Month: November 2022

Five Meta Myths ⇥ stratechery.com

Ben Thompson, Stratechery:

Meta, née Facebook, is now, incredibly enough, worth 42% less than it was when I wrote Facebook Lenses, hitting levels not seen since January 2016. It seems the company’s many critics are finally right: Facebook is dying, for real this time.

The problem is that the evidence just doesn’t support this point of view. Forget five lenses: there are five myths about Meta’s business that I suspect are driving this extreme reaction; all of them have a grain of truth, so they feel correct, but the truth is, if not 100% good news, much better than most of those dancing on the company’s apparent grave seem to realize.

The myths Thompson seeks to bust, backed by Meta’s most recent earnings report (PDF), are that Facebook is increasingly a ghost town, Instagram’s focus on Reels is failing, TikTok is wiping the floor of Instagram in the U.S., Meta’s ad market has died out, and its high expenses are terrible news. Thompson presents compelling counterarguments to the prevailing narrative of a giant withering in its age as it struggles to invent a whole new kind of computing.

The latter point is perhaps the most interesting to me — and, it seems, Meta, as it made Instagram head Adam Mosseri available for a Bloomberg interview after its earnings call, in part to defend why the company’s spending is so high. It also suggests Meta’s ad targeting ability could rebound with machine learning models trained on the network at large instead of third-party data. In other words, a mix of new privacy legislation and App Tracking Transparency could have spurred Meta into building a better ad targeting engine with potentially fewer privacy concerns. Sometimes, it takes that kind of kick in the pants. It is a good retort to articles like one from the Economist questioning why huge capital expenditures are necessary or wise.

Still, I find myself wondering whether the increasingly interchangeable social media landscape is running into the practical limits of available time. Thompson includes a chart showing total time spent in TikTok in the U.S. staying more-or-less consistent for about the past year. That is broadly consistent with other estimates indicating time spent on each platform has basically levelled off. A report (PDF) published earlier this year by GWI suggests much the same: the pie has stayed the same size for years.

Update, November 12: As I was re-reading Thompson’s article, I found a curious inconsistency. Here he is writing about the impact of App Tracking Transparency:

This was, needless to say, a big deal for the entire industry, but what has been fascinating to observe over the last nine months is how few companies want to talk about it (particularly Google in the context of YouTube). Meta’s stock slide, though, shows why: ATT was a secular, structural change in the digital ad market, that absolutely should have a big impact on an affected company’s stock price. Meta, to their credit, admitted that ATT would reduce their revenue by $10 billion a year, and because that impact is primarily felt through lower prices, that is money straight off of the bottom line — and it’s a loss that will only accumulate over time, by extension reducing the terminal value of the company. Again, the stock should be down!

So ATT is responsible for a potential annual revenue hit of $10 billion, a number that will likely grow, and that is a good reason for Meta’s stock to be down considerably. Alright. What about this virtual reality stuff?

It’s worth pointing out, though, that the Metaverse’s costs, which will exceed $10 billion this year and be even more next year, are, relative to Meta’s overall business and overall spending, fairly small. It’s definitely legitimate to decrease your valuation of Meta’s business if you think this investment will never contribute to the bottom line — that’s a lot of foregone profit — but this idea that Meta’s business is doomed and that the Metaverse is a Hail Mary flail to build something out of the ashes simply isn’t borne out by the numbers.

So a $10 billion and growing increase in spending on something not very compelling is peanuts, but an estimated $10 billion and growing hit to ad revenue is a big deal.

Mimi Parker Dies Aged 55 ⇥ theguardian.com

Safi Bugel, the Guardian:

Mimi Parker, drummer, vocalist and songwriter for the Minnesota indie band Low, has died, her husband and bandmate Alan Sparhawk has said. Parker was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in December 2020. She was 55 years old, the band’s management confirmed.

Absolutely gutted. Low explored so many musical styles in the past thirty years, and found itself reinvigorated with its last three releases. Parker and Sparhawk are — were — an inestimable duo. I feel extremely lucky to have seen them play live this summer in an intimate performance at a local Legion branch.

Fuck cancer.

