Tech News Weekly 357 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. Dan Moren joins me as co-host this week. We start by talking about Apple and Amazon working together to strike a deal. Apple TV Plus is now available through Prime Video. Interesting and a little confusing, but we do our best to explain. After that we talk about how the Internet Archive has been hacked. Are you one of the people who's been pwned? I am, and while that was going on, apparently there were a couple of DDoS attacks as well. It's ridiculous. Then Leah Nylen, an antitrust reporter at Bloomberg, joins us to talk about something that is absolutely historical Google's antitrust case and where things stand with the ruling and the DOJ's suggestions about a breakup. After that, Will Oremus of the Washington Post talks about a recent report that looks at the spread of misinformation, disinformation and anti-Semitism on X in the wake of Hurricane Helene. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly.

0:01:18 - Mikah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly with Dan Moren and me, Mikah Sargent, episode 357, recorded Thursday, October 10th 2024. Internet Archive Jacked. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am one of your hosts, Mikah Sargent, and this week, where I would normally be joined by Amanda Silberling, I am not joined by Amanda Silberling, but am instead, by the way, Amanda's fine, I am instead joined by Dan Moren. How you doing, dan?

0:01:54 - Dan Moren
I am also fine, Micah. Thank you for asking. I know everybody out there was concerned.

0:01:59 - Mikah Sargent
I'm glad that you're fine. I'm glad that you're here For folks who are tuning in for the first time or who just need a little reminder. The way we kick off Tech News Weekly every week is by talking about some stories of the week. Each of us hosts brings a story of the week to the table and, because I am polite, I let my co-host go first, so, without further ado, I was hoping, dan, you could tell us about your story of the week.

0:02:27 - Dan Moren
I'm so delighted because it is the most important story ever in the history of technology in the world. This is, of course, the news that you will now be able to subscribe to Apple TV Plus via Prime Video. And if your head sort of is going, wait, what Like? I understand, I understand. I understand where you're coming from. It seems confusing. I get one video service through another video service. Aren't Apple and Amazon rivals? Why, what's going on here? Yeah, I mean, all of that is true. I think what is clear from this deal, which is basically you will be able to go into your Prime Video app, on whatever platform you're on, and subscribe through there to Apple TV Plus. Much as you might subscribe now to say, I don't know, max or Disney Plus or Hulu, any of these other services that often appear as sort of channels, you will now be able to do that with Apple TV Plus as well. As far as these two companies being rivals yeah, they absolutely are right. Prime Video Apple TV Plus as well. As far as these two companies being rivals yeah, they absolutely are right Prime Video Apple TV Plus are arguably competitors in this space. However, if you happen to be an Apple platform user and have gone to the TV app on your Apple TV or your iPad or your Mac or whatever, you've probably noticed that you can actually, I believe, get Prime Video there as well. So the answer is all these services have a vested interest in getting as many subscribers on board as possible, and we call that services revenue, which is the name of the game right now.

Apple, in particular, is really excited about services revenue. Why? A couple of reasons. One, it's recurring. Right, that's a huge benefit to all these companies. You buy an iPhone. You buy an iPhone once. That's great, but you don't buy an iPhone for another several years. Apple doesn't get any more money off you. However, you sign up for Apple TV Plus and you pay $10 a month, and every month, apple is getting $10, which is pretty good, and you have to go through an extra rigmarole if you want to cancel or change your plan or whatever. So that is to the good.

Even more to the point, though, is this issue of margins for these companies. Right? You buy a phone from Apple and you may pay $700,000, $800,000, $900,000, but it costs money for Apple to build that phone, right? Apple is paying for literally all the parts that go into that, plus the assembly, the packaging, the transporting, the marketing, all of those things and they add up, apple's average margin on hardware is somewhere in the vicinity of 30%, which is not bad, but it's 30% out of a big pie. If someone offers you a pie and you're like, I'll take 30% of the pie, that's good, but it's not as good as more pie.

This is a technology podcast in which we talk about pie, but on the other hand, their services margin is closer to 70%. So every time you give Apple $10, it gets $7 to just put in its pocket, which is to say it's not like it doesn't cost money, right? Obviously, not only building the infrastructure for these things the apps, the servers but also actually filming and producing these shows and paying big stars like George Clooney and Brad Pitt or Jason Sudeikis over on Ted Lasso that all costs money, for sure, but the amount of money that it costs on a recurring basis, on the ability for them to deliver that to you, is much cheaper than it is for them to buy you a phone. They're not hand assembling this program for each and every one person who's subscribed. So those two factors combined the fact that it's a much larger degree of profit and it is recurring revenue. That is something that is coming in constantly and can kind of help even out the streams when you don't buy, or Micah doesn't buy, an iPhone.

This year, somebody's got to make up for Micah not buying an iPhone. So, yeah, I think both of those things are big explanations for why you see Apple making a lot of these deals with partners, and its goal is to have Apple TV Plus in as many places as possible so that you, the potential Apple TV Plus watcher, never have to worry about where you go to sign up. You don't have to worry about do I need an Apple TV? Do I need an Apple device? It doesn't matter. It's on any and every platform that you can get access to. It pays them to be everywhere.

0:06:38 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I think Apple will have some work to do in terms of making that clear to the lay person. I know that I have had, you know, anecdotally instances where I'm talking about hey, you can watch this on Apple TV, and they think that you have to have the actual hardware device because Apple TV you know, I'm shortening it to just Apple TV, I should say Apple TV plus, but then they might think that that's a, uh, like the iPhone plus, it's just a bigger Apple TV. What's going?

