 Coming up on DTNS air BNB talks to the SEC hate speech policies have an impact online and does the golden state need a lift This is the Daily Tech news for Thursday, August 20th, 2020 in lovely Cleveland, Ohio I'm Rich Frappolino remote California. I'm Justin. I'm John and I'm Roger Chang shows producer Remember you can always get the wider conversation on our expanded show good day internet We were talking about as seen on TV products audio Editors and all sorts of great stuff and you can do that by becoming a member at patreon.com Slash DTNS, but let's start out now with a few tech things you should know Door-dash launch grocery delivery service partnering with select grocery stores in California and across the Midwest the company will deliver groceries from Smart and smart and final Meyer fresh time and Hivee with service available in Chicago Cincinnati Detroit Indianapolis Milwaukee Los Angeles Orange County Sacramento San Diego and the Bay Area initially Door-dash said the service will offer on-demand ordering rather than scheduling deliveries in set windows like other services And has over 10,000 grocery items that can offer one-hour delivery Grocery delivery is also included as part of the dash-pash pass subscription service Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs announced new regulations that would bar Taiwanese companies from selling internet streaming services based in China Effective on September 3rd the National Communications Commission said that this regulation would not ban the services in the in the country merely restricting Taiwanese companies from acting as sales agents for them Google updated its Google Duo video call service to now offered captions on voice and video messages Google will transcribe but not store the audio from the messages and of course this can be toggled on and off in the messages settings Volkswagen began production of its ID for all electric SUV at its factory in Zwickau, Germany This is a VW second all-electric ID branded vehicle and its first ID vehicle slated to be produced and sold in China Europe and the US two factories in China will begin production of the ID for later in 2020 with these factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee scheduled to begin production in 2022 Sony released imaging edge webcam a windows 10 app which allows owners of Sony cameras to use them as webcams when connected over USB 35 cameras are supported including older mirrorless models like the original a7s and a7 to both of which were originally released in 2014 as well as much more newer models like the last two models of the rx 100 The rx 0 models and a 6000 camera lines Sony did not announce if the software would come to Mac OS Adobe confirmed that users who updated Lightroom CC on iOS to version 5.4 May be missing photos and presets that were not synced to Adobe cloud and that missing data is Yipes not recoverable. Adobe subsequently released version 541, which does not suffer the same data loss bug It's unclear how widespread the data loss was or how many users were impacted That hurts my heart to hear it and finally here Google updated the or not finally here Google updated the support page for Android Auto announcing that any phone running Android 11 can use Android Auto wirelessly Google introduced the ability to connect Android Auto wirelessly back in 2018 But the feature has been limited to pixel and Samsung Galaxy devices Outside of the operating system the only hardware requirement for a wireless Android Auto connection is the ability to connect to 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi networks and finally and finally the Counterpoint research found that in the first half of 2020 the smartwatch market grew revenue 20% Even a shipments remain flat with 42 million devices Apple continues to dominate growing its revenue 8.2% and now accounting for 51.2% of the market Garmin and Huawei both overtook Samsung with the second and third most market share respectively One in four smartwatches shipped in the first half features cellular connectivity and 60% featured some form of heart monitoring All right Let's get a little bit more into talking about Airbnb They announced that it submitted a draft registration to the US securities and exchange commission in advance of initial public offering This would be their s1 filing the company did not disclose for their financial information or say how many shares would be included In the IPO. I imagine all the information will be disclosed at a later date Airbnb also announced a global ban on parties and events at its listings for health reasons with a new property Occupancy cap of 16 people on all future bookings that will remain in effect until further notice Airbnb said 73% of listings had already banned parties in their house rules I know this is something that Airbnb the health part of this specifically has been something that they've been struggling with or at least trying to Project that they are trying to be active about this making it kind of very clear still 16 people see already seems like That's that's a it's a lot of people to be seen in Airbnb right now, right Justin. Oh, yeah I think that that's that is well. Thank you for doing something I believe some folks would say although you are the manager of your own listings So you could make it a more restrictive number 16 I guess is probably the upper limit for a bachelor party or a large family a family reunion or something You know, I guess you could you could see if you squint You could you could imagine some sort of gathering at a large enough a venue for it Even then I would imagine that that's uncomfortable for a lot of Airbnb owners But it really does raise a very interesting question since this is a transaction between the person renting and the person letting their house out What role does the platform have in policing for health concerns in something as dangerous and more to be cynical for a second famous as COVID is this isn't like an odd thing that happens every once in a while Everybody knows about COVID. It's affected everybody So so what does Airbnb have to do specifically as they don't want that to be a major headline when they IPO? Well, and you can