Marketplace Tech

After years of explosive growth, is China’s livestream shopping industry slowing down?

In just a few short years, shopping by livestream has become all the rage in China. Think QVC online and on steroids. Influencers, brands and retailers have swarmed apps like WeChat and Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok — to hawk everything from makeup and clothes to cars and beef jerky.  Viola Zhou and Caiwei Chen, reporters at Rest of World, have been writing about this $500 billion market and how it’s changing in a stagnant Chinese economy.

WeWork files for bankruptcy, Meta’s plan for election-related AI and ad blockers get blocked

It’s Friday! Which means it’s time for our week-in-review show: Marketplace Tech Bytes. Meta announced this week that starting in 2024, Facebook and Instagram will start labeling political ads that use images generated by AI. But no… it’s hardly an AI crackdown. Plus, YouTube goes to war with ad blockers. A spate of uninstalls ensues! But first, WeWork, the co-working space provider, files for bankruptcy. What happened? And what’s next for the one-time golden child of Silicon Valley? Marketp...

Moneyball: the Oakland A’s and the transformation of baseball data

“Stay in Oakland!” was the plea from many a diehard Athletics fan in the stands of the Oakland Coliseum this past baseball season as the team planned its move to Las Vegas. Some potential hurdles to a move remain unresolved, including a vote by Major League Baseball team owners next week on whether to allow it. Even if you don’t follow baseball, you may know the story of how, more than two decades ago, the cash-strapped A’s pioneered the use of high-tech data analysis in the sport. which cam...

Technology, community, insurance: How California hopes to mitigate future wildfires

Social media and “eSIMs” help Gazans stay connected amid war and blackouts

Tuesday marks one month since the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking hundreds of hostages. Israel has responded by bombarding the Gaza Strip and killing more than 10,000 people there, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. The Israeli government has shut off power and fuel supplies to the more than 2 million people, mostly Palestinians, in Gaza. This weekend, Gazans suffered the third internet and phone blackout since Israel declared war o...

Military service members’ personal data is for sale. Is that a threat to national security?

Remember when President Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok? He called attention to the risk that American users’ data could fall into the hands of Chinese authorities who have ties to the app’s owners. A judge blocked the ban, but even if he hadn’t, experts say so much of our personal information is available to buy from run-of-the-mill data brokers. That includes information on Americans serving in the military, which can have big consequences for national security. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali...

Global AI concerns, slumping EV sales and Netflix’s ad gamble

This week, electric vehicle sales are in a slump. Last year, the competition among EV buyers was fierce, with consumers paying premium prices to drive one off the lot. But despite federal tax credits aimed at making them more affordable, the red-hot EV market isn’t so hot anymore. Plus, a year into ads on Netflix, the company is reporting that 15 million monthly active users are watching, and rewards for binging your favorite shows are in the works. But first, we’ll dive into the U.K.’s AI S...

AI vs. AI: Automated programs are writing better scam emails, and AI is spotting them

According to the FBI, email phishing attacks accounted for nearly $51 billion in losses over the past 10 years — and the number is only expected to grow with the introduction of artificial intelligence. Dina Temple-Raston from the “Click Here” podcast followed one company that is doing something new to fight the growing threat of scam emails: fighting AI with AI.

You realized the AI you’re creating may be dangerous. Now what?

It’s been about seven months since leaders in tech signed an open letter calling for a temporary pause on artificial intelligence development. The gist was that the risks of advanced AI are too great for developers to keep tinkering with the technology in the absence of proper safeguards. That pause ultimately did not happen, and for some researchers, the core concerns in that letter still exist. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Jonas Schuett, research fellow at the Centre for the Govern...

Biden’s executive order aims to limit the harms of AI

In 2017, then-MIT graduate student Joy Buolamwini shared the challenge of getting facial analysis software to notice her. “Hi camera, can you see my face? You can see her face. What about my face?” she asks the program as she stares at her webcam. It couldn’t “see” her until she wore a white mask. The reason, argued Buolamwini, who is Black, is because of algorithmic bias. Fighting it is one goal of the executive order on AI unveiled Monday by the Biden administration. Buolamwini, author of ...