0:07:11 - Dan Moren
on here. It's very simple, Mikah. You watch the Apple TV in the TV plus app on your Apple TV. You watch Apple TV plus. I don't see what's so complicated. No, apple, Apple for all its vaunted branding prowess. You're right. It is a big mess when it comes to trying to explain that.

0:07:27 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and so I think that the company in making these deals you know TCL, for example has an Apple TV Plus app on its TCL televisions that you can subscribe to it through that or you can log into it through that televisions. That you can subscribe to it through that or you can log into it through that. You see it across a bunch of different smart TVs Now at this point, several set-top boxes, and so I think where Apple has a little bit of work to do, arguably, is in separating the history of the company, of being such a tie between its hardware and its software and thereby making it feel like, oh, I can't watch Severance unless I have an Apple TV. And, of course, apple will claim that you know, the best experience that you're going to get for watching Severance is through the Apple TV, so you should get an Apple TV. But it is there are parts of it that I'm excited about for more people to be able to watch the Apple TV Plus shows that are out there and get to. I guess. Talk to them about that.

But I think, yeah, there's some work to be done here, and I think the most interesting aspect of this is, yes, amazon and Apple. You know, in the past we saw the sort of reintroduction, I guess, of Apple devices to Amazon's website available for sale, some of them and that was an interesting moment where the two companies said, okay, we can kind of cooperate. And then I believe the Apple TV app eventually started being able to and by that I mean not Apple TV Plus, all right, yep, work on it, figure it out. The Apple TV app called TV on the Apple TV, where you can look at upcoming content or stuff that you've watched before and kind of keep track of what's in your queue, what you've already watched. For a while Prime Video didn't work there and that was kind of a frustrating thing. Netflix, for example, still doesn't work there.

0:09:32 - Dan Moren
Yeah, still doesn't yep.

0:09:34 - Mikah Sargent
Which is foolish and annoying, but that's on the side. So it is interesting seeing Amazon and Apple play ball in this space, and it makes me, because the only thing that was missing here was Apple's service being available via Amazon, and so you wonder what the exchange is here. I guess because Prime's been available on Apple TV.

0:10:04 - Dan Moren
I think it helps everybody to a certain degree. Right, it is good for Apple because it means they are in more places. Right, I think that ultimately, they can't afford to be precious about this in a way. Right, amazon is such a large player in this market that Apple cannot wall off that entire opportunity and say like, oh well, we know there's a lot of people who maybe just subscribe to Prime Video or whatever and we don't want them as customers. No, you can't afford to be in that market.

And Prime, for its part, amazon, for its part, wants to promote the same idea of access to all the content that's available. And I don't think they can be in a position either to say, hey, look at all this great content, don't worry about that content over there that you can't get. I think it really is a rising tide lifts all boats thing here, because you think about not only the TV content that Apple is bringing in terms of, like scripted shows, but they have sports access now as well. Right, like they have Major League Soccer, they have some Major League Baseball games. Those are big deals. And if that's sort of again, if you're walling that off because you have a feud with Amazon or they're your competitors. I think at the end of the day, that's just not a smart business move.

0:11:19 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and Anthony Nielsen in the Club Twit Discord has pointed out there are reports that Apple TV Plus and stick with me here, not confusion about the name this time, but Apple TV Plus gets fewer views per month of its content than Netflix does in a single day. Yeah, so that's according to Bloomberg.

0:11:42 - Dan Moren
Thank you, Henry, right, yeah, apple's numbers are not great for viewership. They are one of the smaller services, for sure, and Apple spent a lot of money on content and would surely like that to pay off more, and that's going to mean more subscribers. Absolutely.

0:11:55 - Mikah Sargent
And I like. So I personally like, as an Apple TV user, I like the Apple TV channels feature. And for people who are like, what is that? This is Apple's own kind of marketplace of third party content buckets and services.

Yeah, services. You can subscribe to Paramount Plus, you can subscribe to a bunch of other options, and what's great about it is you know that it's well integrated with your Apple TV, if you have one of those, and that you know the up next stuff is going to work, but also that the subscriptions are all available as part of your Apple subscription, so you're able to kind of keep track of those. So if someone is not an Apple user and instead, you know, is an Android user, who, it's my understanding, a lot of Android users kind of look to Amazon as one of the options for the stuff that they do not just to Google. It is helpful to have one place where all of your media content is coming through. It is helpful to have one place where all of your media content is coming through. And you know, I don't want to fail to mention that Amazon Prime has some good deals at times for subscriptions.

There have been times where I've been wanting to watch a show or typically it's a movie or something like that, a title and I, you know, search for it.

It comes up in Prime Video and then I'm able to, you know, subscribe for a month for $2.99 or something. So that idea of having one place, that kind of houses, all of these different content buckets, these services, is, uh, is nice, and if you're not already doing it within Apple, but you want to be able to watch the Great Pumpkin, charlie Brown and all of the other stuff that Apple makes available through Apple TV Plus, then I think that's good. And yeah, as you point out, ultimately this is both of the companies getting what is needed out of the deal. I guess you know my last sort of question here and I'm just throwing this at you suddenly, so apologies for that, but do you think that Apple TV Plus is there's a glaring place, that it's missing, or was Prime Video kind of the one remainder, because I can't think of any other big places that you would go that it's not already available?

