coming up next on Tech news today Tony Fidel is out as CEO of nest and we all saw it coming let’s be honest also Instagram upsets its users by switching to an algorithmic feed Google AI has a big red button to push when AI gets too smart for its own good and Kurt Wagner from recode tells us about all of the bigname CEOs that took the stage at the code conference this week oh uh and there’s a selfie statue yes it exists all that and more coming up next on Tech news today this is Twi bandwidth for Tech news today is provided by cash fly at C fly.com [Music] this is Tech news today episode 1527 recorded Friday June 3rd 2016 this episode of tech news today is brought to you by tracker a coin-sized tracking device that pairs with your smartphone and keeps you from losing your most valued possessions visit the tracker.com right now to take advantage of their Father’s Day limited time sale through June 13th only and enter promo code TNT for a free color upgrade hello and welcome to Tech news today this is the show where we talk about all the technology happenings with people who love technology I am Megan I’m Jason Howell all the tech technology happenings all the happenings all the happenings in the technology space we’ve got a few of them we do and a few that happened earlier this week yes when Kurt Wagner of recode joins us he’s been at the code conference all week he has and he’s got a lot of things to talk about there like the we had to like go through and pick a couple of really good key kind of people that were that were on stage and there were just so many of them I don’t know how you pick yeah it’s uh I love watching those videos they’re great um so yeah I’m excited to talk to him because he was there obviously excellent well before we get there we’ve got other things to talk about so let’s do that right now first up alphabet announced today that Tony Fidel CEO of nest for more than six years now including two years at Google once the company was acquired is stepping away from his leadership role uh but staying on as an advisor to alphabet and to CEO Larry Page Fidel and the culture of the nest division has been a very hot topic these past few months some employees have gone public with complaints about how the department has been managed uh including missing sales targets flubbing upgrades and uh flubbing you know new product development because you really haven’t seen a whole lot of that coming out of Nest uh since the acquisition pretty much and I don’t know with with these kind very public struggles I mean including at some of the the Google events on campus you know Fidel made his presence known and said some really kind of you know f f uh Google you know I I believe he said that at one of the meetings I can’t remember exactly what it was but he he’s a divisive character yeah I you know he he got to where he was because of that and that’s certainly a strength in the in the business world but I just think his T his time was numbered his days were numbered at Google and it’s hard to think that this wasn’t a factor in the move right I mean he’s done a couple interviews today that you know that New York Times and Bloomberg um saying like I’ve been planning this for a while but it is very hard to believe that he was n just shown the door um and yeah I don’t know it’s interesting I mean Nest kind of I mean besides All the Troubles that you just talked about like it just seems like where uh you know they were the first PE Nest was the first device in the home it was a beautiful device obviously Fidel came you know he you know helped create the iPod um and and it was just kind of languished it didn’t do all the things uh that people wanted it to do uh and then honey well came along they had the same kind of device uh and you know it is interesting it it does feel like Nest was just a little bit of like the beauty product I know I read on peace and Consumer Reports when I was thinking of getting you know a new thermostat and a new heater and uh and they were saying that like a lot of uh Realtors were recommending that people get the nest but Consumer Reports said the honey well is much better people just think the nest is better because it’s prettier yeah I think that’s a that’s a huge part of it right like um Nest just as an Internet of Things company is probably one of the more well-known companies because of that early success and that all happened before there really was a whole lot of Internet of Things anything happening um you know so I think I think they kind of they got in early they were super recognizable but then like you say a lot of the competition has caught up to what they’re doing they haven’t progressed at the rate that you kind of assumed they would I mean they were doing such cool things from the beginning and then a company like Google at the time not alphabet uh Google buys them and you think wow okay so you know both of their forces together this is going to create some really interesting Integrations throughout the home and and lead to a lot of really cool stuff and it just kind of hasn’t there’s been lots of rumored things uh including including a security uh system that you know is apparently under the underw works but you’re just not seeing it and I think that rate of progress you know could kind of shoot just Internet of Things in general in the foot and not just Nest you know right and yeah they bought drop cam and then he had a you know pretty public Fallout with the creative drop cam too uh so yeah it’s interesting but and then of course