What A Day - The FTC Won’t Let FB Be

Episode Date: December 13, 2019

The FTC is reportedly considering a court order to block Facebook from integrating WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger into a giant, terrifying “Facebook Megazord.” We discuss that, along with FB’s plans for a content supreme court.  The Judiciary Committee is expected to approve two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, making him the fourth president ever to face impeachment. Good luck, dude! And in headlines: Boris wins Britain, Don Jr.’s version of a fun sport, and more. Plus, we dig into the Bowl Of Takes!

It's Friday, December 13th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What A Day, the terrifying black cat of daily news podcasts. Is Friday the 13th still scary if it's in December? It's actually scarier because Santa is watching. On today's show, Facebook, data, privacy, moderation, all that stuff, then some headlines. But first, impeachment news blast. Today, the Judiciary Committee is expected to approve two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, which makes Trump the fourth president in the history of the country to face impeachment.

Yesterday brought another day of hearings in the inquiry, and the full House is expected to vote next week. Throughout Thursday, Republicans introduced a number of amendments, including one that would have added Hunter Biden's name to the articles of impeachment in place of his father. And one after another, they were voted down. That is correct. There were a number of votes, including another to eliminate the first article of impeachment, which pertains to abuse of power, another to strike down the second article of impeachment on obstruction of Congress, and another saying that the United States aid to Ukraine that was frozen was eventually released. Bold strategy. Yeah, and House Democrats are preparing themselves for a few defections in their vote from moderate members who are concerned that voting to impeach could

impact their reelection next year, though two moderate members publicly voiced support for the articles on Thursday. Get on board. Also, there was reporting from this week that indicated that Senate Republicans are wanting to hold a short impeachment trial next year with no witnesses, which runs counter to this initial desire from President Trump to see a strong defense of his actions. But on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also reportedly met with a White House lawyer to discuss the impending trial, which is expected to start in January. And that was today's impeachment news blast.

Facebook, your mother's favorite online argument hub, is in the news for several reasons this week. The first, the Federal Trade Commission may be seeking a preliminary injunction against Facebook as soon as January. That is according to an exclusive report in the Wall Street Journal. When this news broke, Facebook's stock price fell 4%. Akilah, you're super into social media platforms and their inner workings. True. Can you explain what this injunction would mean and what on earth it applies to? Absolutely. So if the injunction is obtained, the court order could block Facebook's plans to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.

If you didn't know, Facebook owns all three of those things. So Facebook said that its plans to merge certain platforms are essentially to make them better for users, not to eliminate competition or evade regulations. Yeah, because when I think of Facebook, I think, wow, this is just super easy to use. Logging in on your phone, always open Safari. The password is never saved. You have to find the little gear that gives you a temporary pass go for two-step verification. And it took me 10 minutes to figure out where my photos were on my profile the last time that I tried. But sure, Mark, fine. Preach.

Well, the social media giant has reportedly worried most of this year that the FTC would seek an injunction against what are known as its interoperability rules. A person familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. Interoperability, FYI, refers to the manner in which digital platforms interact. So to make this super simple, Facebook's dream is to make messaging seamless between Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram direct messages, which is in its own way something like a monopoly if Facebook merges the messaging function of the three main free instant messaging apps that people use. The FTC does not like this idea for several reasons. One is that Facebook makes it really, really hard to import your friend list and contacts to other services if you wanted to leave, so you probably won't leave.

Another reason is that Facebook's plan will likely come at the cost of privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation, believes that Facebook doesn't want users to have control over their data and that the platform should be the ones to keep it safe. Right. And there's been a lot of conversation about going after Facebook for various kinds of monopoly behavior. Senator Elizabeth Warren, for one, has called to break up the company and other big tech companies like Google and Amazon. But this FTC injunction obviously doesn't go as far as she and others have suggested.