0:14:28 - Dan Moren
Right, I mean, and it's tricky too, because there's definitely the other sort of thing that's confusing here is there's the layer of within the video service versus on the platform, right, for example, like being able to subscribe to channels.

You mentioned Paramount Plus right In the Apple TV app and the convenience of it, but you could also always download the Paramount app on Apple TV and subscribe directly through that too. So you know, I think this is more a example of Apple trying to cover literally every base it possibly can, and I can understand why this was maybe one of the later ones that they came to, because I think, if there is some money changing hands here, it may be something like Amazon taking a cut of those subscriptions, which is something historically, apple would really not want them to do. Maybe they worked it out and there's a different deal, we don't know, but I think to me it says the fact that we finally come to this big player that's such a huge counterweight to Apple in a lot of markets tells me that they really have like well, we've tried everything else, and if this is our last sort of major holdout, we might as well give that a go.

0:15:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, absolutely. All right, folks, we need to take a quick break before we come back with even more here on this episode of Tech News Weekly.

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All righty, we are back from the break, and that means it is time for my story of the week. I received an email from a very delightful service I use called have I Been Pwned, and it was letting me know that I had indeed been pwned. If you are not familiar with the have I Been Pwned service, it is a service that basically combs through the internet and finds different data breaches, looks at those data breaches, looks at the data that's made available, finds the contact information that you have made available to the service typically email and then lets you know via email that you are included in this data breach, that your data has been released somewhere online and you can actually go to the have I Been Pwned website and type in your email address and see the number of websites or services that have been pwned in the past and your data has been made available there. So I get an email from them. I know, oh great, here's another one that's involved. And I thought I always think okay, you know I'm not too concerned because I do use a password manager, so it's probably just the password for this site and the site alone. I'll be able to change it, that kind of thing. Well, I saw it was the Internet Archive, which is responsible for the Wayback Machine. For people who are more familiar with that terminology, and the Internet Archive is an organization that aims to archive the Internet, to keep the history of the Internet, and the Wayback Machine is a tool you can use to look at cached versions of websites. So, as websites change over time, if you're looking for a previous version of that content, you can pop in a URL and see if it had been cached, aka kind of archived stored in a previous version so you can view it. And the first thing I thought was wait, I have an Internet Archive account Because I'm just used to going to the Wayback machine and typing something in, so I didn't even know that I could create an account, to be honest with you. But then I looked at my 1Password and, yes, I did indeed have an Internet Archive account. Well, here's the deal Shortly after I got that email, I started to see news about Internet Archive and it turns out that 31 million unique records were taken from the site.

And so this database, this user authentication database this is according to bleeping computers. Lawrence Abrams included names, email addresses, password change, timestamps so you could see when the password had been changed over time, and then hashed passwords, plus some other kind of internal data for the organization Internet Archive, or rather Bleeping Computer was reached out to by and I'm sorry for that passive voice there was reached out to by and I'm sorry for that passive voice there by a security researcher who did confirm yes, this was my internet archive account. Yes, this was my password. Yes, it's hashed here and it does show up. But here's the thing Along with this breach that exposed the data of 31 million users, there was also at the same time well, I shouldn't say at the same time, in the same span of time a distributed denial of service attack, a DDoS attack, distributed denial of service attack, a DDoS attack.

And this was done by a group, or it was claimed to have been done by a group, called the Black Meta Hacktivist Group, who said, and I quote the Internet Archive has and is suffering from a devastating attack. We have been launching several highly successful attacks for five long hours and, to this moment, all their systems are completely down. They were able to briefly bring the site back up long enough to disable the JavaScript library that was responsible for. When you went to the Internet Archive website, a prompt popping up that said, and I quote have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach. It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP. Hibp, of course, is have I been pwned? So the JavaScript library was disabled and there was also kind of an.

They apparently did more with security. They said we upgraded security, but unfortunately another DDoS attack happened right afterward, and so now if you go to archiveorg, at least as of this morning, it is just displaying a web page that says temporarily offline. Internet Archive Services are temporarily offline. Please check our Twitter feed interesting for the latest information. We apologize for the inconvenience. So the site is not currently up and, as far as we know, there's no connection between the DDoS attack that's going on and the data that has been exfiltrated from the group or from the organization.

I just we don't know why they're doing a DDoS attack, and it's so weird to me that they're doing a DDoS attack against a group that exists for the sole purpose of betterment of the internet and the widespread of free and open data. It's all very confusing and it's interesting to see two separate things that are allegedly reportedly not connected happening at the same time. It's all happening against the Internet Archive, I guess I'm curious, dan, yeah, when you saw this, were you concerned? Was this one of the places where, if you did have an account, you were using one of those old passwords that you use across a bunch of different sites that aren't as important? Or were you okay? How was your experience? You know, honestly, a bunch of different sites that aren't as important. Or were you okay? How was your?

0:23:27 - Dan Moren
experience. You know, honestly, I was checking to see it's like I still don't know if I have an account or not. I've certainly used the Internet Archive, I have used the Wayback Machine for many, many years, but I don't recall ever having made an account and I either didn't get a notification or it went to, you know, a spam filter that I didn't actually catch at some point. Um, I will say a couple of things about the internet archive, one, you know, like many institutions kind of of its type it is, um, I think they have struggled to keep up with the tenants of their mission, in the sense that they are clearly something that does not have wealth unlimited, resources unlimited, and perhaps then does not have the ability to hire the kind of people that they need in order to keep everything being run in that order, so that I don't know.