there’s Google home which will be out at some point in the future did they say at the end of this year or did they not give a date I believe they I thought that they said the end of this year uh but I guess that all remains to be seen because it really you know they had nothing to show off at iio so who knows how far along that is and how how believable that is yeah and I mean Google Google and alphabets like I never really understood why Nest wasn’t part of Rick osto taking on the hardware division on the Google side why Nest was its own separate thing from all of the other kind of Hardware efforts that Google as a company under alphabet has going on right now Google has tons of efforts in iot they’ve got Brillo which is like their Android for iot so their operating system they’ve got thread which is me uh Mesh networking for the connected devices and then they have uh weave which is a secure communication protocol for all those devices to talk to themselves and then of course they have the onhub router that has a little bit of that thread capability built into it but they aren’t doing a whole lot there it’s it’s kind of confusing to to know whether this you know how this affects Google um with with Nest just kind of languishing right now or whether it does it all maybe this is way more about kind of the services and the the back end than it is about providing devices I wonder if we’ll see Nest be sold off at some point in the same way that Motorola was ejected don’t know well today Instagram officially begins to roll out a feature it announced in March algorithmic feeds so instead of showing posts in chronologic order Instagram will now show you the post that math thinks that you want to see first math based on what kind of content you engage with on a regular basis this is good for you says Instagram but you’re wrong says internet comment commenters uh they Ed a lot more curse words to express that feeling on on Instagram’s uh post about it now right now uh it does not appear that Instagram will give you a way to revert back to the chronological Fe feed uh Facebook does this so I think that is a little bit of why the all the anger is there you know like okay so you know maybe you’re right but I should have the right to turn it back uh and there was a lot of just like see Instagram which I mean I think that’s interesting because I uh I I I mean I am an Instagram user I don’t uh love it but part of what I did like about it was that it was you know in Chron ological order and I could see everything that was being posted but I I totally agree that um math often does know more about what I want then then I know and I don’t have a lot of time I want I want to save time so yeah it’s hard to give it’s hard to hand over that control when you’re used to it being one way change is hard we see that all the time in technology Facebook you know certainly had plenty of people when they switched over to an algorithmic feed saying well that’s it I’m through with Facebook and I’m sure there was a a small percentage of people that actually stopped using Facebook because of the algorithmic change but I’m sure the majority of those people are still there they still have the option and I think that’s the big differentiator from this is that here you don’t have a choice you know if you liked the way you were getting it before and by the way that that’s the way you’ve been getting it since the service existed you know and it was created in the beginning now it’s different and maybe you aren’t seeing the things that you would like to see um so it’s hard handing over control to an algorithm hopefully they at least give you an option to uh to switch switch over in a similar way that Facebook has you know yeah may maybe in the future they’ll do that here’s the one thing that I want uh I uh I am not a fan of people who post photos on Instagram and Facebook the same photo oh okay um I you know I don’t uh because it just I feel like oh I already saw that on Instagram or I already saw that on Facebook I’m saying it to you you don’t you’re not really a big Instagram They Don’t Really Oh I thought you were saying because because maybe I could do something to change it was say Facebook and Instagram don’t listen to me but I’m saying that I wouldn’t it be great if they knew that I already saw that picture and I don’t have faith at that because I already see that you know in your Facebook feed you already see the same thing that you’ve already looked at often doesn’t that happen to you where you’ve seen something and it comes back up yeah well I mean you know personally I don’t check Instagram regularly so when I see something from Instagram it’s kind of like a reminder to me like oh yeah that’s right there is that other thing I’m happy I saw it here cuz if I hadn’t seen it here I wouldn’t see it at all cuz I just it’s Instagram isn’t on my daily check-in you know my small list of of services that I check in on every single day to see what people are posting there I understand what you’re saying if you’re Che if you’re checking both of them and there’s duplicates it would be awesome that’s a great feature request and I wonder if it’s on their list for it to know specifically that you’ve already seen it on one service and filter it out from the other right uh that would be one way that the algorithm would actually kind of work in your favor I would imagine uh Instagram says users Miss 70% of their feed right now I just want to point out this isn’t going to cut that number number down this just means