Techstrong Gang – August 28, 2024

The message is police detention for the Russian born billionaire founder of Telegram. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world in the age of sas, and someone is trying to defriend Facebook big time with an unfollow button at federal court. Added much more on Wednesday's edition of Textron Gang.

You're watching Textron Gang. And boy, do we have an eclectic episode for you today with a fabulous panel. I'm John Swartz, the roving Silicon Valley reporter, filling in, in what amounts to an almost impossible task.

I'm trying to fill in for the fabulous Alan Shimmel, who is traveling somewhere on a plane as we speak. And the great mike, wait, shim that. It's Cory and Mike.

Mike Ard, who's in Las Vegas, covering the VMware Explorer Show. Before we start, I want to introduce you to our Sterling panel, and we're gonna start going from west to east. And we begin with the voice you just heard on the face, you just saw long time friend, colleague in Bay Area resident Cory Johnson, chief market strategist, the Futurum Group.

Hey Cory, Right here in, uh, in downtown San Francisco. It's a, it's a beautiful morning. So it's a funny thing when I listen to the East Coast Radio, I get ready for the stock market to open.

The sun is just barely coming up here. Same thing here. Yeah, that's, I'm always worried about the lighting in the, in the room for this show because it's pitch black and then all of a sudden it becomes light.

So we're okay. We're, we're good here. SA in San Francisco Bay area.

So as the crow flies, we're gonna move to Texas. And our editor extraordinaire Amanda Ani, who was enduring some stifling heat without air conditioning. Is that true?

And how are you holding up, Amanda? Doing okay. It's amazing how much heat I can handle, but we actually got a cold front come in today, it's going to be only 89 degrees.

Woo. Oh geez. Wow.

Wow. Cold snap. And finally, we land in Charlotte, North Carolina with one of our newest members.

Hope Lynch You is a developer, Doan of sorts. Hey, hope. How you doing today?

I, I am doing well here in Charlotte and, and the way my brain works, I think it's great how we've, we've, we have both coasts and, and, and right in the middle. Right. So, couldn't have planned that better.

Um, heating up. Yeah. Oh yeah.

It's high. It was hot here yesterday. It was, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's been hot.

Yeah. Shipped it. I used to live in the south a long time ago, and I could never get used to this humidity, but anyway, I, yeah, it's another story.

Yeah. So we're gonna start with, um, the detention of the Russian born billionaire founder of Telegram, the messaging app known for its unfiltered contents. So P Dub was detained at a Paris Airport Saturday, and a warrant related to telegrams, lack of moderation.

He was traveling to Paris inbound on his private jet. Uh, the, the, it's, it's interesting the, the circumstances behind his arrest. Um, according to the French president, Mr.

Macron, there were, it, it was in relation to an ongoing judicial investigation that was in no way a political decision. So I'm gonna start with Corey. Um, Corey, I admit I use Telegram, but not too deeply.

What can you tell us about this and, and what's going on with this entire arrest and what it might say about freedom of speech or, yeah, telegram. That Telegram is one of those things to be like WhatsApp, where you have enormous global usage that is not really a lot of Americans. So Telegram is got about 950 million users right now, um, approaching rapidly, approaching a billion.

7 billion, which it then had to give back to investors and pay a fine of, I think, 18 and a half, uh, million dollars to the SEC. That all happened. And then it evolved into kind of both a messaging app as well as a, um, a thing that, where there's kinda like Facebook groups, but those groups can be up to a hundred thousand people or so.

So there are very big active groups on Telegram, uh, discussing, uh, everything from cat videos to child pornography. Terrorists have been on, uh, telegram and use Telegram, uh, to communicate with each other. Um, and there's, and there's Q Anon and anti-vax groups and some really dark stuff on there.

And, uh, so this is without judgment. That is, that is what Telegram is. It's, it's a, it's a place where people exchange messages and a place where people go, uh, like-minded people get together and talk about things.

Um, uh, it is also a place where the messages on telegram are not encrypted end to end. Some of them are the, if you pay extra. And, um, the speculation, uh, in the Telegram community, and it's, and people are really upset about this, is that the government has asked them, uh, just as they did with Apple, uh, so many years ago, ask for a backdoor, ask for a way to be able to get, uh, through the encryption and see what people are saying.

