 This 10th year of Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Miranda Janell, Justin Zelers, and Piper Geese. Also our new patrons, Stone, Michelle, and Erin. Welcome! On this episode of DTNS, Meta launches threads, and I don't know, a few people notice. Twitter continues its quest to be the everything app, and Justin Robert Young is unpacking the U.S. government social media legal drama, and where we stand now and where we're going next. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, July 6th, 2023. From Studio 55, I'm Sarah Lane. From deep in the heart of Texas, I'm Justin Robert Young. And on the show's producer, Roger Chang. I thought everybody was going to get a laugh at my Studio 55 thing. Not really that great of a joke. Thank you. Get it? Yeah. It's a reference to something. It's better. It's better than the previous one. When you have to explain it, it's whatever. All right. Well, we do actually want to explain quite a few stories today. So let's start with the cool kids. Samsung's next Galaxy Unpacked event has an official date. That is July 26th at 7 a.m. Eastern happening in Seoul, South Korea. An image along with the announcement suggests it will be all about foldable devices. People expected that. The company is expected to announce the Galaxy Z Flip 5, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and may unveil other Galaxy Browning accessories. Spotify has removed the ability to continue previous subscription payments through Apple's App Store, which also removes Apple's ability to take a cut of those fees. Spotify says users who are still paying through the App Store will be given the option to log in directly and pay through Spotify or their subscriptions will be downgraded to a free account. The information sources say that Google is delaying a new custom chip for its Pixel smartphones until 2025 was supposed to be next year. The chip was originally said to be replacing the semi custom chips that Google currently designs with Samsung starting next year. Google will reportedly switch to working with TSMC on a new chip code named Laguna that will be based on TSMC's three nanometer manufacturing process. But it's going to stick with Samsung for at least an additional year. The economic time sources say that Reliance Geo Infocom, better known as Geo, is expected to sign a $1.7 billion contract with Nokia to buy 5G network equipment this week. Geo also has a contract with Ericsson as it prepares for a nationwide 5G rollout in India by the end of the year. Taking it seriously. All right, so before we talk about, you know, some other micro blogging service that may have launched within 24 hours of the last show, the invite-only app Blue Sky announced that it will sell domain names to generate revenue. In a blog post, the company explained, you can already set up a custom domain name to use with Blue Sky, but it takes a little know-how and not everybody either knows how to do it or cares. The company's first paid service will be to make this process cheap and easy by partnering with a domain registrar called Namecheap. You might be familiar with it. If not, Blue Sky is partnering with it. The company says it's also considering other monetization avenues to avoid needing to sell advertising. Good luck. All right. Those are the quick hits. Justin, let's talk about a little story. A few people online are talking about it. Yeah, you know, to take it away. Serge, you hear about this Instagram launching its new Twitter clone called Threads on Wednesday, a day ahead of its previously announced July 6th launch. Threads is designed to be an extension of your Instagram network and automatically connect to that built-in community so you can follow all of your current contacts very easily and jump back and forth between Threads and Instagram apps easily or confusingly when you think that you're hitting a button that's bringing you to the previous menu. There are some limitations at launch, however. Currently, there is no way to view only the people you follow on Threads, and there are plenty of complaints already from people who say spammy and otherwise uninteresting accounts are bubbling up too much on their timeline. Instagram chief Adam Massari says the only who you follow timeline is, quote, on the list. You also can't delete a Threads account without deleting your Instagram account. Whoops. In a supplemental privacy policy, Meta explains you can deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account. Meta says this is because it treats Threads as a part of your Instagram account and therefore experience. Yeah, and there are going to be a lot of people who say, oh, typical Meta, you know, I knew Meta was going to do something weird like this. However, people are given Threads a try more than a few. Mark Zuckerberg claimed 10 million people signed up for Threads within the first seven hours of launch. I was at a park with my dog yesterday. So that was probably 3 p.m. Pacific yesterday. So, you know, before midnight, you know, 10 million users, pretty good launch. Not a huge surprise though because you might recall that Instagram has more than 2 billion users. This is Meta after all and Thread launched in more than 100 countries. So there was a lot of access. By Thursday morning though, Threads had 30 million signups. So this is, you know, blockbuster out of the key app. You know, at least for signups. At least for signups. As for competition, because there is a lot of it. Eugene Rochko, who's the founder and CEO of Mastodon, posted a blog post about what Threads means for Mastodon and in many ways said, everyone don't worry too much. This is, you know, overall probably kind of good. Threads