you’re going to miss 70% of a different you know different items that’s interesting yeah I mean yeah and I mean you’ll still see the same amount of photos that you ever did you’ll just see different ones hope they’re expecting that you’re going to see better ones yeah I mean it’s one of those things because like obviously they want you to stick around because um you know they like that you know they they are providing a service presumably every people that work there like one you know believe in uh the service Instagram is providing but also in order to strive they have to make money and they have to have people looking at their ads uh and as far I think the people that got really upset about this were uh the people that sort of sell products on Instagram um and uh you know just or you know celebrities that just and there was a lot of like oh make sure you turn on notifications for my post so that you get a notification because I might not appear but I mean Instagram’s argument and which I believe is that if you have good content uh people are going to engage with it and then they’re going to see it like that you know if you’re just selling dumb product or take you know posting a bunch of your selfies and no one’s ever engaging or watching your videos or you know liking uh your photos then they’re not going to see them as well like I don’t want to see the stuff I’m not engaging with yeah I could see that being a big a big Downer for people who are marketing stuff on Instagram uh just got to step up your game Amazon is cracking down on fake reviews on the products listed on the site uh we’re talking Amazon might Sue these companies you know the the individuals behind behind this if they do this uh three seller sellers today were sued for posting fake reviews using bogus accounts to leave positive reviews on their product pages in these cases those fake reviews totaled up to around 45% of all the reviews listed on those product pages so they 45% of them were fake and created by the the person selling the product basically Amazon hopes for arbitration here hopes that it doesn’t go to court necessarily and uh that would avoid you know the the song and dance court and in the eyes of the public and maybe a settlement of some sort but um I’m wondering like I think that obviously I think this is this is good news because you go to Amazon and there’s a certain level of of automatic trust that I I realize I have when I go to to Amazon and read the reviews like I definitely always check the reviews so obviously I must feel some sort of trust in the reviews but so often you go down there and it’s like and I know you’ve seen this this is an honest review for a product that was given to me by the you know they gave it to me in exchange for an honest review and they’re almost always five stars so there are there are pieces that are broken here in the review uh setup and I guess the challenge is if you know that there are breaks in the system then how can you ever trust what you see right I think I’m I might have I’m losing trust for Amazon reviews um but you know I also work in a place where I have a lot of access to people that I do trust you know where for uh product reviews so that is what I’m most likely going to do also you know have like Twitter that I go to a lot uh and and Trust the people you know the majority of people that respond to me there so yeah I think it is interesting because they have sued the companies that uh that sell the reviews already but now they’re suing the seller so that’s the new thing that uh the seller who bought the reviews so like the you know the I guess the idea is that you could put those people selling the review out of business if you are making it you know illegal to buy reviews which I think it is already illegal but actually punishing it’s like going after the people who are making the drugs as opposed to the people who are selling the exactly yeah uh so I I think this is great I I I don’t know why I guess I understand why they don’t want to be in court why they want arbitration but I think as like I am glad to know that Amazon is going after these people that they’re not just accepting uh because I mean it is beneficial for them to have good reviews fake or real because then people are going to buy more things from them right so it’s good that they’re cracking down on this they’ve still got a ways to go though I mean their term of service explicitly call out that you can do uh you know people can give a review in exchange for a free item and that’s that’s the thing that always bugs me it’s like of course you’re going to get a festar review like they got it for free I mean that’s you know that’s perfectly okay in this in the trans service and that’s why what Leo always says like why he buys everything because you know then he says I bought this I paid for it with my own money did someone didn’t give it to me in exchange for a review uh so yeah I mean that that’s part of why I like working here because that is really always very important to him and so yeah removes any of that like layer of guilt or you know or Associated kind of need to say something positive about something for sure yeah yeah well Business Insider says that mathematicians at Deep Mind that’s Google’s London artificial in intelligence research lab are working on a way to prevent the robot apocalypse a recently published paper entitled safely interruptable agents explains how to build a kind of off switch into Ai and to teach the AI not to override that off switch even