It's not so much the telegram isn't turning over information about, uh, bad behavior. Uh, I, I, I wish I had a better phrase for child porn, but the horrible and disgusting and evil, uh, things, uh, uh, people who are communicating their horrible, disgusting and evil, um, uh, thoughts and practices, but also the private messages that are encrypted and could, uh, telling 'em doesn't even see those, doesn't even have the ability to see those. Um, there is speculation that, um, the company and the founder refused to enter into discussions about whether they would have, uh, a la backdoor or anything else.

And the French government's p****d, and he's a French citizen. When he fled Russia, he acquired French citizenship. He also acquired a, or, uh, reportedly a citizenship in the UAE where he lives, um, uh, lives and posts a lot of shirtless videos and, and, uh, pictures of himself.

Have you seen his Instagram account? I have not. Fortunately, It's jaw dropping.

The guy, oh my God, the guy's ripped and he is posting lots of pictures of himself. He's got a lot more, as he gets older, he has more and more darker hair, which is something I have failed to achieve. Um, but it, it's, it, to me, it's really interesting from a million angles.

There's a, there's the technological angle, you know, how is this company run? Where are, its, uh, what, what is its technical stack, both software and hardware, um, uh, uh, of service this large has gotta have an infrastructure this large. And yet, in the IT communities, I think we hear very little about it.

But it's also interesting from a free, um, speech standpoint. This isn't news that you have a right to free speech, but you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. Um, and yet, uh, you have the Elon Musks of the world out there now, uh, conservative talk radio in the US going nuts about this.

They want to take your right to speech. They want to take your free speech. Um, uh, and it, and it is an argument that is as old as, as America at least is, is what responsibility comes with free speech.

Um, and, uh, and is being re-litigating with this, uh, this news story. You know, it's interesting. Uh, it there, i i, it's interesting.

I telegram, uh, I was using, I wasn't using it, but I got a notification. This will give you an idea of the lack of moderation or filtering that goes on. I have friends, dear friend who passed away a year and a half ago.

She just joined Telegram, evidently, which kind of brings up to the question of who is monitoring this? It's just kind of a, that Is quite a technology stack that's really good. I don't only churches.

And, and then Schuls had that. I do. And it's, it's like, it kind of, you mentioned Musk, which is interesting.

There is that parallel, right? And I think the difference here is that in Europe, they're much more aggressive, I think, especially around privacy focused issues. In the US we basically have, and I'll, without getting too political, we have Musk meddling in a not too subtle way in the presidential election with the use of X.

Um, is is, is this kind of a, uh, kind of a, uh, inflection point perhaps? I don't know, uh, anyone wants to weigh in on this, but is this an inflection point of some sort with what's going on in France, perhaps having an impact on what's going on in the US with XII think the, I think the cultural landscape is still very different between the EU and the US right now as far as how they look at regulation and what things, um, that they're gonna, let's say, crack down on. Right.

Um, I think in the eu, they are more accustomed to having much tighter regulation than in the us. Um, some people have even pointed that as, as to one of the reasons why some people from the EU and other countries come to the US to start a business because it's, it's just easier to get a business off the ground because of black regulation. However, um, if there is some crisis point that can be clearly, clearly pointed to, um, like I think, uh, years ago, speaking of the election, uh, Facebook, you know, had the whole, um, crisis around, uh, that third party company that was paid, uh, to find certain information generation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, something like that you would think would, would be enough. I think it's gonna be a much, much tougher road to get something, um, like that in the us maybe individual, uh, instances.

com, he's finally being extradited, right? That's 12 years, 12 years in the making, um, different, oh, I forgot About that story. Yeah.

But, you know, tied to technology and technology use, it's gonna, it's gonna be slow going in the us So, so the, there was a, uh, this platform was, was complicit as, as, uh, Corey alluded to that they were aiding money, launderers, drug traffickers. I also even heard, uh, something along the lines of, uh, DDoS bots were, were proliferating. Um, do you know much more about that?

