribers now, which is up 40% year over year. And speaking of,

Starting point is 00:06:07 there are some new features coming, quoting CNBC. Facebook on Tuesday also announced a number of new features for workplace. This includes a new live Q&A experience, an integration with Microsoft 365, and Google's G Suite, calendar apps, and a number of new diversity features, including different skin tones for emoji and a feature that allows users to show their colleagues the correct way to pronounce their name, end quote. And Facebook is rolling out neighborhoods, which helps people get to know their neighbors and local communities. In other words, this is a next-door killer, quoting CNET. The world's largest social media website said Wednesday it's rolling out a feature with its mobile app called Neighborhoods in four U.S. cities and Canada.

Starting point is 00:06:48 Facebook users have to be at least 18 years old to use the new tool, which will allow people to find neighbors who have common interests, discover local groups and businesses, participate in polls, along with receiving and offering help to those in their communities. The U.S. cities include Charlotte, North Carolina, San Diego, California, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and New York. New Jersey. Facebook users already use the social network for these purposes through groups, but neighborhoods combines all this information in one place. Using neighborhoods is optional, and users will need to share their location to get matched to a neighborhood. Outside of sharing their Facebook profile information, users can also provide their interests, such as skiing, and there's also a section to get to know the pets in your neighborhood. People who use the feature could also take on different roles, such as a socializer, helper, or welcomer, end quote.

Starting point is 00:07:36 Something something, something. Copy what competitors do, rinse and repeat. Dell has patched a recently discovered 12-year-old driver vulnerability impacting hundreds of millions of Dell systems, which, get this, would have given local attackers full control of your PC, quoting the record. The bug tracked as CVE 2021-251 impacts version 2.3 of DBUTIL, a Dell biostr. driver that allows the OS and system apps to interact with the computer's BIOS and hardware. In a report published today and shared with the record, security firm Sentinel 1 said it found a vulnerability in this driver that could be abused to allow threat actors access to driver functions and execute malicious code with system and kernel level privileges.

Starting point is 00:08:29 Researchers said the DBUTIL vulnerability cannot be exploited over the internet to gain access to unpatched systems remotely. Instead, threat actors who gained initial access to a computer even to a low-level account could abuse this bug to take full control over the compromised PC in what the security community typically describes as a privilege escalation vulnerability. This bug is nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it's the typical bug found in system drivers these days, many of which have been coded years ago and have not always followed secure coding practices. For the past few years, many in the security research community have found similar

Starting point is 00:09:06 privilege escalation issues in drivers from a wide spectrum of hardware vendors, end quote. If that last one was a head turner because they said it's common, but affecting all Dells for the last decade, that seems uncommon to me. Get this one, because it's a head turner too. A U.S. appeals court has ruled that Snap could be sued for a fatal car crash because it involved its speed filter. The court said that Section 230 does not apply to the design. of an app, which you would think, duh, 230 applies to user-created content, right? Not app design. But also, I guess this sort of thing has never been adjudicated before, and also the case is sort of complicated, quoting NPR.

Starting point is 00:09:57 Three young men got into a car in Wellworth County, Wisconsin on May 2017. They were set on driving at rapid speeds down a long cornfield line road and sharing their escapade on social media. As the 17-year-old behind the wheel accelerated. to 123 miles per hour, one of the passengers opened Snapchat. His parents say their son wanted to capture the experience using an app feature, the controversial speed filter, that documents real-life speed hoping for engagement and attention from followers on the messaging app. It was one of the last things the trio did before the vehicle ran off the road and crashed into a tree, killing all of them.

Starting point is 00:10:33 The boys' parents sued Snap, the maker of Snapchat after the tragedy. They alleged that the company, quote, knowingly created a dangerous game, and quote, through its filter and bore some responsibility. The district court responded how courts usually do when a tech platform is sued in a civil lawsuit by dismissing the case. The judge cited the sweeping immunity that social media companies enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The law provides legal immunity to tech companies from libel and other civil suits for what people post on sites, regardless of how harmful it may be. But the appeals court's reversal paves away around the all-powerful law, saying it doesn't apply because this case is not about what someone posted to Snapchat,

Starting point is 00:11:16 but rather the design of the app itself. The parents lawsuit now returns to the lower court. If it goes the same way as the Georgia case, Snapchat will dodge any legal responsibility. But if the trial court agrees to hold Snapchat accountable, that could be significant, court watchers said, end quote. Day two of the Apple versus Epic trial saw Epic CEO Tim Sweeney on the stand, testifying that he would have taken an exclusive app store deal from Apple if it had been on offer. So clearly Apple's lawyers are starting to poke holes in Epic's posturing as the little guy standing up to the bully, quoting 9 to 5 Mac.

