TechStuffFacebook held its quarterly earnings call and while the company is under criticism its revenue is through the roof. Also, Congress is asking social networking companies to think of the children and Jeff Bezos plans to build a station that's out of this world.
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Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, and I love all things tech and it's time for the tech news for Tuesday, October one. Also, I wanted to mention we will not be having a news episode on Thursday, will be bringing an episode of Smart Talks on that day. But let's get to some news for today, and y'all, I would love to say that today's episode has no news about Facebook because I'm tired of talking about it, probably about as much as you're tired of hearing about it. But that ding dang darn company just keeps making headlines. I'm still waiting to find out what the new name of the company itself is going to be. There is this reported rebranding that's about to happen, and by the time you hear this, that news might have broken. And of course there are tons of thing pieces out there as to why Facebook has decided on this rebrand strategy. I pretty much agree with Jake Hancock's take. He wrote a piece for Fast Company and he said that the move is probably more of a thing that the company is doing for investor relations than anything else, and I feel like that's pretty on track, but there's some other things we need to cover. First, Facebook, since I record this, that's still the name of the company, so I'm just going to use that as the company name. Has held its quarterly earnings call with investors, so CEO and privacy is dead. Guru Mark Zuckerberg took some time to address the fact that the company has been in the headlines for a couple of weeks due to whistle blowers coming forth with lots of allegations against the company that range from Facebook has done some dumb stuff to Facebook has contributed to the downfall of democracy. Zuckerberg tried to downplay those reports, claiming that they quote paint a false picture of the company end quote. Now I don't know if it's really a false picture. I do know that more employees and former employees have come forward with additional complaints and concerns about the company. However, one thing Facebook keeps on doing is making cash by the truckload. So in the last quarter, Facebook made twenty nine billion dollars in revenue billion with a B that's nearly thirty billion dollars in three months or ten billion dollars per month in revenue. That is mind boggling. Now, I'm not sure how many investors out there are concerned with stuff like ethics or investigations if their investment is raking in the big bucks on that kind of scale. I mean, from an investment standpoint, you could be saying, hey, I don't know, share they're doing some shady stuff up, but look at all the green they're there bringing me. And granted I was talking just now about revenue not profit. Those are two different things. So if we stick solely to profit, then over the last quarter we're actually talking about a measily nine billion dollars in a couple hundred million and change. Hardly enough reason to get out of bed in the morning. M al right. Anyway, all sarcasm aside, a company making those kinds of numbers is not likely to find itself dumped by investors. Now. Granted, this could change if governments around the world start to force the company to break up and spin off various components into independent organizations, essentially making Facebook peel away the companies that it has acquired over the years, like Instagram and WhatsApp. There's also a possible shift in the ad space that could affect Facebook's abilities to generate revenue. That would be a huge shake up for the company, and we've already seen evidence that the company is trying to get ahead of that by counting the same person twice if that person interacts with an AD on more than one Facebook platform. So for example, on Facebook and Instagram, they would count that one person two times if they interacted with the same ad. So that's a little odd and there's a chance that the ad business will change Facebook's earning potential. That would have a big effect, and we might see some investors lose some confidence, But for now, the company is making some serious bank On that same call, Zuckerberg addressed another growing concern in the company, namely that younger people don't seem to be as hooked into Facebook's products as older generations are. Those are some smart younger people. Facebook has seen younger people's time on its various platforms go into kind of a decline recently, um as people started to favor other platforms. Zuckerberg has said that Facebook will quote make serving young adults their north star end quote. He said the company is looking to cater more features to young adults, which from my observation, usually means that Facebook is going to take a look at what other popular platforms are doing and then either create something similar in other words, copying these platforms, or just go out and buy whatever popular companies are are doing well. See also Instagram and WhatsApp. Now, the gorilla in this scenario would be TikTok, which remains really popular with young adults, so expect to see Instagram reels become more prominent in the future. But yeah, we should add the fact that Facebook's user base is aging and young people are not balancing that out. So in other words, the people who are using Facebook are getting older. Eventually they're going to you know, not be using Facebook anymore because you don't do it after you die. And meanwhile, younger people aren't coming in to replenish Facebook's user base, so that could eventually lead to the company's decline. And that's why I think there was such an emphasis on Facebook trying to aggressively go after younger users. Next up, Ours Technica published an article titled employees pleaded with Facebook to stop letting politicians bend rules, and I guess you kind of get the gist of it just from the headline of the article, but essentially, Facebook was facing criticism from conservatives, some of whom were claiming that the platform was censoring conservative voices and was thus biased toward liberals. So the company's response, according to employees, was to allow far right conservatives spread misinformation and otherwise violate Facebook policies without facing any kind of reprimand for that, one employee said that a director level executive