if it perceives a reward in doing so a reward for example is you know the robot apocalypse the robot would see that as an award this is so a reward uh so fascinating to me because we talk about this a lot like oh we’re turning over so much to Ai and it’s going to take over and we’ve all seen the science fiction movies uh but this is sort of like a big the idea that there would be a like a big red button they use the term big red button in this paper uh that if things went AR you could press it uh but then what’s to keeping this really smart AI from like keeping you from pressing it so it’s something that’s built into uh this that would keep the AI from keeping you from turning it off if it wanted to take over ah my brain exploding like I have to I always have to try and fight the urge to to go right for the oh no it’s it’s Doom and Gloom you know robots are going to blah blah blah when we come on on stories like this but I’m sorry like this this story you can’t avoid it that’s exactly what it’s all about is preventing robots from taking over um so I guess it’s a good thing that it’s in place and hopefully they know what they’re doing behind the scenes to actually have something that is cancelable you know and and can bypass uh I guess I don’t I don’t program robotics under the hood so I don’t know how you successfully create something that is wicked smart and you know can learn new capabilities all on its own but yet can’t access that one function I’m sure it’s possible uh but seems necessary you know and we hear a lot about this also as AI is emerging about just like the responsibility that we have now at thinking about these kind of consequences even if they aren’t short-term or near-term possibilities because when you’re talking 20 30 50 years down the line and we’ve continued down this trajectory there are a lot of scenarios where you know if we don’t think about those things now we don’t get uh rules in place and you know responsibility uh as as part of the whole process the whole ethos of it um that could be the thing that you know makes robots kill you I don’t know I don’t know what the end is there well yeah I mean or or something maybe less drastic but bad right the I’m sorry basically it’s the I’m sorry Dave they want to get rid of that you know exactly that’s it so yeah I mean the Deep Mind has an e ethics board but it’s a secret ethics board which I think is fascinating like how do we know that it’s not there’s not AI That’s writing that report that I wrote about yes the ethics board is the AI we don’t know that for sure so I don’t know it’s interesting because like all this sci-fi has been around for so long you know and it used to be like our people the Nerds and Geeks talking about this but now you hear a lot of people when we talk about this say like oh you know you’re being too suspicious that’s you’re being a lite by like bringing up the robot apocalypse all the time but I think like I think there’s a way to love technology and also not trust it completely and be aware of its uh capabilities the potential both good and bad coming up we’re going to check in with Kurt Wagner from recode with a look back at some of the most important points from this week’s code conference uh but first let’s take a minute 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point how’s it going Kurt hey it’s going pretty well I’m actually hanging tough thanks excellent I’m I’m inan a hangover from all that all that talk of course nothing else that’s that’s what I was referring to as well okay all right excellent uh so Rico obviously spent the last few days uh hosting some of Technology’s biggest names on stage we got a ton of awesome insight into a number of key topics uh we found that picking any one interview is next to Impossible because there were so many good interviews but we picked three really interesting interviews to discuss first let’s talk a little bit about uh Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk he had a lot to share about his his Ambitions for Mars colonization as he usually ends up in Mar you know um on the Mars Topic at some point um he seems to have this whole government thing on Mars planned out what is that all about yeah so I mean in addition to Tesla of course which which he also talked about with the cars he he runs SpaceX which is trying to send humans to Mars by 2025 which in and of itself is pretty you know impressive and just fun to hear about but then uh someone asked him hey what’s government going to look like on Mars and I kind of expected him to laugh and you know say who knows but nope he jumped right into his uh his game plan you know hey we’re going to have a direct democracy where it’s just going to be popular vote and if you have 60% of vote a law can get voted in but then it can get removed with 40% I mean he he is clearly put a lot of thought into how Mars is going to be uh uh operated and um it was pretty impressive and also pretty entertaining at the same time because I think most of us have enough trouble just keeping up with uh our own day-to-day nevertheless planning the government of another planet so um you know he was impressive uh for for sure well so he they also he also asked him uh What uh what do you think about the political situation now do you as you know as long as you’re you have this all planned out like what uh do you think you could have a say in changing the you know what’s happening in the United States right now and he basically said oh no I I I have no um say in that like I have no influence