Marketplace Tech
1,049 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 4 hours ago - ★★★★★ - 1.2K ratingsMonday through Friday, Marketplace demystifies the digital economy in less than 10 minutes. We look past the hype and ask tough questions about an industry that’s constantly changing.
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Episodes
#canceleverything = adios tech conferences. Now what?
March 12, 2020 10:34 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood speaks with Connie Guglielmo, editor-in-chief at CNET, about how a plurality of tech conferences have been canceled due to COVID-19 concerns, and what that might mean for the tech industry. Guglielmo says that this will only allow tech companies to get creative by making the conferences more video-friendly and therefore accessible to anyone who wants to be part of them in a cheaper way. Wood also speaks with Karen Allen, a consultant to artists who livestreams on Twitch, abou...
How online retailers are handling the COVID-19 gold rush
March 11, 2020 10:46 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood speaks with Louise Matsakis, a reporter at Wired, about price gouging on e-commerce giants like Amazon and eBay. She says that these platforms need to respond to gouging just as social media platforms have to respond to misinformation about the public health crises. Amazon, she adds, has been making an effort to regulate the dramatic price increases that some sellers are applying to hand sanitizers and face masks that protect against COVID-19.
In a world of remote work, virtual reality is still pretty much MIA
March 10, 2020 11:12 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood speaks to Adi Robertson, a senior reporter at The Verge, about how virtual reality initially promised us the future, and now that we need it to work remotely during the coronavirus outbreak, it still has very little to offer. Robertson says the equipment is just too heavy to successfully work from home. And then there’s the “goofiness factor.”
Can tech keep learning on track during COVID-19 spread?
March 09, 2020 11:01 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood speaks with John Watson, founder of the Evergreen Education Group, which conducts research on K-12 digital learning, about schools closing due to the spread of COVID-19. He says that while there are plenty of schools and school districts equipped with the tools to make online learning possible, there are still other schools and districts that do not have that sort of bandwidth.
There’s no driving test for self-driving cars — only metrics
March 06, 2020 11:24 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood speaks with Jack Stewart, Marketplace’s transportation reporter, about the recent California DMV “disengagement” report, which tells the public how many times a human has had to manually take over the wheel of an autonomous vehicle. But there aren’t any federal standards for collecting that kind of data.
Fintech apps make stock trading fun … until they crash
March 05, 2020 11:30 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood speaks with Nathaniel Popper, a technology reporter for The New York Times, about Robinhood’s recent outage and what that might tell us about the fintech industry. He says the tech glitches are giving traditional banks a chance to catch up.
A startup founder wants to change the way employees report HR complaints
March 04, 2020 11:30 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood speaks with Claire Schmidt, CEO and founder of AllVoices, an online program that lets employees file an HR complaint anonymously. Research shows, she says, that about 75% of employees don’t report any sort of harassment because they think their HR department is asking for too much information, which makes them feel vulnerable. Correction (Mar. 4, 2020): A previous version of this episode description incorrectly characterized the companies AllVoices works with. The text has b...
Coronavirus concerns? The doctor will video chat with you now. Is that enough?
March 03, 2020 11:38 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood spoke with Robert Wachter, the chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, about telemedicine and if it is effective enough to make a difference during the coronavirus outbreak.
One Chinese government Rx for COVID-19: Collect more data
March 02, 2020 12:02 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBAs China works to contain COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, residents there are being asked to supply a lot more personal information to both companies and the government. But once the virus is under control, could the government still use the data to continue to surveil people? Molly Wood talks with Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak.
Inside China’s digital war on information about COVID-19
February 28, 2020 11:30 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood spoke with Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak about China’s battle with its online information about the coronavirus. She says that in critical times, the country tends to slow down the internet, and in some way censor what is being shared online. Some people are able to bypass that censorship, she adds, by using homonyms to successfully post something.
Michael Bloomberg is paying for sponsored memes. Any ROI?
February 27, 2020 11:28 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood spoke with Taylor Lorenz, a tech and internet culture reporter at the New York Times, about the sponsored memes Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg is paying for. Lorenz says that because Bloomberg doesn’t resonate with young voters — like Sanders and Trump — he has to pay social media influencers to advertise his campaign through memes in forms of videos or still images. All of this is allowed, according to Facebook, so long as it’s known to social media users ...