see that it took them six months to kind of figure out at least what this answer to that question is Right now and yeah, I mean I imagine I have to imagine that they you know They ran some sort of algorithm that said okay of the number of you know party bookings that we've had You know anything over a certain amount You know, I'm sure this is all backed up Hopefully by data and not just I don't know just because it sounds nice I mean Justin just real quick in terms of the timing of the IPO I think the initial impression was man Airbnb is really gonna take it to the chin here with all the COVID lockdowns But they've kind of had this not even a mini boom but a substantial boom in business as people are trying to You know kind of do mini vacations and remote work is kind of the new thing Does does the timing kind of work out that they can say hey look are all of our numbers are gonna be up now for the past You know two quarters or something like that But only because we were down so much for maybe like Q1 Q2 or something like that I think that it makes a lot of sense I know I know for for my wife and I we've been cooped up looking at these four walls the idea after You know, obviously I have to you know focus on the election But after that the idea that we maybe ran out on Airbnb for like a month just to look at another set of four walls That's very exciting I think that there's a lot of cooped up people that would like Stacations and not to talk to people and that's something that you can get with Airbnb that you might not be able to get with a With a with a hotel even if the idea of talking to somebody at the front desk worries you The idea of having a domicile like this. I think is attractive. Yeah, we mean my wife definitely look at that too And you know it turns out with two toddlers not the easiest of us to randomly take them to another place to spend multiple nights So it all works out there In a blog post today Lyft announced that it will be suspending ride hailing operations in California as of 1159 p.m Pacific time on August 20th a.k.a Tonight that move came after a state judge ruled that a service must that the services must Reclassify their drivers as employees rather than independent contractors in accordance with AB 5 but wait There's more just before the show a California appeals court extended the length of The time that uber and Lyft have to comply with this order the temporary reprieve grants uber and Lyft until 5 p.m Pacific time on August 25th at the soonest although it might stretch as long as October depending on a few factors to file written statements agreeing to expedited procedures stated in the order Including a new timeline and sworn statements saying the companies have plans to reshape their business model if Their ballot initiative prop 22 which would exempt ride sharing and food delivery gig workers from AB 5 Fails in November in response uber and Lyft have both said they will not shut down tonight and indeed play this out until their stay You know This is interesting because right after that initial ruling I believe it was judge shulman rule like initially said no You can't have a we can't further stay the enforcement of this order any further and it's interesting Lyft seemingly calling everybody's bluff playing the game of chicken and Seems like either they either they knew something in their their legal filing would have already been effective or we're just kind of confident That that it would be an effective play kind of you know Getting to eat their cake on this one. I don't know If it is chicken it certainly looks like it and in the court of public opinion The rubber was about to meet the road pun intended in terms of how the public would react to not having the option to access a Lyft ride share People who drive would have their own reactions to it but You could read this as Lyft just saying look we genuinely don't believe that our business can operate if we have to categorize I mean the idea of Lyft but with employees is simply a different company like that That's just not what Lyft is Lyft can't operate like that. And so if that's the case then we do need to Pack up our tent and leave. I Think that this was them complying You know, I have no official sources on this but that's the sense. I've gotten anecdotally around the company I Really just I just hope that this just goes to November 2nd. Look, we understand that this is going to be a thing But if you support a B5, I don't know if you want them going away before November 3rd I think you want people Not liking uber and Lyft while still using uber and Lyft because if they go away at least is what this is what We have seen in other cities people tend to have warmer feelings absence makes the heart grow fonder and Pressure on the government builds Yeah, and I kind of think that's the silver lining, you know to your point Lyft was was going to be suspending service to be in compliance with the Ruling I'm going forward, but I also think they had not a ton to lose I think by that because like you said if they're off, you know People recognize the launch of a bunch of unemployed angry drivers that you know theoretically might you know appear on the local news or something like that But then also, you know, the the other issue is that all of the their ride-hailing revenue is massively down Since the start of lockdowns and I don't know if that's you know, I haven't seen their latest financial So I don't know if that's slightly recovered or they're seeing a slight uptick in that But that business is so weighed down and they wouldn't have been giving up any of their other business It was just the ride-hailing business, right? So you still had, you know, your scooter rentals your red car rental service Their bike service all those other services would still have been in operation That's that's not Lyft is not in the delivery game. Yeah, Uber is Uber would have kept delivering food And while those other businesses the bikes and the scooters are those are ancillary that the Lyft is for real for real in trouble Yeah, most definitely intro. Yeah interesting, you know kind of seeing in Europe We've seen just eat takeaway their CEO kind of saying that he wants to get ahead