 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Miranda Janelle, Justin Zellers, Pepper Geese, and our new patron, Brian. Welcome, Brian. On this episode of DTNS, Microsoft says, fine, we'll separate teams from 365 for some of you. Hugh adds more security to its smart home line, and Teja Custody tells us why YouTube might be hurting your viewership, even if you don't know. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, August 31, 2023. From Studio Snickerdoodle, I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Denwood. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us is Teja Custody, host of AI Named The Show. You might remember from DTNS Experiment Week. Also, talk techie to me, those podcasts, and YouTuber. Welcome, Teja. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm joining you all from hot, hot, hot, Scottsdale, Arizona. Ooh, it is hot. Yeah, you were telling us before the show, something like 114 Fahrenheit. That's hot. All others bow down to that hot nuts. All right. Let's get right into the show, starting with the quick heads. After last week's highly anticipated launch of the more functional web version of Threads, Meta is testing another highly demanded feature, and that is Search. Fully searched post text is currently available in Australia and New Zealand, with a wider rollout to other English-speaking countries currently planned. The company also says it's working on supporting additional languages. In a statement, a spokesperson said, quote, we are actively listening to the community's feedback and working on more features to improve the search experience. Motorola has officially unveiled two new Moto G phones launching in September. The Moto G84 5G launches September 1st and the Moto G54 5G launches September 6th. Both September launches are slated for India. However, the Moto G54 5G was recently spotted in a U.S. Federal Communications Commission listing and will hopefully see a U.S., if not worldwide, launch in the near future. Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience, or SGE, which began open testing in the U.S. back in May, has now expanded the feature to India and Japan. In India, it will be available in both English and Hindi, which is a widely spoken language in the region and Japanese and Japan, with voice input also enabled. Unlike Microsoft's Bing's AI Chatbot Assistant, SGE runs directly from the search bar rather than as a separate section. The Federal Trade Communications essentially told ISPs too bad, so sad, when it rejected requests to eliminate an upcoming requirement for internet service providers to list all of their monthly fees. Five trade groups are representing U.S.-based broadband providers petitioned the FCC in January to scrap the requirement before it goes into effect. The FCC, however, stated that the rules would be implemented without significant changes. Every consumer needs transparent information when making decisions about what internet service offerings to make or which makes most sense for families and households. No one wants to be hit with charges they didn't ask for or they did not expect. I love that. ISP is saying, do we have to tell them though? FCC says, yeah, you have to tell them. According to a Bloomberg report, Apple is testing 3D printers to make the stainless steel chassis for upcoming Apple Watch 9. Apple Watch chassis are currently made by cutting slabs of metal into the right shape. The 3D printing methodology would, if it's true, reduce time needed to make the devices and also the material being used. Apple may also apply the 3D printing process to the next iteration of the titanium enclosed Apple Watch Ultra. That's the big one sometime next year. And those are the quick hits. Alright, Rob, let's talk about Microsoft. What's going on? Well, let's talk about some antitrust stuff. So on October 1st, Microsoft will be separating teams from Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites in the European economic area and also Switzerland. This follows a formal EU antitrust investigation open last month over Microsoft bundling teams into its enterprise offering. Teams rival Slack filed a complaint about three years ago over the same issue. At the time, Slack alleged that Microsoft had illegally tied its Microsoft Teams product to Office and is force installing it for millions, blocking its removal and hiding the true cost of two enterprise customers. Alright, so as a customer, you can buy the new package, you know, if you're in these regions, you can buy the new package without teams and save three euros per month. Existing customers have the option to remain with their current plan, kind of grandfathered in type thing. For new customers, if you want teams, that's available for five euros per month. Now the EU investigation is still ongoing and Rob, I know you've got some thoughts on what Microsoft is doing. Is it doing what it needs to do here? Is it in the clear? I don't know that it's in the clear. They're probably going to get, you know, hit with a sanction. But the thing is, Microsoft, and they know this, they've got years, actually, they've got decades of knowledge that tells them when we bundle stuff, people use the stuff that we bundle. So this is one of those calculated decisions. We're going to bundle this probably knowing that eventually we're going to get whacked. But by that point, we are, we're on everybody system. People are using us. So let's just pay the fine, having reaped all the benefits of the bundling for the years that we did it up until this point. Well, I mean, you mentioned that, yeah, when bundled software is provided, it's often the most convenient option and people use it. But yeah, if you have a dominant market share, which Microsoft obviously has been battling with a variety of office weeds for some time, you're going to get scrutiny like this. I remember when Slack first said, hey, you know, what's going on with Microsoft Teams here? This isn't fair. I mean, Slack was not owned by Salesforce