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 welcome to the 359 I'm bed Foxx ribbon yoni salesman I'm Alfred hang Twitter and CEO Jack Dorsey have been taking a lot of heat for not banning Alex Jones a far-right conspiracy theorist and host of info wars after YouTube Apple Spotify and Facebook banned him last week on Tuesday Twitter suspended Jones account for 7 days for a tweet to a video about getting quote battle rifles ready against the media and others Jones denies he made this threat meanwhile the Infowars Twitter account is still live the video is still on periscope which is owned by Twitter so either way that was a lot of an intro but Joan do these social sites have a clear and transparent policy on banning certain kinds of content I'm having a hard time figuring out like do they know what they're doing I think the answer's no okay I think kind of what I thought they know I mean that's part of the problem it's a combination of they don't know how to handle this responsibility where they have to exert editorial judgment over these sort of very gray areas of what is what is a violation of their policies or not they have these policies and they're transparent about these policies but there's so much gray area in what is hate speech what is satire what is what is harassment what is that what is harassment and so because they're not transparent about how they adjudicate these decisions and why this thing deserves to get somebody kicked off but this thing doesn't it just leads to an overall impression that they don't know what they're doing yeah a lot of the moves have appeared to be very arbitrary in a way where you know he gets banned on Twitter for this one but he's made similar comments in previous posts where he talks about you know trying to shoot not him trying to shoot but like just he mentioned like a rifle and then former FBI director James Comey and no he didn't get banned for that one or anything like that but then like he does get banned for this one it does like bring about this whole feeling of they're really like the rules don't really matter and they're just doing whatever they want just seems kind of ad-hoc that's the impression that I get so it kind of wanted to pose this question of the both of you do you think that this episode this is probably the most optimistic view of this potentially but do you think this episode with Alex Jones will help these social sites improve their policies no I mean I think that it for one thing it's maybe like you could say it's kind of crossing a Rubicon like at a certain point even Twitter and Jack Dorsey which I think has called itself like the free speech wing of the internet or something to that effect you know when they even have to say like yeah we can't allow something like that to be present on our platform then maybe that's showing that they're willing to take responsibility for more of their content but it just it opens up a whole Pandora's box because their sites are so large there's their services are so huge and they've given a lot of free rein to a lot of people for so long it's messy yeah anyway like you know this goes back to what I was saying where you know it seemed really arbitrary for Alex Jones this doesn't just apply to him like there are a lot of times where I've seen a post get banned on Twitter or an account get banned on Twitter and the reasoning makes no sense at all whereas other posts where I'll see you're like oh that makes complete sense that like they should you know take this down but they don't there's like always all these screen shot accounts like hey that we found that this post from a Nazi like threatening to kill you did not violate our rules and then I see another account where they tweeted at frosted flakes and says like I'd like to have sex with Tony the Tiger and that's that account was banned so it's just like what is going on with like these rules how are you applying them in the doubt yeah okay I I do want to get to one other piece of lighter tech news while we still have time Alexa and Cortana's long-awaited collaboration is now live as an early access public preview you can now talk to Alexa with your Windows 10 laptop or queue up Cortana on an Ecco speaker I don't know if you guys are excited about this but obviously it's something that people can check out if they want to if they want to do that anyway if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Reuben from Johnny Salzmann I'm Alpha ring thanks for listening and apologies to everybody for all these smart speakers we queued at the end there yeah my bad by the way I ran out of time but I wanted to plug Meghan wallet ins a story about road trip so she wrote about the work to protect the rare Devil's Hole pupfish with the help of a lot of monitoring tech that's also on CNN so check out that story and yeah okay it's a four-minute podcast so sorry bear with me for minute podcast and now wants to take your questions and comments so go ahead and submit those in the chat we want to kind of reiterate again we don't want this to get political or heated I know it has a tendency and it's easy to get that way let's talk about where free speech does come to play how it plays in the social media world where it starts where it stops what rights does Twitter Twitter have what rights does mr. Jones have and let's try to keep it there we know we trust you guys you've been fantastic in the past just disclaimer on behalf so anyways yeah I mean related to that I'm sure a lot of fans of Alex Jones would call the censorship he's obviously been promoting that issue for a long time specifically with the bands from last week whether our deserters and censorship really depends like where you where you say right I mean ultimately it's not a First Amendment issue because those are not we don't have the rights to say whatever they want there is no right to saying whatever you want on Twitter it's not government controlled that's where the First Amendment starts and stops but we were talking about this before the podcast that because Facebook and Twitter and you know some of these other sites are so big and powerful you could to a certain extent make a First Amendment claim or at least you can't you can't make it for some yeah but you can't make the claim that it censorship because it's there's such powerful companies but it's not government-sponsored that they are such