of this reclassification thing And they recently right just bought Grubhub. So seeing if that might have some influence down the road They didn't say they were going to be doing it immediately But seeing if if you know, I know Uber is very fond of talking about their third way in this whole thing If if maybe there'll be some other kind of opinions about that going forward Next up here Facebook announced it expanded its dangerous individuals in organizations policy to address Organizations it deems as posing a significant threat to public safety But does not meet the standard of being a dangerous organization that are banned from the platform entirely under this policy Facebook will restrict the spread of content from Facebook pages groups and Instagram accounts link to the groups and remove them if they identify discussions specifically related to potential violence as part of the expanded policy Facebook removed 790 groups and 100 pages linked to the Q and non conspiracy theory block 300 hashtags and removed 1,500 advertisements an additional 1,950 groups 440 pages and more than 10,000 Instagram accounts linked to Q anon I've currently been restricted from spreading the content and maybe removed if they are reviewed or upon further review I should say Facebook also removed 980 groups 520 pages and restricted 1400 related hashtags linked to US US based militia groups and offline anarchist groups some of which Facebook says identified as antifa We actually actually have a few stories like this So we're gonna bundle them all together back in June reddit announced that its own change in hate speech policy had banned over 2000 subreddits and now the company has announced that they've seen an 18% reduction in users posting hateful content compared to the two weeks prior It also gave some details about hate speech content on the platform subreddits banned in June were viewed by an estimated 365,000 users each day overall hateful content amounted to 0.2% of total content posted each day and with most of that left in the comments And accounted for 0.16 of total views overall 8% of potentially hateful content was reported by users with 30% of Potentially hateful content removed each day by moderators and automated systems And not to be left out tick tock added prohibitions against hate speech in its community guidelines all the way back in January starting at the year now for the first time tick I can share details of its content takedowns for those violations Announcing that it removed 380,000 videos and 64,000 comments in the US for breaking its hate speech rules as well as banning 1,300 users, you know so Justin we have these all I don't think were necessarily Coordinated I think the Facebook one has gotten the most Press here just you know, it's kind of this day. They're the biggest platform. Hey, do I hear a Sarah Lane? Joining us. I don't know What is interesting to me is seeing three different companies different approaches to this and I you know It's interesting to break that down I mean, this is it seems like a very typical Facebook move in that it seemingly satisfies no one and makes everyone mad at the like I Facebook's content moderation, you know Justin you have famously dubbed You know ported the hell hashtag hell portal in other areas and I think this kind of falls in that in that same vein They're trying to it seems like they're trying to make Be transparent about it put that out front and release these statistics But I don't know if opening up to discussion of potential violence Will will truly make anyone happy. It seems like there's a lot of gray area there for sure We're gonna get into another story that Factors into what people think about this and exactly how they believe it shapes political conversation in our main topic But let's just say when I look at this report. I don't know what to make of these numbers I honestly don't know are these numbers a lot. Are they a little considering the volume of what Facebook does? I don't particularly know exactly what You know the you know, what is a acceptable QAnon group? What is an unacceptable QAnon group? What is an acceptable Antifa group? What is a unacceptable Antifa group? I think that a lot of this is Feel good then the reddit stuff as well where they can say look we're doing a thing But it's it's it's it's I don't know really what it means. I honestly don't I yeah, I almost think it's in the reddit case Very bizarre. I mean, I'm sure they're being forthright with with what they're putting out there, certainly But like saying it's down 18 percent that is better than saying it increased certainly But like 18 percent to me is not a huge windfall when it comes to a decrease in hate speech It does also though back up when they said because when they shut down those 2,000 subreddits I remember very distinctly said these are very you know outside of one very once prominent one a lot of these were not Highly trafficked anyway I mean 365,000 total views a day is not like a ton when it comes to Facebook or Reddit or anything like that all together And and you know certainly a very analytical approach to that that to me At least that gives me some context for where they see this problem in the scope of their total platform Like to me that those numbers are more meaningful to me than throwing out a bunch of names of groups And I have no idea how many videos are posted on tiktok I mean certainly 1,300 users does not seem like a lot of users to be impacted By by hate speech policy on tiktok's part for sure Well and tiktok is a different situation since they do a lot more curation of at least the big mega Stars on their platform the before you page is something that they have a lot more control over Uh, I mean and then again, we also don't even know where the tiktok of it all necessarily These days, but writ large Transparency is good. So I don't want to ding them for being not perfect all at once But that being said I kind of feel like there just needs to be a daily report with a lot of these sites And we need to see a lot more about exactly why they're banned and who they're banned and and I think that there's other Recourses that people should have to say wait. Why why did this happen