Intuit wants Credit Karma — along with all the data
February 26, 2020 11:28 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood spoke with Sasan Goodarzi, CEO of Intuit — the parent company of TurboTax — about the company’s recent $7.1 billion acquisition of Credit Karma, its biggest since 1983. The reason for this acquisition, Goodarzi says, is to advance its mission to help families with their savings, while also helping its customers about their financial literacy, like how to keep or improve a great credit score. Since many services on Credit Karma are free, and many on TurboTax are not, Molly ask...
What’s behind Jeff Bezos’ $10 billion climate plan?
February 25, 2020 11:21 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBJeff Bezos is putting $10 billion of his personal money into climate solutions. Will that go toward inventing new technologies to deal with the problem or scaling up what we already have? And what will make more of a difference? Host Molly Wood talks about it with Jay Koh, a managing director at the private equity firm The Lightsmith Group.
Microsoft vs. Amazon vs. White House = Pentagon cloud project delay
February 24, 2020 11:32 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood speaks with tech editor Patrick Tucker of Defense One, a news site that covers national security. They discuss Amazon’s recent court win that’s halted the Pentagon’s JEDI cloud project in partnership with Microsoft. Tucker says Amazon did this because it feels as though the contract was awarded to Microsoft simply because President Donald Trump has an iffy relationship with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Kickstarter workers voted to unionize. It wasn’t about working conditions.
February 21, 2020 11:36 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood speaks with Marketplace’s workplace reporter Meghan McCarty Carino about Kickstarter’s union, which is considered a big win for Silicon Valley activists and for other tech workers. McCarty Carino says that the union looks at traditional complaints, including pay inequality and work culture, as well as newer issues involving gig workers, diversity in hiring and more.
The EU is busy crafting a digital strategy. Because no one else is.
February 20, 2020 11:30 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBHost Molly Wood spoke with Mark Scott, chief technology correspondent at Politico, about the potential rules that Europe wants to put in place that might, Scott says, shape the way the digital ecosystem will be for the next decade. Specifically, they spoke about what this means for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an era when his company has been subject to lots of antitrust investigation.
SoftBank in Silicon Valley reallllly disrupts the scene
February 19, 2020 11:30 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBSoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund started pumping a lot of money into the tech startup scene around 2018, but it has lost billions in recent months after the WeWork IPO disaster, disappointing returns from Uber, other SoftBank backed companies announcing layoffs or shut down. Now, SoftBank Group is apparently putting in billions of its own money to try to keep Vision Fund Two going. Molly Wood spoke with Paul Kedrosky from SK Ventures about what she called a burble in the startup economy.
FTC examining tech exits could change the landscape in Silicon Valley
February 18, 2020 11:30 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBLast week, the Federal Trade Commission said it would examine hundreds of past tech deals to see if they were hurting the competitive landscape. Big tech companies buy a lot of startups, either to acquire technology or to get their hands on hot engineering talent — a system that benefits venture capitalists. In fact, mergers and acquisitions is by far the most common way for VCs to make back their money and then some. If the FTC puts a damper on deals, it could be a problem. Molly Wood spoke...
Swipe right for safety features (and give up more data)
February 17, 2020 11:20 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBIt was probably a busy weekend on Tinder with Valentine’s Day and all. Hopefully it was also a safe weekend on Tinder. The company last month announced a panic button feature for the app to let users report if they feel unsafe on a date, as well as a check-in feature to let your friends know where you are when you’re out with someone. But as always, there’s a catch. You have to share your location constantly to use the new features. Molly Wood spoke with Marketplace’s media reporter Jasmine ...
Tech + old mattresses make gardens grow in refugee camp
February 14, 2020 11:30 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBSome 80,000 people live in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, the world’s largest for people fleeing the war in Syria. As the camp has evolved from a temporary tent city to a semi-permanent settlement of prefabricated houses, a surprising challenge has emerged: what to do with thousands of discarded mattresses. Chemist Tony Ryan from the University of Sheffield knew exactly what to do — use them to grow food. Amy Scott spoke with Victoria Gill, who reported this story for BBC.
FTC scrutiny of Big Tech digs into old deals
February 13, 2020 13:00 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBThis week, the Federal Trade Commission demanded that the five biggest tech companies turn over years of information on some of their past acquisitions. They’re not focusing on the big purchases, like Facebook buying Instagram or Google buying Waze, its navigation competitor, but more on the tiny ones that were too small to be reported to antitrust officials. Molly Wood spoke with Diane Bartz, who covers antitrust for Reuters, about all of this.
Everything’s on Wikipedia. Misinformation, too. But Wiki says its editing process quickly shuts that down.
