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and good morning on Thursday November 2nd it's time for episode 3 10 of the 359 podcast on BB G and your host today include Ben Fox Ruben Roger Chang and Alfred and good morning everybody what are we talking about today it wasn't obvious from the headlines yeah we're gonna be talking about Russia oh good chorus yeah yeah no way look Alvin just got back from DC he actually was in attendance yesterday's two congressional hearings at which Google Facebook Twitter basically got spanked got spanked hard yeah the Senators representatives were just sort of laying in on all of them I will also be talking about Google's pixel to excel warranty and how weird and confusing it is as a little scoop from our colleague Sean Hollister and lastly we'll talk about smart dining it's part of a new package we're putting together called dining redefined our very own Katie Collins has come for the first three stories in this package looking at the role of tech and how it's changing the way we're eating so now further ado if you have any questions leave in the comments section Brian will pick up the best and we'll get them in 3 minutes and 59 seconds at the Q&A session after we record the podcast starting in 3 2 welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang I'm Albert Aang I'm Ben Fox River Congress gave Google Facebook and Twitter earful yesterday testifying in parts of the their role the Russia's influence in the u.s. elections alfred was there at the hearings let's get to it what was it like in there being there in person I mean it was kind of awkward you know when you're at your friend's house and their parents are yelling at them and kind of just there was that for like five hours yeah but this was a lot more tense obviously it's a national security issue yeah a lot of it was you know because they have closed hearings beforehand and you know the public doesn't know about them so a lot of this was them kind of letting the public know here's what we know right and here's what we want the companies to talk about about what they know and and it seems that you know they know that Facebook Google and Twitter are completely unprepared for they know that they had known about it for years you know as early as 2015 they had picked up you know Russian activity and propaganda on their respective platform right and they just hadn't done anything about it yeah I mean the issue of rubles they kept talking about rubles are you taking political ads taking rubles for political ads and I felt like rubles and bad actors like to terms like I kept hearing over and over I think one of the most telling stories was when senator burr from the Senate Intelligence Committee he brought out these two signs so they were very big on like billboards and signs right no I like the visual age yeah so they brought him out and it was these two events one of them was a stop Islam sizing America kind of event for and it was like setting up a protest at a mosque in Texas in Houston oh well and then the exact same event and time for a like Pro Muslim like group like counter protest and this was both set up by them and he showed a photo afterward of like the the fights that had happened there you know and and he he made up a good point where he's like there's during the several news articles that popped up a lot of people are saying we don't know where the organizers were and he said you know it's hard to be there in Houston Texas when you're trolling from st. Petersburg Russia right no that's and that's a great point and ultimately it actually goes beyond or the influence of the presidential election bottom-line like ultimately it was about getting Americans to fight well yeah when Facebook talked about the hundred thousand dollars that was spent on their ads only forty six percent of that was before the election so the majority of it is still being spent right after and they're still effective yeah right all right so next up we've got to talk about Google's pixel to excel burnin issues now Google has extended its warranty for the phone up to two years very generous except for the fact that they don't necessarily concert' consider this burnin issue problem that would be covered under the warranty it's really confusing you know they sort of they sort of reassure people you know if you've got concerns about this call our customer service will build a case by case basis right but they've also kind of argue that this burnin issue this that affects the bottom of the screen isn't covering the warrant because it's not considered defect well they what are they considered they if I'm to understand this correctly they're claiming that the burnin is endemic to OLED screens yes and it's not directly related to specific pixel to excels so burnin usually happens after extensive use so it's it's a little weird a little uh if you do have this problem I would probably recommend call and complain to Google they'll probably honor it yes I would hope so well we hope lastly we want to talk about smart dining we're talking about dining and redefined is a first story Kay Collins has a first story in a series that we were putting out today looking at the role of tech and influency how you eat she had a couple of interesting she looked at a couple restaurants one that actually took your DNA data and customized your meal based on it based on sort of the nutritional value for as in she she needs less carbs she needs more more fish more omega-3 so go figure check out this package we'll have a couple so we'll have three stories coming out the next three days that's gonna be an ongoing series though it's CNET so for more on that check us out don't see that I'm Roger Chang I'm Alfred hang I'm Ben Fox Ruben thanks for listening Alfred you just had to go and mess with the natural order of things didn't you well I was waiting for Ben and then it was just like minor pause yes I was like alright I guess I'll go then no I contributed almost nothing the second-tier was well it's like three people and a four-minute podcast it's not easy well what you have you say right now okay this was the primary question that I wanted to answer about the congressional hearings yesterday a lot of people in just just like the public in general complains about the fact that congressional hearings you know it's great to like spank any you know executives or bankers or you know tech industry people out in public this is this is like a feel-good thing you guys did something like a starter it's cathartic but like it was there any actual action that you predicted might actually come out of this they have requested for them to send further details and they have a week deadline for them just about you know I think the money flow this time with like the ads one of the major questions as they weren't able to