to me and and what status do I have on the platform? Yeah, most definitely All right, and remember you can get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes You can subscribe at daily tech headlines dot com All right, so Justin we have a new survey from pew research center You may have heard of them before before we get into this new survey from pew research I think we also have a sarah laid sarah. Are you there? We do do you hear me? We do we can hear you a wild sarah lane emerges. I am so sorry everybody It has been it has been a day Gosh wildly And I don't hear myself, but if you can hear me great good good stuff Yes, no, no we can we can definitely hear you and that is all that matters So I I'm sorry to step on your read there rich. What what happened with pew research Well, I I do definitely want to hear the dulcet tones of sarah lanes Reaction to this because a new survey from pew research center centered around if americans think the social media platform If social media platforms censor political speech and whether they think that social media companies should actually be doing that Overall 73 of americans think that at least it's somewhat likely that social media platforms censor political viewpoints up 1% from a similar 2018 survey This majority spans across political affiliations with 59 of democrat leaning respondents finding it at least somewhat likely Compared to 90 of republican leaning respondents, but both of them a majority some Some questions did fall more along partisan lines Like whether respondents approved of social media platforms labeling posts by elected officials and ordinary users as inaccurate But while partisan splits could still be seen in other questions Majorities across political affiliations shared a lack of confidence in social media platforms to label inaccurate content So it's it's interesting that everyone is kind of uh, uh, kind of dubious about the uh, or Has some sort of agreement that there is some sort of political censorship going on on these platforms Uh, certainly a majority of americans seem to think that at least according to the survey um You know just in kind of what do you make about a little bit more of the particulars in terms of confidence of of if Those social media platforms should be then involved in you know labeling content Oh, I got thoughts on thoughts on thoughts rich, but I want to go to sarah first Uh sarah, uh, what what do you think about this? well, so um You know my my my my my main takeaway is always Okay, it's not so much about what is being censored It's how the platforms are censoring things and how they may be you know Doing things differently than their neighbor Um, you know and when I talk about platforms, it's like facebook twitter, you know the big guys So at this point, you know I don't you know, I I really don't want to you know Make little of what is being censored But at this point, it's it's more to me about how are these networks doing this? How how are how are they Managing something that is you know on a very large scale like kind of a bad thing like It's it's very messy Well, let's let's break it down to its elemental core Politics in general and I don't mean what our modern political world is I mean as old as ancient greece, right is about Organization not only identifying people that you have a like-minded Thought process with so you might share news that is relevant to you But also in terms of elections Identifying the people that are most likely to vote for you identifying the hardcore of those that want to help you Get elected that want to help you spread the word building a volunteer team Is crucial because while we look at you know, billion dollar campaigns for president By and large people are running A small little campaigns to get elected on a shoestring budget. You need volunteers Social media became an immediate way that you could do that. It was very easy to identify yourself It was very easy to provide a place where you could say oh you want to keep in touch Go to this page go to this group so the the the fact that political thought and political discourse and political campaigns have used social media inherently is not Surprising what is surprising is the fact that we've never really untangled that totally radioactive element large part of our A large part of our our modern discourse from everything else on social media We've never really detangled it from the the food picks and and the cat picks Right, I just rewatched friends like this is all in the same bucket which means that Something that I think should probably have different rules to it something that should be moderated differently on on some level is is just kind of thrown into the hopper and that then coincides with long-standing trends in general conservatives believe that the uh, that liberal Operators in media have censored them forever. They shape the news based on their personal beliefs And that's what that is and that's as true as it was in in the 1950s when it was magazine and newspaper editors as it is now when uh, When when social media platforms that are largely based in a very liberal area of the country You know our our censoring or de-platforming people that conservatives believe are having it done unfairly So so justin. I mean, you know not Not to throw you under the bus too much, but what would you think? Uh, this would be what what would be the better way to approach this Oh, well, I mean, I think that there are There are large-scale issues. I think with The unfettered growth of twitter and facebook specifically And the lack of moderation control I think when you look at twitter and you realize Oh wait, this is just a wild message board without mods The only mods that exist are admins for the platform itself Then some of the insanity Sort of makes a lot more sense And that's before you get to the point where we have an algorithm super charging certain content That is uh more shareable or actionable that often happens to be the most incendiary That gets your adrenaline running, which by the way Politics is also really good at incendiary content that gets your adrenaline running Uh, so I I don't know if this is a situation where We're ever going to get around