| | | | | | | Presented By Tal&Dev | | | | Axios Login | | By Scott Rosenberg ·Aug 09, 2021 | | Welcome back! Don't mind the wildfires, the Delta variant, whatever other apocalypses may be looming in your world ... we've got some tech news for you. Today's newsletter is 1,410 words, a 5-minute read. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Facebook's accountability bind |  | | | Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios | | | | Facebook's leaders know they have to demonstrate accountability to the world, but they're determined to do so on their own terms and timetable. Why it matters: Since the 2018 Cambridge Analytica affair, Facebook has moved to provide more transparency and oversight, but its programs are limited, selective and slow, leaving journalists and scholars as the de facto whistleblowers for problems on its platform. Driving the news: Last week Facebook shut down the accounts of New York University researchers whose tools for studying political advertising on the social network, the company said, violated its rules. Details: NYU's Ad Observatory offers users a browser extension that supplies researchers with data on the circulation and targeting of political ads on Facebook — information that can be more timely and complete than what Facebook itself provides through its public library of political ads. - Facebook says the observatory's tools are "scraping" data, breaking its privacy rules and violating terms of the company's privacy settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. (The FTC has disputed that last point.)
- Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the Firefox browser, released a statement saying that Facebook's objections to the Observatory's extension "simply do not hold water."
The big picture: Facebook has become a sort of global public square that's owned and operated by a private company whose decisions can shape political conflicts, cultural controversies and public-health outcomes. - Facebook itself remains the only entity with comprehensive, real-time insight into the flow of information and money on its platform.
- It has tried to offer more transparency than most of its competitors through projects like its ad library.
- Yet many of its efforts at accountability — from its reports on content takedowns to its creation of the independent Oversight Board to review content moderation decisions — are slow and retroactive in nature.
As a result, the typical pattern for airing and solving problems on Facebook today is: - A journalist writes an article or a researcher publishes a report documenting something on Facebook that should not be happening.
- Facebook takes some action in response.
- Everyone wonders how much else is happening on Facebook that shouldn't be happening, since Facebook is so vastly larger than any arm of the press or the academy can possibly monitor.
Our thought bubble: When Facebook locks out any agent of accountability, given their scarcity, it leaves the impression it's more focused on limiting PR damage than actually stopping misinformation and manipulation of its platform. It's another manifestation of "see no evil" as a corporate reflex. What's next: Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Mark Warner and Chris Coons sent Facebook a letter grilling the company on its decision to ban the Ad Observatory scholars. |     | | | | | | 2. Apple's child safety moves stir praise, protests | | Apple's plan to detect images of child sexual abuse on iPhones and to shield some underage users of Messages from receiving explicit images has touched off the latest round of a perennial debate over prioritizing law enforcement or user privacy. Why it matters: There's increasing pressure on giant tech platforms to flag illegal behavior and remove harmful content. But smartphones are also powerful tools of surveillance that are increasingly employed by authoritarian governments and invasive marketers to target users around the world. What's happening: Apple's new system, announced Thursday, will use cryptographic hashes to identify illegal images that users are uploading to Apple's iCloud without Apple directly snooping in users' troves of photos. - It will also use on-device machine learning to flag sexually explicit photos sent via Apple's Messages service by or to users with family accounts.
Driving the news: Apple, which rarely feels the need to publicly explain itself, posted a six-page FAQ this morning responding to critics and explaining points it feels the press has misreported. What they're saying: Child safety organizations applauded Apple. - "The commitment from Apple to deploy technology solutions that balance the need for privacy with digital safety for children brings us a step closer to justice for survivors whose most traumatic moments are disseminated online," Julie Cordua, CEO of Thorn, an international anti-human trafficking nonprofit, said in a statement.
Yes, but: Organizations focused on online privacy — including the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation — raised concerns that Apple's child-safety tech would get redeployed to detect other kinds of content. - Several thousand people signed an open letter posted via GitHub arguing that "Apple's proposal introduces a backdoor that threatens to undermine fundamental privacy protections for all users of Apple products."
- Will Cathcart, head of Facebook's encrypted messaging service WhatsApp, tweeted that Apple's plan was "the wrong approach and a setback for people's privacy all over the world."