Especially the, the DDoS uh, uh, angle hope, the, There their company's argument is that they are a marketplace for whatever people wanna talk about and their private communications or whatever their private communications are. Um, and, and, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't know the ins and the outs, but what they do to promote things and what their algorithms surface and what they don't surface and, and what their content moderation is. Um, uh, but they say that they ab abide by all of the, um, regulations in Europe, that they do share information with law enforcement, but they haven't said that explicitly, but they've said that they abide by all the laws in Europe, um, uh, and that they have nothing to hide.

Um, again, I think it's, it's, it's, it's so interesting that, um, with, with every generation, we re we re-litigate and re argue the things that we've already decided as a society. Um, and technology has pro provided a a place for that. Um, because, you know, free speech is really different when you can, um, broadcast your speech much, much widely where I can send out a tweet about the latest workday earnings to the whole world from the comfort of my desk.

And, you know, with, with, I don't even need the help of, of all of my, uh, friends and colleagues, uh, to get that going. Uh, but there's also this, um, this pernicious effect that we saw, uh, in, in particularly during Covid and maybe, um, the, the two election cycles ago where we saw, um, uh, Nazis and, and, and racists get together and find groups of like-minded people where we found mentally ill people imagining their own in illnesses where we found anti-vax people, uh, getting together and talking amongst themselves and, and, and so active in the discussion that they were posting so much that we know now that the algorithms of Facebook and Twitter and YouTube were pushing more of that information to those people because they would remain more engaged. And that outrage, the technology stack, uh, rewards the outrage that is great business for the Facebook shareholders of the world and companies like Telegraph, uh, but maybe not so, uh, great for our society.

Yeah. That's what I think needs to be addressed. And I'll say, when I read this article, my first initial reaction was, I, I dabbled in Telegram a little bit, but my initial reaction was, it was no surprise.

'cause I, I felt it was kind of shady and I don't tend to use it. Uh, but yeah, it's a real issue how the algorithm rhythm pushes that kind of content. And we do need to address that.

We'll see the long, how that affects the long-term business model and the value of these things, right? Like, uh, Twitter is, is, uh, uh, we don't know it to be an existential crisis, but we know that the users have plummeted. We know that the costs have also followed, but so has the service problems.

You saw this with e Elon Musk's, um, uh, ill-fated interviews with the, uh, Florida governor Ron DeSantis and uh, uh, uh, Republican, uh, Donald Trump, where they couldn't even get the service up. And you have to say, well, this guy who thought it was a great idea to fire, uh, uh, vast, uh, numbers of our technical employees who keep the thing up and running is now finding that that, you know, the only way to grow or even hold the users that he has, and then the numbers have fallen, is by readmitting, um, uh, all of the people who were banned for good. In my mind, my a political statement, good reason.

Right, right, right, right. They're, they're all coming back. Right, exactly.

'cause they gotta prop up their audience because they're really not getting much of advertising. They're, and if anything, they're just losing name advertisers. That's been, its ongoing struggle they've had for a couple of years.

Um, you know, it's just one last thing, just kind of one final, final thought is that we've got these several examples of these billionaires running these social media platforms that had just turned into kind of morass of, of, of just, I, I don't even know what to say. Um, just, just it's disjointed debate and dialogue and, and some really bad actors. I hate that phrase, but it's true on these sites, I guess, is that something we're just gonna have to endure until something is done in a legislative form or just beyond that?

It looks like, at least as far as Twitter's results go, it looks like gravity's working. That the more of a cesspool that Twitter becomes, the fewer people wanna write checks to Twitter, and the fewer people want to, um, uh, be on the service at all. And you see the, the steady, slow and steady growth of threads.

You, you also see, um, uh, you know, not just advertising voting with the money, uh, with Twitter, but you're starting to see that as it relates to Tesla sales, where, um, people who are concerned about the environment and concerned about the issues associated with the environment, environment are also concerned with the behavior of Elon Musk and not willing to buy his electric car. Some people Yeah. Because of his, uh, political stance.

Yeah. And so, uh, uh, he is reaping what he has own Yeah, that's true. All biblical, Yeah.

