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next-upnext upauthorJanko RoettgersNoneDo you know what's coming next up in the world of tech and entertainment? Get Janko Roettgers' newsletter every Thursday.9147dfd6b1
February 22, 2021
The five biggest pay TV providers lost a combined 5.5 million subscribers in 2020, narrowly staying below the 5.8 million subscribers the companies collectively lost in 2019. Subscriber losses slowed a bit toward the end of the year, but pandemic-related cutbacks still hit the industry hard — and may have led to hundreds of thousands additional cancellations if not for industry-wide billing relief efforts.
The industry is undergoing a bit of a power shift, with pay TV subscribers switching from traditional operators like Comcast and AT&T to tech companies like Google and Hulu and their respective pay TV services. However, a closer look at pay TV trends suggests that these gains may be temporary, as so-called skinny bundles fall out of favor with consumers once operators are forced to increase their price tags to make up for ever-increasing network licensing costs.
The holiday quarter saw significant improvements for AT&T, which got hit hard in late 2019 by consumers ditching its AT&T TV Now online service following significant price increases. Losses notably increased at Comcast, which lost 227,000 subscribers during the holiday quarter, compared to 133,000 during the same quarter a year before.
Looking at the entirety of 2020, AT&T was able to narrow its losses; the telco lost nearly 3.3 million pay TV subscribers in 2020, compared to more than 4 million in 2019. Comcast saw its losses increase from 671,000 in 2019 to nearly 1.3 million. Only Charter was able to actually grow its subscriber base, moving from a loss of nearly 500,000 subscribers in 2019 to a narrow gain of 19,000.
There's been some evidence for pay TV customers transitioning to nontraditional service providers including YouTube TV and Hulu's online pay TV service. Disney disclosed as part of its latest earnings results that Hulu's TV service ended 2020 with 4 million subscribers, compared to 3.2 million at the end of 2019.
However, these gains may be short-lived, if similar efforts run by major pay TV providers are any indication. AT&T effectively discontinued AT&T TV Now in January after losing millions of the service's subscribers when it phased out introductory pricing and raised bundle prices to make up for increased carriage fees. Dish's Sling TV service lost 118,000 subscribers in 2020 even before announcing a price increase in January.
Even Hulu's pay TV service doesn't look as rock-solid once you zoom in a bit: The Disney subsidiary lost around 100,000 pay TV between the end of September and the end of December; Hulu increased the price of its live TV bundle by $10 per month in late December, making it likely that we will see further subscriber defections during the current quarter.
Janko Roettgers
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
People
No editing, no hashtags: Dispo wants you to live in the moment
David Dobrik's new photography app harkens back to the days of the disposable camera.
Dispo turns the concept of a photography app into something altogether different.
Image: Katya Sapozhnina, Diana Morgan, Amanda Luke
February 24, 2021
Jane Seidel is Protocol's social media manager. She was previously a platform producer at The Wall Street Journal, creating mobile content and crafting alert strategy. Prior to that, she worked in audience development at WSJ and on digital editorial at NBC Universal. She lives in Brooklyn.
February 24, 2021
Instagram was once a place to share Starbucks cups and high-contrast pet photos. After Facebook acquired it in 2012, it has turned into a competition of getting as many likes as possible (using the same formula over and over: post the best highly-curated, edited photos with the funniest captions). More recently, it's essentially become a shopping mall, with brands falling over themselves to be heard through the noise. Doing something "for the gram" — scaling buildings, posting the same cringe picture over and over — became the norm. Pop-up museums litter cities with photo ops for posts; "camera eats first"; everything can be a cute Instagram story; everything is content.
And to be clear, Dispo — a buzzy new photography app that just came out of beta — is still a place for content. It probably isn't going to fix our collective online brains and their inclination to share everything about our private lives with others online. It's still an app, and it's still social media, and it encourages documenting your life. But it runs pretty differently than any other image-sharing app out there. And that might be what helps it stand out in an oversaturated market of social networking apps.