There are some choices that they have made in recent years that I have not been as big a fan of.

For example, their decision to start the lending library that they started a while back, which, during the pandemic, then they opened up, kind of unlimited, and now they've been sued by a bunch of different publishers, and I find myself thinking like I understand why you felt that you needed to go down that path as the Internet Archive. But I will point out, those things are not on the Internet. Maybe you should have stuck the Internet stuff Just because it feels like a dilution of the mission and thus is something that draws more resources from it. And by essentially putting themselves in a situation to have legal action taken against them, they have risked their long-term longevity of these other important tasks that they do and I think their intentions are very good overall and I have no qualm with that. I think some of their execution has been tricky and I wonder if some of this has set them up for people targeting them or them, you know, them finding themselves in the crosshairs because people are upset about decisions that have made related to them or not. But you know, I don't know.

0:25:33 - Mikah Sargent
You're telling me that a coalition of book writers gathered together and paid I am not saying that.

0:25:40 - Dan Moren
I am most specifically not saying that I have no proof, but I think it is an issue where you have cases where going from being something that was kind of a perhaps little known or a site that didn't garner a lot of attention, to something that is much more public, and finding itself with a lot of publicity about it, a lot of stories about it, just raises the profile of it as an attack target, and that's not necessarily, again, it's not their fault. In the same way that we saw increases in malware on Apple platforms when Apple platforms became more popular, because it was just a bigger, more lucrative target to attack. So I wonder if, by having the Internet Archive become a more prominent thing, that more people were aware of people who get their ya-ya's out by attacking sites, taking down sites, hacking into sites, decided oh, this is a prominent target and I'll get a lot of attention if I attack this target. And it may be a target that, as it turns out, was not as well secured right. This target and it may be a target that, as it turns out, was not as well secured right.

If your comparison is oh, I could hack into the FBI because that'll really make my name. Well, the FBI is going to get annoyed if you do that and they have the resources to track you down. The inner archive unfortunately probably does not have the resources to go after you if you hack into their site, so I think it's unfortunate. I also saw a story related to this in which I gather they had a the archive had a quote unquote glitch earlier this year that resulted in the deletion of a lot of accounts and some people tried to get basically get in touch with them to get more details about that, and they never responded which is also not a good look slash.

Maybe they're just overwhelmed, maybe they're overworked, maybe they don't have enough resources All of these things can be true. So, at the end of the day, my feeling is the Internet Archive is an extremely valuable resource. We should protect it as so much as we can. But it is also challenging, because we live in a world where people don't necessarily want to pay the money or support the causes that are valuable, because they just don we can't discount the very loud, very well-known voices that regularly encourage the dislike and more of journalists and the media.

0:28:26 - Mikah Sargent
And this is a tool that is used by, especially tech and surrounding area journalists all day, every day, and the idea that not only is their data exposed, but also the tool that they use regularly is unavailable to them. Sure, I wonder if that could be a motivation as well. Again, this is speculation as much as my joke about book writers, authors, you know, gathering together.

0:28:54 - Dan Moren
I'm also going to tell you that book writers don't have enough money to hire.

0:28:57 - Mikah Sargent
No, you can't pay whatever. It was called black whatever.

0:29:03 - Dan Moren
Black meta yeah. Black meta yeah. We don't have the money for that, I'm sorry.

0:29:09 - Mikah Sargent
Well, dan, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join me today on Tech News Weekly. Of course, folks can head over to sixcolorscom to check out the stuff you're writing on the reg, but where else should they go to keep up with what you're doing and to get your books?

0:29:27 - Dan Moren
My books that are in no way funding any sort of illicit activity. You can find me on pretty much every social media platform blue sky threads, mastodon at the Moren in some variety or another. Also, my website is dmorincom helpful to remember. D M O-M-O-R-E-N, which has all of the information about my podcast, including Clockwise, which I host with Micah every week, a bunch of other shows and my science fiction novels, the most recent of which is the Armageddon Protocol, which came out just a couple weeks ago and you can find at fine bookstores everywhere. Awesome.

0:29:58 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you Dan.

0:29:59 - Dan Moren
Thanks, Micah.

0:30:05 - Mikah Sargent
Alrighty, we're going to take another quick break before we come back with an interview about where things stand in the Google antitrust case.

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0:34:02 - Leah Nylen
Thanks for having me.

0:34:04 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, it's a pleasure to have you here. So let's just kick things off with a big question. Can you help us, can you explain the significance of the DOJ considering a breakup of Google? How does this compare to past antitrust actions against tech companies? And, you know, is this novel, or have we seen something like this before?

0:34:23 - Leah Nylen
And you know is this novel or have we seen something like this before? Yeah, so this is a pretty historic recommendation. The Justice Department hasn't recommended breaking up a tech company since Microsoft, which happened 25 years ago, and the US hasn't actually broken up a company since 1984, when they did it with AT&T. So this would be something that hasn't happened in 40 years, if it actually does go through.

0:34:46 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, okay, yeah, that is huge. That is huge, I'm sure, for you. Actually, I want to ask you, as an antitrust reporter, were you waiting with a bated breath, just wondering what was going to happen next? How did? How was that experience for you in hearing about a breakup? Was it kind of like you know, sound the alarms, light the lantern, something wild is happening? What was that like?