do you think that that is true or do you think he was really just trying to not alienate any side or any customer oh I think it’s he’s trying not to to alienate anybody I mean when you look at someone with his a his bank account uh and be his you know social and and uh uh I guess maybe social is the best his social reputation his social pull uh on people I mean crap he’s he sold like 400,000 Teslas before they’ve even been you know rolled out so he definitely has people’s ear and he has people’s respect and attention so if you really wanted to jump in and and throw his weight behind somebody I think it would make a difference um I think he’s just trying to to hold out as long as possible because as most business folks know um it’s not always good business to get into politics um so I would imagine you know he’s he’s kind of playing koi here a little bit but uh yeah he said he doesn’t want to get involved and that he as one single person here in the US can’t really make a difference which I’m sure a lot of us feel like it sometimes so I could kind of relate that was probably the only thing I could relate to him on for the whole conversation Fair I know one thing I could relate to him on that was his thoughts on us living in a simulation because that just I don’t know for some reason that spoke to me I was like yes you’ve nailed it it’s true we’ve evolved from pong 40 years ago to today’s video games this was his point is that in 40 years we’ve we’ve gone from pong to the current state of video games and if at that kind of rate of progress you C you can only you know conceivably see that at some point virtual worlds are going to be as realistic as reality is to us and then I think he said something like the one in a billionth you know chance that we aren’t living in a simulation which was which got the crowd pretty uh uh astonished I think I I can speak for myself only when I say that I’ve spent the last 48 hours Googling you know base reality and uh trying to get an idea for what this simulation discussion is all about it one of the funniest things he said he said number of funny things one of the funniest things he said was as soon as the question was asked I think it was framed it’s like is this something you thought about and he was like I think about this all the time to the point that my brother and I have banned those conversations if we’re ever in a hot tub he said if we’re in a hot tub we’re not allowed to talk about the idea of us being in a simulation uh which which I found to be pretty funny but yeah I mean he he really um I think wowed a lot of people and you know he just thinks about things in a way that not uh many of the rest of us do so that was it was fun to hear uh one one more thing that we should talk about well obviously he talked a little bit about uh Tesla and kind of apple in comparison doesn’t sound like he’s too freaked out about uh the potential competition with apple no he he mentioned Apple I think has been um more competition than Google but either way he was kind of saying well it’s going to be four years before we kind of see anything legitimate from either one of those guys and by that point you know Tesla’s going to be kind of off and running I think is the way he he described it and he said you know if you think about it now uh any car manufacturer out there and this is again his words because I’m not an expert in this area but he said no one really owns more than 10% of the market share which when you think about it you know it’s pretty remarkable right that we’re no matter who you are at the very best you’re going to have about 10% of consumers so it’s not as if you know we’re all going to be driving a Google or Apple car someday and I think it’s a good perspective for him to have a Tesla is he’s saying hey you know we’re not trying to have 90% of the market you know eventually maybe we have 10 and knowing him I’m sure he’d want more than that but um you know it doesn’t seem like Apple and Google are as much of a concern at this point as as probably folks who are already making cars General Motors or or or folks like that so um I don’t know he’s he just never gets rattled I mean he’s like throwing around these ideas these 20 year long visions and he just says it with a straight face so I think the rest of just have to laugh because otherwise our brains would explode or something like that but pretty much yeah he doesn’t get too worri well let’s move on to the less interesting Elon Musk Jeff Bezos another corporate is that his tagline that’s the one I’ve invented for him uh I mean he’s another corporate Tycoon interested in space but doesn’t say the crazy funny lovable things that Elon Musk says uh but Walt Mossberg did an interview with him and it was it was very interesting uh now Bezos I guess came to code the last time he was there was eight years ago that was when the Kindle was pretty new and a lot has changed um just for the Kindle for him uh for Amazon and what were the biggest takeaways for you from the interview with basos man that’s a tough one only because I think you you know like a Google or a Facebook Amazon now has so many different things that they’re trying to accomplish with their business but I mean he touched on everything from owning the uh you know retail delivery cycle so not only just selling you things online but actually delivering them to you with Amazon crie in in a truck um he talked about the relationship that Amazon has with USPS and other delivery services to actually accomplish that and I think