Why default settings are important to a search engine’s success

It was declared the winner of the search-engine wars way back in 1998. Fortune magazine said the company was poised for much bigger things. That company was, actually, Yahoo. As it turned out, that prediction didn’t age well. Of course, Google is the real winner of the battle for search engine dominance. How it got there is the subject of the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against it. Google has just started mounting its defense as the 10-week trial nears its end. Much of the case...

Policymakers take on AI, deepfakes and Meta’s effects on kids

This week, Marketplace Tech is introducing a new regular Friday segment called Bytes: a week in review, where we’ll dive into the major news stories of the week, giving you the context and information you need. And what a week it’s been in the tech industry! Disarray in Congress disrupts plans to deal with deepfakes ahead of the 2024 election. Also, the White House prepares an executive order on artificial intelligence, set for release as soon as next week. But the biggest tech headline of t...

Ageism in China’s tech sector has workers fearing the “curse of 35”

Here in the U.S., big tech is having a good earnings season as companies release their quarterly report cards this week. This, after a year marked by layoffs, with many tech workers going through the first industry downturn of their careers. China’s tech industry has been even more exposed. The world’s second largest economy is struggling. Turns out, a long resume isn’t always helpful to those thrown out of work, as a result. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Marketplace’s China correspon...

How teens are being blackmailed with sexting scams on social media

Last year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) got more than 10,000 tips about minors extorted in sexting scams. The number is even higher so far this year. And what authorities are noticing is that in a lot of these cases boys are the target. It often starts with direct messages on social media. Flirting leads to requests for explicit photos. And as soon as they hit send, the person on the other end threatens to share the photos unless they get paid. Freelance re...

As New York cracks down on rentals, Airbnb hosts go underground

As recently as August, Airbnb was doing brisk business in New York City, with more than 22,000 listings there. Two months and a citywide crackdown later, that number has fallen to just above 3,000, a decrease of more than 80%. Local Law 18, which took effect last month, requires hosts of short-term rentals on Airbnb, Vrbo and similar sites to register with the city and live in the property they’re renting out. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Amanda Hoover, a staff writer at Wired, who’s...

CRISPR pioneer Doudna envisions ending asthma, aiding climate

The technology known as CRISPR is considered one of modern biology’s biggest breakthroughs. It allows scientists to edit genes, similar to how you cut and paste text in a word processor. More than a decade after pioneering CRISPR, Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, is applying it to big problems, like chronic disease and climate change.Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently met up with Doudna at Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute. It’s a cluster of la...

Workers in Israel’s dynamic tech sector are joining the war effort. That’s affecting the industry, and the economy.

Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have lost their lives since Hamas gunmen staged their surprise raid on Oct. 7. In the wake of the attack, Israel’s defense forces have called up more than 350,000 reservists, about 4% of its population. The country’s booming tech industry could be affected more than most, given that so many younger Israelis work in the sector. Fast Company contributing writer Issie Lapowsky recently interviewed several of them, including an Israeli tech lawyer named Yi...

The potential return of net neutrality and the future of the digital divide

The talk of late at the Federal Communications Commission is whether to restore net neutrality. When the Barack Obama administration put those rules in place in 2015, the idea was to ensure that internet service providers — or ISPs — like Verizon and Comcast gave consumers fair access to the web and didn’t favor sites and services they controlled. But that mandate was repealed two years later under then-FCC Chair Ajit Pai, chosen by then-President Donald Trump. He argued that net neutrality...

Bacteria could be the key to a safer, greener way of processing rare-earth metals

The word “bacteria” doesn’t exactly evoke positive images, but scientists at Cornell University recently discovered a novel way to replicate and use a bacterium from Oneida Lake in New York state. It’s called Shewanella oneidensis, and it has a special affinity for the rare-earth elements — such as so-called lanthanides, metals that are important for clean, renewable energy technology. The bacteria can be used to process rare-earth metals through a method called biosorption, which is consid...