had issued a memo indicating that would be really cool if you know, Facebook's moderation policies just didn't apply to quote unquote political considerations. The employees have said that upper level management, including Zuckerberg himself, have frequently moved to block any kind of moderation on these kinds of posts, even if those posts contained false and or harmful information. A Facebook rep named Joe Osborne has said that the claims presented are based on a false premise, that that premise being that Facebook is unconcerned with user safety, and maybe Osborne is being sincere. I fully admit that my own personal perception that Facebook is at best concerned about safety only so far as it will keep heat off the company. That could be totally wrong. That could be a complete misperception on my part. In fact, I hope I am wrong about that. That would be great. I just feel like my perception might be a little closer to the truth based upon how things have played out over the last several years. On a slightly more oddball note, Facebook has retained the services of lawyer Matthew Rosengart, Rose and Gart most recently represented Brittany Spears in her quest to free herself from the conservatorship her father had instituted on her um. And that was a quest that she achieved, actually she was able to to to bring that to an end through the court system. Facebook's purpose for bringing on Rosengart onto their side is apparently to discourage a production company called Anonymous Content. See that company is adapting a book that has the title and Ugly Truth, and that book is all about Facebook around the year, you know, when the company was involved with stuff like the Cambridge Analytica scandal and misinformation campaigns. Essentially, the book attempts to explain how things got to where they are and arguably where they continue to be today. Anonymous Content is making a television adaptation of that book, and they are titling it doomsday machine. Anyway, rosen Art sent a letter to the CEO of Anonymous Content, essentially threatening a lawsuit should the series contain any knowingly false statements about Facebook. Further, Rosengart claims that several of the passages in an Ugly Truth are wrong or misleading, and so by extension, adapting those for television would qualify as being a big old no no. Now, The Verge reports that, at least to their knowledge, Facebook has not pursued any sort of similar claim against the publisher or the author of an Ugly Truth, and that is somewhat puzzling. I mean, if the statements were knowingly false, right, If if the statements in the book are knowingly false, why didn't Facebook pursue litigation against the book or the publisher? Or is Facebook saying, hey, hey, we say that that thing in the book is a lie, So if you put it on TV, then you know we said it was a lie and then you did it anyway, so we'll sue you for you know, having known false information in there, which isn't how that should work, right, But I don't know for sure. Rosengard did say that Facebook was willing to consult on the TV show to make sure it's accurate, which you know, sure anyway, no word yet on how anonymous content is responding to this message. One thing Facebook moderators did recently that was the right decision was to remove a video posted by the President of Brazil Bilsonaro. He had claimed that COVID nineteen vaccines were giving people aids, a claim that originated as a rumor that had at no actual evidence to support it at all. It cited uh supposed British government officials, but there was no such citation. Like it would be like you walking up to me and saying your dad says I can punch you, and not say I I don't think my dad would say that. But you just argue that no, no, no, no no, that that statements out there. It's not a proof. So despite the fact that it's an unsubstantiated rumor, it hasn't stopped, you know, people including the President of Brazil, from spreading it. Now moderators have removed this video that Balsinaro had posted, but it took three days before they did it, And that's a bit of a head scratcher because it seems like a pretty clear violation of Facebook's policies. But at least we have an instance of Facebook taking down a video that did violate Facebook's rules, even when that video came from a powerful politician, because too many times in the past we've seen Facebook turn a blind eye to such things. All Right, that's all the Facebook news out of the way, though I think I might mention it once more before we're done. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll come back with the rest of the news. Today, lawmakers in the United States are holding a hearing in which they will question representatives from tick talk snap that's the company that owned Snapchat and YouTube. So the focus of this hearing is going to be on how these platforms affect younger users. There's been increased scrutiny and how online platforms are influencing people, particularly younger people, and there's also a concern that these platforms haven't been fully transparent or forthcoming regarding that matter. The lawmakers are expected to ask things like how these companies protect user privacy, if they do at all, as well as how the content on the platforms might include stuff that could harm younger people, and how the algorithms that services like TikTok and YouTube rely Upon can serve up progressively more harmful material over time. Also how these platforms monetize user activity on these you know, various platforms. I keep using the word platform, but it's social networking platforms essentially. Now. YouTube has been in this hot seat before, having had a pretty infamous issue with its platform aimed at children, and it's subsequently becoming a target for bad actors and scam artists, as well as a home to some truly bizarre and sometimes disturbing material. I'm not sure if we're actually going to see anything productive emerge from this hearing, though it might serve as motivation for lawmakers to draft or support legislation aimed at protecting kids online. Of course, when it comes to law and tech, particularly in the online world, we frequently see that stuff that's meant to be helpful can sometimes be the opposite. So it's too early to say whether or not we're at a turning point here, or if we are, if it's a turning point that's a positive one. The information reports that Apple is very likely to be the subject of an upcoming Department of Justice investigation, so you might wonder