a lot of us assumed Amazon wanted to cut out the middleman right eventually the if they can own that whole transaction better for them but no you know Bezos was saying we have good relationship with them in fact we want them to be a partner and and that’s something that we’re going to continue to to push moving forward uh he talked about their efforts with original content so Amazon Prime you know is kind of like a Netflix or Hulu in the sense that they want to create shows and movies and things but it was funny is that he was saying hey we’re pretty much doing that just to entice people to sign up for the delivery stuff right like if you get these cool movies and TV shows in addition to free delivery maybe you’re going to do more of your shopping on Amazon so I find I found it interesting that he’s kind of dangling the content stuff as a carrot for more of the retail stuff um so you know it’s just like that that’s more business obviously he also talked a little bit about sending Rockets to space uh like Elon so the Amazon’s and and and Bezos in particular is and a bunch of different things but I think those were some of the main takeaways and and it was just intriguing to hear someone like that who you don’t hear from a lot uh open up about you know the way he thinks about things definitely I mean it’s fascinating to me like just Amazon’s place in this whole ecosystem uh because they really are the ones that are selling things they’re they’re the ones that are asking us for money to buy things whereas you know Google I mean apple is as well but it’s a little bit different I think but you know there’s so many companies fa Google and Facebook uh that are and Snapchat that are really just wanting our eyeballs for ads and so we’re not turning over money to them but we are turning over a lot more that we don’t even realize so I I think it’s interesting so uh I mean because he is similar like Amazon has a a stake in the ground with AI with the echo um as does Google and presumably Apple uh and did he talk at all all about um the Echo and the the future of that or or anything like that yeah I mean he did a little bit and I think you know the echo is certainly um the AI was actually a theme I will say throughout kind of the whole conference and and it was relevant we had you know Sundar the CEO of Google was there um Cheryl Samberg and and um Mike shner the CTO and or Co and CTO respectively at Facebook were there um obviously Elon so we talked a lot about AI Asos did talk a little bit about the Echo um and just this idea of kind of like creating a connected home and and I think you know maybe looking at this from an industry standpoint the idea that um we are using software now to really personalize things and not just you know in physical products like the echo where you’re going to be talking to it at your home but Facebook where it’s determining what you read and Twitter which determines what you read and what you see um you know it’s just it’s incredible how much is kind of reli at this point on artificial intelligence and how much these big companies like an Amazon are having to go out and and kind of fight each other for talent because there’s not a lot of people believe it or not who are smart enough to be uh creating you know robots that act like human beings who would have th so the you know I think it’s it’s kind of going to be a big part of Amazon moving forward you could even look at their Logistics stuff around deliveries I mean I imagine a lot of that is going to be AI powered um more so than it already is and and so he did touch on that but again that was something that a lot of people touched on that was a huge theme throughout this whole the whole event that we had yeah I mean we didn’t even talk at all about Elon Musk and his uh neural lace kind of protection uh with AI so that we don’t become a common house cat to our robots uh but Facebook also took the stage you were just talking about Cheryl Samberg uh and Mike schur um were on with Cara swisser uh with with a nice interview and they also kind of talked a little bit about this earlier in the week we had the topic of deep text that we discussed on the show and uh basically you know for those who don’t remember that’s categorizing language on Facebook uh for things like moderating application that sort of stuff um did they expand on kind of the potential of deep text and what it kind of says for the future of the Facebook experience so you know they actually I was I was a little disappointed because they didn’t actually touch on deep text U they touched on AI more broadly but not deep Tech specifically but as you said you know they they’re basically trying to understand everything thing that we as users share on Facebook so uh that when you say hey I need a ride they can actually surface their Uber and lift integration and you can get a ride right there versus saying oh I just had a ride I’m already here you know being able to determine the difference between those two is pretty key right and and they’re they’re going to do that they are making steps towards doing that but what uh Cheryl and and Mike spoke about on stage was actually more bigger picture stuff so using AI in the future to do things like uh detect cancer and and actually fight cancer and um healthcare related issues which I actually found intriguing because as of right now you know Facebook as far as I know isn’t doing anything in that field but we’ve heard Mark Zuckerberg talk about this as well this idea that artificial intelligence