0:35:14 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, it was pretty fun actually, you know, because we're the antitrust nerds, where there are very few of us but we're mighty and but this is like a historic event for us, as I said. You know, this hasn't happened in my lifetime, so it's sort of like a once-in-a-lifetime event, especially, you know, because they haven't done it in so long. As I said, they tried with Microsoft and they ended up eventually accepting a settlement that didn't require a breakup. So, you know, we haven't seen this in a very long time.

0:35:44 - Mikah Sargent
Wow. So in the article you talk about how there are multiple potential remedies rather than going the way of a breakup like couples counseling. What are some of the other options that the DOJ is considering and how would those impact Google's business versus something like an actual breakup of the company?

0:36:06 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, so the Justice Department's filing. They described it as sort of like a menu of options that they're giving the judge, who will ultimately make the decision as to what to do. So the breakup is sort of like the on the one side, the most extreme. In the middle we have another one that they had recommended, and that would be to require Google to sort of share its index, which means sharing all of the data that it collects on the internet to help make its search results and also help make some of its AI products, and the Justice Department says that they think that is a good option because it would help rival search engines. It would also help, you know, small companies that are trying to get started in the AI business, because you know, one of the big things that hampers folks is getting access to the data to build the models, and this would sort of help with that.

And then they had a couple more options that were more minor. Of course, those are the ones that Google has said that they really like, and that's just to sort of unwind a couple of these contracts that they had with other companies, like they were paying Apple and Samsung and some other companies billions of dollars a year to make Google search the default on web browsers and phones, on web browsers and phones. And so Google says, you know, we can just get rid of that requirement and sort of move from there. The Justice Department doesn't just want to do that because they say you know that was the illegal conduct, we're going to get rid of that. But we also need to do something to sort of remedy what has allowed Google to maintain or to gain its dominance and then maintain it over the years.

0:37:40 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, yeah, this is interesting that there are the years. Okay, yeah, this is interesting that there are several different options here, but that there's. It's cool, I guess, to see that it's not just about where we've seen kind of, I feel, rulings. In the past it's been about slaps on the wrist or bigger slaps on the wrist, I don't know what you would call those, but breaks of the wrist, I guess. But this is about not just sort of, you know, making a company behave by threatening it with something, but about actually getting at the root of something and pulling it apart, figuring out what needs to change so that it doesn't continue to happen or happen again. And you did write that Judge Mehta ruled Google broke antitrust laws in online search and search text ads markets. Can you kind of talk about the key issues in those findings in particular?

0:38:36 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, so search everyone knows what search is. You go to the thing you type in your thing. It gives you the results. The search text ads are the ones that sort of appear at the top of the page. Advertisers pay billions of dollars a year for those advertisements, and Judge Mehta found that Google has sort of carte blanche to over how much it charges those advertisers because they really feel that there's no other option.

You know, when you go to a search engine, you are oftentimes looking for information. You might be looking for information about a specific purchase, so advertisers really want to get in front of you right then, because you are thinking about buying something and there's really, in their view, sort of no substitute for these advertisements and that you know this is actually Google's core business. This is where it makes two-thirds of the money that fund the company. So the Justice Department was pretty happy with the finding that not only had they monopolized search, they had monopolized these ads, because if you want to change a company's business, you really do need to get at where it's getting its money from, and so some of the suggestions that they made in this also do relate to the advertising market.

They made some specific recommendations there, such as giving advertisers a lot more information about where it is that their ads are actually appearing. When advertisers go and buy stuff from Google, google doesn't actually give them like a detailed list of you appeared in this many searches and like this is what people were searching for. Searching for, they give them like sort of an overview of where they were spending the money. But the Justice Department said you really should be like giving people a receipt like we appeared in this many searches and things like that, and allow them more controls over which ads they appear in and which they don't. So there are some proposals in there that would get towards this side of the market as well.

0:40:27 - Mikah Sargent
Interesting. Now, this isn't Google's only set of ongoing issues when it comes to anti-trust actions. So tell us about kind of the other stuff that's going on With your experience. Do you think this is going to have an impact on those other cases, like the one it has with Epic Games and the display ads case? That's a completely separate thing.

0:40:50 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, so in the US there are the three sort of big cases. The one is this one that's focused on search. The second one is the one that you mentioned involving Epic Games and a bunch of state attorneys general who also sued over related things, and that one involves Google's Play Store. In that case, a jury found that Google was illegally monopolizing the market for Android apps because it had been paying manufacturers to ensure that Google Play was the only store that was pre-installed on devices. And then they were also paying a lot of major developers to ensure that they would only debut really important games in the Play Store as opposed to other places, and they were paying again billions of dollars to various companies for this privilege. This is a smaller side of Google's business. It's only $14 billion a year. It's sort of funny when you say only and it's still that large amount of money.

So in that case, the judge has already made his ruling. He has now forbidden Google from entering into these kinds of deals for the next three years, and he's also ruled that Google has to allow third-party app stores to be downloaded through Google Play. So sometime in the near future you may be able to download other app stores within Google Play onto your Android device to make it easier for you to get apps without going through Google Play's billing, so you might be able to start paying for things using things like Square or PayPal, so that they don't have to. The merchant then doesn't have to pay the 30% fee that Google charges them to use the Google Play billing services. So Google has already said it's gonna appeal that one. That one is largely done.

