Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm dr. Chang I'm Ben Fox ribbon I'm Johnny salesman is suck sorry enough Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on an apology tour starting last night breaking his silence over the Cambridge analytical data scandal after five days of just nothing so he acknowledged that the mistakes led to a breach of trust with his users and vowed to do better this sounds very similar John you actually had a chance to watch the CNN interview like what did you think when you when you watched it like was he contrite enough well one thing that he one word that he said in that interview and some other interviews that he that he did after his own post his own post about it was he actually said the word apology so he said that he was sorry which goes further than what he did when he was in full control of what he was talking about right edited he didn't go that far in his original statement and when you know watching the CNN interview in particular where you got to see video of him he got emotional at the end of it when when he was asked about you know what what having children means for how he's stewarding Facebook which is affecting except for the fact that he's the most powerful person in the world right on a billionaire who's enriched himself partly because of these sort of advertising tools that he's given to no Singh apology saying I'm sorry like did I think the question everyone's asking today's is he sorry for what has happened or is he sorry that he got stock tanked or stock tech mean right what what exactly was he apologetic for he apologized for the fact that it happened okay but I think that that's a really good I think the fact that it happened two years ago and they didn't do anything about it is yeah the reason why a lot of people are saying are you sorry that it happened are you sorry that you got caught yeah yeah yeah so play more there's plenty more to come rich Nia has a nice breakdown of all this drama and and Zuck presenting this you know this his pitch of the world for a better Facebook next up want to talk about a CNN exclusive what was we were the first report that Huawei the world's third largest smartphone maker lose Best Buy as a retailer and that's a big deal because none of the US carriers sell its phones and Best Buy was won a few places that you could actually physically see a huawei product okay so how much how popular was this at Best Buy - you know that's unclear though I mean the big flagship phone they just launched the the may 10 Pro I mean literally just launched weeks ago in the US through through these retailers Best Buy and Amazon like throw the two big ones I think B and H and nu a core the other retailers but obviously Best Buy was the big physical channel that you didn't go and see these phones so I don't think they were doing that well I mean they they wha we told me sort of their pre-orders were looking pretty good but just the fact that they these phones won't be in any physical stores is a big loss for the company did you get any impression as to why Best Buy was doing this or was this something that may have been coming from Huawei it's unclear it's definitely so for my sources said that that was Best Buy's decision to end the relationship no reasons were given but obviously there's this backdrop of all this political concerns the the heads of the FBI NSA CIA have all said that they they feel that you know Huawei phones present a risk so there's that backdrop and then we vote we've had the reports that Verizon an 18 t we're gonna sell these phones but ended up backing out because of political pressure yeah all right so lastly at CCO Josh Silverman had an exclusive interview with Ben Fox Ruben and Ben so lay out what exactly is going on with that to you so Etsy had a really tough year last year they went through two rounds of layoffs but Silverman seems to be doing a pretty good job writing the ship revenues up people seem to be going to the site more often and they're gonna be doing a big sale a week long sale prime date basically their own version of prime day to remind people to go back to Etsy and you know they're trying to inject that idea of like specialty retail and special retail more into your life more often all right four more of these stories check cuz I've seen it I'm not your chain I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Johnny salesman thanks for listening who's gonna participate in special day is a cult special day now what's it called it's you wrote the story it's just it's it's like called via Etsy world no yeah it's the world of Etsy sales event world of Etsy sales event its strongest prime day but they still need to work on their their marketing yeah I mean but you know it's it's the way that he described it to me was that people regularly go to Etsy maybe once a year like the regular customers will come once a year this is a good way to remind people that you can inject special more often into your life that's that's like almost a direct quote from the CEO and pretty having something like I'm sure we bought like a little baby yeah there's and and they're hoping that with a lot of the Amazons and Walmarts of the world really taking over a lot more of the commodity goods yeah then they can actually become much more relevant because they sell like 50 million items you know artsy items and handmade stuff that you wouldn't be able to normally find anywhere else one other interesting element that