has said it will support Activity Pub, doesn't yet, not out of the gate, but has definitely said that it is going to do that. That's the same standard protocol that Mastodon uses. And Rochko also said that Threads is generally good for that Fediverse type thing. You know, you can have interoperability between apps and be able to, you know, post something on Threads and see it on Mastodon and vice versa. He also pointed out some differences though between the two platforms saying, well, there's a variety of data that Threads is going to collect from you. It at least can and according to its app store will and also reminded Mastodon users that their data does not get collected. So Fediverse platforms are not always the same. You know, even though Threads and Mastodon should in theory become, you know, two places that data can work together, Meta won't be able to track Mastodon users unless they also use Threads. So if anyone's worried about that, that was something that Rochko was trying to dispel. And if you're looking for drama, we got a little for you. Twitter is threatening to sue Meta, accusing it of poaching former Twitter employees to create a quote-unquote copycat app. Semaphore obtained a letter sent by Twitter's lawyer Alex Spyro to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accusing it of engaging in systemic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property and quote. Yeah, it sounds like Twitter is saying, well, hold on a second. You just hired a bunch of former Twitter employees who would know so much stuff about what we're working on and now they're working for you and we don't like it. Sure. Twitter also published their source code. So there is that. They definitely put that out there for everybody to see. But so let's talk a little bit about first thoughts on Threads. I was not to say like, I'm the most popular Instagram user in the world, but I have a fair amount of... It's a pretty large community there. I've been on the app since 2010 when it launched. So signing up for Threads, I immediately was getting, because I was wearing my Apple Watch, it was like ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. You know, where I was like, am I blowing up? No, it's just because everyone is trying it out and everyone is saying, yeah, sure, auto follow all the people that I followed on Instagram, let's see how this goes, myself included. There are a couple of hiccups I noticed. In fact, you, for example, this morning, somebody had mentioned you in a Thread, if that's what we're calling the equivalent of tweets. And I clicked on your profile and I was like, why am I not following him? I'm following him on Instagram that it's not porting over. And maybe that's just because it's day two. There might be more to it. I'm not sure. There's also a lot of people complaining, well, hold on a second. I really want to only see the people that I follow. Otherwise, you know, it's a lot of muck. And I don't think that's the same, I don't know, experience for everybody. For me, I kind of don't mind it because just hanging out with all the Instagram people that, you know, for a lot of them, I don't really know them that much anymore. I might have followed them more than a decade ago and I don't necessarily want Threads to be, you know, a personal experience between us. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but I think Meta probably has some, you know, some thoughts on why they're doing it this way. I think it's a boring app. I think it's visually uninteresting. And to be totally honest, I don't think that people are currently engaging with each other. I actually was kind of made to be a bit bearish on this. I thought it was going to look better. I thought it was going to feel more fun. Instagram, for anything that you can say about it, is an extraordinarily colorful and fun app and anything that TikTok has taken from it in terms of its vibrancy, I believe was started with Instagram. It's the reason why Zuckerberg spent so much to acquire it. This has none of that charm. It's very flat. And I think that that's encouraging people to really not interact with each other. From the business perspective of this, Meta, like a lot of companies, well, not a lot of companies, Google and Facebook are facing a existential crisis in terms of ads. There's a reason why for all the time, going back to when Meta was Facebook, they could have ripped off Twitter. They never did. It's not because of Elon. It's because they need to create more surface area to try to sell ads for cheaper. And if they don't do that, then they have a larger problem in terms of how money comes into that specific company. I was not made to be particularly thrilled by my experience yesterday. Maybe it will get better, but you only get one chance at a first impression. When you got the resources that Meta does, if it ain't great, it's kind of on them. Although, although, you know, because I've thought the same thing as you is like, it's not really that novel. It's just not Twitter. So like, if you hate Twitter, you're going to try it out like you may have, like myself may have tried out all, you know, micro blogging, Twitter alternatives who might be part of the Fediverse and might not. I wonder how much Meta said this timing could not be more perfect based on, you know, Twitter's sort of fumbling over the weekend and a lot of people having issues just accessing their tweets in general and how much does that become a strategy of saying in two months like we've listened to the community, we hear that you only want a timeline from your followers and we're going to give you that. That seems so much like Meta. They love doing that. They love