Gadgetory

the 359 is sponsored by USB technology the USB implementers forum reminds consumers that USB if' logos are displayed on certified USB products so the next time you're shopping for a reliable USB charger cable or device look for the logos get the whole story at enabling USB org hey welcome and good morning everybody its episode 442 of the 359 podcast you know me I'm BVG and today we're talking all about the suck and to do so we got Ben Fox Ruben and special guest rich Nieva hey rich get that great to have you back hello thanks for having me suck yeah thanks for being here you saved that all morning just to do that now didn't I did that's the only reason I invited Red John so I can I can drop the mic and leave now it feels a feel that felt so good either way rich is visiting New York and during his time here we figured it would be a great opportunity to just kind of do a retrospective and talk a lot about your reporting on Cambridge analytical all the different Facebook scandals so definitely send in questions related to that and we also wanted to end with a story that's been percolating this week about Google tracking people's information even after you turned off location tracking I have to admit I kind of suspected this was happening already but people seemed pretty upset about it so we'll jump into that too yeah either way sending your questions and comments bvg we'll get to as many as you can at the end of the show and let's get to the podcast and here we go we'll see you guys back in the chat in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben and with me is special guest rich Nieva cns reporter covering all things Google and Facebook and I would argue the nicest guy in tech huh today well today we wanted to focus on the biggest but certainly not the only scandal troubling Facebook this year it's about Cambridge analytic a political consulting company that gained access to millions of users Facebook data and used it to target and used it for targeted political advertising did I get all that right yeah yeah it's been quite a year covering Facebook I'm pretty busy for you I'm sure so one of the first things that I want to ask you about was have you seen anything change with Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg like are they chastened or do they kind of like have a different way about them after the Cambridge analytical scandal it's not like Facebook didn't have scandals before but this one was really significant yeah I mean this does feel like the first one that actually like really stuck and when you asked me to be on this today I was thinking back about how how long it's been it's been five months so and it's still going on but yeah it does seem that like this has actually affected the company their executives do seem kind of a little bit more introspective about about their role in the world about and of yeah I'm kind of realizing that maybe Facebook isn't like it's like isn't always this this beacon of goodness and you know kind of like connecting people like whenever i watch f/8 that's like the thing that they always talk about they're like we want to connect the world and it's this like vaguely World Peace kind of thing and to a certain extent it kind of feels like they're at least admitting that like look this is a giant platform we created it's broadly used for advertising that's how we make our money and sometimes it can get gamed and to me it seems like there's at least an admission that things could go wrong there sometimes I don't know if I'm totally right about yeah definitely yeah I mean Facebook executives have said that like look maybe we were a little bit too optimistic about this and and we didn't how refreshing and we didn't realize how terrible some some people could be they didn't say it in that in those words but but yeah you know it's a step in the right direction I would have met right and and now they realize that they have to actually you know they have to prevent abuse in in a way that they they probably didn't think of before yeah one other area that I wanted to touch on was so you were in DC earlier this year for the Zuckerberg hearings and kind of tell me a bit about like what it was like to be there what did what did you see what was it like but you know watching Zuckerberg get you know kind of peppered with questions oh yeah well it was it was a circus it was it was over two days and it was a combined like 10 hours of testimony and it was well first of all you're sitting you're sitting in these tables like right behind him and it's it's I don't know how many reporters are in the room but there were a lot and I just remember him walking out and photographers taking photos of him for like like a minute a good minute when he sits down and like yeah before he sits down and like people taking pictures of the empty desk I'm surprised all that flashing didn't short-circuit his his brain or something I weigh I also wanted to get really quickly to another story the AP reported this week that Google is still tracking your location even if you turn off location tracking Ritchie told me ahead of the show you can actually fix this problem is that right yeah so it it's it's kind of a it has to do with the settings there's a setting called location history where if you turn it off Google is still tracking you according to this story it just won't have your location show up in your Google Maps timeline but if you toggle off another setting called web and app activity then it you know then it'll start to be better yeah it's so nice that they make this really easy for us to prevent some of this stuff but anyway if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm reaching Ava thanks for listening and thanks everybody for joining us for the recording of the audio podcast rich thanks for such detailed reporting you see a lot of the media hype surrounding stuff like Facebook and Cambridge