Yeah, but some people have pointed out that there are advantages to an injunction. Columbia University law professor Tim Wu, a former senior advisor for the FTC, said, quote, the advantages are that it gets things moving and sort of forces things to a judicial decision very quickly. He went on to say, as opposed to having an antitrust investigation going on for five years. He also talked about how high the burden of proof can be in a full-on antitrust suit. Plus, launching an antitrust suit against all FB might open a whole big can of worms for the FTC. It could lead to more suits and investigations against other large tech companies, like when Google acquired Nest or Amazon acquired Whole Foods. Currently, several

state attorneys general are also investigating Facebook and Google for antitrust issues. Man. The second news item regarding Facebook, also yesterday, the platform pledged $130 million to fund a Supreme Court for content. Now, this does not mean that Ruth Bader Ginsburg or somebody like that will be reviewing your SpongeBob memes, which is what I had thought when I heard about it. Yeah, well, I would pay money to find out Ruth's favorite memes. I digress. Facebook's plan is to establish an independent board charged with reviewing how the company moderates its content, providing long-term backing to its experiment and better policing of the platform. The money is supposed to cover six

years worth of salaries, office space, HR, and more. As we all know, Facebook has had a bunch of public controversies over how it handles misinformation and hate speech and graphic content. And this board is what Facebook is calling their, quote, initial commitment to better policing of all of that stuff. The board will function like an appeals court. So there's going to be five person panels adjudicating controversies arising from within Facebook, which sounds like a really big hit CBS drama to me. Yeah, get those ratings up with this bad boy. Love it. The aim of the board is to help the company enforce its own content standards,

but also the board can recommend policy changes to Facebook that the company must publicly address. Interesting. Yes. On the heels of this news, Facebook also released a 60-page report that it commissioned from a social responsibility consultancy called BSR. The paper recommended that this new independent Facebook board consider

a wide range of possible harms from content, quote, beyond just freedom of expression. They suggested that the board should justify all of its decisions in terms of United Nations human rights principles. Love it. This independent board review is the first of its kind for social media networks. And although we have no idea how this is actually going to play out, here's hoping YouTube, Twitter and other social platforms begin to take the problems on their platforms just as seriously. Now we're going to play a quick game called Bowl of Takes. Yes, so we've rounded up some of the week's most scorching hot takes and put them in a bowl. We're going to pull them out and we have 20 seconds to give our take on the take. Gideon, are you ready to sound the F off?

Let's fucking do it. So here's the take. Trump will be eligible for a third term. According to a tweet from former Governor Mike Huckabee, illegal attempts by Comey, Dems, and the media to oust him as POTUS will make him eligible for a third term. My take is that

that's bullshit. All right. Donald Trump isn't even eligible for a second term as far as I'm concerned. Barely eligible for the first if we're being really honest. Donald Trump absolutely

has to leave office when the time is right, which is, you know, always any moment now. Never again. Yeah, that's that's my take. I think you've got to go. Great. Now for me, let's see what we got here. It's so hot I can barely touch it. The Irishman is too long. Three and a half hours is too long for a movie about old men.

And even if you like the movie, you can admit that it could be a half hour shorter. Boy, I wish I had three and a half hours for that garbage ass take. Let me tell you something. Pacino as Hoffa. De Niro as Frank Sheeran. Joe Pesci as Bufalino. Ray Romano as another Bufalino. This is the kind of shit that you can't get anywhere else.

This movie should be seven hours as far as i'm concerned give me all the irishman all day all right that's it i have not seen it and i'm not saying that was my take but log movies wow all right oh wow this take is adam driver isn't that hot he's a good actor but he looks like the lead singer of nickelback or sid from ice age wow okay he doesn't look like sid uh He is huge. And Sid is a squirrel, I think. Also, he is super hot. His shoulders are very broad. You could climb him like a tree or like snuggle under his armpit like a ferret. And I think he's perfect. And you guys are wrong. Armpit snuggling. I always think of ferrets. All right. What do we got? What do we got? Here is my take.

Britain's failure to elect Labour should make us wary of Bernie and Warren. Since Corbyn is a leftist, we can use the results of the UK election to think about how things will go in the US. My response to that take is you're a fucking idiot. There's nothing that's happening in the United States that has anything to do with Brexit and you're not the center of the world. So just take events as they happen and move the fuck on. I love that. So many fucks. Alright.

Wow. How dare Okay. The one that I'm holding It's time to kill Baby Yoda. I didn't write it. Willa Paskin at Slate wrote that given Baby Yoda's carefully calculated one to one eye to eye-to-face ratio, he starts to feel manipulative, playing us like robots, carrying out commands to promote Disney+. Okay, Willa.