gatekeepers Joan you got to move your mic closer sorry but there's such gatekeepers to conversation that that's you can't sue them on a First Amendment grounds but you could make the case that it's still kind of censorship yeah we have a question here from Simon Chang asking what Alex Jones moved to VK or any other possible social media what are the platforms do you think yeah but my question is will he just start his own because he's got the resources he has info wars.com that's the like I mean like drags down it's a place where his followers can interact with them like be social there the other the other thing is too is that they are promoting already gab dot ai which like you know that was that was an attempt by a lot of folks on the right or the far right to create something that they thought was like a free speech social network so that's that's an area where a lot of folks go yeah I mean on the know ton of like free speech on social media though I mean like Joan said it's not like a government like problem or anything like that for them because they're private companies but you know the folks behind Twitter and Facebook and to a certain degree YouTube have this like very like I feel like ingrained like mentality of you know this is a place this is a open platform or anybody can express their feelings and we don't want to stifle any voices online what even though we disagree with them Jack Dorsey defended that last week on Twitter where he basically brings up all these points and says you know it's he can say these things that are awful and wrong and it's up we rely heavily on journalists to do that and like disprove him but there are many many cases of journalists like disproving like yeah I don't and I don't and yeah they it's not it doesn't care so like when this whole like marketplace of ideas things like blows up in your face like what are you really supposed to do at that point it is interesting that Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have both come out and very publicly said that it's okay to be misleading or have misinformation on their sites that is not a reason to be banned and that to me is a very clear indication that they do not want to make editorial decisions I mean when I'm statics Jones though obviously went too far and they decided that this is this is me other than we want to handle I agree with their point of you know it's okay to be wrong on a social network but they're applying that to like normal people you know they're applying that like if I post faith yeah yeah if I post that on my page and if it like some political view that I have and it's like completely wrong but it's like that's just like me like I can say that like within this circle or something and like you know it's not gonna be that much of a problem the fact that there is a verified account or like an account that has like millions of followers that's like posted you know with with a verified status with like marked or classified as like a news organization like saying stuff like this that's something that they could definitely control I guess in my books at least yeah alright anyway when I hear some more from the audience so do we have more questions Brian yeah yeah I'll get there in a sec I just want to say I'm actually impressed that the alfred's kind of a level-headed one this time you put it put it in there put in the calendars why would you be surprised by that because it's not smash so anyways that's uh take a comment from syringe oi what do we think about hash tag diac today that's been trending on Twitter as a step against jack by deactivating their accounts unless he takes down Alex Jones I mean I don't know if it's a direct result of but it might I don't know exactly how the hash tag got popularized but yesterday there was this widely spread post by somebody who works at Twitter who said that they that he was that he's been a user a daily user of Twitter for eight years a decade I can remember exactly what it was but been using Twitter daily for years works at Twitter but he's gonna take a sabbatical he's gonna stop he's gonna take it he's gonna delete it from his phone he's not gonna use it even though he works there because of these problems like that that he feels like the leadership of tweet Twitter as letting Twitter's leadership down by not being more proactive I don't know if that's directly linked it to the the hashtag that's trending but I think that definitely is probably the sentiment that's involved with with that part of the conversation yeah I mean I I don't think a protest like this will work I think it's like a small like circle of people that might be doing it but like if you deactivate your account on Twitter like how can you tell like most of like if you use Twitter I assume you get most of your news from Twitter or Facebook or anything like that so my point is like how are you gonna know if it's successful if okay I think the point is is that it's one of many like bricks on the wall yeah kind of put pressure on Dorsey and I think that to a certain extent it worked I mean like Alex Jones got suspended so it's obviously not a ban and it's very leaky in that Infowars like that twitter account isn't suspended at the same time even though it's like very directly linked to Alex Jones so I I think Facebook YouTube Spotify those guys last week all made the same calculation that they were like okay do we really want to is this the hill that we want to die on like do we really want to defend Alex Jones and like say that like we're not gonna censor people specifically for him he's a very very difficult I would say kind of kind of person to have as a rallying cry and say like we're not gonna make editorial decisions and here's a good reason why it's it's difficult to defend what exactly he does I mean like Sandy Hook is a perfect example of that I kind of feel like that's maybe more and I don't want to get too personal about this because we're supposed to stay as unbiased as possible but if anybody says something distasteful or outwardly and objectively and intentionally offensive just to stir the pot they should get their wrist slapped like if your kids screaming in the grocery store Facebook that's kind of the attitude I've kind of taken away from all of this personally and I that should go for everybody not just somebody whose beliefs I don't 100% agree with if you're being an ass you