How the IRS is using $60 billion to make filing taxes less painful

If you asked for an extension on last year’s taxes, the bad news is the filing deadline was yesterday. The good is if you got it in, refunds are expected to reach you faster than they have in recent years. The notoriously clunky technology behind the IRS is getting a massive update, thanks to a $60 billion cash infusion from last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. The IRS’ technology was considered cutting edge in the 1960s, but Erica Neuman, assistant professor of accounting at the University ...

The game-changing work of Jerry Lawson (rerun)

When you think of the early days of video games, the Fairchild Channel F console might not be the first brand that comes to mind. The Fairchild Channel F was released in 1976, before the more famous Atari released its console. It was also the first system to use individual game cartridges, thanks in large part to Jerry Lawson, a Black engineer at Fairchild. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Anthony Frasier, CEO of ABF Creative and host of a podcast about Jerry Lawson ca...

The race for China’s electric vehicle market

Chinese automaker BYD is now the most popular EV in China and could soon beat Tesla as the No. 1 EV globally. As the Chinese auto market moves to electric, the playing field is getting crowded.

Fraud influencers, phishing and scams — account takeovers are on the rise

Whether it’s for travel, meals or event tickets, it’s hard to deny the allure of a good deal. And providing discounts through fraudulent means is a thriving business online. Once mostly relegated to the far reaches of the dark web, fraudsters are offering questionable deals to consumers on mainstream social media sites and messaging apps. That’s according to the online fraud prevention company Sift. Part of the scam is what is called an account takeover or ATO. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spok...

San Francisco is becoming a tech hub again, Y Combinator CEO says

They say it’s harder to get into than Harvard: Y Combinator, YC for short, is “startup school” for tech founders. It takes applications twice a year. Being among the 230 startups accepted out of 24,000 means getting a half-million-dollar investment and access to mentors who’ve already made it. Airbnb, Reddit and DoorDash are on the alumni list. For most of its 18-year history, Y Combinator has been based in Mountain View, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. Recently, though, its center ...

X’s misinformation woes get worse during the Israel-Hamas conflict

Last weekend, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, people around the world flocked to Twitter — now X — for up-to-the-minute information. What they found was a site crawling with misinformation: images captured months or years earlier in unrelated attacks, inaccurate claims about other countries entering the conflict, even a fake White House press release announcing billions of dollars in new U.S. aid to Israel made the rounds. And X’s owner, Elon Musk, promoting accounts known ...

As SBF sits in court, is cryptocurrency on trial too?

Almost one year after FTX collapsed, founder Sam Bankman-Fried is on trial for fraud. Crypto’s value has mostly recovered; users hope its reputation will too. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Vicky Huang, a crypto reporter at The Wall Street Journal, about how the trial is affecting perceptions of the industry.

Streaming data transparency a vast and contested terrain for Hollywood creatives

The lucrative NBC sitcom “Cheers” featured a washed-up baseball-player-turned-bartender, a spunky waitress and a bunch of regulars who hung out at the bar. By the end of its 11-season run in 1993, the show was getting 26 million viewers a week.Back then, the public could get a lot of information about how our favorite shows performed. But for streaming in 2023, that data is harder to come by. It was a sticking point in the five-month Hollywood writers strike. Members of the Writers Guild of ...

California bill could lead the way in diversifying venture capital investments

Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park is often referred to as the main street of venture capital. Funding from these influential firms can launch a startup into the big time — sometimes unicorn status. But just 2% of venture capital goes to all-female teams. That figure is even lower for Black women and Latina founders. A bill just passed by California lawmakers, SB 54, offers a first-in-the-nation push to gather the statistics on who’s getting all that highly sought-after cash. Gov...

The beauty industry generates a lot of waste. Technology can help.

The beauty industry is getting bigger and more lucrative, but beauty brand Olay says that with about 80% of beauty products going unused, there’s an ugly side to that growth. Startups in Sweden and Finland hope technology can reduce cosmetic waste by changing the way we shop.

Are state and local governments embracing or banning generative AI?

A couple of weeks back, the news broke that a school district in Mason City, Iowa, was using ChatGPT to implement Iowa’s ban on books that include descriptions of sex acts. One book flagged was Buzz Bissinger’s classic “Friday Night Lights.” The thing is, that book includes no such descriptions, according to the author himself. Although the district reversed course, it’s an example of how more government officials are using artificial intelligence at work, in some cases leading to restricti...