February 12, 2020 13:00 - 29 minutes - 11.8 MBAt any given time, Wikipedia’s army of volunteer editors might be fighting a raging battle to make sure that a page contains the truth. That’s happening this week on Wikipedia entries about the coronavirus. Considering the state of information online, Wikipedia’s goal of providing free information for no incentive other than providing information is reassuring, assuming it can beat back the trolls. Host Molly Wood spoke with Katherine Maher, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees Wi...
Instagram makes lots of money. Now creators want some of the profits.
February 11, 2020 11:30 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBIn recent days, we’ve started to find out how much money YouTube and Instagram are making. During its recent earnings report, Alphabet said YouTube made just over $15 billion in advertising sales in 2019. Sarah Frier, a reporter at Bloomberg, reported that Instagram made $20 billion last year in ad sales, more than a quarter of Facebook’s total revenue. But YouTube shares its ad revenue with the creators on its platform and Instagram doesn’t, even though both rely on a steady stream of uploa...
Virus video games are suddenly more popular than ever
February 10, 2020 11:30 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBThe coronavirus in China is having a large impact on the economy and on many travelers — businesses, factories and stores are shut. With so many people staying home quarantined, they’re going online to entertain themselves. Health and fitness apps are seeing surges in downloads, but it’s video games that have seen the real leap in popularity. The strategy simulation game Plague Inc. jumped recently to the top of Apple’s App Store for games in China. Jack Stewart spoke with Marketplace’s medi...
How disinformation on YouTube gets into your “watch next” queue
February 07, 2020 11:30 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBAn in-depth report last month looked at climate disinformation online and found that YouTube was spreading videos through its recommendation, or watch next, algorithms. Many of these videos are slick and professional, making them seem credible. Not only are these videos popping up to the top of recommended queues of YouTube’s billions of users, but they’re wrapped in regular ads from big-name companies who are unwittingly funding this disinformation. Jack Stewart spoke with David Roberts of ...
Here’s my fail plan, said no startup founder ever
February 06, 2020 11:30 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBThis week gave us a spectacular tech failure with the Shadow Inc. app that basically ruined the Iowa presidential caucuses. But tech failures aren’t always considered a bad thing in Silicon Valley. There’s a mantra here — fail fast — that suggests you should try things quickly as an entrepreneur and move on to the next thing with lots of great lessons in hand. Host Molly Wood speaks with Arielle Pardes, a senior writer at Wired, about how tech companies, even the small startups, should plan ...
Iowa caucus debacle verdict: Sometimes, there shouldn’t be an app for that
February 05, 2020 11:30 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBHere’s what we know about what happened earlier this week at the Iowa presidential caucuses. The Iowa Democratic Party hired Shadow Inc., a startup company, that built an app that clearly hadn’t been tested well enough before it was deployed in the real world. Host Molly Wood spoke with Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at MIT and a member of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, and asked him what parts of the voting process do need tech innovation?
Airbnb is offering lots of experiences. Results may vary.
February 04, 2020 11:30 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBThe company known mostly for its short-term rentals wants an even bigger share of the roughly $180 billion tours and activities industry. Airbnb just hired a former top Disney executive to run its Experiences business, all while it’s gearing up for an IPO expected later this year and grappling with concerns about safety and fraud. Marketplace’s Amy Scott spoke with Aric Jenkins, a staff writer at Fortune, about Airbnb’s challenges ahead of its potential IPO.
Harvesting tech shows up down on the farm as Brexit labor shortage looms
February 03, 2020 11:30 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBAs it turns out, there are jobs where a human touch is — or has been — irreplaceable, like fruit picking. Soft, delicate fruits must be assessed for ripeness and then gently plucked without smooshing. But in Britain, one looming effect of Brexit is a shortage of cheap human labor, which has spawned a new flurry of interest in robots that can do the job.
What Facebook’s $550M facial recognition settlement might mean for users
January 31, 2020 11:30 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBAbout a decade ago, Facebook started automatically tagging people whose faces its algorithms had recognized in uploaded photos. It almost seemed like magic. This week, Facebook agreed to pay $550 million over claims that the tool violated privacy rights. The settlement was in Illinois, which has strict laws protecting biometric data. The social giant revealed the settlement agreement at the same time as its quarterly financial results this week. Natasha Singer, a tech reporter for the New Yo...
Is the highly engineered Nike Vaporfly just a shoe?
January 30, 2020 11:30 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBWorld Athletics, the governing body for track and field, is set to announce whether it’ll ban certain types of shoes. In particular, Nike’s Vaporfly shoes have been prominently on the feet of athletes responsible for tumbling race records recently. Nike says that the $250 sneakers shave up to 4% off a runner’s time. But is that technology some sort of doping?