at the time that it complained about this. And that's perhaps why we haven't heard a lot more crowing about from Slack. I am a Slack user. I don't really connect it to too many third party apps, although you do have a lot of options that way. So it isn't so much that Microsoft is offering its version of something that you couldn't get elsewhere. Teja, where do you fall on this? Are you a Teams user or Slack user or either? I used to use both for companies that I worked with. So it was kind of internal to their programs. I love Slack. It was a big Slack user. It's easy to see both sides because you want to see it from the competitive standpoint, which as we know is what the very smart Slack lawyers said was, hey, this is against you regulations. But you can also see it from Microsoft's side being like, well, if we're the biggest and we're the best and we want to bundle it in, let's just give it to everyone. I think where it lies for me is people want an option to either opt in or opt out. And I think that's a big option across the board. So what's going to be interesting to see is there's some talk about some confusion around this now, is the option just to have teams on your own for the few euros a month? Is that just going to be only available to bigger customers and not say you or me that may just have a small team that just wants to communicate via Teams? How many times can I say Teams? Microsoft says as many as you would like. And they appreciate that. And here's the thing. Like I said, Microsoft, they know that if they don't bundle it, Teams was enough different than Link. It's predecessor that if people say, well, if I got to buy this new thing, I might as well go ahead and look at something like Slack or look at other options that are out there on the market. But when it just comes with the stuff you already are purchasing, you're more apt to, well, we've got this in the box. So let's just go ahead and take a look at it. And that's where the problem comes in for a company like Slack. Slack can't do that. Slack can't just bundle their stuff with the biggest enterprise productivity suite that exists. Microsoft can't. So it gives them an unfair advantage. From Microsoft's standpoint, it's like, well, we're going to exercise that unfair advantage as long as we legally can. And then when the heat comes, we'll change. But by that time, maybe a bit of the damage is already done. Indeed. Indeed. Well, all right. So Microsoft is making some concessions in the European market where it has been forced to do so. This isn't necessarily over. This is Microsoft saying, we good. Here, we're giving people other options. And, and yeah, you know, like, like you mentioned, Teja, there are, it's hard to argue with something where you're like, well, I'm already here in this office suite. This is a great option for me. I think the problem is, is that when we come into antitrust issues like this, people say, well, there are other options though. And if you don't know that there are other options, then that's where, you know, the unfair market advantage comes in. All right, Rob, let's talk about smart homes. Shall we? Absolutely. So Signify announced a new security camera that can connect to Philips Hue, Philips Hue's line of smart lights. The Philips Hue secure cameras and sensors for home security support 1080p video monitoring plus night vision and motion trigger notifications. They connect using Hue Bridge like other Hue devices. Two-way talk is supported so the cameras can be paired with Hue lights and sound alarms for privacy folks and encryption is also included to keep video clips and snapshots private and recognition on device to let camera recognize people, pets and packages. A security center will also be part of the Philips Hue app to control various devices and includes a take action screen. That's where you can activate an alarm that flashes the lights, for example, or sounds a siren or contacts local authorities if you're really in a jam, among other options. Some features require paid plans. Those started about $4 per month. Anybody with a Hue account could connect up to 10 cameras linked to a bridge. I happen to have a bunch of Hue cameras, but I don't have Hue lights, but I don't have a camera, but I do have a bridge. So this is kind of nice for anybody who's got half that system built up, supposed to be pretty compatible. The Philips Hue secure line will be available this fall. We don't have a specific date otherwise, but coming soon, I mean, gosh, it's September starting tomorrow. The Hue secure wired camera is $200, $230 if you include a desktop stand. The battery version, so if you want to, you know, put it somewhere that's not necessarily near an outlet, $250 floodlight camera is $350. Contact sensors are $40 for one $70 for a two pack and various mounts. Another add on hardware can be purchased for 15 up to about $50. All right. So before the show, Roger had mentioned, gosh, you know, these security cameras sound kind of expensive. This is also the Hue line. So there's a little smart home prestige here, I suppose. Let's go around the horn a little bit and talk about home security and what we're all using. Rob, let's start with you. So they are on the price here in, but the thing you get with this is that there's a lot of folks who already have standardized on Hue. So they're already, they're already like you're using it. So this is just, you can just go buy this camera and plug it into an existing system as compared to having yet another system that you've got to control and do all the kind of things that you have to do to, you know, to get it the way that you want. Right. You've got the app, you kind of know how it works. Right. So it makes it a little pricier than some of its competition, but the fact that it's just going to be so plug and play to what you may already be using, you may just say, ah, you know, let me just go buy that because you don't have to have the hassle now of literally setting up another system inside of your