Tech News: Amoral Algorithms and Anticompetitive App Stores

to it. Yesterday, former President Donald Trump announced he was filing class action complaints against YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook in a Florida court, claiming that the company has violated his First Amendment rights by banning his accounts in the wake of the January sixth Capital riots. Numerous experts in law have pointed out that this kind of sounds like a lost cause. The First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees that the government shall not infringe upon the freedom of

expression the freedom of speech. But last I checked, Twitter, YouTube, and even Facebook are not the US government. You might argue that these entities are, at least in some ways on a level with some parts of the government, but that does not make them government entities. They are instead businesses, and well, as such, they're allowed to do stuff like say, here are the rules for being part of this platform,

and if you violate the rules, you get banned. Kind of like, if you have someone come in your house and they are bad mouthing you and your loved ones, you can tell them to leave and not allow them back in your house. That's not violating the First Amendment. Now, what this does seem to be to me, and I stressed this is just my opinion and it's total armshare observation, but it seems to be an effort to raise money from supporters, and ostensibly that money is supposed to go

to this legal fund. And maybe also it's an attempt to stay in the news cycle, which I mean, you know it worked because here I am covering it. But if these complaints actually make their way through the system and ultimately go to court like a trial, and that the court finds in favor of the former president, it would mean a monumentally huge shift in how the US handles the First Amendment, and it would no doubt immediately get moved to a court of appeals. It would be

pushed up the court system from there. But most of the legal experts I've read seemed to indicate that this is at most a frivolous lawsuit, and that in fact, the law team supporting Trump could find themselves reprimanded for it. Anyway, I thought I had to reference it because it is something that's happening within the world of tech. Let's move on. Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, create a browser extension called Regrets Reporter, and this was all to be, you know, part of

an informal study. So Firefox users could install this extension onto their browser and the extension would log that users viewing activity on YouTube. This was all on the up and up. That was the stated intent and purpose of this extension. So it was essentially Mozilla looking for volunteers. So these volunteers could then flag clips of stuff that they wished they had not seen. That's why it's called

regrets Reporter. So the idea was to see how frequently YouTube's recommendation algorithm might submit videos that people just plain wish they had never encountered. And it turned out to be, you know, a fairly decent number. Users would flag videos that they found upsetting or nonsensical or just playing unappealing, and some of them were videos that were dedicated to

spreading misinformation. Uh somewhere the bizarre and and offensive parodies or mash ups that started making headlines a few years ago.

When they began to pop up on YouTube frequently. Nearly forty thousand people volunteered to take part in this project across one countries, and over the course of a little less than a year, the app extension collected three thousand, three hundred sixty two reports about recommended videos that people regretted watching, which I mean three thousand, three d sixty two. That's not an enormous number for a full year of this project going on, or almost a full year of

it going on. Generally, areas in non English speaking countries had more incidents than English speaking countries, which suggests that perhaps YouTube's algorithms work less well in those countries, and some of the recommended videos videos that YouTube's own algorithm was pushing seemed to violate YouTube's own content policies, which

is not great. YouTube is pretty guarded about how it's algorithm actually works, and in a way that makes sense because if word got out how the algorithm worked, then people could figure out ways to potentially game the system even more than they already do. But at the end of the day, the purpose of the algorithm isn't really to serve up the perfect video to you. The purpose of the algorithm is to keep you on YouTube for

as long as possible. It's an engagement algorithm designed to have you stick to the platform for longer because that means you watch more videos and you see more ads, and that makes YouTube more money. So if you think about it like that, the algorithm doesn't quote unquote care about the content or quality of any given video. The algorithm doesn't care if the video even violates YouTube's policies. The algorithm's job is to suggest videos that are like

need to keep each individual on YouTube longer. That's it. While YouTube says that the company has refined its algorithms so that the time it's working perfectly well and it's not going to push any sort of borderline content your way, the fact that the company remains so guarded about that algorithm means there's not really any way for someone to

verify that claim. Now, I have no idea how effective the algorithm really is at serving up content without it being borderline or in violation of YouTube's policies, but I do know that the recommendation algorithms on various social platforms can easily exacerbate problems sticking with Google. A collection of thirty seven states in the United States have brought a class action lawsuit against the company, claiming it is exercised quote monopolistic leverage end quote with the Google play Store.

Now that's the Android app store in case you weren't familiar. So Google imposes a comm sition on purchases made within the play Store, and it takes up to thirty percent of that money. And that's pretty standard in the industry. So in other words, this is the same sort of practice that's used by Apple, by Amazon, and by Microsoft. In addition, this one is a bit odd because Google is actually fairly lax when it comes to how you

get apps on your Android devices. You can actually download apps directly from developer websites and not go through the play Store at all, so you can bypass that whole system. Plus, if you are an Android user, you can elect to allow side loading. That means you can load apps that developers never even submit to Google. So another you know, it doesn't have to be in the Google play Store for you to be able to use it. You can

just sideload it from wherever. This is a little risky because it could involve installing malware to your Android device, so it's not recommended for everyone, but it is something you can do. Apple famously does not allow for sideloading, So it seems to me like Google has a fairly decent argument to make here about how the company allows

for alternatives then going through the Google Play Store. But let's say this does go to trial and that Google loses, that would be some pretty scary news for the other companies that I've mentioned, like Apple and Amazon. We've heard a lot about app stores and the cut that companies like Google and Apple take. I mean, that's at the heart of the ongoing battle between Apple and Epic Games, So we will keep an eye on this particular story.