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</div></p><p>Dispo, at its core, is a picture-taking app. It's the brainchild of internet darling David Dobrik, who noticed that his friends loved to bring disposable cameras to parties, develop the pictures and share them afterward. So he created David's Disposable, a free mobile app that functions like a disposable camera: You take a picture and wait a day to see how it turned out. The free, ad-supported app launched in 2019, offering a <a href="https://www.tubefilter.com/2019/12/26/david-dobrik-disposable-camera-app/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">$1 premium subscription</a> that removed ads. Its relaunch, which includes the highly anticipated feature of community rolls, is no longer in beta but remains invite-only.</p><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CHi6-UCjCiT/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:540px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CHi6-UCjCiT/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; width:100%;" target="_blank"> <div style=" display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div></div></div><div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display:block; height:50px; margin:0 auto 12px; width:50px;"></div><div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style=" color:#3897f0; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CHi6-UCjCiT/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by David Dobrik (@davidsdisposable)</a><br></div></blockquote> <script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script></div><p>The relaunched app has a new name and a team of all-star developers, including alumni from Adobe, Byte, Raya and more. Dispo also got a buy-in from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian: It <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/reddit-cofounder-alexis-ohanians-new-venture-fund-invests-in-disposable-camera-app-11602072245" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">raised $4 million in October 2020</a>, and so far this year, it's attracted a potential $100 million valuation, <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/camera-app-dispo-gets-investment-interest-from-sequoia-andreessen-horowitz-benchmark" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">with interest from Sequoia, a16z and Benchmark</a>, according to The Information. Dispo's TestFlight reached capacity after just a few days, largely thanks to a massive surge in downloads from Japan — more than 5,000 in an hour — over its launch weekend. </p><p>Dispo works like a disposable camera. Daily at 9 a.m., users log on to see their pictures from the day before after they get "developed." They can send pictures to their own library, or add them to "community rolls," which is where most of the social interactions happen. Anyone can create a community roll and add collaborators, and anyone can follow a community roll (even without following the users themselves).</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>CEO Daniel Liss believes one of the differentiating factors for Dispo, in the broader social media landscape, is that it isn't a social app — it's a photography app. "Other apps use photos, but they're about shopping or messaging or entertainment," he told Protocol. To him, Dispo is more about "experiencing photography with friends." According to some of the early users, though, experiencing photography with friends and strangers alike is the social aspect that drew them to the app in the first place. </p><p>The early users who spoke to Protocol mentioned a huge variety in the kind of community rolls they've come across: one for pasta photos, called "Impasta Syndrome"; one for pictures of socks; one for thrifting. One tester, Amanda Luke, started her own community roll called "Confession Booth," where users could write out a confession ("I wish I were more confident") and snap a photo of it to add to the collection. "I have found almost immediately the community at Dispo so supportive and creative," Luke told Protocol. "You don't have to put on a perfect facade." </p><p>So far "everyone's using it as intended," said Rob Focht, a UX designer out of Philadelphia. He chalks this up to the fact that many early users felt a sense of responsibility, and because those who beta tested it — tech folks, UX researchers, community managers, the chronically online — felt ready for a break from the way social media currently operates. Many of the people who spoke to Protocol for this story called Dispo "refreshing" when contrasted against other social media. They liked that it doesn't actively encourage Instagram-like behavior such as agonizing over filters and captions. "Do you ever think about how that speaks volumes on how social media managers just want a break from most social media?" said Amrith Shanbhag, who works as community lead at Opal, a digital mindfulness app. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>One thing he loves about Dispo: no hashtags and no brands (yet). "There's no space for brands on Dispo, right now, really," Shanbhag said. "A social network without brands would be amazing, which I know is ironic coming from someone who runs brand accounts." There's no way to game Dispo (again: yet) in the way that social media marketers around the world have learned to game the rest of the social media landscape. A Dispo account flourishes only by interacting with others organically, by contributing to community rolls, by just being human. "It demands authenticity," Focht said.</p><p>Dispo's functional departure from current social media didn't happen by chance. "I think social media and software in general has become extremely clinical and transactional in recent years," said Michael Shillingburg, who works in UI, UX and 3D design at Dispo. "More than anything, I want to make Dispo a place that people inherently feel welcome before they even see a piece of content."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>The app also doesn't display the number of accounts that a user is following, so there's no place for anyone to obsess over their "ratio," or the gap between how many accounts they follow versus follow them. (Accounts that have large followings without following many other accounts are said to have a "skinny" ratio. Instagram is a nightmare!) </p><p>The app is not wildly unlike VSCO, an artsy photo-editing app that reached the zeitgeist in 2019, where people can edit and share photos, and follow other users. But VSCO allows for photo uploads and endless editing options; with Dispo, users get one shot taken via the app, and that's it. The behaviors inspired by the apps are inverse: VSCO invites users to mull over hundreds of editing options, creating presets and editing for hours, whereas Dispo wants people to snap a photo and forget about it till the next day.