ask was comparing the ratio of Russian ads versus like actual ads like how much money they took from like ads in general compared to like just how much our budget is pretty small right yeah it's very small not even even when they compared the Russian ads during the election compared to the amount of money that the Trump and Clinton campaign had spent mmm like that was like a revealing like piece of anyone was 81 million dollars from the treating the yeah and that wasn't out there before so they were kind of looking for so for details like that but I think this also draws back to the point about how unprepared they were I for several of the questions that would have really helped out a lot with details a lot of the answers we don't know or we have to look into that yeah which is which is super troubling that like these platforms have gotten so big and so influential that they don't actually know who's advertising anything and I think some of the details that surface really showed a lack of oversight from from these companies on themselves when Facebook was trying to distance themselves from the Russian ads one of their excuses that they kind of made was these ads came to us through our ad platforms where anybody can actually buy an ad online ad right now without ever talking to anybody from Facebook which is super which and they from Facebook's perspective is super scalable yeah and that's why they do it and as it's a very easy and quick way and they created it as like a yeah they created it when they announced that program was basically look anybody can buy an ad now and you know it's so easy known it's so fast and then you have to think that there's somebody out there yeah yeah it's been ten dollars advertising on Facebook for my journalist page just to like see whatever you like yeah it was super you know um I got like yes I mean like I got a handful of followers but I wish I was as good as the Russian trolls because yeah you guys didn't really study you got some really controversial material well yeah they definitely make it very simple and it's not like anybody but I think I think them pointing that out really worked against them because they were trying to say like look we can't be responsible for this because we didn't even talk to anybody on it and like that sounds why didn't you talk to anybody around a dog yeah and then Twitter also I mean I think if anything this really showed you know the scale of like how much they had missed so a lot of the trolls on Twitter had come from this Russian trolling forum and st. Peter's probably call the internet research agency they don't do research on the Internet right but they're really good at viral post like when one of the yeah so they're really good at rolling online and one of the senators had asked basically you know how did you find out about them and Twitter answered through news reports and the thing is you really shouldn't yeah rely on news reports to find out about your own company yeah like that's and you know that's I think that's some of the details to take away from the hearings yesterday maybe that's not that you know you guys are terrible we hate you me one of the bigger themes or I guess directions I was looking for was you know these companies were going to Capitol Hill to basically placate them so basically be contrite and convince these regulators that they don't need laws joined them right now I don't know if they really succeed know when the House Rep had asked all of them Mesa what can Congress do to make your jobs easier to you know like how can we help basically right they didn't say legislation they didn't say you know push forward if the ads Act or anything like that there they basically said make sure that we communicate with each other basically right make sure that we but not the government yes I don't want to talk to you yeah you just want to work this out amongst ourselves tell us alright the honest ads Act is by the way for anybody that doesn't know it was an ad vet sorry it was an act that a few senators including John McCain and HR yeah and Senator Warner from Virginia had pitched where it's basically treat online ads on Facebook Twitter social media the same way that we treat ads on vision political ads on television where it's like this message yeah you have to see you also know you have to know who's actually what the thing is it's different on Facebook because even if it says like pay for by whatever they're disguising themselves already yeah like they could run these ads and say like paid for by LGBTQ like for America they're already not LGBTQ for America so even if it says that like it really wouldn't matter no wait a minute that all these social networks have embraced the whole verified account type thing why can't that come into play in a situation like this why can't that those are but those are the difference between accounts creating content which is its own problem and I think the back end is ad system that is basically built so you can anonymously buy ads and and send them out also to suppose yourself as somebody that you're not is already like against Facebook's Terms of Service but they're already breaking the rules by and on top of that creating only verified accounts to advertise means that all of a sudden it's gonna be more complicated and difficult to actually get that delicious and I think Facebook likes to hide behind their argument if you know everybody has to put their real names on Facebook and it just no they don't what are you talking about that's not really a good verification process I think they rely too much of nobody lies on the internet like come on yeah like that's their argument and it's just it's so plainly like a myth but I don't know why they stand by it all right Brian what questions do we got we have a great comment actually here that kind of a devil's advocate from Randall Global says you can't blame them 100% for the misuse of platforms oversight on oversight where do you draw the line I kind of love that you know this is igniting a little bit of a fire in the conversation at the chat today wait we can't blame who the company's yeah wait why can we blame the tech company's perspective on it I mean I think that I think one of the more harrowing comments from the Twitter legal counsel Shawn ed get was he talked about the spread of fake news on Twitter and he pointed out it was pride saying one of at one of them there was like a voter suppression campaign whereas a hey you can text a vote now like and then oh yeah and it was up on Twitter for a very long time right and then he points out that story it's like you know we all there there were more comment on that tweet than there were retweets saying this is alive this is a lie and so he's like you know our user base is so good at detecting these things and you know warning everybody