As Elon Musk Begins Overhauling Twitter, Mass Layoffs Have Started ⇥ twitter.com

Mike Isaac and Ryan Mac, New York Times:

This week, Mr. Musk moved to make money from Twitter’s “blue check” verification program, a method of making sure users are who they say they are. The billionaire announced that the program, which is currently free, will be rolled into the “Twitter Blue” subscription service, which will offer enhanced features for a monthly $8 fee.

[…]

Mr. Musk’s new Twitter Blue subscription service, which will give subscribers the check mark next to their username, is aiming to begin on Nov. 7 in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to internal documents seen by The Times. Subscribers would not need their identities authenticated to get the check mark, the documents suggested.

I have exercised a high degree of caution in reading about Musk’s plans for Twitter, and — if I may — I suggest you do the same. He famously struggles to deliver on exactly what he says, even on a wildly flexible timeline. So I do not think it is wise to read this and conclude that a new version of Twitter Blue will definitely be launched this Monday — despite the best efforts of overworked staff — and that no identity confirmation will be required for gaining verified account status.

With that in mind, let me indulge in taking it at face value, because it paints a deeply concerning picture.

Twitter’s verified account program has been a mess pretty much since it launched. It was started in 2009 after St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa filed a ridiculous lawsuit against Twitter over a parody account. In the beginning, it was only open to people, not businesses, and it was by invitation only, like an even nerdier version of the Stonecutters.

The whole point of this white checkmark on a blue violator was to signify to other Twitter users that this account actually belongs to the person in question. Twitter took pains to state these checkmarks were never intended to indicate importance, only that tweets from a specific account were authored by that person. But if the point of this process was authenticity, surely verification should be open to anyone, right? Ten years later and after a brief false start in 2016, Twitter created a public verification process. In doing so, the company admitted verified accounts must be both legitimate and notable — from a public figure or organization.

If this report from the Times is true, though, it is a regression on both counts. I think verification should be opened up to more people, but only if the account’s authenticity can be confirmed. This new version does not accomplish the goals of verifying an account and, worse, offers an obvious potential for abuse. If all it takes is eight dollars per month to create a verified account in the name of a public figure, organization, journalist, or embassy, expect to see way more authentic-seeming fraudulent tweets.

Oh, and if this does actually launch on November 7, that is one day before the U.S. midterm elections, which is a hell of a day to pick for adding a wave of confusion. (Update: CNN and the New York Times report the launch of this new verification system will happen after the midterm elections. Even though the Twitter app may appear to reflect these changes for you, the rollout has not actually happened.) And it gets worse.

Twitter’s leadership sent all employees an email today announcing the process of laying off about half its staff:

Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email. By 9AM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter. Please check your email, including your spam folder.

If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email.

If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email.

I cannot imagine there being a great way of laying off staff, but this notice seems especially cruel when contrasted with the email Stripe CEO Patrick Collison sent to employees today announcing that company’s round of layoffs.

Given this blistering pace, some staff have already found out they are leaving the company. It appears the speed of these layoffs with little notice may also be illegal.

Alex Heath of the Verge reports on an additional complication:

After employees received the memo confirming layoffs would begin, many began quickly trying to unlink their Twitter accounts from their work email addresses — a company-mandated policy that also requires physical keys for two-factor authentication.

My thoughts are with everyone being laid off — some undoubtably relieved they will not be enduring whatever this new version of Twitter may bring, while others are heartbroken and likely concerned about their employment prospects while tech companies are putting the brakes on hiring. My thoughts are also with the remaining staff who will need to keep the service as stable and reliable as possible during high-traffic events, such as next week’s elections, while also trying to mitigate the spread of impersonated tweets.

‘If Books Could Kill’ ⇥ twitter.com

Michael Hobbes, of the excellent “Maintenance Phase”, and Peter Shamshiri, who you might know from the “5–4 Podcast”, have launched a new show called “If Books Could Kill”, where they deconstruct crappy airport non-fiction and reflect on, as Hobbes puts it, the TED Talk-ification of complex societal issues. Their first episode is about the caustic legacy of Freakonomics and it is terrific; next week’s is a Malcolm Gladwell book. I cannot wait.

Two Great Things in MacOS Ventura

I have been using MacOS Ventura for a little over a week now and, while I still have not gotten used to phrases like “Preferences” and “Desktop Picture” getting replaced with the dreary words “Settings” and “Wallpaper”, respectively, I do think there are two legitimately great things in this release worth calling out.

