Facebook’s Legal Meltdown & Google’s $32B Power Move | Tech News of the Week

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Announcer: Welcome to Tech News of the Week with your host, Too many flagons of dwarven Honey Mead.

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Ned: Welcome to Tech News of the Week. This is our weekly tech news podcast where Chris and I dissect four interesting things that we found in the news. Chris, it looks like you have feelings about Facebook. Let's go.

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Chris: Facebook is literally the worst part one, their leadership. Have you ever heard of the Streisand effect? It's when something, some piece of news or whatever, a celebrity or otherwise famous person wants to keep quiet that would probably ordinarily not get any press at all. Gets blown up by the press because said celebrity goes on some kind of rampage trying to shut down stories about that secret thing.

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Ned: Mm.

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Chris: A few weeks ago, Mark I believe in free expression, except when it reflects poorly upon myself. Zuckerberg went on the legal warpath against one Sarah Wynn Williams publication of a memoir called, quote, Careless People. Sarah Wynn Williams, by the way, is a formal global policy director at Facebook. And the careless people referenced in the title are all the people she worked with and around at Facebook up to and especially including Mark Zuckerberg himself. Aside from stopping Wynne Williams from actively promoting the book, the Zucks legal tantrum has let everyone know about the book. And now that since he cares that much about it, we know that the allegations are likely true. A few Facebook's destabilizing efforts in foreign countries upsetting Sheryl Sandberg not because she's worried about the people, but because it means that she might not be able to harvest organs from the people who live there, potentially in the future. Whether this was a joke or not, Unsure. Also, Facebook employees letting Mark Zuckerberg win at every board game he ever plays with them. And anytime someone else wins, Zuckerberg cries and claims they were cheating. And of course, the old canard female employees being expected to quietly tolerate sexual harassment or be fired.

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Chris: Cool. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Hold, hold. Did we all not mention advertising executives celebrating increased revenue based on ads that target teens insensitive emotional states? This is just the tip of the iceberg. And sadly, none of it is surprising. Zuckerberg has long prided himself on being successful first and ethical. Not at all, because ethics are for poor people. I'm pretty sure that's an exact Zuck quote, so you know, he sucks. And as the kids are fond of saying, culture flows downhill.

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Ned: Google to acquire Wiz for $32 billion. Wait, didn't we already do this? Indeed we did. In July of 2024, Google offered $23 billion to acquire Cloud security outfit Wiz and Wiz turned them down. Asaph Rapoport, the co founder and CEO said at the time that that he thought the company could reach a value of $100 billion in the future and their long term plans were to IPO not be acquired. How quickly the turntables Asaph so what changed in the last nine months? Well, I can think about 9 billion things that changed reading through the blog posts and articles. There's very little else to indicate why ASOF had such a change of heart. Wiz is known for supporting multiple clouds, creating code to cloud security protections. Joining Google is not going to feel great for close partners like AWS and Azure. There are the usual bloviating platitudes about synergy and Google being a leader in the AI space, but I think it all comes down to money. The leadership at Wiz clearly felt they were worth more than $23 billion and and Google finally found the right number. The acquisition is still subject to approval, although I expect a rubber stamp from the US on this one.

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Ned: The EU is known to be a little more wary about these mega mergers, but eventually they'll cave. Personally, I think this is bad for the industry. A cross cloud cybersecurity firm should not be owned by one of the major public clouds. It just seems like an inherent conflict of interest and and a disservice to customers. But hey, $32 billion says a lot more than I ever could.

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Chris: Facebook is literally the worst Part two AI stuff. So we have talked a few times about the never ending ongoing litigation revolving around all the major AI models creating said models using legally using illegally obtained copyrighted material. Well guess what? Facebook has an AI model. It's called Llama and you've probably heard of it. Up until Ned's all time favorite episode about deep seat came out, most people regarded LLAMA as the most capable model that was available for you to freely download and just run on your own at home. Well now, new filings came out this week showing LLAMA engineers lamenting the cost and delay of getting things like books and research papers to use for training in a legal and responsible way. In fact, one of them called out the problem. The problem is that people don't realize that if we license one single book, we won't be able to lean into the fair use strategy. A reference to a possible legal defense for using copyrighted books to train AI. So what did they do, you ask? While obviously already knowing they just went ahead and downloaded them all illegally. Of course. Another filing shows that a mysterious executive who goes by the indecipherable codename mz, gave them permission to train based on data downloaded from Library Genesis.

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Chris: Library Genesis, or Libgen, is one of the largest online repositories of pirated copyrighted content online, something to the tune of 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers, at least according to one article. That's a tough number to pin down, as I'm sure you can imagine. Completely fine for Facebook to do that, right? Because it's fair use. I'm making a face for people listening. If this use were so fair, one would wonder why Facebook employees took such pains to hide the fact that they were doing it from the filings. Again, one employee remarked that, quote, torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right. No kidding. Did it stop him from doing that though? If you need the actual answer to that I need you to refer to Facebook is literally the worst part. One from like just like three minutes.

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Ned: Ago and if you want to hear us rant more about AI, just listen to the main episode this week. Say goodbye to your copper Copper Lines the new head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, is planning to let ISPs have their way with American infrastructure. And if you thought your DSL was terrible, just wait till you have nothing. Carr is planning to relax requirements for telecommunications providers that are trying to retire their copper lines. The existing requirements are intended to protect consumers from having their landlines and DSL connections removed without receiving similar or better service at the same price. Imagine you're a rural customer paying 35amonth for 5 megabyte DSL. Not great. But then AT and T strolls along and says, we're ripping out that line. Here's a 4G connection for $99 a month. You would be nonplussed. So the FCC had an adequate replacement test that telcos had to pass if they wanted to remove those copper wires. The new revised order will allow telcos to forego the performance testing process, citing a totality of circumstances that proves the replacement service will be better. That is, trust us, notably untrustworthy ISPs probably shouldn't receive the benefit of the doubt, given that they're prone to lying about everything.

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Ned: But the new FCC leadership is totally in the tank for their lobbyists. Carr isn't planning to stop with this order either. His mantra is delete, delete, delete, claiming that red tape and regulations is what prevents ISPs from delivering better service and not their reticence to actually invest in their networks. I never thought I'd actually say this, but I miss Agit Pie. Dude.

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Chris: Dude.

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Ned: All right, that's it. We're done. Now go away. Bye.