home automation setup. Teja, what about you? Security cameras, where do you, where do you follow on this? Do you have one? Do you need one? Do you want this one? Oh, I want this one, but I do, I do have one. I used to have two and one broke. I have the Arlo Pro. So this is not a commercial for them. It broke right outside of the year like coverage too, which just really grinds your gears. But anyway, I have Philips Hue lights and I absolutely love them. And I use them with like all my different smart devices. So the thing I'm most excited about here and to touch on the price thing, I feel like price is in the eye of the beholder because right now, like if we want to talk about owning like market ownership, this is massive. If you like for me, I'm so excited about the secure contact sensor that they're coming out with because it's going to send you notifications when like a door is opened or closed. But beyond that, you can also link it to your lights. So when you get home, you can open the door and a light can come on. And to me, it's like a really affordable way to customize your home in the smart space without paying to customize a home. Like if you think about what people spend, I'm sure on like custom home buildouts and putting all of this smart tech embedded in their home's ecosystem. Now it's like, no, for the rest of us, you're renting, you're renting a tiny apartment, you're just moving into like an already existing 1970s house, something like that. Now for a few hundred dollars and a couple bucks a month, essentially, you can set up and customize a system, one complete system in one secure app, loving it, total game changer. And I've been looking for a way to switch from the system I have. And so this with the contact sensor, I think it's going to be my new jam. We'll update you guys after it comes out in the fall. Please do. Yeah. I don't currently have, well, I'm sort of floating around home wise right now. But in my old house, especially for the DTNS Live With It show, one of the most popular options that people kept suggesting is Sarah should get a security camera system. But I was like, you know, I'm behind a gate. I'm up a long driveway. You know, there's really not a lot of, I mean, I might catch like a raccoon or a skunk on my front porch. Hopefully that's it. But it didn't totally make sense for me. But yeah, Tasia, like you mentioned, especially if you move around a lot, this kind of stuff is easy to set up, pretty portable. I mean, even the other day, we were talking about something here on DTNS where it was, you know, a thermostat that could know when you opened your window and then the thermostat would adjust accordingly. And I was like, a smart window and Tom said, no, Sarah, it's like a sensor, you know, there are little things for all sorts of parts of your house. You're technically not wrong. The sensor makes the window smart. Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, the more of this, the better. I'm with you. I'm in the hue ecosystem, although I have some life x lights as well. But yeah, I mean, this is all, this is all moving in the right direction. Speaking of moving in the right direction, this is almost the, you know, the lead that was buried as previously promised, Phillips Hue bridge is finally being updated to support the new smart home standard matter. A software update will roll out in September and that's let that lets you as a user connect your hue system with other matter devices and apps makes it all that much smarter. This applies to even the oldest hue bulbs that launched way back in 2012. All right. If you missed Tom's how to make a great podcast class, it was a hit and people said, what? I missed it. And I'm mad about that. I would like to be part of the next one. If you missed it, good news. You can still get the online course in our DTNS Patreon store. Tom explains the basics of podcast producing a little bit more than the basics because, you know, Tom's a bit of a veteran and shares his experiences on what makes a really great podcast actually great. A lot of learning, a lot of learning you can do there. You can download the class or stream it over at patreon.com slash DTNS slash shop. Well, for a lot of folks, YouTube is not a platform for personal content. I mean, it might be a platform to share personal content. It's also a revenue stream for many though. But if that is your situation, what happens if the platform like YouTube has some sort of a bug that causes your viewership numbers to drop like a rock or a sack of bricks? Teja, you've been dealing with this problem on your own channel for some time. So let's talk about what the problem is and what you've done. Yeah, I noticed on August 5th, you know, everything was hunky dory and come August 5th, my revenue just completely fell off of a cliff. You just see this nose dive down. You know, you never want to see an arrow down. No, certainly not. But especially not one that's where you go, hello on my own line still. Correct. So for the first week, I honestly thought, you know, sometimes stuff happens on the back end with YouTube analytics and it corrects itself after a few days and not a big deal. And after a week of it happening, I grew more concerned and couldn't see anything amiss on the back end of my channel. I was looking at ads still running. I was looking at where my traffic was coming from. Nothing seemed awry. And it wasn't until 12 days later, so August 17th, I think it was, that I got a banner on the top of my analytics page that said that my ads had been limited to one or more of my videos due to invalid traffic. And you guys, this was the first time I had ever even heard that term invalid traffic. Yeah, I had no idea what it meant. Well, I mean, did YouTube offer an explanation on, you know, was there a little question mark that you, you click and find out more? There was. I think it's like a little I. And so of course I went down that rabbit hole and YouTube basically describes invalid traffic as any activity