The first is Stage Manager. I only have Ventura on my laptop, but I bet that is the context where the Mac version of Stage Manager makes the most sense. Its single-application mode and aggressive animations have made me think twice about habitually ⌘-Tabbing over to my Twitter client, and I find it makes it easier for me to juggle multiple windows while reducing clutter. It is imperfect, but it feels successful in a way that is surprising to me. Who knew MacOS needed yet another way to manage windows? Turns out.

The other thing I find impressive is the redesigned Print dialog box. It suffers from a few of the same bizarre layout choices that plague System Settings — there are yawning chasms between the left-aligned labels and the often narrow fields on the right, for example. But as far as functional redesigns of longstanding complex UI patterns go, I find it a joy to use. I have quibbles — Cupertino-area friends, I am filing feedback reports — but I think it is a true success overall.

Above all, what I am most surprised by in MacOS Ventura is that the maturity of this operating system has not stopped rethinking even basic elements like window management and printing. Neither improvement has gotten in my way or made me feel uncertain about how to use MacOS, either. That is a hard balance to strike and I think these are both successful examples of making big changes that do not break workflows in their quest for improvement.

More of this, please. I have thoughts about Notifications.

ProPublica Scrambles to Check Translation in COVID Origin Story ⇥ semafor.com

Speaking of ProPublica, it appears the publication is struggling with its own trustworthiness problems after fallout from a scandalous story claiming a “research-related incident” was responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Max Tani, Semafor:

The ProPublica/Vanity Fair article relied on Toy Reid, a State Department China analyst whose close readings of Chinese Communist Party documents apparently unveiled revelations that all other observers had missed.

“Party speak is ‘its own lexicon, Reid explained in the piece, cautioning that even native Mandarin speakers might not understand it. “It’s almost like a secret language of Chinese officialdom. When they’re talking about anything potentially embarrassing, they speak of it in innuendo and hushed tones.”

But Reid’s “party speak” interpretations, quickly came under scrutiny from some journalists and experts on China, including many native Mandarin speakers, who said the story was based on a mistranslation.

Readers of the ProPublica–Vanity Fair investigation and at least one of their own sources are disputing the very substance of the story. In the last month, four separate publications — the Wire, the Intercept, and this joint effort — have released bombshell articles with glaring problems. We need a better calibre of scoops and reporting.

Update: Ryan Grim, DC bureau chief for the Intercept, begged in his newsletter for these issues and questions to not be cast along partisan lines. That is something I am entirely in agreement with.

DHS Has Pulled Back on Tracking Election Disinformation ⇥ propublica.org

Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, ProPublica:

In early 2022, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, which is part of DHS, was in talks to deploy a federally funded nonprofit to protect election workers from harassment and violence.

The effort would have allowed elections officials to sign up for a service to protect them from having their identities and personal information exposed on the internet, known as doxxing. It also would have created a system to track and alert elections officials who were subject to serious threats on social media, including from foreign actors.

Around the same time, as lies about elections were becoming a central plank of GOP candidates, Republicans also began to attack the administration’s efforts. Some free-speech advocates also expressed concerns about government overreach.

Again, if the Intercept wanted to build a more complete context for its reporting, it would have included information like this about the DHS’ intended efforts. Bernstein and Marritz interviewed election officials who say they now spend their days explaining elementary civics to voters while worrying about their safety.

The Intercept’s Story About Government Policing Disinformation Is ‘Journalistic Malpractice’ ⇥ techdirt.com

Mike Masnick, Techdirt:

Do not believe everything you read. Even if it comes from more “respectable” publications. The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that “leaked” documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming it reveals the “smoking gun” of how the Biden administration was abusing government power to censor them on social media.

The only problem? It shows nothing of the sort.

I linked to this story earlier this week, but I think you owe it to yourself to read Masnick’s more careful interpretation, too. It does seem like the Intercept’s reporters on the story, Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang, took liberties with the context of quotes and misrepresenting what officials were actually doing.