</p><div class="rm-embed embed-media"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">gotta give it up to the incomparable <a href="https://twitter.com/shillingburger?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@shillingburger</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/boop?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@boop</a> for these aesthetics in <a href="https://twitter.com/DispoHQ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dispohq</a>, like wow 👏👏😩😩 <a href="https://t.co/9ryozuCKrw">pic.twitter.com/9ryozuCKrw</a><br>— Devon Ko (@devonko_) <a href="https://twitter.com/devonko_/status/1360410177904672774?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></div><p>It's also tempting to liken Dispo to Instagram because the apps are so fundamentally and functionally different, but community rolls act kind of like Instagram's Close Friends list on steroids. You can post different pictures to different audiences because of the community roll feature, in the same way that most Instagram users wouldn't post most of the mundane (or… wild!) things they post to their Close Friends list to their broader story or a normal grid post. Having a specific audience for certain photos allows people to display different parts of their personality within the app, without having every single photo tied to their everlasting online presence.<br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>Diana Morgan, a community manager at an enterprise software company, said she uses a private Instagram account because she's "not really looking to be consumed" digitally by people who know her professionally. On Dispo, she's able to show a different persona, too. "I'm a huge supporter of pseudonymity, and I think Dispo also encourages that in certain aspects," Morgan said. "It's not about you as a person, or as a brand, it's about the rolls, and about people coming together and wanting to share their versions of an experience."</p><p>The functionality still isn't all there: Early users mostly use Twitter, whether through big direct message groups or tweets <a href="https://twitter.com/youfoundanisha/status/1360629111606099968" target="_blank">calling for collaborators for rolls</a>, to communicate with each other. One twitter DM group filled up and was migrated to Slack. There's no direct message feature in Dispo yet; if you want to talk to someone within the app, you can leave a comment.</p><p>The delay in developing photos lends itself well to the concept of content moderation. Dispo does AI analysis on the photos for anything blatantly terrible or inappropriate, and hopes to assemble a larger moderation team in the future, Shillingburg told Protocol. It's also got the benefit of a social network not built around going viral. "The app structure inherently promotes more … wholesome interaction," Shillingburg said. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>We're nearing a second decade of life lived online, life that's being documented in real time, and it's kind of a big thing to think that one app could change the way we've been programmed to use social media. "What I found fascinating was the delayed gratification, how you're able to get the photos," Morgan said. "It brings us back to being in the moment."</p><p>Dispo is looking good right now, somewhat because early adopters feel a sense of responsibility to use the app as intended. But people can be crazy and self-centered, and how long can a wholesome social network last, no matter how well-built it is? Dispo is about to find out.</p>
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Jane Seidel is Protocol's social media manager. She was previously a platform producer at The Wall Street Journal, creating mobile content and crafting alert strategy. Prior to that, she worked in audience development at WSJ and on digital editorial at NBC Universal. She lives in Brooklyn.
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Building better relationships in the age of all-remote work
How Stripe, Xero and ModSquad work with external partners and customers in Slack channels to build stronger, lasting relationships.
Image: Original by Damian Zaleski
February 21, 2021
February 8, 2021
Every business leader knows you can learn the most about your customers and partners by meeting them face-to-face. But in the wake of Covid-19, the kinds of conversations that were taking place over coffee, meals and in company halls are now relegated to video conferences—which can be less effective for nurturing relationships—and email.
Email inboxes, with hard-to-search threads and siloed messages, not only slow down communication but are also an easy target for scammers. Earlier this year, Google reported more than 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to Covid-19 scams in just one week and more than 240 million daily spam messages.
<p>To keep the lines of communication wide open in this new reality, organizations are adopting new cloud solutions at a rate CIOs expected to see years from now. In fact, 79% of CIOs agree that the pandemic will force their organizations to digitally transform faster than planned, according to <a href="https://slack.com/blog/transformation/people-partners-systems-slack" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">J.P. Morgan</a>. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>But executive leaders know it takes more than just adopting a communication platform or software bundle to build relationships remotely. You have to find the <em>right</em> solution that meets both your internal and external collaboration needs. That's why competitive businesses today are turning to Slack, the <a href="https://slack.com/features/channels" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">channel-based messaging platform, </a>to close communication gaps with partners and customers in the age of remote work. Companies can securely collaborate with external parties using <a href="https://slack.com/help/articles/360017938993-What-is-a-channel" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Slack channels</a>, a single place to share files and messages, in the same <a href="https://slack.com/resources/using-slack/setting-up-a-shared-channel" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Slack workspace</a> through <a href="http://slack.com/connect" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Slack Connect</a>.</p><p>With Slack Connect, organizations can build stronger customer and partner relationships through real-time communication. And unlike email—which leaves users open to the risk of spam and phishing—companies and external parties receive communications only from <a href="https://slackhq.com/introducing-new-layers-of-enterprise-grade-security" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">verified members in Slack channels</a>. Plus, Slack workspace administrators can maintain control over data and monitor external access. </p><p>Here's a closer look at how teams at Stripe, Xero and ModSquad are using Slack Connect to engage customers, prospects and partners in real-time and close deals faster. </p><h4>Stripe: Expediting sales deals while building lasting relationships with customers</h4><p><a href="https://stripe.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Stripe</a> is an online payment provider with a mission to support e-commerce. The Stripe sales team works with early-stage startups all the way through global Fortune 500 companies, and uses Slack Connect to engage with customers, keep communication organized and teams in sync, and jump on sales opportunities.</p><p>Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, head of Americas revenue and growth at Stripe, says communicating with prospective customers in Slack has been instrumental in maintaining engagement and closing deals.</p><p class="pull-quote">"Historically, the gold standard of a deep relationship in sales was getting the person on text," says DeWitt Grosser. "Now the gold standard is getting them into a Slack channel."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Usually at the beginning of a sale, DeWitt Grosser explains, reps used to double down on communication using the "law of 2x." Essentially, you start with a meeting and then follow up a week later. But this strategy no longer makes the cut: A lot could change in a week, and Slack is more in line with the tempo of the digital workplace. </p><p>"In Slack channels, the dialogue with the prospect happens in real time, as opposed to the next time you align your schedules," DeWitt Grosser says. "This kind of personal, persistent connection grows customer loyalty and retention."</p><p>Often sales reps have to communicate with a variety of departments to seal the deal. Instead of emailing them separately and creating silos, Stripe's account executives and solution architects set up a Slack channel with key customer stakeholders, like developers, the head of payments and a finance representative. </p><p>"When you need to move quickly, email is not the right format: It's more formal and responses take longer," says James Dyett, Stripe's head of global product sales and payments optimizations. "Slack has super powers. It's a much better experience." </p><h4>Xero: Working with external partners like they're on the same team</h4><p>If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it's that relationships matter. Whether it's launching a marketing campaign with a partner or hiring contractors to complete a specific project, we can't—and shouldn't—try to do everything ourselves. <br><br>When it comes to nurturing partnerships in the midst of the pandemic, <a href="https://www.xero.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Xero</a>, a cloud-based accounting software company, affirms that working in Slack Connect has been a game changer. Justine Wallendorf, New Zealand partner marketing manager at Xero, says Slack Connect helped her team launch a joint online marketing campaign with partners, <a href="https://www.figured.com/en-us/figured-xero" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Figured</a> and <a href="http://paysauce" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Paysauce</a>. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>The three companies were offering a complete software solution for farmers looking to manage their business digitally. By coming together in one Slack channel, #xero-partners, the sales and marketing teams across all three businesses could connect and ensure alignment on: </p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Immediate universal access to all campaign details</li><li>Consistent messaging across sales enablement deliverables, such as one pagers and slide decks</li><li>Quick feedback and turnaround times for deliverables</li><li>Clear leadership signoffs</li></ul><p class="pull-quote">"Working in Slack Connect guaranteed that everyone was beating the same drum and speaking the same language, positioning our partnership as best as possible in the market," Wallendorf says.</p><h4>ModSquad: Winning customer loyalty with exceptional customer support</h4><p>With so much uncertainty in the world, efficient and reliable customer support is akin to a safe harbor in a storm. That's why Slack customer, <a href="https://modsquad.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ModSquad</a> has its support teams troubleshoot customer issues in real time with Slack Connect.</p><p>As a customer experience outsourcer, ModSquad knows good customer service. Each day, ModSquad's global crew of experts—the Mods—help their customers engage with their audiences online through customer support, content moderation, community management and social media. </p><p>ModSquad works with its clients in Slack Connect to set up service level agreements and incorporate support dashboards. With the <a href="https://slack.com/apps/A0108APQFQC-geckoboard" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Geckoboard Slack integration</a>, ModSquad monitors clients' incoming calls and chats—without ever leaving Slack. Whenever the team sees an uptick in activity or service impacting issues, they can quickly alert clients and internal teams for quick resolution. The team also relies on a <a href="https://slack.com/apps/A9WFQ3M0B-zendesk" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Zendesk Slack integration</a> to track service desk tickets, troubleshoot and resolve issues.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>According to Steve Henry, senior vice president, client services at ModSquad, Slack channels also help build a culture of transparent communication and trust with clients.</p><p>"Establishing trust with our clients is very important, and Slack provides a crucial component for all of our efforts" Henry says. "With Slack, we can provide world-class support solutions and improvements for our clients, driving efficiencies while growing their business in the process."</p><h4>In an all-remote world, Slack Connect builds strong partnerships</h4><p>Slack Connect is available for <a href="https://slack.com/pricing/paid-vs-free" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">all paid plans</a>. If you're already a customer but new to Slack Connect, feel free to <a href="http://slack.com/contact" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reach out</a> or learn more on <a href="https://slack.com/resources/using-slack/setting-up-a-shared-channel" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">how to get started</a>. And if you want to see how others are using Slack Connect to work with external partners, check out a few of our recent <a href="https://slack.com/blog/collections/slack-connect-shared-channels-shared-success" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">customer stories</a>. </p>
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Google vows to do better on DEI and firings. Timnit Gebru is not impressed.
Google AI lead Jeff Dean said Google had concluded its investigation into Timnit Gebru's dismissal in an email to employees Friday.
Google has ended its investigation into the dismissal of prominent AI ethicist Timnit Gebru.
Photo: John Nacion/Getty Images
February 19, 2021
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
February 19, 2021
Google has concluded its investigation into the firing of prominent AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru, and it announced some changes to its hiring, firing and research policies in an email from AI leader Jeff Dean to employees Friday.
While Dean did not share the results of the investigation into the circumstances surrounding Gebru's dismissal, he said that the company would enact new policies to "review employee exits that are sensitive in nature." His email, which was obtained by Protocol, said the company will also begin linking performance reviews for vice presidents and above, in part regarding diversity and inclusion goals, and it will report DEI goals and progress to the Alphabet board of directors in quarterly reviews.
<p>The review process for publishing research papers will also change, especially for research that addresses "sensitive issues," according to the email. The process will become more streamlined because "what might be considered sensitive isn't always clear," Dean wrote. Part of the new process will include a review and outline of the kinds of research the company believes it should be conducting. <a href="https://www.protocol.com/timnit-gebru-fired-ethics-google" target="_blank">Gebru's departure was mired in internal controversy</a> over a research paper that discussed some of the ethical risks of large-language AI models; Gebru refused to take her name off the paper at Google's demand and then was dismissed shortly afterward. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>"I expected nothing more obviously. I write an email asking for things, I get fired, and then after a 3 month investigation, they say they should probably do some of the things I presumably got fired asking for, without holding anyone accountable for their actions," Gebru <a href="https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1362838828046831619?s=20" target="_blank">wrote</a> on Twitter.</p><p><span></span>Google also <a href="https://t.co/1BTGOo5Wry?amp=1" target="_blank">announced yesterday</a> that the company's research on responsible AI will be restructured under a new team led by Marian Croak, a long-time Google engineering director. Margaret Mitchell, Gebru's former ethical AI co-lead at Google and founder of the ethical AI team, has been under investigation by Google and without access to her accounts for several weeks, and said she was not informed about the restructuring plans. "And this is how I find out. I'm so glad for all the trust they've rebuilt. It seems I've been completely erased and my team taken," she <a href="https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1362469250053533697?s=20" target="_blank">wrote</a> on Twitter about the news.</p><p>"I understand we could have and should have handled this situation with more sensitivity. And for that, I am sorry," Dean wrote in the email.</p><p>On Friday afternoon, Mitchell <a href="https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1362885356127801345?s=20" target="_blank">wrote</a> on Twitter: "I'm fired."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p><em>This story was updated at 5:31 pm ET to include news of Mitchell's firing.</em></p>
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
Transforming 2021
Blockchain, QR codes and your phone: the race to build vaccine passports
Digital verification systems could give people the freedom to work and travel. Here's how they could actually happen.
One day, you might not need to carry that physical passport around, either.
Photo: CommonPass
February 23, 2021
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
February 23, 2021
There will come a time, hopefully in the near future, when you'll feel comfortable getting on a plane again. You might even stop at the lounge at the airport, head to the regional office when you land and maybe even see a concert that evening. This seemingly distant reality will depend upon vaccine rollouts continuing on schedule, an open-sourced digital verification system and, amazingly, the blockchain.
Several countries around the world have begun to prepare for what comes after vaccinations. Swaths of the population will be vaccinated before others, but that hasn't stopped industries decimated by the pandemic from pioneering ways to get some people back to work and play. One of the most promising efforts is the idea of a "vaccine passport," which would allow individuals to show proof that they've been vaccinated against COVID-19 in a way that could be verified by businesses to allow them to travel, work or relax in public without a great fear of spreading the virus.
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</div></p><p>But building a system that everyone agrees with — and can access — is no small task. There are several companies working on competing projects to verify vaccinations. But beyond that, there are more than a few hurdles that could prevent vaccine passports from succeeding, from antiquated medical records systems to interoperability issues and privacy concerns. Here's how they could actually succeed. </p><h3>Competing projects, similar standards</h3><p>Pretty much since the first blockchain white paper, people have been looking for perfect examples of where a distributed, immutable ledger could be valuable. There's obviously the push to use it for currencies, and companies have tried to use it for things like tracking <a href="https://www.protocol.com/ibm-blockchain-supply-produce-coffee" target="_self">food production</a> and <a href="https://www.govtech.com/products/Blockchain-Voting-Debate-Heats-Up-After-Historic-Election.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">voting</a>, but there are few use cases that have truly taken off, at least so far. "We've been working on this since 2014; we never thought that health care would be the kind of the use case that we take this mainstream," Jamie Smith, the senior director of business development at Evernym, a company focused on using the blockchain as a basis for verifying identities, told Protocol. </p><p>Smith said Evernym had been discussing its concepts with automakers, retailers, telcos, governments, loyalty companies and banks prior to the pandemic. One of those companies was IAG, the airline group that owns British Airways, which had been interested in the idea of contactless travel based on a single identity credential that follows you from the airport check-in to your gate. With the pandemic, that morphed into thinking about ways to verify that passengers have had negative COVID tests, and eventually, that they've received a vaccine. "From our perspective, it was a really easy lift to see," Smith said. "We're doing contactless travel, and we just added verifiable credentials for test results."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>It's a similar genesis for IBM's Digital Health Pass initiative, which leader Eric Piscini said started about two years ago as a way to store people's entire health records in a safe, accessible platform. It also relies on the blockchain for its immutable record of proof, and both Evernym and IBM are part of an open-standards group called the Good Health Pass Collaborative, which aims to bring private credentialed vaccine records to business and people around the world. Companies are working on their own implementations of the standards, but Evernym's Smith said the data is meant to be portable from one passport to another. </p><p>Most of the companies working on passports say their systems are private by design, especially given that they're mainly working off the same open standards. In most cases, the health information only ever remains on a user's phone, but where it asks to verify that the user's information meets a system's standards — such as whether this person has had two COVID vaccines and should be allowed into an office — that information is recorded on a blockchain. "You can, using blockchain technologies, verify that someone has been tested recently, without having access to the underlying data," Piscini said. "I don't know any other technology where you can do that."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Similarly, the nonprofit Commons Project's CommonPass, backed by the likes of Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce, started out as a project to bring an analog to Apple Health for Android. JP Pollak, a senior researcher at Cornell and founder of the Commons Project, first launched CommonHealth to bring the sort of data and insights that Apple Health offers to iPhone owners to Android users. Last summer, the group started building an app that could take health data and privately share it with others — in that case, it was to help truckers stuck at the borders in <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/opinions/digital-technology-re-opening-africa" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">East African countries</a> who couldn't easily prove they'd taken COVID tests. This morphed into vaccine credentialing, with the group now working to pull together the various data streams needed to get a project like this off the ground. </p><p>"Health care institutions, EMR vendors, retail pharmacies, state vaccine registries, all issuing people a digital verifiable credential of their vaccination record that they could then use in the app of their choice, to be able to get access to various kinds of services," Pollak said. CommonPass is also working with the Mayo Clinic, as well as Epic Systems and Cerner, two of the largest EMR vendors. </p><h3>Something for everyone </h3><p>With so many competing efforts to become the world's digital vaccine passport, it might seem that the country is heading for some sort of VHS versus Betamax format war for proving everyone has had COVID vaccines. But given that so many of the efforts are using the same standards, and in many cases, looking to embed their tech in someone else's app rather than their own, the race might be less about the best tech winning, and more about various approaches working in different situations. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>"The intent is not to be the only company; we don't want to be the proprietary platform that everybody has to use because they have no choice," IBM's Piscini said. "That's not who we are right now: That's the IBM from 30 years ago, not the IBM of today."</p><p>For IBM, though, the selling point is that the company already works with so many other massive companies. Why look elsewhere for a vaccine passport solution if your airline booking system is already powered by IBM? "We believe our network is going to be more valuable than any other because of our scale and our ability to integrate the platform with CRM systems, building systems or stadium systems — we can do that every day," Piscini said.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY2NTc3NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTM1MjYyM30._ykxxCyx3_wDbZrYgCcmK0QT2Ue1tZFdP5pf60kOmPU/img.jpg?width=980" id="c81c9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3967636652192acfdaad341861263bc8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">IATA's digital passport app.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Photo: IATA</small></p><p>For other companies, it's about securing new partnerships with major players in the hopes of finding that scale. Evernym, for example, is working with International Air Transport Association, the airline industry's trade association, on an air travel-specific app called Travel Pass. IATA is working with airlines and local governments to ensure it has the latest requirements to feed the app's rules engine. "It will say, 'Hey, you're flying JFK to Heathrow, you need a PCR test 48 hours in advance before you can land,'" Evernym's Smith said. "And of course, those policy changes are changing every day." Qatar, Emirates and Etihad Airways are all <a href="https://simpleflying.com/qatar-iata-travel-pass-launch/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">expected</a> to start trialing the app in the next few weeks.<br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>In other instances, the technology will live inside other companies' existing apps; why make someone download yet another app and add another hurdle to compliance? Instead, the experience will be rather like adding a loyalty account or TSA PreCheck number when booking a flight. Airlines and other venues restricting access will require uploading negative test results or vaccine records using one of these services. "You're going to be using the United or the Delta app, and they'll be using our solution or somebody else's, but you will do it via their app," IATA's Travel Pass lead, Alan Murray Hayden, told Protocol.</p><p>The World Health Organization is also working on its own offering, and recently convened the <a href="https://www.who.int/groups/smart-vaccination-certificate-working-group" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Smart Vaccination Certificate Working Group</a>. It's built upon the WHO's nearly century-old notion of the "yellow card" vaccination record, which first was used to document that travelers had been inoculated against diseases such as cholera and yellow fever. Evernym Chief Trust Officer Drummond Reed is part of the working group; he said there should be more to share in the coming months. </p><h3>What could go wrong?</h3><p>It's entirely possible that as more people start to get vaccinated, vaccine passports start to become the norm. You walk to work — still masked, of course — scan a QR code reader in the lobby, and are let in. You go out for lunch, and your loyalty card app has a discount for in-store shoppers verifying they're vaccinated. Your concert ticket is also tied to health pass information that you shared earlier in the day with Ticketmaster. But there are more than a few hurdles ahead of the companies rushing to turn these concepts into realities. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>First off, there's the … reality … of the real world that any digital system has to contend with. For anyone without access to the internet, digital vaccine credentials will prove difficult to acquire, though all the companies Protocol spoke with said they would offer a paper-based QR code for people who don't have smartphones. But there's also the issue of having to corral so many different stakeholders into one system, especially when some health care providers are still reliant on antiquated database systems or <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/health-care-revolution/electronic-health-records-after-coronavirus" target="_self">even paper records</a>. "The amount of inefficiency in the system is tremendous," IBM's Piscini said. </p><p>But in the U.S. at least, all vaccinators are required to report COVID-19 vaccines to their state. Piscini said that even for people who just received a paper copy of their vaccine records, systems like IBM's can likely link up to the state's immunization registry and allow people to import records to a vaccine passport.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY2NTc4My9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzg3MTM2M30.RZtqR7F_FuXK1S24V6jVaqUZ0xOSG-gCwj00xU3fxcM/img.png?width=980" id="b0bd3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="11d8002d92c0cd6ef39b12fc7b8dccf8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">How CommonPass's app shows your records. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Image: CommonPass</small></p><p>And states are willing to help out, Pollak said, adding that CommonPass has started working with Hawaii to roll out its offering for would-be tourists. "We're seeing a lot of state governments stepping up and doing a really good job with this," Pollak said. "It would be surprising if there wasn't a coordinated federal effort very soon." That being said, while <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/iceland-covid-passports-canada-1.5904828" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">many countries around</a> the world are committing to working on vaccine passports, getting a straight answer out of the U.S. government on what it's doing has proven difficult. The State Department, which maintains America's traditional, analogue passports, referred me to Homeland Security, which referred me to the White House. The acting director and chief of staff of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, Kei Koizumi, told Protocol that "OSTP can't discuss projects we are working on before they are publicly announced."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
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</div></p><p>But even with systems in place at a federal level, there's still a fair amount of education that needs to happen before people will trust systems like these. "There's a substantial gap in understanding and knowledge of how these systems work, and people's views, in terms of who should get access to which data," Pollak said. </p><p>"We assume there's a Facebook Borg in the sky, monitoring every interaction," Smith said. "The emergence of verifiable credentials breaks down that mental model, where actually it becomes more like decentralized bits of paper that I can carry around, and no one's to know that I've been sharing this information."</p><p>"Our belief is that if you do the right thing, from a platform point of view, protecting your privacy, and giving you control and access to the platform to everybody who wants to use it," Piscini said. "I think those are very basic things that allow the core of the platform that we build to generate adoption by the individuals."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="8">
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</div></p><p>Even with a system that works, there may still be holdouts to this potential new normal. "Some people are saying, 'I will never get vaccinated,'" Piscini said, "and I don't know if the airlines are going to say, 'Well, maybe you will never fly again.'"</p>
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Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
Amazon's new interface tries to rein in the chaos
The company is rolling out a new interface with profiles and a big emphasis on live content to additional Fire TV streaming devices next month.
Amazon's new Fire TV interface is coming to additional streaming devices next month.
Image: Amazon
February 17, 2021
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
February 17, 2021
When Amazon's Fire TV team began pushing out a new interface to select streaming devices in December, it wasn't just aiming for a cosmetic refresh. The new Fire TV experience, which is scheduled to launch on Fire TV Stick 4K and Fire TV Cube devices next month, promises to rein in some of the sprawl caused by Fire TV's last major UI change. However, the new changes also show how hard it can be for TV platforms to do the right thing for consumers without offending content partners.
The idea was simple enough: Instead of making consumers browse bland lists of apps, forcing them to choose whether they'd want to spend their evening with Netflix or Hulu, Amazon's Fire TV team wanted them to get straight to the movies and shows that matter. That's why in late 2016, the company was first among the major smart TV platform providers to introduce what's known in the industry as a content-first user experience, with rows and rows of shows and movies — from various streaming apps — directly on the TV home screen.
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</div></p><p>It's an idea that has since been embraced by many in the industry. Google, for instance, took some major cues from the Fire TV interface for the home screen of its <a href="https://www.protocol.com/chromecast-google-tv-androidtv" target="_self">new Chromecast streaming dongle</a>. TV makers like Vizio and LG also feature content recommendations directly on the home screen these days. </p><p>However, the world of streaming media has also changed a lot over the past four years. Whereas people might have had one or two streaming subscriptions back in 2016, they now have four or five, and free services like Pluto, Tubi and Amazon's own IMDb TV are getting a lot more usage as well. Put recommendations for all of those services on one screen, and it quickly starts to feel like an avalanche.</p><p>"We never imagined this is where we would be today," acknowledged Amazon Fire TV VP and GM Sandeep Gupta. "The experience was overwhelming at times."</p><p>To rein in the chaos, Fire TV now has a simplified navigation bar that includes access to a user's favorite apps, as well as dedicated sections for content that won't require any extra payments (think ad-supported shows and existing subscriptions) as well as a simplified search experience that allows someone to browse streaming results by categories. Fire TV devices are also getting systemwide profiles to personalize the experience for every household member, and a new feature called app previews that highlights content for specific apps even before a consumer opens them. "This was a pretty radical redesign for us," Gupta said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>On the surface, all of those changes seem sensible. But industry insiders will quickly tell you that any change to a consumer's discovery path can be a minefield for TV platform providers. Take Google's new Chromecast device, for example: Together with a new interface for Android TV, the search giant also introduced a systemwide watchlist as a way to bookmark individual shows and movies across all streaming services. Weeks after launching the device, <a href="https://www.techhive.com/article/3599868/netflix-drags-streaming-tv-backward-cord-cutters-take-note.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netflix forced Google to exclude its originals</a> from the watchlist; the streaming service would rather have its subscribers use the list in its own app, where titles don't compete with those of other services.</p><p>Amazon's new interface may not provoke quite the same backlash, but there are some possible stumbling blocks. One example: Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu all have introduced their own profiles over the years. Amazon is now offering third-party services an API to tie these app-specific profiles to Fire TV profiles, which would do away with an extra step whenever you open a participating app. But it's far from certain that everyone will play ball.</p><p>"Integrating with partners takes time," Gupta said. "It takes several years to bring partners along."</p><p>The best way to get partners to embrace new features was to show them how they benefit, Gupta added. And at least this far, the new UI seems to be working: Previously, users spent most of their time on the home screen. Now, they're spending more time exploring recommendations in other areas, which ultimately leads to increased watch time, according to Gupta.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>He cited Hulu as a success story of a deeper integration into the TV UI. The Disney-owned service wasn't among the launch partners when Amazon first unveiled a live TV guide for Fire TV in 2019. After Hulu finally did integrate its live TV programming into the guide, it saw watch time for this type of programming on Fire TV increase significantly.</p><p>Amazon first rolled out the new Fire TV interface to the 2020 versions of its Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite in December. Next month, the UI will come to Fire TV Stick 4K, Fire TV Cube (first and second gen) and Fire TV (third gen, pendant design); the company plans to extend it to TVs with built-in Fire TV OS and older streaming adapters in the coming months.</p><p>The company is also working to further tweak the UI on devices that have already received it. At the beginning of February, it added dynamic row ordering, which changes the presentation of content on the home screen based on user behavior. And ultimately, Amazon also wants to use the new and improved personalization to better integrate plugs for new streaming services into its interface, making them feel less like up-sell prompts.</p><p>"The difference between ads and recommendations is relevance," Gupta said. "I think that's where profiles play a big role."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p><em><strong>Correction: </strong></em><em>This post was updated Feb. 17 to reflect that Hulu watch time increased significantly once it integrated its live TV programming into the guide.</em></p>
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Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
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