he told me about was handmade at Amazon yeah which Amazon launched two years ago he said has not had an impact on the business and this was really being pitched as a potential quote-unquote Etsy killer and after two years it really hasn't had as much of an impact I guess is some people may have expected yeah I'll be honest like when I read through the story and I was like the first time I remembered and made since the announcement yeah it's it's Amazon gets into a lot of different businesses and there's an immediate reaction to that whether it's healthcare or banking or what-have-you and sometimes that reaction is an over reaction especially in the stock market and Etsy still exists they have not been killed by Amazon by any stretch so yeah alright so well I think that we should have a little bit of a conversation here to kind of drum up a little more interest in the the Zuckerberg situation yeah how much do we feel is really on his shoulders as an individual versus the company do we think he's taking the right action now or is it too little too late and that's coming from me I think ultimately this just appeared to be very lacks interest in protecting user data damage control so it's just they were not whether it's from Zuckerberg or anybody beneath Zuckerberg everybody on down I think is somewhat culpable or liable in the situation that you take 50 million user data from 50 million different users and it just ends up in a place that I'm sure a lot of those users weren't really happy with so they should do a lot more and they said that they were gonna do a lot more to try to do a better job protecting user data I mean I would say if you're gonna point the finger to someone it is definitely Zuckerberg I mean he owns whatever he's a super majority control over the company he is the face of the company it's still I think it's so bothers a lot of people that it took five days for him to finally come out in public and say something he just sort of kind of deferred any kind of response to to his lieutenants right and even like when asked about testifying before Congress he kind of deferred on that too and the sense that he said like I'd be happy to do it if I'm the best person for it it's like oh that's some hedging that's some hedging especially considering well you're the CEO of this company you found it how are you not the best person to address these things and if you're not the best person why isn't this your business like why isn't it your interest to know these things right and you know yes and the calls Corner both in the US in the UK just there are tons of calls for Zuckerberg to appear before government hearings he hasn't but he's never done it he's usually sent a General Counsel or he sent other lieutenants so it's I think a lot will do want to hear him speak before Congress before and actually testified on some of the some of what's been going on at Facebook right and what's interesting is is that this is not at all the first scandal that a Facebook has faced over the past two years that's been pretty well documented and for whatever reason I mean John maybe you have a better idea on this whatever reason this one's blown up much more considerably in in the you know the general public and people are paying a lot more attention to this one as opposed to some of the other issues that have come up I mean personally to be frank I think that it's because of the I think it's because of breakfast brexit and the election of trunk trump that people aren't are interested are pissed off about it you know like I've even the Cambridge analytical itself like that vice wrote about that more than a year ago before the election you know like yes this topic has been written about and the fact that developers have these acts that have this level of access and then that level of access was shut down that was written about years ago I think it's that people partly because Facebook has been exploited the way it has to so divisions among people we're all in a state of hyper like sensitivity about these things and feeling threatened I think a lot of people are feeling under threat and that's why they're lashing out Morgan's Facebook for things when they've had these problems in the past and Facebook is now being viewed much more as you know being presented as like a weapon or a political tool as opposed to like just a fun place to share a community as a community their baby pics you know cat pics whatever this this is completely separate in many ways from the Russian propaganda that was being done during the election right and then the other thing is it's it's it's also just looking at how they handle the data they just sort of the idea that they kind of trusted these third parties with our data to do the right thing and responsibly delete all that stuff was I mean come naive or stupid worst case stupid best case naive relax yeah just doesn't I mean that's that's the problem with Facebook and how it how it treats data because it as much as they they give lip service to protecting our privacy and making sure our data is safe like clearly by their actions they're showing that that's not really the priority right let's jump into the chat we got some good conversation going Oscar he says the apology is useless if Snowden's info didn't make the masses budge why should this continuing on I want to express sir enjoys strong words sucks 20:18 resolution to work at Facebook isn't going well the motive directors should fire this use they can