Employees are leaving companies too because they don't agree with the, uh, the behavior of the companies and, and the reputations of them. But, uh, that's a topic for another day. Hey, thanks.

That's a good discussion. We'll be moving on to topic two in just a moment. Welcome back to Techstrong Gang.

Uh, there was a survey of, uh, nearly 1300 DevOps professionals who are building and deploying applications on top of the Salesforce software is a service platform. And they found that more than half work for organizations that have embraced continuous integration, continuous development platforms with another 28% planning to adopt the survey also found 59% of respondents working for organizations either have worked, already adopted, or are planning to adopt version control while 54% have implemented automated testing. Hope, can you sort through this and explain to us what this all means?

Yes. Um, I think it is one, I think it is fascinating that we can still have a conversation about SaaS in, in a semi incredulous way, uh, even in this day and age, right? Uh, as long as we've had SaaS environments, but, um, the rapid adoption of DevOps in SaaS environments and highlighted by platforms like Salesforce, right?

I think it shows an evolution in software development and IT operations that is continuing, it's been going for some time, maybe exacerbated by, by the pandemic, but businesses more and more are relying on SaaS solutions. They are looking for scalability, they're looking for flexibility. Um, for some it's, it's driving them toward, you know, how can we be cost effective?

But, you know, uh, news alert news flash SaaS doesn't automatically save you money, but, um, integrating those practices so that they can streamline their software delivery, hopefully be more collaborative, especially if they have distributed te distributed teams, um, and hopefully have higher quality applications. But how do they deal with the challenges? Because this can bring some really complex tool chains.

If you're using SaaS, you're integrating tooling from a lot of different vendors, and it is not on-prem, you cannot see the infrastructure. Maybe you can't touch any of the backend. Um, how do you make sure you have security and compliance across these distributed systems?

And what about vendor lock it, right? You have a vendor you really are relying upon, um, but you, you don't have a way to change, or maybe the egress costs are just so high, um, that it doesn't make business sense for you to move. And one of the, the big, big pieces to me also is the security, because now you're looking at shared responsibility between you and the SaaS vendor.

How do you ensure that you don't have security gaps, especially if you have a vendor? Hopefully not, that's not as responsive and, and not giving the right information that you need to be able to make your security decisions. But, um, but it is interesting, again, that SAS is still, uh, such a high point of conversation.

Even in this day and age, We sit in a different place, right? Like, we're technologists, we work with the technology, and yeah, almost by definition that's cutting edge. But when I, I'm, and so I'm always amazed when I talk to companies, uh, as I do every day, and I, and I hear about, you know, with exceptions, but I hear about digital transformation and I'm, I'll say, what does that mean?

It means taking things off of paper and going to, I'm like, really? That still is really happening, right? And it, and the answer's yes.

Like, you know, I, I've, I'm in the hot, in the, in the, in the, the tower, the white tower. I'm in the, the, the, the ivory tower. I'm in the, I'm in the right, literally, I'm, I'm in the ferry building.

There's a, there's a giant clock tower above my, a white clock tower above my head. But I'm in this place in San Francisco, and in this mindset where I'm thinking about ai, I'm thinking about the, the transition from, uh, 800 gigabits to 1600 gigabit optical transport in a data center. Um, I'm thinking of that, you know, I'm not thinking much about sas and, and yet the rest of the world is, is, is chugging along and making these changes, uh, still that I stopped thinking about.

Right, Because yeah, it's very interesting. And, oh, go ahead. Oh, no, go ahead.

I was just gonna say, it's funny because we usually are the first movers. We see it first. We hear about it first, and like you're saying, other things come in and, and, and fill it in.

And we don't really give it a second thought, but please continue. Yeah, I just think it's interesting how there are so many companies that are still in that process of basic moving, you know, moving to the cloud and, uh, moving away from certain legacy systems and things like that. And we get into that debate.

Are they really, uh, is it digital transformation or are they just finally digitalizing? It's funny that you mentioned, uh, you mentioned, uh, security issues, hope, because it, we used did a story of, from app Omni did a survey of about, I think it was 2,650 organizations in six countries. And basically they found that a third of them have had some sort of SaaS breach, and nearly half of those corporate victims had more than 2,500 employees, which is kinda staggering when you think about it.