and software can really be um what changes our Health Care system and helps us detect diseases earlier on and so it’s clear that they as a company are thinking about that it’ll be interesting to see if they actually uh you know come up with kind kind of a product or something that that does that or if they’re simply progressing AI more broadly in hopes that that others can use what they’ve learned and in advance you know in the healthcare industry but I found that intriguing that they really did talk a lot about Healthcare when they when they were thinking about the future of AI for sure did they offer any insight on how easy or how difficult it would be to use uh deep text for comment moderation so they did not but I had an interview with someone on Facebook kind of about deep text before the before they announced it and and got a you know about a a demo is I I try to retain as much as I could this is complicated stuff but the feeling right now is that it’s only being used for two things the first is um that ride uh sharing that I Told You So if you mention that you need a ride Facebook will surface kind of a their Uber lift integration and hopes that you’ll get a ride the second is uh you know if you want to sell something on Facebook um you might say hey I got an old bike and then Facebook will see that you’re trying to sell something surface they’re selling tools which they which they have but that not a lot of people people I think even know about so it’s a good opportunity to kind of put that in front of people but with the comment moderation I mean think about it this way we already read things on in newsfeed on Facebook based on an algorithm right an algorithm determines what shows up higher or lower and as a result that’s the things that we see and the things that we don’t see I think what they want to do is essentially use that same idea with comments right so they would be able to determine uh from the text of a comment how relevant it is to the video that that someone left it on or the post and say okay you know this comment based on a collection of likes uh replies and also just context because we the computer algorithm can now determine context we’re going to move that higher up or lower in the Stream so that people aren’t you know getting spammed uh people aren’t able to rig the system and and put a link to something totally irrelevant at the top of the comment thread because that of course kills the discussion and obviously Facebook doesn’t want to do that so I don’t necessar I mean it sounds I don’t want to say easy to me because they already do Newsfeed stuff it sounds similar um I’m sure it’s very challenging but I think it’s something they’re thinking a lot about and probably going to be one of the first use cases with deep text that we see outside of the two that uh we already mentioned and are you shedding any tears today about Instagram uh going to the algorithmic feed uh I don’t know if I would shed tears about that but I I you know have heard um it was actually interesting you bring this up because I was just on Facebook this morning a good friend who is a photographer and also a very very DieHard Instagram user left a long post about how um you know never thought I’d say this but Instagram has basically is dead to me now um you know it’s transformed from this app where it was really about photography and beautiful photos and it’s now uh kind of more like Facebook right like you get a little bit of Photography but you also get some stories and you get some text and you get memes and you get gifts and that kind of stuff and um to me uh it doesn’t bother me as much but I could see people who really enjoyed Instagram for the photography being a little bummed out to see how uh the app has evolved to a little bit more mainstream so um we’ll see I bet people are going to you know complain about the algorithm but I don’t know if I follow enough people to make it a big deal to be honest with you all right well thank you so much for joining us Kurt uh Kurt is a reporter at recode at Kurt Wagner 8 on Twitter thanks so much and hopefully we’ll talk to you soon yeah my pleasure thanks for having guys enjoy the weekend all right you too take care we have some feedback uh jez X wrote uh to TNT at twit.tv hi guys gals great shows I had to cringe when both you and Bethesda said that the mods were 50 times more popular on the Xbox than the PC that’s Fallout mods that we talked about last night uh the reason for this he says is that they only take into account the official Bethesda site downloads the PC modding Community has been using other sites for mods for a long time before Bethesda made an official site the most prominent one being Nexus mods this alone is the reason why it’s 50 times more because PC users have been using this site for Fallout 4 mods month months before Bethesda made their official site at bethesda.net you will also find that most of the mods on bethesda.net are just re-uploads by the mod authors from nexusmods.com and have been out for ages for PC users it’s a really good point Point really good uh I mean that’s a probably a heck of a lot more numbers than when you put it that way um cuz I know I mean because just at its core the mod Community you know has happened for a long time outside of kind of the official channels so it makes perfect sense and I’m happy that you uh wrote in to correct us us and Bethesda yeah take that Bethesda you got well actually it also TNT’s fan of the day is at wb5 net on Twitter I’m assuming a ham who says