Dozen Worthy Reads 📰 (No. 167)
This week : Instagram's algorithm, Apple's new privacy features, Amazon's ad's business, Netflix merch, Big tech bills, Apple subs, TikTok Ads, Facebook's decision on Trump and more ...
Hi All,
I hope you all are doing well and welcome to Dozen Worthy Reads. A newsletter where I talk about the most interesting things about tech that I read the past couple of weeks or write about tech happenings. You can sign up here or just read on …
Instagram sheds light on how their various algorithms work and that they do not shadowban. It's interesting that they are releasing this information now -- and honestly, if true, this seems to be quite normal. To me when I see such things released, I always wonder, what are they NOT telling us? Shedding More Light on How Instagram Works
Apple released a whole slew of features this week that are bound to give marketing email companies a bit of a heart attack. The feature essentially is one where tracking pixels in an email, the ones that track if you’ve opened an email will no longer work. The issue is there is no easy way to measure engagement. Casey Newton writes about this in Will Apple Mail threaten the newsletter boom?. Apart from the fact that Apple is invested heavily in privacy is there an ulterior motive; by blocking one of the large open channels for marketers (emails) will this help their ads business; or collectively are all these features targeted at making more people buy Apple’s hardware. As a user you definitely don’t want people to know when you’ve opened their email. This does not impact links within the email so maybe that's next or until then that becomes a new metric. Casey has broken this down into emails that have content you pay for/and or enjoy (such as a subscription newsletter) and annoying marketing emails. The other key point here is this only impacts Apple Mail.
And of course this had to happen; Amazon has quickly and quietly become an advertising juggernaut. Tech is super interesting in the sense that Facebook was mostly ad’s revenue and now they are trying to build shopping/commerce revenue with Facebook Shops etc. Whereas Amazon started with a commerce business and quickly went into the ads business
Amazon Advertising Rates Soar in Pandemic-Fueled Surge
Even Netflix has gotten into merch with their new netflix.shops site: Netflix Online Shop to Sell Products Tied to Shows Like 'Lupin'. With enough popular content, merch comes next. This is almost like the Disney playbook to a certain extent; are theme parks next (with a Stranger Things attraction?)
Congress is quite determined to go after big tech. House lawmakers today introduced five bills that cover various aspects of competition that have given big tech an advantage. This is one of the largest threats to BigTech. BigTech is going to have its hands busy and like MSFT back in the day this will distract them and create avenues for new technologies to evolve.
House lawmakers introduce five bipartisan bills to unwind tech monopolies
Alex Kantrowitz has covered the five bills a couple of days ago (then in draft). Worth a read : Congress Is Going To Throw The Kitchen Sink At Big Tech
If you’ve ever used Apple subs you will know that canceling these subs is arcane. Lots of people think that deleting an app will delete the subscription as well. While this is a step forward, what would be cool is to be able to let a user know that they have an active sub/allow them to cancel their sub while deleting an app! Apple's StoreKit 2 simplifies App Store subscriptions and refunds by making them accessible inside apps
Per Bloomberg, TikTok is allowing for a take over of its home page and other key real estate for a price. Advertisers will now be able to shell out a few million for the ad space. Seems like Super Bowl ads all over again! USA today did that too for a Netflix promo and the results were not uhh well, very friendly
TikTok Charges Up to $2 Million a Day for Top Advertising Spots
Apple continues the privacy narrative with new logon tech and their iCloud Private Relay. I think iCloud private relay is pretty cool and if it works the way they say it does (decoupling what was viewed by whom) this would be cool! However in all likelihood to not get booted out Apple’s iCloud Private Relay will not work in China and several other countries (Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda and the Philippines). Apple has no choice in the matter really!
Apple is strengthening privacy, and taking advantage of all the bad news around leaks, advertising, privacy step by step killing the internet business models. As a user, hard to argue that I would not want to use this but as a business person, Apple is just raising the walls of their moats higher and higher
Apple says its new logon tech is as easy as passwords but far more secure
iCloud Private Relay and other Apple WWDC privacy features
Apple's new 'private relay' feature will not be available in China
Facebook decided on a two year suspension for Trump; As I wrote in “Does the Facebook Oversight Board have teeth?” kicking the can back to Facebook was the right decision but there are better ways to do this including limiting reach rather than completely banning him. But as Trump knows after shutting down his blog in less than a month, Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are indeed key for reach. Charlie Warzel has a good teardown of the Facebook post
With reference to the “1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act”, as I wrote in Edition 159 of Dozen Worth reads saying that this could open a can of worms, the supreme court has ruled! The decision means that federal prosecutors can no longer use the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to charge people who misused databases they are otherwise entitled to access. This law could have placed people in jeopardy for just checking social media on work computers! The case, Van Buren v. United States involved a police officer that violated the act by searching a license place DB in exchange for a bribe. The office had access to the database as part of this job! Supreme Court narrows scope of sweeping cybercrime law
From Justices express qualms about sweeping computer crime law
During arguments in a case involving a Georgia police officer convicted of violating the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing a license plate database, the justices pushed a Justice Department lawyer to explain how a ruling in the government’s favor wouldn’t open the door to prosecutions of innocuous behavior. Those could include browsing Instagram on a work computer or performing public-spirited security research to test a system for vulnerabilities.
The case that could decide the scope of the CFAA stems from a tawdry sting operation. In 2017, a district court convicted police officer Nathan Van Buren for using his access to the license plate database to check whether a strip club dancer was an undercover officer in return for a loan from a man who turned out to be an FBI informant. Van Buren’s lawyers argued that he hadn’t violated the CFAA’s prohibition on unauthorized computer access because he’d had legitimate access to the database as part of his job.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld Van Buren’s conviction, finding that the CFAA prohibited accessing a computer for improper purposes even if the defendant was authorized to use it for other purposes. Four appeals courts have now interpreted the CFAA in this broad manner, while three have interpreted it more narrowly.
So basically an old law (CFAA, 1986) has unintended consequences today for not just the officer (whom might I say I don’t condone) but this could open up a can of worms...
Nilay Patel interviews Horacio Gutierrez (Spotify’s Chief Legal Officer)
Why Spotify’s Horacio Gutierrez thinks Apple behaves like a monopolist
Interesting read on those notification sounds. From a product perspective I didn’t realize that so much thinking goes into it : Sound design for software: Why software makes noise and how it's made
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