And it's, uh, it, it's, so, it, it, it's, in a sense, SaaS apps have become kind of a, they're a system of record. I think most app, cloud app spending is on SaaS. And because they're SaaS apps have become a system of record, are at the center of how businesses conducted is also become a prime target of cyber criminals.

Is that, is that probably what we're gonna see more of? Is, is this continues to Grow? I, I think, I do think, I do think that is possible.

And, you know, there are those handy tools online where you can go and query and see what the tool stack is that organizations, and maybe it's accurate, maybe it's not. But if I am a, uh, if I'm a cyber criminal, and I know I found a vulnerability, did deny It, now you've got an alibi. I've got an alibi.

Just say, if I was a cyber criminal, she said, if were, If operative word, now, you know, I'm narrowing, you know, I'm narrowing my targets. And especially if, you know, they, they find a way that they can impact multiple organizations, uh, at once. I, I think it, I think it is a big threat and it does put more responsibility on the SaaS vendors.

And some of them, you know, maybe, uh, litigation fees are, are going to reach the point, uh, you know, maybe they'll make some hard decisions, but it's tough. But one of the other pieces that I think is interesting, um, around this move to SaaS is there are still a lot of issues potentially around regulatory compliance, right? So some organizations, if you're looking at GDPR, if you're looking at hipaa, um, compliance in a SAS environment can be challenging when that data is distributed across multiple cloud providers, multiple jurisdictions, um, is a part of your business in the eu, a part of your business, uh, in the us a part in, um, you know, uh, countries in, in South America, the regulatory requirements are gonna be so different.

But now you want to provide single access through this one SaaS provider to everyone, some SaaS providers, um, can't do that. And it's, it's just such a tough problem to untangle. I think it's great that it's opening up options for, uh, smaller businesses, smaller organizations, some who would not have been able to get off the ground, making an on-prem investment and trying to scale that investment over time.

Uh, the flexibility you get with SaaS is, is a game changer for a lot of businesses that probably would not have existed if not for it. But, um, but still so many considerations. You know, the, the, there's this, I, I'll mention it one more time.

I guess. The state of SaaS security 2024 report mentions these, uh, confluences security challenges like decentralization in consistent en enforcement, lack of clear responsibilities, and also the fact that only 15% of organizations have security teams that manage SaaS. Um, is it more, let me ask you about, just as a, as a professional really knows this well, is your greatest concern security, or is it regulation, or is it, I mean, on top of everything else that you have to worry about?

Um, I think in this day and age, the greatest concern is, is security. And especially if I am in a highly regulated industry, um, those regulatory requirements make me even more concerned, uh, about security if I'm not in a highly regulated organization. Um, so Finance, healthcare, Yeah, insurance, any of those.

Um, yes, security, security moves to the top. If I'm highly regulated, security moves to the top. If I'm not highly regulated, security moves to the top, security wins, no matter which direction.

Okay. Alright. Hey, um, interesting conversation.

Um, thanks again for your insight and, uh, we're gonna move on and talk a little bit about Facebook, our old dear friends in the next segment coming up. com is the number one online destination for DevOps education and community building. com covers all aspects of DevOps, including DevOps, best practices and tools, DevOps culture, DevSecOps, business impact, continuous testing, continuous delivery, and more.

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There's a lawsuit in federal court that would conceivably let billions of Facebook users unfollow friends groups and pages in one fell swoop with an unfollow button just to click of the button and they're all gone. And, uh, as you can imagine, meta, which is a company that owns Facebook runs, Facebook is probably terrified. No, they are terrified.

I talked to them about it. So there's a, there's a professor, a public policy professor on the East Coast and Ethan Zuckerman who's attempting to resurrect this browser extension that was invented by someone else. 0.

And, uh, he wants to bring this as an option to the billions of Facebook users. And in a, in a sense, kind of upend the way things are done there, Facebook is gonna fight him in coordinate. And it brings me to this, Amanda, I believe this, this, this, this kind of movement.

Do you think a lot of people would use that button if given the choice? Absolutely. I think when you're talking about from the customer experience angle, many people would be very happy to have this as an option.