Off-Facebook is here, but you’re still there
January 29, 2020 11:30 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBAirbnb, Tinder, British Airways, Duolingo, Spotify and even Marketplace are just some of the hundreds of websites that Facebook says have shared my data with the social network. Just from those you can probably work out more about me than I might want to share. This is all part of Facebook’s Off-Facebook Activity, its new tracking tool that went into wide release yesterday. It lists all of the companies and websites that share activity, like views, purchases or even just when you open an app...
Yes, tech is changing everything. A new book might encourage you to embrace that change.
January 28, 2020 11:30 - 10 minutes - 11.8 MBWe’re in a moment right now where we’re sort of mad at technology. Our phones are sucking up all our time and data; our social media platforms are spreading misinformation and divisive arguments; there are privacy and ethical dilemmas around every corner. But there are those who still believe that technological innovation will change our lives for the better.
Keep returning stuff for free, and ultimately it will cost us all a lot
January 07, 2020 11:30 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBThis season’s online holiday sales were worth some $138 billion to e-retailers, and nearly a third of that stuff is expected to be returned, according to new research from CBRE, a real estate research group. That’s actually typical for 30% of online shopping to be returned, whereas 8% of other stuff bought in shops is returned. All of those returns come with a cost, even if they’re free to us, the shoppers. There’s the emissions from the trucks and planes, the waste from packaging and discar...
CES 2020: Let’s see how tech envisions the new decade
January 06, 2020 11:30 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBIt is the start of a new year, and here in the land of tech and business, that means CES –– the massive consumer electronics show that dominates the tech industry for the week that it hits Las Vegas in early January each year. I’ll be there this week covering the event, and so will a lot of other tech journalists, including WIRED editor-in-chief Nicholas Thompson. Historically, CES has been a fizzy and fun celebration of gadgets, TVs, drones and phones, but in the last couple of years, the s...
Is there a way to use facial recognition that isn’t a dystopian nightmare?
January 03, 2020 11:30 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBThis week, we’re talking with Marketplace reporters about what tech topics they’re watching on their beats as we look ahead to 2020. One issue we can expect to see in the news a lot is facial recognition. In 2019, San Francisco banned police and public agencies from using it over civil rights fears, but it’s become widespread in China, where it’s used for daily surveillance and to track and detain the minority Muslim population there, the Uighurs.
Tech platforms, on the hook to clean up political advertising, take different approaches
January 02, 2020 11:30 - 4 minutes - 11.8 MBThis week, we’ve been interviewing Marketplace reporters about what we should expect in tech in 2020. Today, we’re taking a look at one major event happening in 2020: the U.S. presidential election. It is no secret that there was a boom in social media misinformation campaigns during the 2016 election with the goal of influencing how we vote and who we vote for. Tech platforms are in the spotlight on the subject of digital political ads, targeted ads and the security of our election.
Congress isn’t going to let Facebook’s cryptocurrency happen without a fight
January 01, 2020 12:37 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBThis week, we’re talking to Marketplace reporters about what to expect from tech in the year ahead. Regulation is a big part of that conversation, and today we’re going to chat about cryptocurrencies, specifically Libra, the digital payments system and cryptocurrency proposed by Facebook earlier this year. It seemed like it might be dead on arrival considering all the backlash, but lawmakers haven’t forgotten about it. There are a few bills being considered by Congress that could have an imp...
Some tech employees turned on their employers this year. Will 2020 bring more tensions?
December 31, 2019 11:30 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBIt’s prediction season. This week we’re asking our Marketplace beat reporters what to expect in tech in 2020. Today, we’re talking labor in the tech industry, specifically about the trend of workers protesting their own companies. In 2019, employees from Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other tech giants walked out, signed petitions or went public with complaints about military contracts, tech for oil and gas companies and internal problems with culture and discrimination. Google employees even...
EV sales might accelerate in 2020. Maybe.
December 30, 2019 11:30 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBA new decade is almost upon us, which means this week we’re going to be talking about what to expect from the tech world in 2020. Today, let’s kick the tires — pun intended — on the transportation tech that seems prepared to go big in 2020, electric vehicles. This tech has been around for a while, but at least here in the U.S., the EV market hasn’t had its boom and there hasn’t been much mainstream competition to Tesla.