The history of the keyboard is filled with battles, controversies and lasers

The humble keyboard is the unsung hero of our tech lives. It’s the thing that almost every great modern book or screenplay or even Instagram caption was first written on. And yet, very few people are writing about it. Designer and writer Marcin Wichary sought to change that with his new book “Shift Happens.” In it, he chronicles the sometimes contentious history of the keyboard. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Wichary about his research, beginning with the very first typewriters.

How California’s Delete Act could impact the business of data brokering

There’s an entire industry built around making money off personal information that’s gathered online. Companies known as data brokers collect it, then sell it to other parties. California tried to tackle this problem a couple of years ago, giving consumers the right to ask that companies delete their information. But actually doing that is tedious. Consumers have to make the request one company at a time. A bill passed by California lawmakers this month aims to change that by allowing one re...

After a decade, the EU draws the curtains on its Human Brain Project

In making the case for the Human Brain Project back in 2009, neuroscientist Henry Markram noted that 2 billion people are affected by some kind of mental disorder. It was time, he said, to explore fundamental questions about how the brain works. The collaboration that resulted involved hundreds of scientists across several nations. This week marks the end of Europe’s ambitious but also at times controversial initiative. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Miryam Naddaf, a reporter for the ...

What the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit means for Amazon

According to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states, “Amazon is a monopolist.” They say Amazon uses strategies that prevent sellers on its online marketplace from lowering prices on other platforms and compels them to use Amazon’s logistics service to be eligible for Amazon Prime. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Neil Chilson, the former chief technologist at the FTC and currently a research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, about the FTC’s law...

What’s happening in the Google antitrust trial? It’s kind of a black box.

We’re going on Week 3 of Google’s high-stakes trial over allegations that it bought its way to dominance in internet search. The Department of Justice and several states allege that the tech giant has maintained a lucrative monopoly through exclusive contracts with browser companies and phone makers like Apple and Samsung. Google has countered that it’s dominant in search because it offers the best product. Covering this trial has been a complicated task. Part of the challenge is that Googl...

How countries around the world shape their data policy

It’s impossible to quantify the volume of data generated by citizens around the world. Make no mistake, though — data has become a commodity to the companies that monetize it. At the same time, governments are making laws around how to protect it, who can access it and even where to store it. These choices are guided by how leaders think data can advance their national interests, according to Gillian Diebold at the Center for Data Innovation, who just wrote an analysis on the subject. She sp...

AI in schools creates greater risk for marginalized students, researchers find

When ChatGPT came on the scene in November, it sent schools across the country into a panic. Some districts immediately started setting rules around how students could use artificial intelligence programs in their schoolwork. Others moved to ban them altogether. All this happened while information about the good and the bad of AI’s foray into classrooms was still pretty scarce. Researchers at the Center for Democracy & Technology, based in Washington, D.C., gathered data to counter some of ...

“Model collapse” shows AI doesn’t have the human touch, writer says

AI chatbots have gotten pretty good at generating text that looks like it was written by a real person. That’s because they’re trained on words and sentences that actual humans wrote, scraped from blogs and news websites. But research now shows when you feed that AI-generated text back into the models to train a new chatbot, after a while, it sort of stops making sense. It’s a phenomenon AI researchers are calling “model collapse.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Clive Thompson, author of...

The race to develop earthquake warning tech

Earthquakes are the trickiest phenomena to detect ahead of their impact. California, for example, has the MyShake app, which aims to notify Californians seconds ahead of a quake. But aside from the public sector funding this type of lifesaving innovation, private companies are also racing to develop the tech for earthquake warning and alert systems. The BBC’s Will Bain reports.

How presidential candidates are talking about tech on the campaign trail

We are a little more than a year away from Election Day, and voters have probably heard something about candidates’ views on the economy, foreign policy and other issues in the media daily. But today, “Marketplace Tech” is looking at what candidates are telling voters about their plans for the future of technology in the United States. How are they framing issues related to artificial intelligence, social media and the power of Big Tech? If you scroll through the websites of the leading can...

Have smartphones peaked?