analytics and it's nice to see somebody get serious about it and get analytical and not just make jokes you know that being said that's what we're here for the first question the first question is what kind of oil does Mark Zuckerberg take mm-hmm yeah we want to know well yeah yeah what kind of oil to like make sure all the gears work he's a robot rich it's a news show but you gotta loosen up a little buddy so anyway send in your questions and comments and I'm gonna do my best to filter through the crap and get something good to keep the conversation going oh god I want to know you use the phrase beacon of goodness when describing Facebook what does Facebook ever a beacon of goodness it was a satisfying distraction at best well it's it's more like how exactly does does the platform promote itself right you know like it's a type of situation that like any company that markets itself and talks about itself well obviously try to present the best possible foot forward and the way Zuckerberg for the longest time and still at f8 this year if I'm right about this talks about connecting people and how that's really important and and they kind of got back to that too with their advertising where they're like you know thank you for the friends yeah you came here for the friends and stayed for you know the the Russian election influencing but they there was still kind of this undercurrent of we're here to connect people and you know in connecting people we hopefully are making the world better even though I would argue you're just making people jealous of everybody else's vacation but you know yeah the longest time they're there their mantra was make the world more open and connected and then they changed it amid all this to bring the world closer together so it's not that different but yeah I I mean it's it's by the way one other thing that we didn't get to because it's a four-minute podcast you also did like pretty deep reporting on Zuckerberg like his background is in his history you went to his old stomping ground in Westchester County where I'm originally where I'm not originally from there I'm from Philadelphia but I lived there for seven years so can you kind of give us like some of the highlights about what you learned on your reporting you spent like months looking into you know kind of like what it was to build the Zuckerberg robot and how we got to where we are today yeah I I went to Dobbs Ferry New York and which is where he grew up visited his old high school I tracked down his old fencing teacher you know his fencing coach and one of his classmates and just in you know saw where he grew up it's it's this big white house on the corner of a quiet street wasn't one of the things that I'm kind of curious about too is when you talk to some of those folks like for instance the fencing coach was there any awareness when he was going through high school that like yeah this guy is this guy's gonna be a big deal you know sometimes when you know somebody is really different or perhaps so brilliant it's it's pretty quickly identified very early on is that something that you know maybe people told you about they did yeah I mean so he was the he was the captain of the fencing team he was like the co-captain and one of the things that I remember his classmate telling me who was also his fencing teammate was that he was really he was really quick and he was he was physically a quick fighter like he could parry and adjust like super not see exactly right right aren't you telling me this story about him like at a match and all I keep thinking about is their their their old mantra which is move fast and break things right that's pretty funny which is like one of the kind of one of the things that that critics used upon that philosophy as to why they're kind of in this mess now yeah I had no idea that mantra related to fencing very interesting it does hitting I'm kidding all right anyway let's get to questions BVG let's uh let's see what people want to talk about yeah coming in from Ricky B could Facebook sue CDA for damages to its image that's a great question let's let you field that one hmm I don't know it hasn't really come up I'd be surprised they have teams of lawyers why wouldn't they like III guess you could sue anybody if you wanted to but as far as you could tell this isn't something that's really been on the table or been discussed by Facebook at this point yeah I mean it would be it would be a bad look you know it's like to sue Cambridge analytic oh well string Facebook is is kind of the behemoth here you know it would it would look like a you know a deflection I think that's a dresser I hadn't thought about that and they're you know they're their big thing this year has been we're gonna take more responsibility for for for our role in this and so to do that would kind of you know maybe negate some of the work that they've been doing to their image yeah also Cambridge analytic as a company really no longer exists and I was hardly any money there so what exactly they would get out of it I'm not really sure but either way that's a really good question that was an interesting perspective mm-hmm Josh Boyd are coming in with for the location tracking doesn't Google use that for live traffic in Google Maps already I think that is one of the aspects yeah I think the primary concern for people was that you're supposed to when you turn off location history the assumption is is that they're no longer tracking my location the problem is and and this was why I assumed like this wasn't really all that surprising was that it's still especially on a phone for the phone to work you know your cell phone provider and Google and Apple like they have to have some awareness of where the phone is located or it ceases to function as a phone so I don't know that wasn't that was my impression obviously people are you know justifiably annoyed that you go into the settings you