yeah yeah he control the majority shares like he obviously I just thought that the the strong language was no I'm sorry sure that's mean as long as he wants me to see you yeah it's more likely than Zuckerberg will be like you know what I'm just pulling the plug Facebook is dead and for him to not be the CEO Facebook and it continued it just like right oh my god that would be so wonderful it's really fun to think about and talk about cuz it's like this alternate universe bizarro world because it's such a part of our lives but because it's such a part of our lives and also it's an economic force beyond just itself like how many people's livelihoods depend on it would have a lot of repercussions I mean I talked about this on an interview like this whole delete Facebook hashtag I mean it's easy to get outraged and share delete Facebook but it's a lot harder to actually do it cuz you do I mean I rely on Facebook for a lot for keeping tabs on my friends and family like that's I'm so kind of hooked into it and it would be tough to give it up it's the only channel that I'm in touch with certain folks you know partly from overseas so it wouldn't make any sense for me to delete facebook because it would basically be like cutting off my nose at that's point so that's that's you me and a lot of people though Ben it's it's become a very helpful communication device it's also become a poisonous billboard well I think also it's interesting is how there has been this mental shift I think in everyone's minds in Facebook and outside Facebook people that use it whereas you know people I mean how many times have we seen over the years these studies being like using social media like Facebook makes you feel bad about yourself and we're all like hahaha I'm doing stuff that makes me feel bad about myself my health is degrading right now and I'm gonna do it it's so funny but now that we're realizing the repercussions not only to ourselves but also to democracies and geopolitics and security people are like wait a second this isn't so hilarious honey well you know what I mean do you think this marks the turning point for for folks to actually take a more sober look at Facebook them I don't know that's I think it's really good being addictive right they're really good at it I don't know we'll see yeah yeah and it fits very much into the broader conversation that we've been having about you know are these tech giants do they have too much power are they causing more problems than good this this filter is very directly into that whole conversation - let's jump back into the chat coming in from Abdul has anyone looked into the traffic to Facebook recently I think this recent news must have affected it I think I saw something yesterday where they lost like twice the amount of Tesla in the last couple of days there's something like that like the stock price actual foot traffic but their net worth is certainly taking a hit yeah I mean stocks definitely hit but I mean it's I don't know it's such a I feel like folks like Zuckerberg that's true but do we have any numbers as far as user and actual fall off not since the Cambridge analytical scandal because that's only happened in the last yeah we do know that in the last quarterly report Zuckerberg and this is following on so at the end of last year's eckleburg said hey we're gonna focus on making our platform better and we're gonna spend millions of dollars on it and it means we might not be making as much money in the short term to focus on what they call time well-spent like having less of this like no value engagement that keeps you on Facebook for a long time but doesn't mean that you're happy while you're doing it so with this focus on time well-spent in the last quarter the most recent period Zuckerberg said that people aren't spending as much time on Facebook because of that initiative I'd imagine that all this discussion and noise about how people are disappointed in Facebook and how they don't get value out of it I imagine that's only exacerbating yeah trend yeah that is a trend sound right or people are going on it yeah because it sometimes that does happen where come so top-of-mind that people just end up going on Facebook more often yeah where they go on Facebook or the only way that you can see Zuckerberg responds after five days a log into Facebook too yeah well luckily they report their monthly active users and daily active users on a quarterly basis so we will be able to continue to track that that's not something that's like hidden or anything like that so we'll get an impression but I think you guys would agree that you know the delete Facebook movement if it is a movement is probably only going to have a short-term impact that's at least yeah I mean I think why delete substitute drivers are pretty much the same there isn't an alternative Facebook right to the say that exactly Joan but to at some effect there are lots of alternative and we did talk about there are a lot of them yesterday and that's the thing it's hard to to take it seriously when it's like but I need Facebook but it really has innovated the way a lot of us do communicate long distance with group and for that I still sing its praises but it has been infiltrated so it is may be time to start looking into some of the alternatives one of the popular terms let's take a few more in the chat we got a little bit of time left coming in from Matthew dacher yes it's the power that these companies have have companies always