should get your ass slapped well not like don't laugh at me no I I I'm glad I'm not your kid I don't I don't want to deal with this but I mean the point that but I think it's not even like if you're doing something bad you deserve to have some sort of you know slap on the wrist or whatever it may be but even I don't I don't personally understand why these platforms don't hold higher standards as people have greater and greater influence on them like if there's a site if there's a page or an account that has millions of followers that should I feel like mean that they are held to a higher standard of you can't say these offhand things off the cuff quite as much I don't see but and that's would be one way to allow there to be a continuation of free discourse just not by the people that can use the free discourse in a bad faith way to poison other people's conversations yeah and I feel like Twitter does it it kind of gets to do it both ways yeah a little bit more now in that if somebody's like trolling you a lot of times they'll like hide the comments like if there if there are like responses to things like the algorithm will identify that like oh there's a group of friends talking and then somebody shows up and starts just like writing in troll comments or whatever those those comments will then get hidden but you can just click through and see them if you want to so that's that's kind of a way for Twitter to not editorialize too much but to also make the make discourse like a little bit more comfortable or a little bit safer I guess I mean to Joan's point though I I agree within in the sense that you know if somebody you don't have to editorialize to like take away somebody's like verification check or something like that would you yeah really doesn't matter but like to do that is like I feel like is a sign at least from a social network saying like yeah we don't like a proof of what's going on here but like we're letting it like happen anyway in the sense of yeah we're like okay so this is no longer a verified account that we're like pushing out to people or like signal signifying to people like we you should consider this a trusted source like I don't really care about like the the blue checkmark or anything like that but a lot of people who look at Twitter accounts do yeah since when they'll see something and like oh this account is verified that must mean it's like a legitimate source of news or something right so you know that's like a simple step that they can take and like ensure that they're not like verified they're like pages anymore or anything like that and Twitter said that they are gonna look into verifications it's not like yeah and they said it's not a top priority but it's obviously they've admitted it's a broken system and they realized that it is often viewed more as a seal of approval than just a way to verify that yes this is the person that is as it is so like yes this is Alex Jones is a counter Elon Musk's account as opposed to like a fake account which which if you're gonna look at it as face value that's what they claim they wanted to do with the verification checks but you can see like and this is where like I will grant them these decisions are super complicated like I could see a scenario where let's say you take the check mark off of Infowars then you don't then the whole panoply of site of accounts that pretend to be info wars that vein being info wars could spread even more noxious things and yeah people can understand like the one that has like 1.8 billion followers is the one but you know what I mean like I've been emboldened and provide more legitimacy to the ones that are pretending to be the crazy I completely agree with you I agree with you to jail are not they are not in an easy position at all but that's precisely why we're talking about it on the podcast so yeah they're not it's a it's a hard position to be in but they're also like incredibly wealthy people that make these decisions like they've beyond like in the scope of history people it's very rare that people have in like in enrich themselves quite as much as these people that run these platforms so like these are hard problems so when I say like I'll give them I'll cut them that slack it's a hard problem but like they should be dealing with hard problems that they're making as much money hmm you know yeah excellent points all around Joan I do agree with you too it's better to know where the obnoxious behavior is coming from I'm gonna have like a finger at it yes and we'll get to a couple more questions and Sanjay asks is ghosting an account okay or better than censoring this is a good question is that kind of like a shadow banning shadow banging or gonzo egg or whatever it's called Bo's owing yes right it's a lover people that these platforms can Paul I don't know what do you guys think I like I feel like it's one of those things you can look at you know like different sides of the mirror like is it is it good that they're taking a half-measure or is it bad that they're taking happens like it's classified I think I think it depends on the type of troll that you're dealing with so when Infowars had their account basically deleted from YouTube they set up another like YouTube account like right after and it was on their on their Facebook page they were they made a post that basically said you know YouTube is censoring us now and we are moving to another YouTube channel click on here for our like stream today while we like get set up or whatever so that was the results of a permanent like band that they knew about had they been ghosted or shadow band or whatever you want to call it then it would have taken much longer for them to figure that out like I guess the idea would just be like how come we're only getting like five views or like ten viewers like today as opposed to how much we usually get and then like you know the but the thing is like at that point they'll probably connect the dots and yes figure out and then make another account anyway yeah in a best-case scenario I think reddit it was apparently ghosting people that were trial they were doing that until like 2013 2012 and and the idea there and I don't know how effective it was obviously they're not doing it anymore but the idea was is that people would just you know post crap on Reddit and they would get no responses no yeah but that's votes whatever and and