I know, um, I, I feel like 1500 friends, I have about 1500 Facebook friends, and I feel like trying to go through all those and find the ones that either aren't even on Facebook anymore, that I'd like to clear out would be too much trouble or going through to find ones I don't even know. I mean, how many of you have Facebook friends? You don't even know how they ended up there.

And I would love to try to filter through my list, but it would take so long. So, and then all the groups you get invited to over a period of years just stack up and you get all those alerts. So in my mind, I'm sure that this will be a wonderful service for most of the users to clear out and filter through all these groups and, and friends and all that, and kind of narrow it down to what they're really interested in seeing.

But of course, on the other side of that, I do see how, uh, meta would not be happy with this. But, you know, coming from a customer and user experience, I would think they need to take that in consideration. Mean isn't the value of the, of, as a user, the value of the network is also the network, right?

I, and I guess what you're arguing for is kinda what we started talking about with Telegraph, which is, which is, is the, is the quality is a higher, a smaller, higher quality audience, more valuable than a large audience. And I think in some of these things that people tend to use, you know, Facebook, which I think a lot of people use with fa with family and close friends and not the, the distance, uh, uh, I, I have a story on a story. So I used to uh, uh, work at Bloomberg, uh, and I was on the, the set a lot.

And I would run from the set to grab something from my desk or to get something to drink. And this cameraman who was close friends with, would played practical jokes and put something shocking in my screens that when I came back and they would count down 3, 2, 1, you're on camera and I look at my, my monitor right below me and there'd be something, some ridiculous note or some obscene website or something. And it was a running joke and it was getting irritating, but I don't wanna take off my camera man 'cause it's taking care of me.

And I came to find quite a while later that I had, I was following on Twitter, hundreds of really weird accounts. Like how did, how did, did this, like someone buy an account that I was following till I, I called up this cameraman why we no longer work together. And he's like, I've been waiting for this call for years Because He followed all these accounts.

I don't, you know, I've, I've, and a pretty active Twitter account, I don't really pay attention to it, uh, so much. But yeah. Um, the surgical strike of who you follow and who you don't is pretty hard to, um, Well you mentioned, well, If you just surgically remove one at a time, it's not easy to remove the, the hoards that you might want to.

Yes. And then you're talking about that amount of time and um, you know, I know some people with like 5,000 friends and then that gets even harder in 300 groups to sort Through. Oh, can I tell you friends You were be Yeah.

Can I tell you guys a story? Um, this was about 2017, remember there was a major breach Facebook, like millions of people had to change their passwords. It was like a couple million.

I was one of them. You know what, in a sense that was a blessing because at the time I had like way too many friends. I had like 3,500 friends and I, without offending anybody, I did not wanna just defriend them.

That, that created all sorts of problems back then. So what I basically did was just, I couldn't change the pa I, I di I just decided not to change the password and start a whole new Facebook profile using that as kind of an excuse. I mean, it's, it's less than half now.

My friends' number of friends's, less than half than what it used to be, but in, I feel So much closer now, Schwartz. 'cause now I would chosen To be my friend. Well, no, I would never consider like taking you out out of the equation.

But remember, remember Corey, there was, what was the name of that, uh, social network where you only could have 50 friends? I can't remember the guy's name. Oh yeah, Dave.

Uh, I, I remember he thought that it would work because isn't there like the sociological or uh, uh, study that shows that most people have 50 friends? Well, That's the Kevin Bacon math, right? Yeah.

Oh yeah, exactly. Right. And Actually there are some people who are the, that, that that thesis is that some people have are the connectors who have an inordinate amount of friends.

And if you're connected to that person, then you are suddenly connected to so many. And that is, that is, that is the math that powers, that's basic math. The powers Facebook itself and Instagram.

Uh, but more Facebook where it's, where it's where your connections make your connections more valuable. Yes. You know, one thing.

Yeah, go ahead. And the value ascribes to Facebook. Sorry.

Hope. One Thing I'm, I'm wondering, um, your opinion's on that, that occurred to me in thinking this topic over, um, Facebook is a free service. You, you are the product when you are on Facebook, your data, your connections, your friends.