I use an old iPhone 3G as an iPod I’d rather save my phone battery for for actually using it as a phone to which I have to say what do you actually call people with this with this mythical phone device I don’t understand it I don’t understand uh excellent thanks for sending that in show us how you watch or listen to TNT just record a video or take a picture of yourself or your setup and post it on Instagram Google+ Twitter or Facebook you the hash how IAT TNT and we’ll find it so there is a social media storm brewing over a bronze statue in Sugarland Texas there’s actually a real storm also in Sugarland Texas so if you’re there stay safe uh but this is a tech show so the soc called Selfie statue has been the subject of criticism on Twitter since it’s unveiling earlier this week the statue features two young women taking a selfie and uh it is part of a collection of Bronze Statues depicting what people do in the park presumably take selfies uh the next statue that will be um released is going to be a man playing in the guit playing the guitar another thing people do in the park now citizens criticize the use of public funds for the Statue but it was not paid for by public funds it was donated uh today slate had a piece in defense of the statue arguing that the fact that such a mundane activity was rendered in bronze is part of what makes it interesting uh I spent a lot of time thinking about this because uh we this is what we do this is what we look like and so when you think of statues uh they’re often of what people do yeah well I mean and that’s that’s the theme of of this particular installation right is what are people doing in our parks and here’s a number of different things I have no problem with this I’m really happy they didn’t go with a selfie stick right uh may maybe someday that’ll get that’ll get em bronzed um but I do wonder if you know years down the line when human life does not exist anymore because aliens have obliterated us from planet Earth um and there you know another alien life hits the planet searches for for whatever they can find they’re going to run across this and they’re going to think that in a previous world we worshiped this small device and we would hold it in the in the air and we would all duck and smile at it because we loved it so much and actually it would totally be the truth it’s true well I I loved this slate piece because uh it really goes deep into like you know images of women and why people have issues with women taking selfies because it’s women taking control of the you know object of I know it’s if you’re it yeah it goes deep in terms of a bronze selfie statue if you’re interested in that read the Slate piece uh also points out that most art itself was like as uh you know it was a selfie like it wasn’t people taking it themselves but it was people saying I am going to pay you a bunch of money to paint my photo because I rich and I want you to take my photo and paint my photo that’s what art was and so we don’t we don’t walk around the museum and say look how narcissistic all these people were that’s true like I can think of that I think it’s the mcer painting where uh it’s like the reflection of MC eer and he’s he’s painting which is basically a a selfie I mean a very talented art-based selfie not just a photograph of himself but yeah you’re right you’re right um that’s true a lot of artists have have made you know art that way and I don’t know we just think we’re really cool I guess that’s people just think they’re awesome that’s the mor of the story and uh yeah Dr morby is in the chat room also van goes selfie self-portraits yeah so that’s that’s the story it okay all right I mean I can’t yeah barely I need to read more more through this though because I’ve got to I’ve got to get to to the heart of the subtext really yeah it depends I mean you could read the Twitter arguments about it or you could you know read the Fox news story about it or you could go deeper and read the Slate piece or even deeper Refinery 29 really goes deep into the the part about women controlling the um means of production in terms of Art and it all began with a selfie bronze statue who knews yes she’s also wearing my scarf she’s wearing a you know an infinity scarf in the selfie statue too so I took um you you saw yourself in that in that statue saw ex the the whole selfie thing do you take selfies I I do I’m I’m known to take a selfie all right now and then yeah I mean we all we all do even though we say we don’t and even though we we make fun of it we all kind of do sometime don’t say you don’t because I’ve seen you them I do I also make fun of it but I’m making fun of myself when I do it too uh we’ll have to ask Jill Duffy Monday’s guest uh Jill Duffy’s from PC mag whether she takes selfies and what she thinks about that uh so she’ll be in on on Monday we’ll bring her in on Skype TNT records live every Monday through Friday at 400 P p.m. Pacific 7 p.m. Eastern 12 a.m. UTC twit.tv you can be a part of the show by emailing us at TNT twit.tv you can also leave us a short voicemail that is 260 TNT show and find us on Twitter we are at technew toay TV we are also on Google Play music iTunes chomecast Apple TV we’re everywhere find all the ways to subscribe at twit.tv TNT and I am on Twitter at Megan morone and I’m at Jason Howell and thanks to our technical director car Cole and all the folks who help us produce this show every single day and thanks to you for talking Tech with us today we’ll see you all on Monday have a great weekend [Music]