think you turn off location and you didn't right I think that's part of the reason it struck such a nerve is that people think it's a little disingenuous something called location history you know you'd think you turned it off and they would not track that it went one of the other things that I've been hearing from you know Google and I think Facebook to this year is that like you know we're gonna do a better job helping users with their privacy and deleting some of their information however they always mention it's gonna make these services worse or it's gonna make them more difficult what do you think like how do you think users are responding to that are they okay with that balance I always wonder like do people even care are they digging into the settings like I don't know that they are I wonder if people even know yeah I mean I think that's the the the thing that's kind of hit home here is that um there was a story a couple weeks ago about Gmail and third-party app developers being able to read your inbox which would for people for people like us who follow us every day like that's that's not really surprising but like people are actually starting to understand how these companies work I don't know I feel like that one's kind of icky like I'm not that crazy about that one either but yeah like people find out about it and they're like huh not cool yeah anyway more questions Mike Shaw asks should Congress step in when it comes to Google tracking and I think maybe we should stay away from the word should and say could Congress step in I think that they I mean every time one of these kind of privacy debacle breaks a debacles breaks out there are Congress people who make statements another another call I saw the other day was privacy experts asking the FTC to be involved so yeah if this if this kind of blows up more for Google that's something that can be that could discussed I remain skeptical that Congress is actually gonna step in and do anything about this stuff it's pretty difficult for them to like even pass a budget on time these days so I would say don't hold your breath when it comes to this kind of thing but it might get to the point where they would have to step in if it just continues to worsen and this year is a really good example or they'll talk about it or they'll tweet about it probably tweet about it yes Alex Mitchell asks does disabling the tracking feature save on battery and if so do we know how much I would say probably it probably saves on battery but simply any kind of background total app like that saves some sense a battery but I don't think we've had our hands on it long enough to tell to measure it right it's probably I don't think that you're gonna notice a huge difference it's like if your phone honks out at 3 p.m. every day from heavy use if you turn off location tracking it's not like I have no idea if like what you're gonna get an extra half hour out of it or something but I can't imagine it's gonna like change the the viability of your phone significantly that's that's just a guess it's it's a good question but it's also technically pretty difficult to try to figure that out yeah Michael Brown first of all welcomes rich to the show he's never seen it thanks Michael right on do you think these big CEOs like Larry Page Tim Cook Bezos do they use Facebook Google Amazon etc well I know Zuckerberg uses do they use it themselves or do they have it you know like a team like a social media team do uniform I do know that Facebook has people to help with their executive pages best as I can tell Jack Dorsey is the one responding to people on Twitter and I kind of feel like it would be disingenuous if he wasn't it seems like it's him but I don't know well there's there have been reports about Zuckerberg definitely having a team of people to help curate is his Facebook page in his image when he travels he travels with a professional photographer so when he went on that big trip of the US last year that was all documented by a by a professional crew right and the guy is like a major executive he's one of the world's richest people you would accept it you would expect that kind of thing about Zuckerberg where they're really carefully curating that that message but yeah if Jeff Bezos has a Facebook page I mean like I've never I've never happened upon it and if he does have it it's probably pretty private you know like he posts Bezos posts things on Twitter every now and then when he's walking around with a robot dog or he's in a giant mech suit but in general Bezos doesn't tend to tweet that often Oh he also tweets a lot about Blue Origin and Rockets so yeah I always imagined that the celebrity type have fake accounts fake names so that they can log on and screw around without being hunted since they they have their own they have like fan pages or even if it seems Comey James Comey is a perfect example of that James Comey was kind of like chilling out on Twitter for a while until I think it was a reporter it Gizmodo yes that right ended up like tracking down like connected the threads and figured out that it was it was James Comey and like he eventually was he at like at Jimmy Co or something like I don't know it was like something like Nostradamus or whatever theologian that he put it that he wrote his thesis honors yeah yeah yeah so it was it was something that if you were paying really close attention you could you could figure it out and it was pretty clever now he's he switched that name to James Comey and I think he he now has a verified symbol and everything but yeah like you you're probably right that some people are kind of like lurking on Twitter there's also like a good example is Elon Musk where he's tweeting constantly all the time and you know just kind of like raging about stuff so you've got you know the whole gamut as far as like tech CEOs and how they use these services but I imagine like any celebrity somebody