The other one that we mentioned involves ad tech. So ad tech is this sort of complicated technology that you as a consumer never see, but it helps buy, sell and serve all of the display ads that you see across the web. So those are, like you know, the banner ads that you see when you're reading a news or a blog or a sports site. Google has also, according to the Justice Department, monopolized the market for that kind of technology through a series of acquisitions and conduct over the years. That case just had a three-week trial that wrapped up two weeks ago. It's going to have closing arguments in November and then the judge said that she will rule before the end of the year. That's another one where the Justice Department has actually explicitly said that they want to break up. So if they win, they have said that they think that Google should be required to sell off some of the tools that it has bought and owns that relate to online display ads.

0:43:33 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, Now in it you note that, as you would imagine, Google does plan to appeal once everything's kind of figured out. Google's like look, we're already ready. So, based on your reporting, what do you think this is going to look like timeline-wise? Will it be reminiscent of what we saw with Microsoft? Do you think it's going to be a whole new ballgame? Is there a shift, kind of in the overall way that the justice system looks at big tech companies? What's your crystal ball here?

0:44:12 - Leah Nylen
So the appeals process, as I said, it's starting now in Epic. It won't start in the Google process until the remedy is imposed which the judge says he's going to impose a remedy by next August. So that's sort of our timeline for when this search case will be done and then that appeal starts. Appeals generally take anywhere from one to two years Depends on how busy that court is at that point in time. And then you know there's always the possibility of a Supreme Court appeal.

But the Supreme Court really doesn't take antitrust cases very often. They didn't take the Microsoft case. You know they don't take these very often because they're boring from their point of view. So you know it could go to the Supreme Court or it could just go back. So you know Google has to wait to the end of the whole process, both the liability and the remedies phase, and then it gets to appeal. It is going to, of course, ask that it not be required to do anything while that appeal is pending. The Justice Department is probably going to oppose that and say well, you should at least have to make a couple changes while that is pending, in particular in the search case, because some of these changes have already started taking place in Europe. So they feel that you know, in their view, you're already doing it elsewhere. You might as well start doing it here. So we'll sort of see. Google has been emphasizing that we're still years away from a resolution, but we're probably more like two to two and a half years out.

0:45:36 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. And then one more kind of crystal ball question here, and really every time I bring up a question like this there's a little bit of understandable hedging involved. But it's an honor to get to talk to people who are very versed in the work that they do specifically, and so more. I'm asking from your perspective as an antitrust reporter, as someone who focuses on this stuff regularly, given the complexity of Google's business, what challenges do you foresee in implementing a potential breakup or other structural changes to the company if one of these other remedies plays out and the appeals process doesn't work out in Google's favor?

0:46:23 - Leah Nylen
and the appeals process doesn't work out in Google's favor. Yeah, I mean, Google has already actually started talking about some of the things that it thinks would be sort of technical challenges if it would be required to be broken up, For example, Android and all of the App Store and stuff. These are like software but they run on Google's machines, so if it's required to divest it, you're going to need somebody else who has a lot of servers that can devote to this, and there actually aren't that many other companies in the world that have the sort of computing power that would be necessary to sort of host all of this stuff. I mean, you have Microsoft, you have Amazon, but do we really want to be giving them this other major business? They've also, you know, in some cases been accused of being monopolies as well. So you know it's a little bit complicated about who might be able to buy this, or if it were spun off into a new company, like, how much of Google's existing stuff does it get to take with it? That is, you know, pretty hard to figure out. I mean, that is pretty hard to figure out.

The other thing is we were talking yesterday with analysts and they said Google's future is a lot in AI. The Justice Department is looking at putting some of the limitations and what they can develop with AI, because so much of the data underlying its AI models came from search. Their argument is you know, if you monopolize this market you shouldn't really get to take the fruits of that illegal behavior and move it to a new place. So it could be, you know, pretty, I guess, catastrophic for Google, depending on what the judge rules. If he does place limits on their development of AI, what the judge rules if he does place limits on their development of AI.

0:48:10 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, Wow. Leah, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to talk about what's going on. Clearly, you know, you and the other small group I don't know if you gather together every year as antitrust reporters to hang out and talk about this, but I know there'll be much more to continue to watch as things kind of unfold and we hope to have you again on in the future to give us the latest when that comes. Of course, folks can head over to Bloombergcom to check out your work. Is there anywhere else they should go to keep up with what you're doing.

0:48:38 - Leah Nylen
I am still vaguely on X and also Blue Sky.

0:48:42 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome, and what's your, your username there?

0:48:46 - Leah Nylen
At Leon Island. So awesome, you can find me All right.

0:48:49 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you very much for your time today. We appreciate it.

0:48:51 - Leah Nylen
Thanks for having me.

0:48:53 - Mikah Sargent
Alrighty folks, we're gonna take a quick break before we come back with our final interview of the day.

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So get started today with 1,000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit. That's melissa.com/twit, and we thank Melissa for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break, and that means it's time for our second interview of the day. We are back from the break and that means it's time for our second interview of the day. This time we are talking about well, disinformation, misinformation and anti-Semitic attacks on X. Joining us to talk about a recent report about all of this is the Washington Post's Will Oremus Welcome back to the show. Will, yeah, thanks for having me. Washington Post's, will Oremus Welcome back to the show Will.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, so in your piece you talk about a report that touches on the concerning trend of anti-Semitism being incorporated into misinformation about breaking news events. It's kind of like a it's a trend right now. Can you talk about how this manifested in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene?