Um, so now there is this case which is about digital rights, user autonomy and control over my personal interactions, but on service that I have given $0. So what are my rights other than my contractual rights when, when I signed up that I probably gave away? So I am interested in how that will be approached when and if, you know, this court case is, is in motion.

Well, you Pay, you just don't pay with cash. Exactly. But in, at least in the US right, that contract is, is usually taken more seriously if I've handed over even a dollar.

Oh, by the way, the guy I raise a good point. Yes. That is a good point.

Dave Warren was the guy I was thinking about with the Yeah. The 50 that, um, but yeah, that's that's interesting. Yeah.

When you listen and Corey, you and I went through this when we would talk to Cheryl Sandberg all the time right about Facebook. And she, she'd say, oh, the more you, the more you write, the more engaged you are. But it also, it feeds into the algorithms and feeds into the data and feeds into their bottom line.

Um, yeah, I don't know about the rest of you Used to keep track of. So whenever Mark Zuckerberg was called up to speak in Washington and speak testify before Congress, um, and, uh, uh, I I, I kept track of, and then later when I was no longer a journalist started buying shares in, in meta Facebook and meta whenever he was testifying for Congress. 'cause the stock always tanked and it always came back.

And it was, and it worked for years and years and years. And, and it, you know, stocks had 500 right now that's long after the splits and everything else. And, You know, yeah.

It's, it's uh, it's this business of, of letting users, um, create a, create a network for Facebook and create content to bring people onto Facebook so they can sell ads and using algorithms to promote the things that get people most intrigued, uh, is working quite well for Facebook. Mm-Hmm. Yeah, they were always, and they were never afraid.

I mean that was, this is maybe another topic, but they were never afraid. He in particular was never afraid of breaking something and then reinventing it. Like all the features they would add over the years were initially hated or despised and then became the most popular features.

Meanwhile, poor Jack Dorsey over at x or Twitter at the time was paralyzed. It wouldn't change anything. You couldn't even edit your own tweet after you sent something out.

And in a sense it can dull and stultifying and, and in the state of where it is now versus Facebook where they actually had fresh ideas and kept things moving. No, well, one thing I was gonna, I'll point out with, um, this lawsuit is that it's based in part on section two 30 of the Communications Decency Act that gives people like us control over how they access the internet. This is like one of those as is those flashpoints where every social media company is terrified that they're no longer gonna be they protected by that.

Yeah. And, and which shields them from liability in terms of what third parties say. Um, well I'm sensitive to that too with this latest iteration of things too.

I was, I was working on something we, what did this telegraph thing and I was trying to create some of visual elements to help a producer at News Station. I did an appearance, a News Nation yesterday to talk about telegraph. And I entered in the information into a Gemini, Google's, um, chat, GPT competitor.

And, uh, I entered the information in and asked if it could reformat all these things, uh, that I'd written and, and change 'em into essentially tv uh, uh, graphics. And, and it came back and said that it could, uh, that Gemini was unable to, uh, write about politics right now and elections. Oh.

Which I wasn't, which this wasn't really about, but it wouldn't give me an answer. 'cause someone at Google said, this is not the time for us to make headlines about what our AI is, is creating theory. Mm, yes.

Interesting. You know, that's interesting because we had a discussion on this show, I think it was last week, where we, we, we talked a little bit about Google and part of what we said was deemed not, uh, presentable on YouTube. So in a sense there's like a, a, a form, it wasn't censorship, but they basically went above and beyond in terms of filtering the contents.

And which, and it kind of, in a sense is kind of a good thing in that, that they caught it. Um, it wasn't, not nothing nefarious, but it kind of was, was reassuring versus as what we've been talking about earlier, what we see on Telegram or on X, where it's just anything goes. So, um, so, so would it, would any of you, um, object to using the unfollow button of everything?

I wouldn't mind. I think people want it. They should have it.

Yeah. I would think that most people would appreciate the button. I would use it.

And I'm also sitting here thinking, I know Meta doesn't like this. They're finding it. But then on the other side of this, I think, well, what if everybody did filter down to exactly the friends, exactly the pages, the groups they wanted to follow Couldn't meta take that data and essentially be able to advertise more direct, uh, appropriate content to certain groups.