had this kind of power over our lives or has this only happened in the past decade I'm thinking that might be a bit of a sarcastic statement I don't think that it's only a new concept in the past decade how has mass communication innovations been impacted by it it's gone from so the internet has caused this Titanic shift between like a gatekeeper model where there are only three broadcast stations there were like two newspapers in every city and there wasn't this like free flow of communication information that we have now with the internet but because we have such concentration in very few companies like Google and Facebook being you know representing the last majority of advertising money on the internet we have a concentration of power without the same sort of regulation that those gatekeepers had in the past the gatekeepers in the past they had the FTC over seeing them with much more scrutiny than the FTC would oversee a reddit or Facebook or and it is because of that ad model like Facebook and Google these companies are designed to extract as much data from you as possible so in that respect I don't think any company no company knows as much about you as a Google or Facebook companies in the past surely didn't have that kind of control over you they didn't they didn't know your preferences they didn't know the fact that you had you liked I don't know Thomas Trang cartoons or something because you tell them yeah Facebook has developed this program where you are in indicted to want to volunteer more information because you get somewhat rewarded for it you get more relevant things passed towards you and then you find common ground with new people right or you take part in like fun little quizzes yeah exactly that end up being used to target you for political ads so yeah geez what a world we've built we got a little bit of time for a few more Ryan Williams is pointing out the obvious one is just signing up for things terms and agreements being more cognizant of what you were engaged yeah wouldn't that be a beautiful world that any would all live in not to say you're not 110 percent right with that but let's get real how many people actually do that yeah we got to think about other we don't have to think people really should just be more responsible more accountable oh really how many people read those terms they're also long long before we leave and that's yeah exactly it's not like companies make it easy for you to know what you're giving up and they also don't make it easy for you to control that if you have the ambition to do you know what I mean like there's no easy way to find even on Facebook like it's not an easy way to turn these things off you have to know that's to be a scandal for there to be stories to tell you where to look yeah and for the company like oh maybe we should make it easy looking for I mean I finally went and turned off a budget see I didn't realize I mean it's not a super hard process to do it but like it definitely takes extra steps you have to know what to look for and like yet so we're for a scandal like this we were just sort of like right unwittingly just kept going with these apps that have hooks into all of our data mm-hmm - points out that hang on no I got miss I misspoke for a second let's take another one from Ryan Williams if you delete Facebook does that mean deleting your Google account Twitter etc I don't know if that's necessarily the case but what happens when Facebook goes away who becomes the next crowned most popular most traffic area that's going to inevitably be infiltrated and and poisoned and damaged as well I don't how do we future this no no the total hypothetical hype set but if it wasn't to go away tomorrow would Twitter rise up how would Twitter get broken how do we avoid this going forward no I took good question well I think in order for Facebook to go through this hyper hypothetical word it goes away like something else would have to take its place something new like I don't think Instagram necessarily replaces what Facebook is neither just Twitter they all are social networks but they all do things a little bit differently so offer different kinds of experiences so I feel like there needs to be like a better mousetrap that beats out Facebook just like Facebook be it out MySpace and Friendster and I'm missing one of those stir and yeah like they all there was that the cycle were these social knows and then they they fell aim to an extent Facebook brought in the direct peer-to-peer messaging I think that kind of because aim certain joy points out aim really was the first big step like beyond like the networking people together yeah yeah or I seek you or I see Cuba aim become a household name yeah that's true in a larger scale than gneissic you did yeah when name finally ended people were kind of sad yeah that was a new program that we'd never seen anything like yeah a direct messenger system but - did point out that Facebook is popular because it's a of least resistance yeah it became the path of least resistance for hackers for spammers for this then the other thing said yeah and they did that very much in good and bad people yeah absolutely I mean like there's a good reason why 2 billion people have Facebook accounts another expansion on the thought is as far as information spills go Facebook is small change compared to the likes of Yahoo and Equifax do we really think that's true well I think that in terms of the scale that we know of like right now we