Starting point is 00:12:00 An interesting tidbit came when Sweeney admitted that he uses an iPhone because of Apple's focus on privacy and security in response to questioning from Apple's lawyers. One of the things Apple's lawyer focused heavily on was Epic's use of its metal graphics API. In fact, Apple lawyers pointed to previous praise of metal on iOS provided by Epic. The company highlighted internal emails from Epic executives praising metal. In 2018, Epic also provided a quote for WWDC at Apple's request, praising metal. With this argument, Apple's goal is to emphasize that Epic benefits heavily from the use of Apple technology. In turn, this helps to justify the cut that Apple takes from its App Store transactions, end quote. And then quoting Protocol.

Starting point is 00:12:45 all, quote, Sweeney's most salient testimony came near the end of his session when he was asked to explain what's at stake for the future of Fortnite and why the fight for alternative app stores and payment methods on iOS is so important to Epic. Sweeney said the app stores in-app purchase restrictions present an existential issue for Fortnite and its potential of evolving into a true metaverse style platform. Quote, the long-term evolution of Fortnite will be opening up Fortnite as a platform for creators to distribute their work to users, and creators will make the majority of the profits, Sweeney said. With Apple taking 30% off the top, it makes it very hard for Epic and creators to exist in this future world, end quote. In other words, Epic sees Apple's platform

Starting point is 00:13:29 fees as a threat to what Fortnite could become in the future, not necessarily what it is right now. If creators are selling digital goods on Fortnite and giving a cut, presumably 12%, to Epic, It's not ideal to turn around and give 30% of that smaller cut right to Apple, Sweeney argues, end quote. Finally today, the Y2K bug called from 1999. It was like, you folks haven't learned anything. It seems that Berkshire Hathaway's stock has appreciated beyond $420,000 a share, which is a problem for stock exchanges like the NASDAQ that have a compact digital format. More explaining from the Wall Street Journal. quote, on Tuesday, NASDAQ temporarily suspended broadcasting prices for Class A shares of Berkshire over several popular data feeds. Such feeds provide real-time price updates for a number of online

Starting point is 00:14:24 brokerages and finance websites. Nasdaq's computers can only count so high because of the compact digital format they use for communicating prices. The biggest number they can handle is 429,49,496.7295. NASDAQ is rushing to finish an upgrade later this month that would fix the problem. It isn't just NASDAQ, another exchange operator, IEX group, said in March that it would stop accepting investors' orders in Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway, quote, due to an internal price limitation within the trading system, end quote. This is all basically a stock market version of the Y2K bug, and it's becoming an increasingly urgent issue as shares of Warren Buffett's company have risen more than 20% this year,

Starting point is 00:15:06 buoyed by a rising market and a return to profitability after fallout from COVID-19 in 2020. Here's the trouble. Nasdaq and some other market operators record stock prices in a compact computer format that uses 32 bits, or ones and zeros. The biggest number possible is 2 to the 32nd power minus 1, or 4,294,94,965. Stock prices are frequently stored using four decimal places, so the highest possible price is 429,496.7295. No other stock is anywhere near Berkshires, Class A's, Stratospheric Price Level, so it is understandable why the engineers behind NASDAX's system chose the number format, which programmers call a 4-byte unsigned integer. The U.S. stock with the second highest share price, Home Builder NVR, Inc, is trading just above $5,100 a share. Using compact formats that take up less memory can make software more efficient, a high priority in the world of electronic stock trading. At the root of the problem is Mr. Buffett's decades-long refusal to execute a stock split of Berkshire's

Starting point is 00:16:13 Class A shares. The 90-year-old billionaire has signed birthday cards to friends with the message, May you live until Berkshire splits, according to Fortune Magazine. When pressed on the issue, he has told shareholders that a lower price would bring unsophisticated short-term investors into the stock. I know that if we had something that was a lot easier for anybody with $500 to buy, that we would get an awful lot of people buying it who didn't have the faintest idea what they were doing, he told investors at Berkshire's annual meeting in 1995. Since then, Berkshire has introduced class B shares with a lower price point, broadening the company's investor base,

Starting point is 00:16:45 and many brokers now offer fractional trading, allowing investors with just a few spare dollars to purchase tiny slices of Berkshire. Still, Mr. Buffett has insisted on not splitting Berkshire Class A shares, end quote. Unclear at the time of this recording if we are doing a Twitter space tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern, or if we're going to do it Friday at that same time, check us tonight, I guess, on Twitter at 9 o'clock, or I'll pin a tweet. If we do end up doing it tonight,

Starting point is 00:17:22 if you don't see anything or hear anything at 9, then you'll know we're doing it on Friday. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 05/05 – Facebook Oversight Board Upholds Trump Ban

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