giving their audience exactly what they want and not something that would maximize page views and would surface viral tweets. So even if it does, you could still spin it that way and still make it seem like you're a company who listens to the people. I'll start holding my breath now. At the end of the day, there's one website that is the best on earth for complaining about Twitter and it's called Twitter. Very true. Yeah. In fact, most of the most interesting stuff I've read about threads is indeed on Twitter. On Twitter. As of this recording. But hey, besides probably wondering how I can probably burn Meta to the ground in some sort of way, Twitter is staying busy, doing other stuff, looking for new ways to make money because it has to. Over the past week, the company has been granted money transmitter licenses in the US States of Michigan, Missouri and New Hampshire. That's in an effort to add payment tools to Twitter's platform and move closer to being that everything app a la WeChat that Elon Musk has said that he really wants to make happen. Twitter is applied for the license in all 50 US States. So three out of 50, you know, it's a start, right? But there's no defined timeline for that approval process. You know, Elon Musk has previously made his desire for an everything app, crystal clear and reinforced it when he announced Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yaccarino and a tweet. He said he wanted to transform the platform into X the everything app. X dot com was the name of Musk's earliest company, one that eventually became PayPal. Yeah. So that whole idea of Twitter becoming X. I kind of forgot about it. Honestly, until I realized because you can just sort of say like, oh, we're going to make it an everything app. And you go, okay, well, I mean, WeChat exists because of, you know, the Chinese market and all sorts of things that Twitter is not nor as meta or any other app I can really think of. So sure, have fun with that. But but yeah, it sounds like the company is at least taking the payments part of it seriously, something that meta has also done in the past. And I don't know, Justin. If let's just say in a world, yeah, where everyone leaves Twitter and and goes to threads, we're not there yet. We're not even close. But let's say that happens. What would it matter if Twitter wasn't everything app? I mean, doesn't that have to have the, you know, billions of users that something like meta can can brag about? Well, X's future would be in the utility that it provides a place for not only conversation, but also being able to break out of that conversation into smaller groups and actually have something that would be of worth being able to exchange money like you do on a Venmo order a pizza together and split it easily, that kind of stuff. Here's the reality though. And I cannot highlight this enough. Advertising on the web is fundamentally changing. And I don't want to say it's in trouble. I don't want to say it's going away, but you can see gigantic cracks in this platform. Twitter was a huge burning pile of money when Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion because it was trying to be an advertiser and was never really able to get it to the level that it needed to be. Now say what you will. And I think there's a lot of fair things to say, but Elon Musk chasing the advertisers that they had off the platform. But the reality is, is that's going away. There's a reason my blue sky. Jack Dorsey knows very, very well how hard it is to get advertising onto a micro blogging platform that has the range, let's say euphemistically, of a Twitter. And now he's going to sell domain names. We don't even want to do that. We want to sell domain names. We want to sell buttons and rubber noses so we can do anything that is in our power to not try to rely on advertising. And that's what Elon's trying to do here. Will it work? Will the audience be there? Does the Twitter audience want it? We will find out for all of Elon's business successes having this level of retail relationship with a customer base has alluded him to this point. Yeah. You know, I know there are a lot of people out there saying I'm never going to use a meta product because I, you know, I don't believe in the company. You could say that about a lot of companies, but I know a lot of people in the tech space who say that about meta, 100%. And people will say that about Twitter. And once you do something like, hey, but don't you want to order a pizza within the app? Very convenient. And maybe because I live in the US, so we're a little, we're a lot behind the curve on a lot of the stuff. You know, I say, no, not if I hit the company. I don't care. Yeah. I don't care how easy it is to do. I have other options, which we do. So yeah, if you can make it so that you can't leave Twitter unless you want to, you know, if it works and your friends are there, all baby, you'll use it. Right, which is, yeah, that is, you know, the underlying question. Will they be there? Hard to say. Well, we're in early days of threads. We'll definitely be talking about it more. But we wanted to remind you to thank yourselves for everybody who became a patron and increased your pledges. We had so many new patrons, so many increased pledges because of so many of you who wanted to bring Molly Wood on the show one Friday every month. Now, we're still looking to reach that goal, but we're in much better shape than we were when we started. So thank you to everybody in advance to reach our goal of having Molly on one Friday every month. We need more help. If you haven't already, consider supporting the show by visiting patreon.com slash DTNS. All right, we talked