The bottom line: Apple pundit John Gruber of Daring Fireball praised the intent and design of Apple's system but acknowledged "completely legitimate concerns from trustworthy experts about how the features could be abused or misused in the future." - Alex Stamos of the Stanford Internet Observatory tweeted, "I find myself constantly torn between wanting everybody to have access to cryptographic privacy and the reality of the scale and depth of harm that has been enabled by modern comms technologies."
| | | | | | | | 3. Self-driving cars would be nowhere without HD maps | | Self-driving vehicles may be loaded with sensors and artificial intelligence, but they're limited without a really good map, Joann Muller writes in Axios' What's Next newsletter. Why it matters: High-definition maps are critical to the safe, wide-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles. More accurate than satellite-based GPS, they provide richly detailed models of the operating environment and important context to help AVs avoid mistakes. Driving the news: A Tesla owner tweeted a video clip recently showing how his car's Autopilot system mistook a low-hanging moon for a yellow traffic light and kept telling the car to slow down. - While Tesla did not publicly address the reasons for the error, industry experts suggest Tesla's camera-based system was lacking important context.
- An HD map — along with redundant sensors like radar and lidar — can provide that missing context, Gartner Group mobility analyst Michael Ramsey tells Axios.
- "It would know where there are traffic lights. The moon is not a yellow light because there are no traffic lights in this area," he said.
The big picture: Mapping is having a moment. Digital maps are getting more sophisticated, with breakthroughs enabling real-time navigation details for pedestrians, 3D geolocation for drones and augmented reality for gaming. - For autonomous vehicles, HD maps do more than just provide a high-def view of the world — they also enable a self-driving car to know precisely where it is, down to a few centimeters.
Read the rest. | | | | | | | | A message from Tal&Dev | | How to truly steer your career in the right direction | | |  | | | | With Tal&Dev, you can find professional happiness — and your next position — with the help of a robust career management platform and world-renown coaches. - After taking an assessment, you have an opportunity to get matched with employers who are looking for people like you.
Get started. | | | | | | 4. WeWork book: The $10 trillion mirage |  | | | Graphic from "The Cult of We." Courtesy: Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell | | | | This single slide above — marked up in the yellow scrawl of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son — captures this era's euphoria over the hyper-scaling of tech startups, combusting with extremely low interest rates, Axios' Mike Allen writes. The big picture: Cash gushers chase indefensible valuations on delusional growth prospects and paths to profitability, with little regard for the reality of the underlying business and market structure. The slide was uncovered by Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell as they wrote the delicious new book "The Cult of We," chronicling the wiles and humiliation of Adam Neumann, WeWork's day-drinking co-founder, former CEO, and chief snake-oil salesman. "As he pondered a bigger investment in WeWork," the authors write, "Son pushed WeWork's already ambitious financial projections into territory unprecedented in business history. During a meeting with Neumann, he scribbled out a vision for a company worth $10 trillion." - The wild-haired Neumann — a yeller who combined a televangelist's frenzy with tequila and weed, plus quirks that included strolling Manhattan barefoot — eventually drove his baby off a financial cliff.
"Had a frothy venture capital sector not been so obsessed with the search for eccentric and visionary founders," the authors continue, "WeWork might still occupy only a smattering of buildings in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan." Read a free excerpt, "Chapter 1: The Hustler." | | | | | | | | 5. Take note | | ICYMI - Plans for a new Google campus in north San Jose show a focus on hardware products. (CNBC)
- Crypto industry lobbying caused some last-minute snags in the Senate's infrastructure bill approval. (Washington Post)
- Samsung leader Lee Jae-yong, convicted for bribery in South Korea, is out on parole. (Wall Street Journal)
- The pandemic forced medical organizations to speed tech upgrades that would otherwise have taken years, a doctors' survey found. (Axios)
| | | | | | | | 6. After you Login |  | | | Brittney Griner defending against Japan's Nishida during Sunday's gold medal basketball game. Photo: Ina Fried/Axios | | | | Japan's women's basketball team gave the U.S. a run for its money thanks to grit and some strong outside shooting. But the one place it really couldn't match up was in height, as Ina was able to capture in these photos from Tokyo. America's Diana Taurasi seemingly taunts a Japan player, holding the ball high above her head during Sunday's gold medal matchup. Photo: Ina Fried/Axios | | | | | | | | A message from Tal&Dev | | What you want is a career — not just another job | | |  | | | | Tal&Dev's tech-enabled career assessment helps career-minded professionals like you to develop your own career strategy. Here's how: The assessment prompts you to reflect on your professional objectives and talents, so you can understand which path is right for you. Take the next step. | | |  | | It'll help you deliver employee communications more effectively. | | | | | | Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. If you're interested in advertising, learn more here.
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