else and my whole point was like your team should have detected that on its own it's like imagine you go to a restaurant and there's like dirty dishes everywhere on all the tables right and you're the one that has to like clean it up and then the restaurant owner says like you know our customers are so good at cleaning up the dishes here like that's not the point but you don't go to Twitter to find like fake content and report them you go on Twitter to be on Twitter so that's such a weird thing for him to like brag about so my whole point is that if you're on a platform that is free that like you know that platform should be the one monitoring like this stuff not you myself I think going back to the comment or there's it's probably accurate to say that there is plenty of blame to go around and if we do like if the country decides to move in the direction of legislation that would be really complicated and interesting I see if social media actually does have some sort of he'll be just you see how effective some of this legislation would because his point of the honest ads Act only really fixes one small part of this huge yeah right fake news is not it's not advertising these posts are not advertising so how do you stop that and what I got kind of gathered from the testimony was these are huge huge platforms that even Facebook and Twitter don't really have a full grasp of right they don't for whatever for all those smart to learn but they just they don't seem to be able to kind of manage or see what's going on yeah a lot of where they can actually effectively yeah and to be fair you know it is a massive platform and when you have you know hundreds of millions on a 2 billion case billions right users it you can't siphon through every like comment down just and you know that's why they rely on these algorithms alone they all of them talked up there a I when they asked like how are you gonna fix this every single platform was basically we're gonna fix up our algorithm that's the thing now I mean that's but that's the only way that is so Silicon Valley rare because it's like it's just a book have an answer have an answer to the problem and the answer lies in software technology right yeah right because when you're a hammer everything's in there exactly so Brent anything else yeah first day is on your side al Freddie they agree with you Microsoft AI josh Josh boy to set agrees to says I need to have some kind of verified add a new system for political ads on social media and I agree with that 100% I have no idea how to even begin to implement I think I think Rob right no one really has a good solution for screens a lot of these weren't even political ads though they were just kind of like you know like respect police officers which yeah which you know I guess we can debate whether or not that's political but I think when they're talking about the honest ads campaign when they're talking about political ads or talking the other thing and you know vote for this person yeah right those calls for like gatherings for yeah black lives matter those aren't ads yeah it was like the two examples that senator burr brought up those were just events yeah exactly events on Facebook yeah you can't even pay to promote those you know it goes a lot deeper than just like paying for sponsored like posts well it's also worth mentioning that it's good that we're talking about all this now I mean like 2018 the midterms are gonna be around the corner at Brad point and they're gonna be next year they're gonna be next like a and E and the expectation that this is gonna go away anytime soon is you know very wishful thinking if anything you know it's gonna turn into a cat-and-mouse game where both sides are gonna get better at their jobs but it's not gonna go away Christopher Burke in the chat says bring back geo cities and that's kind of a thought I had yesterday not specifically geo cities but I wonder if this is going to lay rise or maybe rebirth to some of the older social networks that were imposed by commercialism maybe the return of friends check out my angel fire but think about it though I wonder if there will be some kind of backlash from this where we'll see a new alternative kind of thing you know like I don't want ads I don't want you know politics I just want to see what my event ends st. Louis is doing I think it's a very idealistic view I just don't think that's gonna happen if at Facebook's earnings yesterday they is going to bury Facebook but I'm wondering if there will in fact be an alternative to come out of this where people make jump ship - yeah but that alternative if there's not gonna be any ads or anything like that it's how's it gonna draw a single dime Facebook didn't have ads when it started yeah when it started I think but eventually they all they all need to make money that's the problem true we were talking about this before the pirate fund that that snapchat and that's doing fairly well yeah all things considered they didn't have to go to Congress because they didn't deal with the same Russian trolling problem they're probably in as good a position as anybody to capitalize on the situation snapchats done a really good job at insulating itself from this zone issues subscription basis yeah but most snapchat has been able to keep out of this you know cesspool mostly because their content isn't completely public right not everybody but also they have very very tight connection yes limitations when it comes to everything yeah there's a there's an anecdote in a Bloomberg article about how snapchat kept out of the fake news like Spiral because they actually have human editors moderating all the content that comes in so during the Charlottesville like protest stuff when they finally arrested the person like behind the wheels yeah somebody sent a snapchat to and that with the caption says like got him like got the guy or whatever somebody from snapchat actually when they put her on their official story like Chronicle izing it they changed the handle to it appears a suspect was around just to make sure that they like accidentally get the wrong guy right right right yeah all right that's all the time we have what's more corruptible people or computers computers Peters can be easily fooled that's true there are some other really great questions and comments in the chat we're not gonna be able to get to him we'll try to we'll try to bring them back next week or something yeah thanks everybody cuz that's obviously be an ongoing conversation sometimes oh yeah thanks everyone all right if you like taint that you saw her hurt here check us out in CNET our podcast is also available on iTunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud if you google play music see y'all next week take care everyone have a great weekend so you know it Connect connect goodbye you