Is political speech censored? Your point sarah, I do think is on the on the prescript event more what we need to understand and that is Why is it censored? How is it censored and that being done? in a transparent manner For which we can all understand for example on twitter a couple days ago There's a satirical website That has a twitter account like all websites do a babel on b and it's more of a conservative leaning onion kind of Outlet it's very funny and it got suspended and I was only suspended for What I could tell about 30 minutes and then the account came back on but in that moment You know a lie races around the world before the truth has a chance to put on its pants And this wasn't even a lie. This was a just a hiccup a thing Uh, but free the b was trending Uh past that because the prime was the pump was primed for they finally came after the most innocuous conservative outlet That was the story So I don't know if again This stuff being censored. I think is probably a benefit You want some level of control from the platform that that shapes their product But how they're doing it and why they're doing it and the political splits on exactly how much I think that will only continue until and hopefully this doesn't Reach the end resolution eventually each party will lose every once in a while And then they will get very upset that they lost because of these platforms because politics Loves to find scapegoats for why people lost that don't involve the candidates Or the people that worked on the campaigns and they're eventually going to find some way or reason To crack down on these sites from a governmental level, which I think would be bad Well, the conversation continues and obviously if you have thoughts you can always participate in our sub reddit Submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit dot com Rich straw felino. Who's in the mail bag? Well, I would love to tell you sarah. We have this amazing email Uh, it's coming to us and of course now. I can't read it because the cell is moved It's from arthur. He's canadian and he says being a windows formerly dos user over the majority of my tech life I was uh once used to purchasing software from local stores on disk source from a variety of publishers without a guarantee That the software will necessarily work as expected in those days There was always the idea that in the back of my mind that a virus or other malware could have infected the disc at Some point we're doing the travel from the developer to my hands with the advent of the internet and centralized app stores Consumers were offered the implied security that software is being downloaded has been vetted by an entity with financial interest in the user Having a good device experience Somehow the idea of the store taking a cut has become icky I wonder if the public has lost sight of the value of the store one question is once the store is established What is the real cost of upkeep to the entity running the store? Does apple really need to take a 30 cut to cover its costs? Of course side loading is a possibility in most ecosystems microsoft android mac computers for example So I don't see a problem with the developer epic in this case offering a lower price on their own website Compared to a higher price on the platform store Users willingly take the risk of leaving the safety of the store should be able to access a factory direct price However, it also makes sense that apple and google remove the app when the developer actively redirects users from a trusted store To the independent website for burstly yours arthur so arthur well, thank you so much for uh We we appreciate your Your verbose nose. Um, this is actually really good It's an interesting, you know idea of you know back in the day. Yeah, you go to a store You buy a piece of software. You know that the store is, you know Trustworthy and you feel good about that. We are not in those days anymore You know, everything is all you know In in various, you know app stores You know apple or google or you know the like and that is actually a really good point I think because in in in a certain sense As arthur is saying it's like well, you you're kind of paying for that vetting You're paying for that vetting that that company is doing on your behalf Before you end up buying anything because You're not going to do that I don't know. What do you think as with our previous discussion? I think perhaps transparency You know if if it's the case that it is extremely expensive to vet all of these apps They have you know million hundreds of thousands not millions of apps on the app store You know, I'm sure that is not a cheap thing to do But I you know, I think the perception is that you know apple is certainly making a tidy amount of revenue off of of the app store and you know Where if that's just pure profit off the top then I think that's where some of the companies get a little Feel a little icky as arthur said Well, let's shout out patrons at our master and grand master of levels including Johnny Hernandez our ragdoll vermidol and bjorn andre Also, thank you. Thank you. Thank you to justin robert young for being with us today Justin you are a busy man. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work Well politics is blooming Sarah and I am there to pick and trim the roses and present them to you Each and every night of these conventions as I have been throughout this week for the democrats and I will be again tonight Had twitch.tv slash justin r young. I will be next week for the republican convention That is monday through thursday and of course I'm also on the politics politics politics podcast. You can get that at politics politics politics dot com or anywhere that you find cast in general Excellent, you can always support our show at any level by going to daily tech news show dot com slash patreon Thank you so much in advance. Thank you so much to my cohorts for You know helping me along this this week. It's been kind of weird But uh, but uh, but I love y'all um, and if you if you don't have a mask Maybe you have a mask, but if you don't have one and you want one We have mask in our dtns store now. 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