Look, Baby Yoda can't help how attractive he is, and it's bizarre that you would bring it up and throw it in his face. He's really just trying to save the universe, and it's bizarre that you think that has anything to do with Disney+. He'd do it anyway. We do love our small green friend. Freakish little animal. No! All right. Oh, this one is great.

Holy shit. Click is the best Adam Sandler movie. Vulture writer Jesse David Fox said, Click is the best Sandler movie because it checks all the boxes in terms of what makes a good sandler movie high concept emotional mature storytelling plus good broad comedy okay i have not seen uncut gems my gems remain uncut but i do appreciate the boldness of this take because click was secretly a very sad movie. And that was an interesting twist from the movie and Sandler. So you definitely think that's the best Sandler movie?

Absolutely not. No. Okay. And that was our fun segment, Bowl of Takes. My hand is on fire. And now to some ads. It's time for Nordstrom Rack. It's time for Nordstrom Rack. It's time for Nordstrom Track.

It's mama's favorite store, Gideon. I love the Nordstrom Rack ads. That was new. Yeah, it's new. It's my new cheer for Nordstrom Rack ads. So it's cold, even in sunny LA. Neither of us are from here. Do you have all of your warm supplies this season, Gideon?

I'm basically a ball of sweaters. That's true. The only thing that you can actually see when I come in is my eyes. Yeah, what I'm getting at is I have a of your warm supplies this season, Gideon? I'm basically a ball of sweaters. That's true. The only thing that you can actually see when I come in is my eyes. Yeah, what I'm getting at is I have a lot of warm supplies, but I could always get more patterned sweaters that scream, Grandpa has done golfing and ready for his lounge chair. Yeah, this sounds like good news to me. Well, if you're at home and you're cold and you're sick of it,

Nordstrom Rack is your BFF this season. They got the brands. They got the prices. And, hey, free shipping on orders over $49 for a limited time. So yeah, enter code CROOKED at checkout to take 10% off your order of $50 or more one time per customer, online purchases only. Portion Rack. It's where it's at. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. The UK general election results are in and it looks like messy scarecrow Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Conservatives are racking up the wins.

That means the government is back on the road to Brexit and possible threats to the National Health Service. The Conservative Party now has a majority of the seats in Parliament, having dealt a historic loss to their opposition, the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, also announced last night that he will not lead the party in any future general election campaign. He was under a lot of pressure to resign as the results came in. In Scotland, things went a little differently. The Scottish National Party, which favors Scottish independence, saw a victory when they picked up a number of new seats there. Johnson's win and Brexit could renew efforts within Scotland to vote again to leave the UK and therefore remain in the European Union. Donald Trump Jr. put on his man's man hat this August when he hunted and killed a rare endangered sheep called an Argali in Mongolia. This is why dads need to hug their sons. Permits to hunt this bighorn sheep are difficult to get

and mostly awarded based on connections, money, and politics. And what's even more rare is when Donald Jr. got his permit, according to a ProPublica report, he got it from the Mongolian government after he shot the sheep. This story calls into question the ethics of Don Jr.'s role as a non-government employee who can be used by foreign governments to curry favor with the president's family. In other words, world leaders who want to influence Trump can just let Don Jr. shoot their rare animals. Very normal billionaire son behavior. Ten former NFL players were charged with defrauding the league's shared health care fund on Thursday. The fund reimburses former NFL players for any medical expenses not covered by insurance, a fact that the players took advantage of by filing nearly $4 million worth of claims

using fake invoices and fabricated letters. This is an example of a bad hobby to take up when you're retired. The players face up to 20 years in jail and huge fines if they're charged. One more thing. 2020 is almost here, and you know what that means? Voting. The final vote is sure to be pretty, pretty, pretty close, and it's important to make sure everyone can vote and everyone's votes are counted. That's why Crooked Media has partnered with Stacey Abrams and her organization Fair Fight to protect the vote in battleground states next year. Head to votesaveamerica.com slash fair fight and donate. Make Stacey proud of you.

I hope you're proud of me too, Stacey. Me too. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Give us a rating, send us your BlackBerry pin, and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you're into reading and not just a book called

Being a Millionaire for Dummies in a Crowded Public Space like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's how you enjoy yourself on a vacation when you never experience adversity by paying $50,000 to shoot a rare sheep. John Milstein and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka.