Brian McCullough (0:04)

Welcome to the Techmeme write home for Wednesday, January 8th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, tons and tons of controversy and fallout from Meta's announced content moderation changes yesterday. I've got what I think is a fair comprehensive rundown of all the angles, interesting new rounds for Blue sky and Anthropic and the coolest stuff I've seen from CES thus far including are rollable laptop screens finally ready for prime time. Here's what you missed today in the world ofTech so Meta's decision to change its content moderation processes announced yesterday caused a whole lot of controversy. If you checked techmeme this morning, like half the page was made up of articles talking about this. Employees inside Meta have apparently been sounding off internally lots of criticism from outside as well, like Meta's fact checking partners PolitiFact and FactCheck.org saying they had no role in deciding what the company did with the fact checked content that they provided. Den Meta's claim that Meta had no control over the moderation and other fact checking partners, including USA Today, say they were blindsided by Meta's decision to drop them and reject claims of being too politically biased. Now, a lot of the controversy stems from speculation that these moves were made to curry favor with the incoming administration. In fact, yesterday Donald Trump said Meta has, quote, come a long way after the company announced it will end its fact checking program and that Meta's quote presentation was excellent. But a taste of this controversy. The Verge is reporting that Meta is dropping fact checking after incoming FCC head Brendan Carr threatened it over such practices. Quote, Trump's FCC chairman pick and current FCC commissioner Brendan Carr is a self identified free speech defender with a creative interpretation of the First Amendment. In mid November, as part of a flurry of lightly menacing missives to various entities, Carr sent a letter to Meta, Apple, Google and Microsoft attacking the company's fact checking programs. The letter was primarily focused on NewsGuard, a conservative bet, a noire that Meta doesn't actually work with. But it also demanded information about the use of any media monitor or fact checking service, and it left no doubt about Carr's position on them. You participated in a censorship cartel that included not only technology and social media companies, but advertising, marketing and so called fact checking organizations, carr wrote. The incoming Trump administration and Congress, he continued, will take, quote, broad ranging actions and those actions can include both a review of your company's activities as well as efforts by third party organizations and groups that have acted to curtail those speech rights in case the implications weren't clear enough, Carr spelled out exactly how his agency could punish them. For now, I am writing to obtain information from you that can inform the FCC's work to promote free speech and a diversity of viewpoints. As you know, Big Tech's prized liability shield section 230 is codified in the Communications act, which the FCC administers as relevant here. Section 230/only confers benefits on big tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, in good faith, end quote Prize liability shield you've got there, and it'd be a real shame if someone administered it, end quote. Now again, that's the Verge's take on it. That was quoting from the Verge. Those aren't my words, but there are also a ton of takes that I could pull from from all sides. Instead, I think I'm going to lean on the Wall Street Journal here because I think they have the best summation of all of the angles of this debate. Quote Mark Zuckerberg's announcement that Meta will end fact checking and remove speech restrictions across Facebook and Instagram shows how Donald Trump's presidential election and the US Political wins that swept him into a second term have accelerated a move by social media giants away from refereeing what is said on their platforms. Trump ally Elon Musk led the charge starting in 2022 when he acquired the platform, then known as Twitter and slashed content policy jobs and loosened content restrictions. In 2023, YouTube and Meta halted policies that had curbed claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 US and Meta has cut spending on trust and safety efforts as part of Zuckerberg's effort to enhance efficiency. Such moves are scaling back policies and operations that have involved tens of thousands of staffers and contractors, as well as billions of dollars in aggregate costs, and that alienated the conservatives who are set to control both houses of Congress as well as the White House. These platforms are realizing that if they want to have a role in where tech policy is going to go over the next four years, this is the game they've got to play, said Katie Harbath, a Republican and former Facebook public policy director who has advocated for more guardrails around social media. Shrinking or dismantling fact checking and content moderation systems, though, risks upsetting other users as well as some advertisers, politicians and employees by supercharging the kinds of hate speech and deliberately misleading information that compelled the companies to create those systems in the first place. The culture has grown too woke, and as a result we are correcting for it but moves of this sort seem like an overcorrection, said Michael Kasson, a longtime ad executive and founder of consult consulting firm 3cv. We shouldn't throw brand safety principles away completely, end quote. It also widens a divide over online speech with Europe, which has been strengthening laws making tech platforms responsible for the content they carry at the same time that the pendulum has been swinging the other way in the U.S. zuckerberg and other social media leaders long resisted content moderation beyond what was required legally. They emphasized that they were platforms, not publishers, and shouldn't be held liable for harmful content a user posts on their sites. Though Facebook established some content guidelines in its early years, it also routinely launch its services in languages that no one on its staff spoke. A series of public controversies, including revelations of Russian election interference efforts in 2016, the spread of fake news and Facebook fueled ethnic violence in Myanmar, spurred Zuckerberg to publicly temper his initial assertion that a light touch on moderation was a virtue. But his enthusiasm for moderation was at best tepid. In November 2016, amid complaints that Facebook may have swayed the election, Zuckerberg warned, quote, we must be extremely cautious about becoming arbiters of truth ourselves, end quote. Cost also has played a role in the company's thinking. Tech companies have beefed up automated content moderation systems, but the work has remained labor intensive. While Meta has boasted about the billions of dollars it has spent on safety and security, layoffs in recent years disproportionately hit the company's safety staff. Meta's new move allows them to cut even further at the amount of money that they spend on trust and safety because they're just going to do less of it, said Laura Edelson, assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University. Quick couple of interesting raises here. First up, sources are telling Business Insider that Bluesky is finalizing a new round at around a $700 million valuation, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Blue sky raised a $15 million Series A in October and an $8 million seed back in 2023, and the Journal's sources say Anthropic is in advanced talks to raise $2 billion in a round led by Lightspeed Venture partners at a 60 billion valuation. Anthropic was valued at $18 billion last year. The deal would make Anthropic the fifth most valuable US startup after SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe and Databricks, according to data provider CB Insights. It was valued last year at $18 billion in a round led by Menlo Ventures. Much of Anthropic's funding to date has come from its close partner Amazon, which committed $4 billion to the startup in November, bringing its total investment since 2023 to $8 billion. Amazon's November investment was a convertible note, meaning it will translate to equity at the valuation set in the current round. Anthrapic develops and operates its technology in data centers operated by Amazon and Google, which has also invested billions of dollars in the startup. The startup's annualized revenue in extrapolation of the next 12 months, revenue based on recent sales recently hit about $875 million. One of the knowledgeable people said most of that has come from sales to businesses. Small steps today can have a huge impact on your future. You know the saying from Acorns mighty oaks do grow. Which is why I love our sponsor Acorns. Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing so your money has a chance to grow for you, your kids and your retirement. 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Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor view important disclosures@acorns.com ride foreign we've seen rollable PC prototypes at CES for years, but it looks like the form factor is finally ready for prime time. Lenovo has announced the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable AI PC, a laptop featuring a 14 inch screen that can extend vertically to 16.7 inches. Coming in Q1 for 3,499 bucks. Quoting Wired Laptop screens can feel cramped, but what if you could magically just get more real estate without having to carry around a portable monitor that's precisely the purpose of Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable AI PC. Yes, rollable. It has an OLED display that, with the push of a button, extends the 14 inch screen upward to make for an awkward aspect ratio, but roughly doubles the screen space to 16.7 inches. Two screens are better than one for productivity, but what if one screen could be two but still one? Yes, it plays a fun animation and some music when it does its rolling thing. You can also activate the rolling action with a palm gesture. Once it scans your palm, shift it up or down to raise or lower the screen. Pressing the button on the keyboard is way faster. You can take advantage of Windows 11 window snapping features to put apps one on top of the other. I stacked two browser windows, but you can put other apps below too. Considering I'm already that guy who brings a spare portable monitor everywhere, this just seems like a more elegant solution that takes up less space in my bag. And of course, anyone can take advantage of the long aspect ratio to get a better look at documents, PDFs and web pages. End quote. Just this functionality would be a feat on its own, however. To help maximize the potential of its rollable display, Lenovo added a custom set of multitasking features that allow you to add widgets to the expanded screen space or use it as a visual clipboard and a place to view frequently used docs. And when you're doing something like sharing your view during a video call, you can use the EXT display as a virtual monitor so you have a clean desktop for presentations. But to me, one of the most impressive things about the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable is that it's not that much bigger or heavier than a traditional clamshell of a similar size. It weighs around 3.6 pounds and measures 3/4 of an inch thick. Performance looks solid too, thanks to the inclusion of Intel's Core Ultra 7 CPU, up to 32 gigabytes of RAM and 1 terabyte of SSD storage. And while its port selection is just okay, you still get two Thunderbolt four jacks and three point millimeter audio, along with other handy features like Wi Fi 7 and a five megapixel webcam with an electronic privacy shutter. So even with Lenovo's focus on the laptop's futuristic screen, you still get a pretty well rounded machine. And quoting Windows Central, Lenovo can call the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 a Copilot Plus PC because it's built with AI enabled features like Lenovo AI now and co creator from Paint thanks to its choice of intel core Ultra Series 2 processors that include built in NPUs or Neural Processing Units for local AI computing. Instead of relying on the cloud, it's becoming a standard with modern machines, but it makes even more sense for a device aimed at professional creators. It's expected to launch in Q1 2025 and it doesn't come cheap with a starting price of $3,499, end quote. You know what, let's just do a quick CES roundup. Everything I'm going to talk about is linked in the show notes, but here is a list of some of the coolest things I saw at CES thus far. If Rollable laptops Making your screen bigger is something that has been coming down the pike. Something I've been expecting to come for years now is smart windshields in cars that is putting a heads up display like screen right on the windshield. Well, BMW's new iDrive does exactly that. Quoting the Verge the new heads up display runs along the narrow black strip at the bottom of the windshield that stretches between a pillars. The display is three dimensional and includes speed, adaptive driving assistance information, stop and road sign information, navigation information and state of charge. It's customizable too, allowing drivers to set up the information they want to have in their eyeline while on the road. Unlike other HUDs or HUDs where you have to be at the right angle to see the information displayed, BMW says the new display will be visible to both the driver and passenger. BMW also integrated navigation and ADAS features into the HUD so that the path you're following turns green when using onboard navigation with driver assist. End quote. So that's supposedly coming to an unnamed X class SUV later this year. Next up though, Nike's new X Hyperice Recovery shoes. Quoting cnet. The innovative new footwear lets you adjust the compression of your feet and calves as well as warm your weary muscles. These battery powered boots include compression and heat for both warm ups and post workout recovery. Nike says a system of dual air Normatec bladders bonded to warming elements spreads heat evenly throughout the boots, aiming to warm the muscles and to tissues in your feet and ankles. The Nike X Hyperice shoes have a few buttons that allow you to control three different levels of compression and heat. It massages and compresses your ankles and feet. And from our test of the shoes you can especially feel the heat around your ankles. Lots of things Solar at ces, Echo Flow has a solar hat that you can wear to charge up to two devices with a maximum output of 5 volts, so you might have to stay outside a while for it to work. But anything that helps top off your phone battery is better than nothing. This is maybe more practical. Tactical Anchor has made what they are calling the Solix Solar beach umbrella that can get solar rated power of up to 80 watts. Might be enough to power a small cooler or something like that while you're sitting in the sun in the sand. Speaking of keeping things cool, what's the biggest headache if your house suddenly goes without power because of a brownout or whatever? Your fridge, right? All that food getting spoiled. Well, a company called Biolite has a refrigerator backup battery. They say it takes 30 minutes to install because it's thin enough to your fridge and can deliver up to 10.5 kilowatt hours of capacity. This is apparently enough to keep an 18 cubic foot fridge running for up to 60 hours or a larger 26 cubic foot fridge powered for up to 30 hours. But what about keeping your phone charged? Well, what about a device that can give you 100% charge on your phone in just two seconds? Say hello to the swipit. Quoting the Verge, I didn't have phone toaster on my CES bingo card, but here we are. Swip it is a unique solution to the problem of keeping your phone battery charged up. And it promises a life where you basically never have to plug your phone into a charger again. But it'll cost you. To be clear, there isn't an actual toaster involved. Swip it. Which rhymes with whip it and I'm sorry you have that song stuck in your head. Now includes a system of interchangeable batteries that fit into specially designed phone cases. You use your phone like normal and the extra battery charges your phone through a power connector integrated into the case, much like plenty of other battery cases on the market. But instead of having to recharge the external battery, you swap it out to change the battery out for a new one. You insert your phone case and all into the swipit hub, which is the toaster looking bit. Inside the hub, a fully charged battery is swapped into your case, the old one is retained to recharge, and your phone is ready to go with a fresh external battery. The whole thing happens within seconds. The demo unit I saw was pretty noisy about it all, but I'm told final production models will have much better sound dampening. End quote. And finally, this is maybe the most practical thing I've seen. You know how you have phone chargers all around the house? House. And sometimes the actual USB cables. Part of the charger gets lost or you can't find the cables. At the very least you have these ugly cables dangling out of all of your sockets. It looks messy. Well, from the why has no one thought of this before? File basis has a new inner core wall charger that has two retractable USB C cables that are again, retractable. They coil up inside the device when not needed. So out of the way, out of sight. And man, do I need this for every room in my house, in every car we have. I guess it's obvious that I'm a dad and so I have a dad's obsession with keeping everybody's devices charged, being the papa and walking around the house and plugging in people's devices so they'll be charged and ready is the new dad who goes around the house turning off lights to save on the electricity bill. Guilty as well. Charged. Talk to you tomorrow.