at all on your channel that does not come from a real user or a user with genuine interest. So obviously off the bat, you think of things like if you're like bought farms, like you're incentivizing or buying, having people buy views exactly and clicks on your content. But they also list a couple other things that they include in invalid traffic, which is things like friends or contacts, letting your playlists run all day long, which is weird and I've never done. And they also say if you announce to your viewers that, you know, you should watch this ad and click this ad, then that would boost the ad traffic and you're not allowed to do that, which again, I've also not done that. So besides that, I mean, there really wasn't too much more info, except when I did a bit more digging on what they call invalid traffic. And this is the biggest hiccup to me and biggest catch is they say, and I'm going to pull it right from their site that sometimes creators may find their channels are affected by invalid traffic, even if they're not intentionally driving it. So even if a creator isn't aware that activity they've received is a result of invalid traffic, YouTube is essentially saying it's still the creator's fault. I don't, you maybe can make that make sense to me. I've been in this hole for weeks trying to make that make sense that one of the biggest tech companies in the world would say it's a creator's fault and the creator has to know where the traffic is coming from. So I reached out to YouTube support and, you know, circles guys, just we went in circles about it. And I was also told the exact same thing not once, but twice in my chat with support was you under no circumstance, it is across the board that YouTubers, the creators are responsible and the creators are to control where their traffic is coming from. I can't make heads or tails of it. Well, yeah, I mean, as you explained it this way, I wouldn't be able to either. I mean, I guess the only and I don't do a lot of stuff on you. I mean, I'm really only a YouTube consumer and not a creator, but this sounds a lot like, I don't know, you know, remember back in the days of the old Twitter of yesteryear, where sometimes you look at your follower account and you're like, I lost like 1500 followers overnight. What the heck? Oh, they're doing some sort of a bot sweep kind of thing. It doesn't really matter for a lot of social networks where it's like, sure, follower accounts, you know, have hold some cache, but it's not a monetary thing. Things are a little different over at X right now. But on YouTube, like you're explaining to Asia, it very much is. And for the company to say, well, you know, these people were fake or, you know, you've got friends who are, I don't know, keeping a stream open all day. I mean, how many people would even be able to do that if you even had a good friend who says, yes, I'll do you a solid like that's not, that's not a real revenue stream. So what do you as a creator do at this point? Well, I went through all the channels that I possibly could go through and I immediately got on our good friend Google and I started looking into like, what does it actually mean? Because like, cool that that's the YouTube definition in valid traffic, but like, what do we do now? And I found a lot of other creators this is happening to you. I have a running list. And basically, besides reaching out to YouTube support, we don't, this is part of the problem is we don't have any other avenues. We are just trying to make enough noise right now that someone will take us seriously and someone will from YouTube acknowledge that this is indeed a bug because what's happening on the back end of my channel is echoed amongst other creators where there's no weird influx. There's no new traffic source. There's nothing that even if somebody was targeting me maliciously and I had no idea I would see that in my analytics on the back end on a video, they won't even tell us what video or videos are affected. So how, how can we solve the problem, Sarah? If you won't even tell us what it's affecting, but it's our fault, how are we supposed to fix it? Yeah, well, it sounds like you've been in touch with the, with YouTube as much as, you know, as the channels that are offered to you, you're not the only person who's having the issue. I don't know, Rob, what would you do if this were you? This is one of those situations where, you know, hey, you got a problem. So we're going to deign your monetization. What's the problem? We can't tell you. What do I do to fix it? It's not our problem. It's your issue. You need to fix it, but we're not going to tell you what it is, where it's coming from. So I'm just thinking, you know, you literally get, you know, if you've got internet beef with someone, could they set it in their newsletter or could they just say, hey, I want everybody right at this time to go over to this channel and start watching all the ads, knowing that the algorithm or, you know, something programmatically is going to say, hey, this is invalid traffic, let's demonetize or let's, you know, let's, let's make all this traffic invalid. It's, this is just when you deal with, when you're living in someone else's sandbox and it's like, it's one of those things, you know, what do you do? It's like, hopefully eventually they're going to come out with something, but I can understand your frustration because it's like, you probably want to fix it, but you can't fix it because you don't know what to fix. Robby summed it up in a minute of my hour-long circle chat with YouTube. I'll put supports and quotes because it was just like that exact thing. And when I said to the person I was chatting with, so you're telling me like it could not be my fault, but I'm being, I'm being punished for it. Even if it's nothing I did, whether a bug or whether somebody's maliciously attacking me and way too many others for this to be just like a malicious attack. And the response I got was, I'm sorry, you feel that way, which by the