what's being investigated. Well, that would be whether or not Apple has a monopolistic hold on some aspects of the tech space, most notably in the field of apps, particularly for the mobile world. Now, this dovetails with the lawsuits flying between Apple and Epic Games, which are mostly about how Apple institutes an in app purchasing system. It's a required system, you cannot use anything else, and it also takes a cut of all in app purchases, and again, developers are denied the opportunity to offer up any alternative to Apple's in app system. That's not the only matter that the d o J is interested in. Another is the allegation that Apple requires third party apps to abide by certain restrictions with regard to location tracking, but Apple's own apps are not held to those same restrictions, which does sound a bit any competitive. It sounds like you've got two different sets of rules. You've got the rules that I follow, and then there are the rules that you have to follow, and my rules might be a little, you know, more loose than yours. That's not fair. The d o J first opened up an antitrust probe into Apple back in twenty nineteen. According to the information the probe re and ly scaled up in activity, potentially indicating that an official investigation is to follow. This past weekend, Tesla deployed an update to its so called full self driving program, which, as I've mentioned in previous episodes, takes a really liberal definition of full self driving. But this update, version ten point three, ended up causing some pretty scary situations. Apparently, the Modes Forward Collision Warning System or f c W, would malfunction upon the installation of ten point three, and would occasionally detect a collision when there was no such danger present. Some users even reported that their cars went into fc W mode even when no other cars were on the road, and in at least some of these cases, the Tesla vehicle would then automatically apply the brakes really hard. Often it would do so several times, even on short drives, making the cars effectively undrivable. Now, clearly a card that's just breaking hard for no reason is itself a danger on the road and could potentially lead to actual collisions. Tesla recalled the update and rolled users back to version ten point two. Elon must tweeted that you know these things happen. It's a beta program, so with beta programs you expect to find bugs. I mean, honestly, that's the purpose of a beta program. You open up testing at scale so that you can quickly identify design flaws that otherwise might not pop up in a limited internal test. But this is where I start to take issue, because in this case, you're talking about a technology that can freaking kill you if it does not work properly. I'm actually surprised that internal testing didn't bring up any incidents of phantom warnings, because based upon the reports of the people who were in the beta test, it seemed like it was a pretty common issue. And I would also say the cavalier added HUD is definitely out of place. Anyway. Update ten point three point one rolled out yesterday, and presumably vehicles will no longer detect ghosts in front of them and then slam on the brakes. Now, on other Tesla news, the company recently signed a huge deal with the rental car company Hurts, which has placed in order of one hundred thousand Tesla cars for around four point to billion with a B dollars. That's a pretty big deal, both in the sense that it's a big business deal and that's a big deal to go so hard with Tesla in an effort to electrify a fleet of rental cars. The announcement of the deal gave a boost to Tesla stock price, driving the company to a valuation of more than a trillion dollars. I'm curious if Hurts will charge customers if they return their rented Tesla's on less than a full batteries charge, because one way is that rental cars companies make cash is they charge you out the wazoo if you don't have a old gas tank when you return the vehicle. I do know that Hurts struck a deal with Tesla to let renters use the company's supercharger stations around the United States and Europe. Pretty interesting development for a rental car company that was literally in bankruptcy just a year ago. Finally, I mentioned last week that some companies, including lockeed Martin, plan to collaborate and launch a private space station into low Earth orbit by twenty seven. Well, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon dot Com and Blue Origin, announced that his space company also plans to build a commercial space station, and it has the operating name of Orbital Reef. Like the station I mentioned last week, the purpose of this one will include stuff like acting as a research lab for various sciences, presumably ones that can potentially lead to a profitable application. Because this is going to be largely commercial research, not necessarily pure science research. It will also serve as a potential site where a company could maybe run a hotel for space tourism. Apart from these little details, Bezos and Blue Origin haven't revealed much more about their plans, such as whether or not the station will be modular in design like the International Space Station or monolithic like the other proposed private space station we talked about last week. Nor do we have any concrete information on a timeline about this other than the hope is that it will be an operation before the end of this decade. So to all those Amazon workers out there who are debating unionization, let me just say, while you're peeing in a bottle, you could be staring at the stars, just not as close as Bezos will be. And that wraps up the tech news for today, Tuesday, October twenty six one. I hope you're all well. Like I said, we will not have a news episode on Thursday. We will have an episode of Smart Talks also on Thursday, If you haven't already started listening, you should check out the podcast Thirteen Days of Halloween. It's a three D audio spooky ghost story podcast. Uh, And on Thursday, I will be in an episode of that series. It's pretty cool. Uh. Episode two is probably my favorite so far, and I'm not in that one. It's just my honest opinion. I think episode two is a really strong episode. But yeah, check it out. It's a pretty creepy, fun like camp fire spooky story type stuff and I really like it a lot, so I hope you do too. If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, feel free to reach out to me. The best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
