🍪 Big tech hits the Supreme Court

Rise and shine, compadres. This is Bite Sized Beta. We’re like your trusty morning Starbucks drive through - servin’ up spicy tech takes with a side of personal growth. 

Let’s dive in.

In the oven this week:

  • 🧑🏼‍⚖️ Big tech hits the supreme court 

  • 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines

  • 🛴 Poll of the week: Lime??? 

  • 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 4 best finds of the week

  • 😂 Snickerdoodles: meme time

FRESHLY BAKED

BIG TECH 🤝 THE SUPREME COURT

It’s not every day you wake up and the future of the internet is being decided by the Supreme Court.

Yes, that court - the highest court in the land. 

This week, it heard arguments for the case of Gonzalez v. Google. We ain’t lawyers, but it’s a big case. 

Here’s the TLDR for your next dinner table convo:

  • Nohemi Gonzalez, an American student is killed in the 2015 ISIS attack in Paris

  • Her fam sues Google because they think Youtube recommended content that helped ISIS recruit the terrorists

  • Google’s like, “uhhh not us,” and points to a law called Section 230 that basically says platforms like Google, Twitter, FB, etc. can’t get sued over content its users post

  • This case will determine if Section 230 gets held up or not

Ok chief, what’s the big deal?

If we get rid of Section 230 protection, companies will start getting sued left and right for stuff being posted on their platforms. 

Imagine you’re Spotify - you could get sued for recommending a podcast that offends someone.

Or if you’re Yelp, you could get sued for food poisoning at a restaurant, just ‘cause the customer found the restaurant on Yelp.

Or if you’re Amazon, you could get sued for recommending a product that malfunctions.

What could Big Tech do then? It’s got a few options:

  1. The crackdown: remove anything that has a drop of risk. Sure, maybe 90% of videos on TikTok get removed, but at least the last 10% will be boring harmless…. 

  2. Chaos mode: stop making decisions. Stop policing content and stop recommending stuff. Anyone can post anything and everyone can see it. Anarchy? Who cares! At least you can’t get sued because you ain’t making any decisions about how content shows up 🤷🏻‍♂️

  3. The escape hatch: shut down entirely. Seems far fetched, but will be an eventual outcome if 1 and 2 don’t work.

So are the stakes high?

Does a bear sh*t in the woods?

Could The Rock beat us up? 

Is Bite Sized Beta your favorite newsletter? 

Answer: yeah.

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED TREATS

Big news if you have an electric car that’s not Tesla: Tesla’s opening up its charging network and pledged to make at least 7.5K chargers available for all EVs by the end of next year. Biden announced new rules to standardize EV charging this week and Tesla is playing ball. Let’s goooo!

Meta is putting the blue checkmark up for sale with “Meta verification,” a verified badge on FB/IG. For $12 a month and your real government ID, you get access to a real Meta support person, exclusive features, and increased visibility and reach. Eh for most people, but great for Meta, who stands to make an extra $2-3B from it. 

Speaking of Meta - it looks like the company is preparing for more layoffs. About 10% of the company’s workers got poor reviews this performance cycle. On an investor call this week, Zuck said, “We’re working on flattening our org structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster.” Watch out, L6’s 👀

Elon says Twitter should be ready for a new CEO by the end of the year. Hit reply to this email and send us your guess for who the next tribute will be.

Lime is now… profitable? After getting banned in some cities and seeing scooter spend fall almost 100% in the pandemic, Lime is allegedly (no proof) profitable. Apparently things turned around after it introduced a swappable battery last year and now it’s looking ahead to an IPO.

POLL OF THE WEEK

WHO TF USES LIME??

Real question... Lime's gotten banned from so many cities we can't remember the last time we even saw someone on one. Sound off, homies 👇🏽

When was the last time you used Lime?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

A MESSAGE FROM FINANCEBUZZ

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CHOCOLATE CHIPS

OUR FAVORITE FINDS

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

Biden meme

😂 

 

That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!

If you enjoyed this, we'd love it if you'd fwd to a friend! We don't gate keep here - spread some of these sweet treats. 🙏🏾

 

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