else runs their official fan page for people to follow but then they create the fake names that they can go and play like candy crush or whatever mm-hmm yeah got to play candy crush or if you're Kevin Durant you can we are running out of time I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit and a conversation that's going on in the chat for a minute now we've been concerned about these little cameras in the front of our laptops and on our phones and who or what has immediate access to them whether you've tried to disable them or not is that still a concern do we and do we ever think that Facebook has like gone down that path well it's certainly a conspiracy theory that that people always talk about and during the last congressional hearing with Zuckerberg he was actually asked that if Instagram spies on you I don't know they at least with your with your with your microphone I don't know if he was asked directly by the camera but he dispelled that he was like no we don't do it yeah I've heard that more than any other conspiracy yeah it's a really like long-running one yeah it's like I'm thinking about a lawn mower and then I'll get like an Amazon yeah at about a lawnmower so and whether or not it's true I mean that it won't go away that the theory won't go away kind of tells you something about how people are thinking about these companies yeah and with the Google location tracking thing it's a perfect example why people aren't aren't as trustful of these companies as they used to be I thought I turned off my location history I didn't you know like there's there's good reason why people are kind of being a little more skeptical about how these companies are treating user privacy these days yeah I would say so yeah I would I don't know this is a new computer but usually I do just block my webcam unless I'm using it so yeah I feel like people do that a lot more often these days yeah several people in the chat have pointed out that it has been documented that Zuckerberg himself covers his webcams we have seen that too every time that elaboration has there been there's been a photo I think like he posted a photo of him in his office and there was a there's there's something over the camera and over the mic yeah it's I think at the time people were a little surprised about it but I kind of feel like at least in the tech world more people do it nowadays it's just for peace of mind type of thing so a good example if that is is like Google came out with a bunch of kind of like those those like kitchen counter tablet kind of things they're like smart tablets or smart displays is what they call them and they come with a little shudder to close the camera and Amazon doesn't provide that for its Amazon echo show and because they're like oh it works it works all the time you're not getting hacked so like why would we include a shutter but for me personally like I would prefer if they just had the shutter in there then I know for sure that you know the camera is not watching me when I don't want to tell ya I take a little bit of Solace and I know like by and large the entire concept that you're being spied on is horrifying and terrible but I take a little bit of Solace I kind of want it to be true just because like I talked to myself a lot during the day and my phone is 99% of the time in my pocket until I get angry at something and then it becomes my punching bag and I whip it across the room ask anybody here in the office you that they've seen it and between that and and like if I'm gonna be crass for a second like I fart so like the idea why somebody like listening in on my phone and seeing like the inside of my pocket and then fart sounds I just like enjoy that buddy good luck with that try to tell me depends or something I would love just some guy in a room yeah first of all if there was a subscription service to like kind of like Truman Show but Bryan's life I I would be paying for it second you don't need to wear it depends if you just fart I have to admit I'm just trying to all draw that line because you say that oh I thought I thought about a lawnmower and then Amazon tried to sell me like a lawnmower blade or whatever what they would try to sell me if they just heard me you know rip ass or something yeah yeah I don't know sometimes I just kind of feel like I'm being watched like right now it's kind of weird we're man is a weird feeling Billy ocean so in kind of closing thoughts you know I'm trying to find the right way to express this between the spying and the cameras and the false information and the listening and the aggregation and the algorithms and what data is more valuable for them to secondo up how much can they turn that around and is there ever a world that we live in where they'd give it all up for the sake of the greater good whoa well okay I can answer that last part absolutely not no like that's how they make all their money is through user data and as far as what's more valuable than nine I would probably say the more types of information the more data points they have on you the better so whether it's age location home address I color family members like the more data that they have to kind of build a biography around you the better and that's why Facebook is such a powerful tool because it's basically a user survey that they then use to target advertising and you give all your information to them you tell them this is this is a you know like my political leanings my religion it depends how much information you want to give them but ya know a lot of people do actually fill out that info yeah and it depends on the advertiser to you like if somebody wants to sell you a skateboard you know they're gonna target a skateboarder right yeah yeah they're also gonna look for people potentially in certain certain states or counties yeah age groups you know and and Facebook has all that information they can google to a certain extent