way, lesson for everybody. That's not an apology. You don't apologize for somebody's feelings when you made them feel that way. It's worse than nothing at all. You want to see me in range? I was like, girl, please. If you want to see me offended now, like you've pushed the button. But yeah, so it's just, it's left us with our hands tied. And to me, there's just too many of us that this is happening to that. It's something where if this would not have happened to me on August 5th, I wouldn't have known it's an issue. And that's also not okay to me at this point. So it's still ongoing for me. We're at the end of August. I still have lost my personal effects have been cut, my personal ad revenue has been cut more than 76% off of the cliff. And it's significant. And so for me, like that's one of my revenue streams. Thank God. And by the way, still extremely significant. Like YouTube went with the ad revenue alone from like my third top earning tier for me in a month down to almost nothing now. Like I might be able to buy a coffee at the day with what I'm getting now. And so there's a lot of YouTubers that this is their full time gig. This has completely decimated them. And if this doesn't happen to you, you wouldn't know this could even be a thing. And so when I started doing all the research on this, I realized like this is a known issue since November of 2022. YouTube does not want to admit it because I feel like it, this is my allegedly my opinion, YouTube don't come for me, please, not any more than you already have. But in my opinion, they don't want to acknowledge that there is an issue on the back end of their system, whether a bug or too sensitive to something. And I don't know what, which I would still consider a bug, because that puts that risk with their advertisers now. So if their advertisers know there's something going on with their algorithm, how can the advertisers trust them that actual clicks are clicks and actual views are views. And it creates a whole other issue. But for the creators, like we just really want some transparency. And we want to be able to talk to real humans at these companies, like even outside of YouTube, like this is not okay that this can happen. And I don't want a company, any company to hide behind something that it's your fault, even if it's not your fault, deal with it. It's not acceptable to me. So what we're all trying to do now is band together and just make enough noise that everybody knows what's going on, whether it's happening to you or not, whether you're a YouTuber or not. Let's just make some noise about it and hope that we can have an actual discussion with YouTube about what's happening and what we can all do to come to a win-win solution for both parties because they're still running ads on my account, by the way, you guys. So my revenues dropped over 76% and ads are very much still running. And some creators have said that it's too second to your ads or something or like not, you know, the big ads, but like even today I just put a video out on this exact topic, very meta of me to put a YouTube video on something that YouTube is doing to me. But like some of the ads I had on there were for like Disney Plus and like pretty big ads, I think like those aren't second to your ads. So and other creators I've talked to have had Apple ads running, those aren't second to your ads. So it's, it's wild that that's still running on my account, but my revenue's been hit that bad. And some creators, it's between 70 to 90%. So some creators, it's almost gone down to zero. Well, Teja, thank you so much for letting us know, you know, for those of us who aren't monetizing YouTube content, or at least not to the point where it becomes a livelihood, a reminder that, you know, some of the most prolific content creators that you enjoy, you know, they, they, they make more than just buying coffee from this, you know, this is, this is how they live their lives. And it's fun for everybody as long as it works. Sounds like in YouTube's case, there's something a little bit broken here. If you have experienced anything like this, or you've heard about that, and you want to send us an email explaining what the deal is, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com would be the place to do it. We thank you very much in advance. And Teja, for now, thank you so much for being on the show with us. It's been a real pleasure. And we certainly hope that your YouTube woes get, get turned around soon. And I will buy you a coffee next time I see you. Well, thank you guys so much for having me. And hopefully next time I'm on, I'll have a better update. Indeed. In the meantime, let folks know where they can keep up with everything that you do. You can, of course, find me on YouTube. I'm YouTube.com slash Teja Kastodi. I'm Teja Kastodi on all of the things everywhere. X, or if you're like me and still calling at Twitter, you can find me there too. I'm on Instagram at Teja Kastodi. You can go to TejaKastodi.com and just find me. Reach out. Even if you just want to say, hi, sorry, this is happening to you. I'll take a virtual hug. Or if it's happening to you and you want a shoulder to cry on, I got you. Well, we're so glad that you joined us today. Do come back soon. This was a real pleasure and so much good feedback from Experiment Week. And yeah, we're looking forward to more of that. Thanks guys. So Patrons, stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet, where products are getting a press at the IFA conference in Berlin and reminding us that form factors can still be wacky. Oh, don't you love a good wacky form factor? I do. Just for now, just a reminder, we do the show live Monday through Friday. We're on demand, of course, but if you can join us live, 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC is when we do the show. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are back doing it all again tomorrow. We've robbed Milo and Len Peralta joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.