When tech unicorns stumble, prices go up for everyone
December 27, 2019 11:30 - 11 minutes - 11.8 MBThis holiday week, we’re taking a look back at some of our shows from 2019 that deal with topics we’ll be thinking about in the year ahead. That includes the way tech companies are valued and how it can affect all of us. Tech valuations were soaring, then in the fourth quarter of this year things got messy. Earlier this year, I asked Alex Wilhelm, editor in chief at Crunchbase News, why these private valuations have risen so high.
A visit to X: The tech moonshot factory is working on climate change
December 26, 2019 11:30 - 13 minutes - 11.8 MBAs we look ahead to 2020 and think about tackling giant problems, climate change is high on the list. So, we wanted to re-air an interview with the leader of a company that thrives on tackling giant problems. X, Formerly Google X, is the division of Alphabet devoted to moonshots. Its climate-related graduates include Dandelion, which harnesses heat from geothermal energy, and Malta, which uses salt to store excess energy produced from solar and wind farms.
An app that pays you for your data? Yes, actually.
December 25, 2019 11:24 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBThis holiday week, we’re taking a look back at some of our shows from 2019 that touch on topics we’ll definitely be thinking about in the year ahead, and data is at the top of the list. When it comes to trading your data for free services are you getting a fair deal? Digi.me is an app that lets you connect all your various online accounts. It scoops all the data they have on you and puts it in one encrypted location that you can control. And then a new company called Universal Basic Data Inc...
VCs are leaving trillions on the table by bypassing diverse leaders, study says
December 24, 2019 17:44 - 4 minutes - 11.8 MBWhen we first aired this story earlier this year, I said to stop me if you’ve heard this before: 91% of venture capital investment goes to men, and almost 80% of those men are white. It’s probably because 90% of venture capitalists are men — mostly white. But new data shows that VCs are leaving a lot of money on the table by only investing in people who look like them. Morgan Stanley put out new information this past fall saying venture capital as an industry could be missing out on as much ...
Lawyer argues product liability claims in Facebook suit over sex trafficking
December 23, 2019 11:30 - 7 minutes - 11.8 MBOf all the battles Facebook is fighting right now, it probably didn’t expect Annie McAdams of Houston, Texas. She’s a personal injury lawyer and is arguing on behalf of her clients that Facebook is legally liable for what it is not doing to protect minors from being sex trafficked on its sites. She’s intent on forcing a conversation, if not a ruling, on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal law that shields internet companies from liability for a lot of what happens on t...
Lawsuit says tech giants use child labor in cobalt mining
December 20, 2019 11:30 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBEarlier this week, six U.S. tech companies were named in a lawsuit that accuses them of endangering the lives of child laborers in the mining of cobalt for their products. Several children have been maimed or killed in pursuit of this rare element, most of which comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The lawsuit, the first of its kind, names Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Dell and Tesla. “This is the first time that tech companies have been on the hook for this,” Roger Cheng of CNET tells...
Your kids’ data is already online. How much do you want to add to that?
December 19, 2019 11:30 - 6 minutes - 11.8 MBThe author of a new book wants us to think before we post about our kids. She says that between social media, tech in education and the vast system of government, advertising and digital data collection that we live with every day, our kids are getting an online history that they didn’t choose and can’t escape.
Great interface design is often invisible. But maybe it shouldn’t be.
December 18, 2019 11:30 - 9 minutes - 11.8 MBWhen it comes to design — whether it’s for apps, websites, phones, TVs or computers — we throw around the term “user friendly” a lot. User-friendly design makes using a product easy and painless, which means we don’t notice it, we just enjoy using it. Sometimes, when a design is really good and easy to use, we don’t notice that we’re kind of addicted to an app, game or phone — or that we’re becoming increasingly dependent on those things. Cliff Kuang, a longtime user-experience designer and ...
California’s new privacy law will touch companies and protect consumers, if you ask
December 17, 2019 11:30 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBCalifornia’s big consumer privacy law goes into effect on Jan. 1. It’s the first law in the U.S. that demands that companies give consumers more control over their information and more power over what they can do with that information once they have it. On the consumer side, you can now ask companies to show you everything they have on you for free up to twice a year. You can ask companies to delete the data, and the law requires companies to give you an easy way to opt out of having your pe...
Active wildfires are fast-moving disasters, and the fallout can be terrible, too
December 16, 2019 11:30 - 5 minutes - 11.8 MBNASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory are launching flights to gather more data about the lingering pollutants from fires by flying straight into the smoke plumes. We can’t actually see these super tiny pollutants, but they’re big enough to affect our breathing, especially for those who have asthma. Both NASA and JPL are learning more from studying the plumes during a fire, as well as the air after a fire, to help understand how these pollutants will affect us long term.