know of 50 million people but you know uh Coburg said they're going to be looking into thousands of apps that had the same opportunities that Cambridge analytical and that Cambridge researcher yeah they're I'm sure there are other apps out there just sort of sitting in your account that have hooks that connect to a difference and granted Facebook did shut off some of this access but there's still a lot of data flowing around from those older apps from what two or three years ago mm-hmm we only have a couple minutes left so let's ghost go uh quick through a couple of these syringe I had another good concept as he always does how about completely changed the way facebook makes money I'm thinking low key crypto minor on the website not the ones that screw up the CPU will that be fairer than targeted ads and if Facebook dares to make crypto mining step it might legitimize that form of currency he's got very good points here yeah I ever had blocks crypto currency ads yet it won't block political propaganda well it's working on the political stuff and it makes a lot of money on political ads so I think the intention is to improve the political ads as opposed to just barring them completely Facebook is part of the duopoly with Google we're like that's how they make their money they dominate digital advertising so I don't see that changing at all that's how the entire business model is set up it's not on selling oculus headset I think it's a nice yeah it's a nice thought about using cryptocurrency but yeah that's and Zuckerberg said yesterday if there would be he addressed the idea of like would there be a subscription Facebook because the advertising is the fuel that gives bad actors a reason to be there like if you can make well except for Russian interference because then your writer and game isn't making money it's disrupting geopolitical order but most of the badass roles of the highest order are there just to make money and so that's the fuel that drives all this stuff and so the question is if you take away that fuel that will suffocate some of the bad actors but he made the point that it's important for Facebook to be not necessarily in first world countries but in places where internet access isn't as easy to get then not having that that barrier to entry that it being a model that is extreme extremely cheap or free for people as important that like would the better mousetrap be though like the anti Facebook or the next thing after Facebook could it be a subscription-based model obviously it would hit a different demographic as you suggested but that could be something interesting that somebody else might want to look like the dilemma with that is you know these sites all these these companies all have one goal early on is for like massive ramp up of the users exactly it's all about scale and when you when you put in a subscription model in there you automatically just hurting yourself in terms of potential growth there right like you can't get to that scale for that height and for that and that's for those startup money when you've got the subscription model so I mean yeah it's theoretically Facebook could do it now that they have the scale but I don't know how many people would stick around if they had to pay whatever final would that look like you know would that be in completely separate Facebook or were you getting Facebook pro yeah Facebook awesome Facebook Plus yeah okay we're coming down to the end here let's switch gears real quick and talk about Huawei Lohengrin I think that's how I pronounce that name apologies if I screw that up my question should the USA at large ban Huawei phones I mean didn't they already with the routers they so they do have a ban on telecommunications equipment companies are basically forbidden from from working with huawei in terms of their their back-end equipment the phones I mean they have almost essentially have done it in you know with their comments they haven't there's no official ban but if you know the NSA CIA and FBI all say like you probably shouldn't be behind these phones that's a real issue right so yes I think that while we already struggled with their presence in the US and losing Best Buy is you know it's bad but I mean they were already kind of in a bad situation in a difficult position yeah for anybody out there that's watching this that has a huawei phone should they be concerned like should they feel like they have spyware on their phones or something like that I mean that's always been the conspiracy theory out there I don't know I can't I can't say with a hundred percent certainty that they're completely safe I know they're well reviewed I know our our our colleagues on the reviews team I have generally given these phones pretty good reviews and they're known brand yes you know around the world but there's always that lingering we don't know and that's that's cognition for the u.s. that's big enough to have stopped them from coming in here in in a meaningful way I think that is a fine place to end for a week we spend a lot of time talking about Facebook and I think we're gonna spend a whole lot more time look but that is it for us Thursday's are Friday and we'll have to wrap it up here and we'll see you again next week Roger you want to take us out yeah if you like anything you saw or heard here check us out on CNET our podcast is also available on iTunes TuneIn stitcher feedburner google play music and the Amazon echo see y'all next week see y'all next week