The Intercept’s reporting usually strikes me as more careful to adhere to documented evidence, even if it is sometimes dramatic. This is a sloppy effort. While it does appear to be true that officials sometimes flag social media posts that may cause confusion about U.S. elections or offer dangerous COVID-19 health advice, the claims made by Klippenstein and Fang are a stretch. Besides, if you are concerned about moderation by social media platforms, does it not seem better for health misinformation to be flagged by representatives of the Surgeon General instead of relying on underpaid and overworked contractors?

Hundreds of Drones to Swarm New York Skyline for Candy Crush Advertisement ⇥ gothamist.com

Jake Offenhartz, Gothamist:

At least 500 drones will depart the shores of New Jersey on Thursday evening, flickering over the horizon in a choreographed dance meant to evoke the experience of swiping colorful treats on a phone screen.

Promising a “surreal takeover of New York City’s skyline,” the fleet will pulse with LED lights as it serves miles of Lower Manhattan with an aerial advertisement for the mobile video game, Candy Crush.

This is not the first time something like this has been done with drones and, as Offenhartz documents, it is not even the first time over New York. Surely little is in the greater public interest than looking up at the night sky and being reminded of Candy Crush.

Uber Tests Push Notification Slots for Third-Party Advertisers ⇥ techcrunch.com

Rebecca Bellan, TechCrunch:

Uber recently launched its new advertising division and in-app ads. Apparently, those ads aren’t staying within the app.

Instead, ads from other companies are being sent out as push notifications, much to the chagrin of some Uber users. Over the weekend, people turned to Twitter to complain about the notifications, sharing screenshots of ads, including one particularly popular one from Peloton that Uber had sent out. One of the primary complaints: notifications are being sent out when users aren’t engaging with the app.

I get businesses that want to promote their own services in notifications. I do not like it — apps like Doordash thoroughly abuse push notification privileges, and nobody at that company or Apple seems to care — but I get it. But selling users’ screen space to third parties? Appalling.

When Apple formally permitted ads in push notifications in March 2020, a behaviour developers had long engaged in regardless of App Store rules, I guessed something like this might happen:

Notably, there is also no requirement that push notification ads be a promotion for the app or its features. It seems perfectly legal under these rules for unscrupulous developers to sell push notification ad slots to third parties. Gross.

Apple also permits ads in Live Activity views.

Uber’s aggressive advertising appears to be a perverse and unintended consequence of changes to the above App Store policies combined with its desperate need to find a business model which does not look like an inferno of investor funds. The future is what we make of it and, increasingly, businesspeople have decided dystopian science fiction is awesome, actually.

An In-Depth Look at the iPhone 14 Pro’s Many Cameras ⇥ lux.camera

Sebastiaan de With:

I shoot a lot of iPhone photos. In the last five years, I’ve taken a bit over 120,000 photos — averaging at least 10,000 RAW shots per iPhone model. I like to take some time — a few weeks, at least — to review a new iPhone camera and go beyond a first impression.

I took the iPhone 14 Pro on a trip around San Francisco and Northern California, to the remote Himalayas and mountains of the Kingdom of Bhutan, and Tokyo — to test every aspect of its image-making, and I have to say that I was pretty blown away by the results of the main camera.

There are photos in this review that are truly difficult to tell apart from a very nice dedicated digital camera. I am not in the market for a new iPhone this year, but these images are making me impatient for the iPhone 15 Pro.

One interesting choice Apple made is to change the equivalent focal length of the main camera for the third time: to 24mm from 26mm in the iPhone XS and subsequent models, and 28mm in all preceding iPhones. For my tastes, that camera is moving in the wrong direction from a focal length perspective. Still, it is somewhat offset by a cropped 52mm 2× capture mode and upgraded processing of images shot with the 77mm 3× camera.

de With:

For those hoping that iPhone 14 Pro would do away with heavily processed shots, we have some rather bad news: it seems iPhone 14 Pro is, if anything, even more hands-on when it comes to taking creative decisions around selective edits based on subject matter, noise reduction and more.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

There is a compelling case to be made for the more aggressive and better processing of 14 Pro images, but there are also some bizarre decisions here that make it seem like the camera is drawing an imagined reality. I hope for a gentler approach in the future, or full access for third-party camera apps to truer 48 megapixel RAW sensor data without the adjustments of ProRAW.