0:52:30 - Will Oremus
Yeah. So in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, there were all kinds of falsehoods swirling online, first about the nature of the disaster itself, but then, even more prominently, about the government response to the disaster. And as a lot of the criticisms I'm sure there were valid criticisms of the government response, but as those started to get mixed up with politically motivated criticisms and, uh, outright conspiracy theories, some of them took on a blatantly anti-Semitic tone. There were a lot of personal attacks on the mayor of Asheville, north Carolina, who's Jewish, on the public affairs director for FEMA, alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary, and some of them were quite nasty and they were circulating mostly on X, formerly Twitter, and they went pretty viral. I mean this wasn't a niche or fringe kind of thing and it was all bound up with the idea that somehow Jewish people were orchestrating some kind of plan or were betraying Americans in various different ways. And I mean it's going to sound cuckoo if I start trying to explain the narratives, but a lot of people apparently are latched on to it.

0:53:54 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and you talk about how these posts on X received significantly more views than official FEMA communications. I think it's a little obvious this question, but I do want to ask it, just for the sake of kind of understanding and breaking this apart. What implications does this actually have for emergency response efforts? I think some people would claim, maybe, that well, you shouldn't be going to X for your information anyway. Well, you shouldn't be going to X for your information anyway but this does have an impact.

0:54:32 - Will Oremus
Yeah, it does, because Twitter, over the years, had become a go-to for public agencies to get out information quickly, partly directly to the public, but honestly it's partly because so much of the media is on there or was on there. They knew that if they put out a blast on Twitter, that all the local reporters would see it right away. They would disseminate it through their channels. The word would get out. Many public agencies are still on X, but they've known for some time that this could be more problematic than before due to some of the changes that Elon Musk has made there. And now, I think, when they're trying to get the word out, they're finding that their official communications and even the media's reporting on what they're saying is getting drowned out by these viral conspiracy theories, anti-semitic attacks, false rumors that are all going around.

0:55:21 - Mikah Sargent
Understood Now. The piece also discusses X's content moderation policies. How has the platform's approach to moderating this type of content changed since Elon Musk's acquisition? I mean, we just saw for the first time kind of a report about moderation, but things have definitely changed.

0:55:50 - Will Oremus
Yeah, almost everything's changed. There are at least four or five major ways that moderation has changed since Musk bought Twitter in 2022. One is that he changed the system for verifying accounts. So it used to be that if you saw a blue check on an account, you knew that that was an authenticated member of the media or government official or public agency or a celebrity of some sort, someone with a real public profile and a form of accountability. It doesn't mean that blue checks always told the truth or got things right, but you knew who they were right and you knew that there was a real person with a real public profile standing behind that account.

Under Musk, blue checks have been for sale to subscribers, so anybody can buy a blue check. That doesn't necessarily mean they are who they say they are, and blue checks have been given out to a lot of the most prominent conspiracy accounts, because buying a blue check now helps you get your message out. So if you're trying to get clout on X, you buy a blue check and it helps you rank more highly in replies, among other things. That's just one way. There was also the layoff of the curation team, so in breaking news events, twitter used to have a team of mostly former journalists whose job was to curate those trending topics, and what they would do is they would add context. So if there was a trending topic but it was based on a falsehood, they would write a little summary that explained, you know that, debunked the falsehood right there in the trending topics. They were among the first to go when Musk took over. They're all gone.

He also reinstated hundreds or thousands of previously banned accounts. Now, these were accounts that were banned for violating all kinds of rules, including hate speech, repeatedly spreading dangerous misinformation, et cetera. They all came back and you can kind of guess what the consequences of that might be. And one of them, for instance, was Marjorie Taylor Greene who, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, posted on X that quote. They did this by controlling the weather, and a lot of people took that to mean Jews, because she's made similar claims to that in the past that are anti-Semitic.

I mean, that's an example. That post alone got 20 times more views than FEMA's 20 most popular posts in the week after Hurricane Helene, than FEMA's 20 most popular posts in the week after Hurricane Helene. And then, finally, just the general pullback on content moderation reduction in content moderation, staff relaxing the rules. So we worked with this nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue, or ISD, that did this report on these viral falsehoods on X after Helene, and they found that of the 33 most viral false posts, these are debunked factually false posts. First of all, 10 were overtly anti-Semitic in nature. The 33 posts between them got 159 million views on X and after 24 hours after they had found these 33 posts, all 33 were still up. None had been taken down, even the ones that were blatantly anti-Semitic and included hate speech.

0:58:54 - Mikah Sargent
In that you also talk about how some officials fear for their safety due to these online attacks, for their safety due to these online attacks. Can you talk a bit about that and how these threats are affecting the ability of emergency management officials to do their job?

0:59:11 - Will Oremus
Yeah, I mean, look, if you're a public figure, you're going to get criticism, and that goes with the job. But having millions of people call you out for being Jewish and imply that you're not loyal, you're not a loyal American or that you're committing treason, is what some of them said. Some of them made references to their noses and facial features. I mean, that's not typically part of the job. That kind of stuff has sort of been kept to the fringes of social media generally, but it's now gone fairly mainstream on X, because there's no penalty, there's no disincentive and there's a fairly receptive ecosystem of people who will amplify those types of posts, probably some of them bots, to be honest. I mean, that's a hard thing to measure, so that's unfortunate for them.

But I think the bigger issue here is not woe is me for the public officials, it's the trust of the people who they're trying to help, right, I mean, if you're, if you're in bad shape after a hurricane has washed out your town, cut off your cell service to your Internet and you're being told that the people, that FEMA or that your governor or whoever is going to seize your property or that they're you know that they don't have any money because they spent it all on migrants, um, or that they're uh, that they're trying to um, replace, uh, uh, american citizens with with people of color.