I does too they just kind of get it differently right books yeah these books able to do it because we're basically just give it to them yeah and that's what I'm everybody I do think they're gonna look for a certain demographic for an in Facebook can provide all that information so I think yeah holistically it's all important to them it's all important and they're not gonna give it up you're not giving it up no that's how they make all their money let's rewind like 15 years before social media and data mining was really a thing III I'm not trying to pretend like I know exactly when we could pinpoint this became a concern because I'm not a historian I'm just thinking like back before the time of Facebook back before the time of the any of this controversy and vulnerabilities we're headline news what kind of information would you have volunteered just get philosophical with me for a second what kind of information would you a volunteer to advertisers because I don't mind being trying like somebody trying to sell me something that I want and there's a tiny little piece of me that's like I don't know I guess cookies in a weird way can help somebody help me find something that I would want in my life you know I would totally volunteer information so that they could try me try to sell me better booze you know I don't mind entertainment you know Hart movies at me games at me that kind of stuff what about you guys I don't know they weren't already mining the data out of the cockles of your search history and trying to learn what kind of human they are as human you are as the robots they are what would you volunteer I I think the power of Facebook is in that they're not like they're selling point is give us this information we'll package it for advertisers they don't say that overtly ever they don't but but that is their business model and that's why people are so willing to hand over their info and to share their lives on Facebook because it's kind of like the whole ad model is somewhat hidden from the user interface but that's that's what I'm trying to say take the hidden part out of it if there was like a survey like welcome to the Internet what would you like to buy what would you put in those fields I kind of feel like if a company was that upfront about it people would really yeah would be unwilling to provide most information you know I think so so as it good for instance eBay does more of this than they used to or they ask you about your interests and I filled out that survey because they're like what what kind of stuff would you like to buy on eBay you know like do you want Philadelphia Eagles gear yes absolutely do you want like a like a cool leather jacket with a skull in the back no that's not me camilo no I would look great yeah I would look pretty in that so I think in that regard on a shopping site if they want to ask me my interests that's fine but I kind of I guess I get a little bit weirded out with like more personal information but you know that's that's where a lot of the internet is these days yeah yeah what about you I don't know if if I saw a guitar like like a guitar ad on Facebook you know I would not be upset so I don't Facebook does have little controls on on each ad where it's like is this ad relevant should you know should we not show this to you anymore and that stuff kind of helps to eat out the stuff that you're not gonna you're not gonna be into yeah but on our way out the door everybody anybody chime in here or on Twitter let us know if you would want to participate in voluntary ads what kind of information you would get like the volunteer for it I see life improvement might be on board with it anybody else out there just curious this is you know that it'll never happen but I what oh great news is moving so so this is this is a pretty useful corollary as is you know would you pay for Facebook so that's an area that a lot of people are talking about now to where if they had a totally different model where they didn't have to make all their money packaging your information to ads for advertisers would Facebook being a better place and would it just be the place where you could share your cat videos and your baby pictures and that kind of thing so I'm curious about what what your kind of perspective is on that and whether that's gaining any attention at Facebook or in general well they've talked about this and they've been asked about it Sheryl Sandberg their CEO has said that there will always be a free version of Facebook and I think Zuckerberg said this too which has begged the question are they you know are they thinking about subscriptions and yeah I don't know what would I would you would you no no of course not why would I pay for Facebook you know but I guess as if you option I mean if you could use Facebook and have them not collect information about you how much would you be willing to pay for that yeah that's that's a better way to package that question I think I would have to noodle on that one I don't really know the answer to that immediately so but that's that definitely got me thinking sorry I got distracted I was thinking about ways to troll the Facebook ad algorithm anyways we do have to go where at the end of the show let us know if Google was listening to you and if your devices start trying to sell you cool leather jackets guitars skateboards or dependence garments undergarments the only of those things and then yeah thanks everybody will see you tomorrow thanks to USB for sponsoring the show Ben want to take us on out rich and thank you very much for being on the show really appreciate it and rich is here for two weeks so maybe we'll have them on again anyway the 3:59 podcast is available on itunes toon and stitcher Feedburner google play music google podcast the amazon echo and of course CNF calm thanks everybody for watching sending in your questions we'll see you again tomorrow bye folks bye you