the argument is is that they just kind of get tired and you have this site but that's different though because it's like anonymous people that like don't have a massive following that would be wondering you know any time you're off screen hey where's poochy you know the idea is like oh that person like has like a large following so even if we shadow band them they would know like they're falling would be like you know still find them all stuff and if we banned them out completely then they're still going to be a big big like ruckus about it so shadow banning doesn't exactly work when the person you're doing it to has a large following to begin with I really like this conversation that's going on in the chat right now about accountability and standards our wallops says the verification check should mean more than just this is in fact the person that they are APEC asks wouldn't having separate rules for accounts with more followers be fair take YouTube and people with six million subs and people with a hundred is it fair for their rules to be in different classes sir enjoy says why isn't pro speech defendants so vocal save Facebook for going against Alec Jones and then Hunter Lee comes up with this fantastic idea that I think would be an interesting thing for us to look into Hunter Lee says maybe they should have a new way to mark an account different degrees of marks like with an X instead of a check mark to label them untrustworthy that's an interesting argument well the whole event gets to make yeah so they're very against like saying we'd like you shouldn't trust this source like even even on like the fact checkers that they put on Facebook those are those calls that like this is like deceptive news or this is misinformation the those calls are not made by Facebook they like rely on third party sources like the AP and nope yeah to do that for them because Facebook for a while has basically like we don't want to be the ones that are telling you what's true and what's not so like I think that like making a mark for a website that like provides like false information would not be like would not be something that they would do and on the first point about you know different sets of rules for if you have a verified account or like X amount of followers I mean I think that makes sense I think like you know when you are verified or when you have like an account with like you know at you know millions of subscribers you enjoy a different set of benefits that like a normal user wouldn't have like I believe on YouTube like you're allowed to monetize your stuff like almost immediately after you have like X amount of subscribers which they changed recently so like normal like random channels just couldn't monetize stuff so I think that if you enjoy certain benefits from it then you should also have to adhere to a different set of rules from like being a bigger name it's a good point yeah yeah and and just on YouTube for example just to be clear if you do have access to being able to monetize your videos you are held to different standards of appropriateness instead of being called to like the YouTube Terms of Service can't like curse right you're held together friendly yes so there are higher standards but but but that's not to say that you could have one video that fits those appetite of standards and still be at Alex Jones you know what I mean you could still have like tons of things you don't monetize that are in violation of the basic community standards but you know now he's been kicked off so so these thing went that far Christian says if the major social media platforms censor everything then there will be a social media for those who have don't want to be censored that's an inevitability here's another really interesting thought from Christian as well what if Twitter lets you know that they're going to censor your post before you upload it using some form of AI what if there was some kind of automated film for that AI to exist it would have to know what you're typing before you even publish it and that's I mean it had a meat-based invasive it has to be based on keywords right we're talking about slippery slope we may be like that is more thought policing they just suspending or banding they also do that in comment sections though like on certain websites like New York Times does it too or like if you try to like type in the f-word or anything like that they'll like tell you basically you know like it's so easy to get angry yeah yeah it is which is why I don't think it should be based on keywords or anything like that that being said that I think is really weird if a website had a policy like that of you know what we're gonna take this post down before you even post it just so you know like kind of things like our a I spotted some you know negative things in here it does seem clear to me though that that these sites are gonna have to make more editorial decisions than they are right now because they're trying to avoid it as much as possible so if five to ten years from now Facebook Twitter have like editorial teams that actually monitor this kind of stuff from that perspective I guess I wouldn't be that surprised by that they obviously have a lot of moderate I'm ready to get rid of you know crap and troll comments nudity a lot of those things that are some more often than not easier to just say like oh okay that's nudity we'll get rid of it as opposed to something like harrassment or hate speech which can fit into gray areas and remember everybody just as a public service announcement and thank you to Greg there's always a block button syringe oi does bring up that there there's a very good segregation of verified marks for articles on Wikipedia they have different colored stars padlocks and a whole host of marks not Twitter could take note from that I I completely forgot about that feature in Wikipedia that there's different grades of authenticity to an article like if it's been heavily edited by third party users rather than actually cited from source that you have to take like it's like a grain of salt reading I think that'd be an interesting thing to see implemented across a lot of different media platforms yeah somehow Wikipedia has done a really good job of avoiding like putting itself in this internet mud pit that we're all in now where you know I mean yeah it is also you know an incredibly rich target like