And in this wild great replacement theory, I mean you just you might not know who to turn to. You might they might offer help. You might not accept it. You might, uh, when they ask you to evacuate because a hurricane's coming in Florida, which we just saw, you might not evacuate because you don't trust them. But what if they come in and they're going to bulldoze your town and mine it for lithium, which is another one of these viral false claims about what the government responders were doing? So I think that's the real tragedy is that it's the people who are hurt most, are the people who believe this stuff and and then, as a result, don't seek the help that they critically need.

1:01:48 - Mikah Sargent
Does the ISD report or any of the research that are more most likely to believe what's being said here. So what? What does anyone get out of disinformation to this level, and has that been studied at all?

1:02:01 - Will Oremus
yeah, I mean, whenever there's a natural disaster there is, you know, politics come into it and especially when you're in the absolute peak of an election season, one side's going to see if they can turn this against the other side and blame the other side for it. That's not a new thing. I mean, we saw tons of criticism of the George W Bush administration over its handling of Katrina. You know much of it probably justified, but the point is that there's always going to be people who are using it to advance a political agenda. I think we're seeing that more than ever now. You know it used to be that at least sort of the leaders of the parties wouldn't try to undermine public trust in the first responders and FEMA during an active recovery operation. So that's new and worse than before.

The other thing is, honestly, I think some people are just doing it for clout. Some people have realized that after a disaster, people are scared, they're worried, they're confused. They are looking for a way to make sense of everything. And if you can hand them an easy way to say, well, well, here's what's happening and here's whose fault it is, here's who to blame, give them a place to direct their anger, you know it's it's the woke, it's the woke left, or it's it's Kamala Harris, or it's it's the Jews, jewish elitists, the globalists whoever it is, you're giving them something to latch on to. That goes really far on social media these days, particularly if there are no content moderation measures in place to slow it down. And so, again, I mean, the virality of these falsehoods is a testament to the fact that if you're an account that wants to get attention for your brand drive people to your podcast or sell your you know, show your stuff that you have on offer peddling these conspiracy theories could be a really profitable way to do it.

1:03:50 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. You talked a lot about the kind of most concerning trends of the ISD report. Was there anything that you wanted to bring up that we didn't talk about throughout the interview that this ISD report found?

1:04:07 - Will Oremus
Well, you know, I think one of the things we were focused on Helene and that story but one of the things when you look at Milton I mentioned earlier the concern that maybe people won't evacuate if they don't trust the government. I think, just in general it. You know, it's one thing to be skeptical of the government and to criticize the government. We journalists do that all the time. It's our job, you know. Hold them accountable. But when you have people believing that the folks in charge are fundamentally un-American or disloyal or treasonous, I mean I think that's like a bigger, that's a bigger problem that doesn't just get easily unwound and it's something that's going to keep rearing its head and probably the consequences will resonate from that for a long time.

1:04:52 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. And then, last but not least, when you've got something like this, that ultimately, I think, leaves people feeling frustrated and, like you know, there's, what does one do? Have there been any suggestions for solutions or strategies to combat this intersection, in this case, especially of misinformation and anti-Semitism during crisis events? And you know what people are going to do, going forward, for, you know, the next hurricane, the next earthquake, the next fire, whatever it happens to be.

1:05:31 - Will Oremus
Yeah, I mean. One possibility you brought up earlier is, you know, maybe everybody should just get off X. But if you're a public agency, you're trying to reach people wherever they are and you don't necessarily have the luxury of taking a principled stand and saying, well, I don't want to, I don't want to be part of this network. If that's where, if that's where a lot of the word is getting out, Um, but I do think when I've talked to to public agencies, uh, across the country, they're looking at, at alternatives. They're looking. Well, can we get our residents on a text message blast? Can we use, are there other apps that are purpose-built for getting out the word in emergencies? You have some of these in California for the wildfires, and then you have government officials looking to be more proactive.

Fema put out a website trying to debunk all the false rumors that are out there. You have Biden out there now calling people out for spreading falsehoods. They're trying to take their message straight to the public. They're also trying other platforms. We reported yesterday on the White House joining Reddit. They launched a Reddit account, partly because they see Reddit as maybe potentially a better place to get out reliable information, particularly because Reddit is now ranking very highly in Google search results. So when people go looking for information on Google, often they're turning to Reddit to get good answers. So the White House is going to see if maybe that's a place where they can reach people and debunk falsehoods or clear up misunderstandings.

1:07:01 - Mikah Sargent
Understood Well. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to talk about what's going on here and keeping an eye on this. Of course, we can go over to WashingtonPostcom to check out the work you're doing. Is there anywhere else people can go to keep up with what you're doing online?

1:07:20 - Will Oremus
Yep, I'm Will Oremus on Threads and on Blue Sky and on X, and feel free to follow me on any of those. I'm less active on X these days, but I still keep up with it because it's my job.

1:07:32 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. I'm right there with you. Thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate it.

1:07:36 - Will Oremus
Thanks a lot, Mikah.

1:07:38 - Mikah Sargent
All righty With that. We have reached the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. The show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw that is where you I said W, like I'm back in Missouri TNW that's where you can go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats. I should also mention that if you'd like to get every single one of our shows ad-free just the content well, check out Club Twit. Just $7 per month gets you every Twit show with no ads, just the content. You also gain access to the Twit Plus bonus feed. That is extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show.

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