about this briefly yesterday, but just a reminder that on Tuesday, Judge Terry A. Dowdy issued an injunction barring some officials in the White House, CISA, FBI, Homeland Security from contacting social media companies about moderating content protected under the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Now, this follows a lawsuit against President Biden, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and Department of Homeland Security alleging that government officials have been trying to control social media speech. Tell them what to say, what not to say since 2017. The injunction includes some exemptions for national security threats, public safety, some malicious activity. So Justin, what's the latest? Well, as expected on Wednesday, the Biden administration appealed the injunction which was issued in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The decision will now be reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. Now, you might say, what are the ripple effects? Some of them have already begun. The Washington Post reported that shortly before the appeal the appeal from the Biden administration, the State Department canceled its regular meeting. Apparently they had a standing meeting Wednesdays with Facebook officials to discuss 2024 election prep and hacking threats. This is according to a source from within Metta. So Justin, the rulings don't stop sites. This is not just Facebook or Metta or Instagram, anything in particular, but it could be anybody who's big enough, YouTube, TikTok. They all can still moderate their own online content, right? Yeah, of course. This is not anything that would affect the selective moderation and the decisions from the heads of these platforms from doing anything themselves. What it does affect is something that came to light specifically in two instances, the Hunter Biden laptop story and the COVID and vaccine misinformation stuff that really came to light during the Twitter files. I guess both of these came to light during the Twitter files. But part of the thing that came more to light was a sometimes semi-formal relationship between government organizations and these platforms, wherein outside of anything that was monitored publicly or listed publicly, much in the same way that the government when they want something taken down has to issue a notice that a lot of these companies then publish. This was just a little chit chat wherein oftentimes government sources pointed out accounts and conversations that in the cold light of day didn't really hold muster. And in some cases, like the laptop story, was informally suggested could be Russian disinformation. And so when you look at the fact that the State Department canceled a meeting that was already set up to be a prep meeting for things to look out on the horizon of an election that's gonna happen next November, then yeah, I think that this kind of court battle at the very least sets up a standard for which we would like for the government's communication with these kinds of companies to be more public than it was. Where we will land on this scale legally and where the government will continue to push it, will it become more super secret? Will they want to have more of this out there? We will see. Yeah, I mean, I feel like the injunction, including exemptions for, you know, hey, security threat, you know, public safety, you know, malicious activity, like the government saying, we're only trying to keep everybody safe. Hard to argue with that. I mean, it depends on how you feel politically. So you might say, no, never. Don't want it. But those exemptions seem like at least a leg to stand on, you know, if you're on the government side of it. But otherwise, it does seem a little bit, I don't know, maybe, maybe not the worst thing in the world to kind of go back to the drawing board and say, all right, how do we, as the government, trying to keep everybody safe, and you as the social media network with billions of users talking about Meta, nobody really has billions except Meta, but, you know, many, many users, how do we communicate in a way that doesn't make everyone think that, you know, we're doing under the table kind of stuff? Well, and that's from the government's perspective, they will likely make the legal argument that, hey, everything we have always ever done has fallen under these carbons. This is about national security. This is about public safety. This is about malicious activity. And so when we go out and say we believe the contents of this story are Russian disinformation, we are actively trying to safeguard these platforms in the United States. Was it ultimately, as it turns out, no, right? If you censor conversation about certain elements of the COVID virus or you censor certain information about the vaccines or say, lean on the idea that certain rabble rousing accounts need to be banned or shadow banned, then that is a conversation for which we'll need to be fleshed out further. But the government will say that they have always been within their right to do this, even by the injunction that is put forward. Whether or not we will see these kinds of things hold up is a different story. Well, while we're all thinking about that, we might think, you know, I'd like to get out of dodge. And maybe I'd like to travel around the whole entire earth. Don't want to go to Mars and I don't blame you. But it ain't no place to raise your kids. If the whole idea of world travel sounds good, I agree with you. I actually did that. But it is more complicated than you think. So here's Chris Christensen with more info. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another Tech in Travel Minute. Planning around the world ticket is difficult. There's a lot of different regulations you have to know. But there's a new interesting tool from one world. That's the Alliance that includes American Airlines, British Airways, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Canadian Airlines and others that lets you plan a round the world ticket with an AI assistant that basically starts you with a conversation of where you want to go and then orders that itinerary and then make sure that it can actually work. For instance, I put out an itinerary that included Dakar and Addis Ababa and there's no flight that goes in between those. And in a round the world ticket, you have to keep traveling in one direction and you can't backtrack and you can only go to a certain number of countries. So it helps you find a workable round the world ticket that is round the world with one world explorer. And this is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. You know, the last time I did this, the internet was, well, it existed. But I did not have the tools that we have now, especially ones that Chris brings to us. However, I have done a round the world ticket and it's true. And I'm surprised that it hasn't changed over the years. You do have a variety of restrictions because you have to go in one direction, probably just has to do with the airlines, you know, making money. And there are certain things that just won't work and resources like this are great. Well, yeah, I would assume that part of the reason why you have to go in one direction is because in terms of immigration, if you've ever landed in a foreign country, what they want to know is when you're there and when you're leaving and where you're staying because that's how they are keeping track of the people visiting and stuff like that, right? So if you are not going back, that's a red flag unless you are going around the world. In that case, there could be some designation but to continue your trip around the world, you got to keep going in one direction or else you're just plodding around. And I think that that might raise some red flags in terms of immigration stuff. All right. Let's check out our mailbag. All right. So, so Bede, Bede, one of those, I hope is right right in. Let me know if I got it wrong. Had experience with tech devices being banned in schools. This was a GDI conversation that Tom and Roger and I had yesterday about the Netherlands saying we want to get those smartphones out of schools. Bede says my high school in New Zealand had a ban on phones not smart watches though, except if you were taken in exam. When I graduated in 2018 and I believe they're still bans, you also weren't allowed to use your laptop in class unless the teacher explicitly allowed it, although I think laptop news might be standard now. The school's policy was that they would confiscate your phone for two weeks. If you were found using it, I would love to know how the parents felt about that. Oh my goodness. Obviously, students didn't care and would still use them under their desks or inside their bags sitting in their lap. Although this is perhaps more of a reflection of the effectiveness of punitive discipline than anything else. Bede says overall, I do think this rule meant we were all more engaged in classes than if phones were allowed. Oh, sorry, I was on my phone. Yeah, I know. I'm sure that that was a great idea. Well, as your teacher, Justin, I will now confiscate your phone for two weeks. I hope your parents don't care about that. I'll have to call my mom. Can you imagine? Like, I mean, I'm like, how is the two-week thing even enforced? Do parents say, well, you were bad, so they'll take your phone that we're paying for? I would assume. I mean, look, it wouldn't be the first time that an expensive thing was confiscated by a school. I'm sure that there are some parents that are a little fussy. And also phones are probably a little bit more of a commodity to kids these days than they are to us. When we have actual disposable income, it can buy very expensive ones. If a parent can afford an expensive phone for their kid, then maybe it's something that they're happy is out of their lives. Yeah. Yeah, in many cases, it's just why your kid got a C. Yeah. We're taking that phone. So, yeah, well, thank you. We had a few responses to our conversation yesterday. So thanks for everybody who writes us in saying, hey, this resonated with me and give us some more information. Do keep those mailbox coming. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Also, keeping it coming is Justin Robert Young with the Knowledge. Let folks know what is new in your world. I have a podcast called We're Not Wrong, co-starring Jen Briney and Andrew Heaton. If you would like to go ahead and get that in your life, you can find it wherever you find your podcast. We're Not Wrong Pod is a fantastic way that you can hear about the Supreme Court cases that we're all decided this week as well as a new poll showing a decline in American pride. Are you proud to be an American? Find out if we are on We're Not Wrong. Can't miss a plug like that. Patrons, patrons, do stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. Justin and I are going to be talking about a Bluetooth speaker that's sort of for portable devices, but sort of not at the same time. This is not really like anything else on the market. So stick around for that. But just a reminder, you can catch this show live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. And if you're saying, hey, who's going to be on the show on Friday? Well, guess what? It's Rob Dunlitz. See you then. See you. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.