if somebody wanted to spread misinformation I would imagine that Wikipedia is a good place to do it it's been yeah people have tried to gain Wikipedia for years yeah I think they have a lot of experience trying to exact out in certain pages yeah I imagine the Presidents Wikipedia page is something that gets targeted a lot and and I know that like Yelp has started doing something like this to where like anytime there's something controversial in the news involving a business like that place will be like bombarded with like negative reviews at all like out of thin air but like Yelp has started doing stuff now or like they'll lock a page if it's like been in the headlines lately because they know people will swarm it to like like ruin its ratings or anything like that all right so that's I guess that's proof that there are controls that can be made to improve things but at this point especially this year it does feel like more of like a dumpster fire at Facebook and Twitter and well I think the thing is like when you're that big you have to be a lot more careful and considerate of like what your moves are when you're like Yelp is kind of let me like Yelp is a big website but I think out of them it's like they can make these moves without like making any kind of waves cause like people won't like scrutinize that or try to figure out like oh how can I get around this or anything like that with Facebook and Twitter they you know they're so big that like they have to be nimble about everything they do less they you know end up like crushing a few things like by accident because of like the changes that they've made so do you think that something maybe along the lines of the rating system for like movies and TV would be kind of helpful like what is appropriate rating people no no no no rating content rating channel rating one major concern is like impression ability of a user if younger users are getting inundated with conspiracy theories how long until they just kind of fall down that rabbit hole themselves maybe that's that's hard to do online though like especially like I guess it's different from movies and TV shows but like if you're going with like we're gonna rate like info Wars versus rating like seeing that or something like that like an organization like that could always just ask all its viewers and like rabid fans who like well I mean we gauge something Facebook is doing this right now they did their trust survey and they're continually doing these trust stories where they ask their users just those two questions are you familiar with this outlet and how much do you trust it and what they do is in order to eliminate those like bipolar elements of how boil tea they eliminate the like factions at either end so they only listen to people's and this is a simplification of it but they only really factor in people that aren't on the two poles of oil tea either like I don't trust CNN at all or I think Infowars is the best thing ever you know like those people aren't counted in Facebook's rankings but Facebook's rankings aren't transparent they don't share yeah primaries that's my primary problem with all of this is is that none of this really seems transparent they say what the policies are by the way that they are laid out and actually met it out in different like it seems completely I don't know oftentimes nonsensical it still doesn't make it I'm not personally trying to get in were suspended but it doesn't make sense to me that you would suspend Alex Jones's account but not Infowars account at the same time they're like one and the same and Alex Jones is just posting stuff on the info wars site it gives me the impression that all you have to do you have to specifically say something bad on that one account or else it's not really like it doesn't make it difference so the argument could be that Alex Jones could create 24 different accounts to post things like willy nilly on all of them and then prevent bands that way I like this comment from Alex Mitchell that just came in the problem the Internet is it's trying to be a good parent because parents don't want to do it themselves as the difference between making things civil and making a child safe bring back parenting on that note I myself I'm just kind of becoming disenchanted with the whole grassroot things and farming out to the audience to get the feedback and it's just it's it's a cesspool guys accepted only questions except for our chat room but yeah I don't know I don't know I'm getting dangerously more and more in favor of having like what's the msrb rating board for the internet geez I know I know I hate that I just said that out loud but at the same time I hate what's happening in content right now except for the show except for this show that's the problem is that except for whatever you know like everybody everybody likes their thing and you know you know let me push my own conspiracy theories on this show and it's awful yeah so breakfast is a scam that's that as dr. Robotnik did nothing wrong yeah Wow way to bring it down Ben this entire show was your fault okay yeah I don't know what I just said but yeah I'll take the blame for it that's fine that's what good parents do is that take responsibility can we have something lighter tomorrow to talk about yes any questions about Alexa and Cortana being on the same device election what shoehorn that one in at the anyway I kind of have to go yeah we're out of time but good discussion and thanks everybody for keeping a level head the Internet as I said is a horrible horrible place filled with trolls and rotten comments so it's nice to have a civil discussion that's some good think about big breakfast industry okay like nobody really wants to eat cereal in the morning that's not so hungry right now okay cereal is not a good meal all right like cereal they really needed to sell it on are we done are we still on air I think we're still on air either way the brush can't silence me okay the breakfast is delicious counsel podcast is available on iTunes tune and stitcher Feedburner google play music google podcasts the amazon echo and of course cnet.com thanks everybody for sending your questions really appreciated the show today thanks both of you for being here thank you think about how good eggs are why do you only have to eat eggs in the morning they can have eggs multiple names you're gonna have two guys Mike you