It would align better. I if everybody was more, um, you know, able to do that and they were more narrowed down, they could take that data and do something with that. Twitter has taken that approach in the past letting you have different groups and different, uh, that you follow.

But, uh, uh, Facebook has met whatever, for whatever reason they've figured out the math isn't there for them. Yeah. Because some of the ads I've seen, it's not for any product or service.

I have any interest. And it's just, yeah, there's someone out there. So yeah.

Uh, nuke it all and just warn the people I care about. Oh My God, sort it out. There we go.

Yeah. You know, uh, and then come back and add those few back in. But yeah, what a pleasant experience, right?

I'm seeing the things I care about from the people I care about. Now, if those, if those connections don't do that though, I'm still gonna be mildly impacted because it's gonna bleed out. But it's gonna be a, a, a somewhat a degree of improvement.

But, uh, if your, if your friends are like-minded, it's probably gonna be a lot better. I don't think there's as much of a stigma, uh, about Defriending or just pruning your, your friends now as there were, as it as it was maybe five or six years ago. Do do you agree?

I mean, it just, Facebook is not as just essential to people as it was. It's, it tends to skew towards total towards older folks. Um, yeah, you're, I don't think people take it personally as if, if you were to do, to do That, you don't think I, I think, um, My kids No, you're raw.

My teenagers pay very regular attention to who follows. Okay. Who stops following somebody?

Okay. Who changed something? Who posts me?

I posted a picture dropping my son off at USC last week and he couldn't be bothered to call me ever. He was on the phone in seconds. Take that down.

It's so embarrassing. And people are lighting me up. I'm like, I saw that post by the way.

I did see that. I saw you're in USC. I'm old.

I'm old. My friends are old. My my Instagram followers, my old friends.

No, my friends follow you too. I'm getting lit up the picture. I'm standing between his mom and I.

That's great. You caused a scandal. I love it.

You know him, John. Who's That? He's a nice guy.

Oh yeah, I know. We met him right at the football game. Right.

That's a problem with this. It's a nice picture. That is A great picture picture.

It's, that's wonderful. That is a great picture. Can't believe this is my favorite people.

You know, my daughter use this Facebook a little bit. Um, she's more of an Instagrammer and Snapchatter, uh, Uhhuh and I do those very little, so we're kind of opposite there. Uh, and then my son though, he's 14 and he is definitely not into any of the, the, those social channels.

He's more about TikTok and YouTube. That's my son. Right.

My son's the same way. You know, it's funny 'cause my daughter, um, who has kids specifically asked us never to post photos of their kids on Facebook or on X, anything like that. So out of respect, I don't do that.

And it got me into the, this kind of habit of posting less as much as I'd like to. And I was told sometimes by my younger son that I shared too much. He got mad at me for posting something on X to trying to help him with, with the story.

He immediately saw it and told me to take it down. So yeah. Corey, I I feel your, uh, your pain because this is something, but to again, Amanda, um, my son Christopher used TikTok all the time.

I mean, he just, he would never, he even consider using some of the stuff I I use. And, you know, it's generational. Uh, I hear that.

And I wonder because for me, rarely, I am rarely on Facebook, Instagram, daily, Reddit a few times a week. TikTok Yes, YouTube every day. So if you told me Facebook would go away, never to come again, I'd be like, all right.

So I had a, I have a friend who worked within Facebook and they left on fairly bad terms and she's, I'm there, I'm not gonna use it as much as I used to, but religiously uses Instagram constantly. It the same company. I mean, there's a differentiation, but still is the same company.

And she left on bachelors with the company. But that's the exception. So yeah, we're different strokes, different folks.

Um, the other Final company can ask to do with what content you're most interested in, and then the vibe that you, that you mesh with the most. Exactly. Well put.

Well, a good way to end it actually, Amanda, um, hey, thanks everybody. This was great. We did miss you, Alan and Mike, but you know, we can live without you.

We, we did it without you. So, um, until next time, this is Textron gang. We'll see you tomorrow, Thursday, the rest of the week.

Have a great week everybody. And uh, thanks for tuning in.