Speaking of Apple, Steve Wozniak, who co founded Apple with Steve Jobs back in the nineteen seventies, gave what amounted to a nearly ten minutes speech in support of the right to repair. This was in response to a cameo request. Cameo, just in case you're not familiar, is a service that allows celebrities to set a price for personalized video messages that fans and then buy, usually for someone else. I tried to set up a cameo for myself, but turns out I can't afford to pay people to have me

send them videos, so I'm out anyway. Louis Rossman, who is a supporter of the right to Repair movement, purchased a cameo request from Wosniac and asked him to speak about the idea of right to repair, and Wosniac did not disappoint You can actually watch this video on online. And the right to repair is a general movement that pushes for legislation that would require companies to stop making it difficult or even impossible for someone to make alterations

or repair the technology that they purchase. So one example I always like to give with this is with John Deer equipment, as in like farming equipment like tractors, John Dear restricts the ability to repair those products. So you know what you're supposed to do is take your your John Deer equipment and go to an authorized repair shop that has a license with John Dear and they have the equipment that is necessary to diagnose and repair the equipment. If you try and do it yourself, uh, you get

you run into roadblocks, like figurative roadblocks. So for the d I Y types out there, this is a slap in the face, and I mean particularly for people like farmers, who often can be very self reliant, having this can mean not just it's it's not just inconvenient for some people, it can be an enormous hassle. Wozniak spoke about how in the not too distant past you could buy whatever electronics he wanted. It could be a TV or a radio or whatever, and you could make repairs on that

technology yourself. As long as you had to know how and you had the components. You could just go out and buy something like, you know, a vacuum tube and replace it yourself. He even said that Apple started off with that kind of pilosophy, which is a far cry from how the company operates now. Wozniak asked the question, is it your computer or is it some company's computer? As an is it a company's computer that you get

to use but you don't actually own it. We've seen the right to repair movement pick up support both here in the United States and overseas in Europe, and I am curious to see where it goes and whether or

not it actually leads to any meaningful change. Next security firm trust Wave Spider Labs published a report that says, the malicious code in ransomware used by hacker groups like REvil have a feature that looks for Russian or Russian related languages on computer systems, and if it detects that language is present, like if it detects that most of the programming and code and documents are in Russian, the malware does not activate itself on that system. It doesn't

infect those systems. So why is that well? The owing theory is that these criminal hacker groups are largely located out of Russia or former parts of the USSR, and that the Russian government is at the very least ignoring these criminal groups as they target various computer systems in other countries, particularly in the West, and that the hacker groups wish to keep it that way, and so they make sure that the code they unleash isn't going to

affect Russian systems. In other words, you just you don't poop where you eat, as they say. Russian authorities have so far proven to be uninterested in cracking down on hacker groups, which has led to suspicions that perhaps the Russian government might even go so far as to encourage

or maybe even subcontract these hacker groups. Now, those allegations are difficult to prove, but the discovery that the malware being used as specifically avoiding Russian systems suggests that the hackers at least know that they are more likely able to operate freely as long as they don't step on Russian toes. We recently had Pride Month here in the United States, and while people within the LGBT communities still face struggles here significant ones in other countries, the threats

can be even more overt. Take China, for example, we Chat, the most popular social networking platform within China, recently shut down multiple accounts relating to LGBT topics, and allegedly we Chat sent out messages to the account administrators claiming that these channels that were you know, being hosted by these admins were violating me chats policies, but gave no details as to how they were doing that, and the lack of information has led to speculation, and some of that

speculation questions if perhaps the communist government in China is cracking down on these groups, potentially because they the government might view these groups as maybe questioning the government's authority or challenging that authority. In some way, and that the government then puts pressure on companies like we Chat, because in China, the Communist government is heavily involved in every

major company within the country. China classified homosexuality as being criminal until but while homosexuality is now decriminalized, at least on paper, people in LGBT communities still must deal with a great deal of discrimination in China. Now. To be fair, that's also the case in many other parts of the world, including the United States. It's not like China is an outlier in that regard. It's just that this is one

of those cases where it looks particularly overt. As I said earlier for my last story today, I want to preface this by saying I'm not a car guy, and also I find hyper masculine marketing to be absolutely ridiculous. I think it's laughable. So perhaps it comes as no surprise that I was rolling my eyes so hard that you could probably hear it at a recent video revealing that Dodge will release an all electric muscle car in Now.

To be fair, I think muscle cars are kind of cool, and I think an all electric muscle car is a really neat idea. It's kind of in a way antithetical to the way muscle cars typically get positioned in the market. But the way the video unfolded really kind of I don't know. I guess it pushed some buttons with me. It would have to, it's an electric vehicle anyway. The video includes a narrator who at one point incredulously says, wait a minute, did we hear that right? Dodge as

an Dodge making an electric muscle car. And then there's a shot of a dude who's behind the wheel of a Dodge muscle car saying, you mean hypothetically right, Like they wouldn't Dare make an electric muscle car because internal combustion engines are manly and whatnot, and going electric is antithetical to muscle cars aesthetic. I suspect this is really just Dodge getting ahead of the inevitable reaction of the

thought of an all electric muscle car. But seeing as how the automotive industry in general is having to switch to e v s or at least alternatives to internal combustion engines, it was kind of bound to happen. I mean, it either had to happen this way, or muscle car variants of vehicles would just have to go away anyway. I really do think an electric muscle car is a cool idea. I just find the marketing approach to me a bit laughable. But I feel that way, like I said,

about all hyper masculine advertising. I mean, if it's if it's an ad for steak or beer or something like that, typically it just makes me kind of get exasperated at the the the way that masculinity is depicted. I feel like it tends to reinforce perhaps not the healthiest of stereotypes. But hey, I'll get off my soapbox. We'll stick with tech. That's it for the tech news for today, Thursday, July one.

We'll be back next week with some more news. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, let me know the best way to do that is send me a message on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech 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.