There was a time when the unveiling of the next-generation Apple iPhone was a very big deal. Today, there are still plenty of fans keeping tabs on the latest releases from Apple and competitors like Samsung and Google. But if you didn’t hear much about Apple’s hardware showcase in Cupertino, California, last week, it wasn’t just you. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Lauren Goode, senior writer at Wired and the co-host of Wired’s “Gadget Lab” and “Have a Nice Future” podcasts, about the eve...

How tech has influenced a year of demonstrations in Iran

Saturday marks one year since the death of Mahsa Amini, the young woman who was arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s “morality police” for allegedly violating its strict dress code for women. She died in custody. Protests that started at Amini’s funeral quickly spread across the country. Iranians have depended on messaging apps and social media to share information and try to stay safe. But staying connected hasn’t been easy, according to Shaghayegh Norouzi and Reza Ghazinouri with th...

How Musk’s Starlink became a security liability for the U.S.

Here on Earth, the satellites that make up Starlink look like a string of stars travelling across the night sky. More than 4,000 of them are circling the Earth in low orbit right now. They’re part of the private venture that’s the brainchild of billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals there so Ukraine could stay connected to the internet. But turns out Musk controls both the on and the off switch on that technology, givin...

Why did the Instant Pot go out of style?

If you’re a kitchen tech fanatic, the odds are good you’ve purchased or been gifted an Instant Pot. But Instant Brands, the maker of the Instant Pot, filed for bankruptcy in June. Susan Orlean, who writes Afterword, an obituary column in The New Yorker, said it seemed fitting to write an obit for the Instant Pot.

The European Commission lists some tech titans as ‘gatekeepers’ of online services

The European Commission has designated six of the largest tech companies on the planet as the “gatekeepers” of online services. You’ll know these names: Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Facebook parent Meta. Google and YouTube parent Alphabet. And, maybe you’re less familiar with this one: ByteDance, which owns TikTok. They’ve all got until March to comply with the continent’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to give users more choice. For more, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Sum...

Why Apple is supporting the “right to repair” in California

States across the country are considering “right to repair” laws. These laws require most electronics and appliance manufacturers to provide instructions and tools to consumers wanting to repair their products instead of paying company technicians for the service or, worst case, buying a replacement. It’s something that iPhone maker Apple has long been against, until last month, when the company suddenly announced its support for California’s bill. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Brian Heate...

Google’s Justice Department trial could test the future of antitrust law

When’s the last time you used Microsoft Bing or Duck Duck Go to search the internet? Yeah, that’s no accident, say the U.S. government and several states. Next week, an antitrust case they filed against Google goes to trial. The original complaint notes Google accounted for almost 90% of all search queries in the U.S. And Googling only got us so far on this one, so Marketplace’s Lily Jamali called on Rebecca Allensworth, an antitrust lawyer and law professor at Vanderbilt.

It’s imperative – and nearly impossible – to contain artificial intelligence, expert says

When Mustafa Suleyman co-founded the AI research company DeepMind more than a decade ago, his goal felt ambitious, even a bit far-fetched: to build a machine that could replicate human intelligence. Now, he says, rapid progress in the development of AI means that goal could be met within the next three years, and the implications of that milestone are huge. Suleyman explores those implications in his new book, “The Coming Wave,” which came out this week. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Su...

X/Twitter’s political ad policy could affect elections around the world

Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey banned them in 2019. Now, owner and Chair Elon Musk is officially bringing back political ads from parties and candidates to the company he renamed X, expanding its push into cause-based advertising. The move could boost revenue; some big brands have been less than eager to buy ads on the platform since Musk took over. X didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of taping, but it has said it plans to expand its safety and elections team ahead of the 20...

The U.S. and China’s different — and similar — attitudes about AI in the workplace

We know that artificial intelligence will change the workplace, and in some industries more than others. Also, perhaps, in some countries more than others. Today we bring you the view from China. Marketplace’s correspondent there, Jennifer Pak, has been speaking to companies and workers in creative industries about this thorny issue. She recently visited a Chinese company that’s been playing with AI to generate animation. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Pak, who is in Shanghai, to explo...