News of the Cyber World

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Erdogan in NYC Urges Elon Musk to Build a Tesla Factory in Turkey

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used a break in New York City on Sunday to urge tech giant Elon Musk to open his next Tesla factory in Turkey.

Erdogan’s entreaty makes him just the latest in a long line of leaders to lobby one of the world’s richest men.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who met Musk in June, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, have also tried to lure him to their respective countries.

In March the Mexican government announced Tesla will invest about $5 billion in a massive new factory in the northern city of Monterrey.

Erdogan was in New York to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting, which he is scheduled to address on Tuesday.

AP reports the two men have held a series of meetings both in Turkey and on the sidelines of international forums, developing a seeming friendship that they extended in New York.

Turkish television on Monday showed Musk entering New York’s Turkish House, a new skyscraper across from the United Nations building, with his son, whom he held on his lap during the talks.

A Credit Card Coalition warns you that...

Walmart Wants to Rollback Your Rewards; Keep Billions

Big-box retailers like Walmart are doing well for themselves these days. In their August earnings report, Walmart announced revenue was up more than five percent, and their stock’s shares are up about ten percent for the year. Part of the reason for Walmart’s success is their sheer size and massive influence on suppliers, but it’s also their habit of lobbying Congress for favors.

This summer, big-box retailer lobbyists were successful in getting Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Roger Marshall (R-KS), J.D. Vance (R-OH), and Peter Welch (D-VT) to introduce legislation that would create new credit card routing mandates. These mandates would allow Walmart to process credit card transactions based solely on what is cheapest for them without regard to the value that consumers derive from rewards and anti-fraud programs.

Although Walmart is promoting this bill under the guise of “competition,” it’s really a ruse. The bill actually gives the federal government massive power to further control payments in Walmart’s favor, cutting out the credit unions and banks who currently invest millions in anti-fraud technology and rewards systems. This isn’t about competition, it’s about cronyism.

This “Big-Box Bait-and-Switch” would add billions of dollars to the bottom lines of mega-retailers every year while eliminating almost all the funding that goes towards popular credit card rewards programs, weakening cybersecurity protections, and reducing access to credit, particularly for Americans that need it most.

Essentially, Walmart and other big-box retailers want to enjoy the many benefits of accepting credit cards without having to pay for that privilege. Currently, most businesses pay an interchange fee of 1-3 percent of every transaction to accept credit cards. This fee has remained stable for roughly a decade. What Walmart doesn’t want to acknowledge is that financial institutions—including payment networks and banks of all sizes—are constantly investing money to improve America’s payment ecosystem to ensure that consumers and retailers have the safest and smartest payment system in the world.

It’s not the first time Walmart has lobbied for the government to make new rules that favor them. In 2010, Walmart teamed up with Target and other mega-retailers to add the Durbin Amendment to the must-pass Dodd-Frank bill. The Durbin Amendment instituted price controls on debit card fees, and it didn’t even get a hearing. Instead, Sen. Durbin slipped it into the bill as a last-minute favor. As is always the case, these price controls backfired and had a ripple effect on the entire economy. Big-box retailers got to pocket billions, while consumers lost massive benefits like debit card rewards and free checking.

Canceled: YouTube Stops Russell Brand from Monetizing Videos

The move comes in the wake several women making allegations of sexual assault against the UK comedian-turned-influencer, as Breitbart News reported.

AP reports YouTube said monetization of Brand’s account, which has 6.6 million subscribers, has been suspended “following serious allegations against the creator.” His agent has also dropped him.

“This decision applies to all channels that may be owned or operated by Russell Brand,” the Google-owned video service said.

Brand, 48, vehemently denies allegations of sexual assault made by four women initially made public in a Channel 4 television documentary and The Times and Sunday Times newspapers.

The accusers, who have not been named, include one who said she was sexually assaulted during a relationship with him when she was 16. Another woman alleges Brand raped her in Los Angeles in 2012.
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Promoters have since postponed the remaining dates in a string of live gigs by the comedian.

Elon Musk Hints at ‘Small Monthly Payment’ to Access Twitter/X

CNBC reports that Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has once again made headlines, this time for his plans to overhaul the social media landscape. During a livestreamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Musk announced that X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, may implement a monthly subscription fee for all users. The move is part of a broader strategy to combat the proliferation of bots on the platform.

“Moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” Musk said, although he did not disclose the exact cost or features that would be included in the new subscription model. The announcement comes as Musk boasts of 550 million active monthly users on Twitter/X who generate between 100 and 200 million posts per day. Although the number seems impressive, it isn’t clear what percentage of these accounts are bots instead of people, and Musk is not disclosing the platform’s metrics according to measurements formerly used by Twitter, so a historical comparison of the platform’s health is difficult.

The conversation with Netanyahu was initially intended to focus on the theoretical risks of artificial intelligence technology and its potential regulation. However, Musk seized the opportunity to address allegations of hate speech and antisemitism on Twitter/X. The platform has been under scrutiny for amplifying bigotry, leading Musk to threaten legal action against the Anti-Defamation League, a leftist organization.

Elon Musk’s Starlink Falls Short of SpaceX Subscriber Projections by 92.5%

Ars Technica reports that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its Starlink internet services have not lived up to its own lofty expectations, missing its projected targets by a wide margin. In a 2015 presentation aimed at investors, SpaceX had projected that Starlink would boast 20 million subscribers and generate nearly $12 billion in revenue by the end of 2022. These figures were part of the company’s ambitious plan to revolutionize the internet landscape.

However, according to a Wall Street Journal report, the actual numbers tell a different story. Starlink’s revenue for 2022 was reported to be $1.4 billion, a far cry from the projected $12 billion. Moreover, the company had just over 1.5 million customers worldwide, including consumer users and businesses, as opposed to the 20 million it had anticipated.

“Starlink hasn’t signed up customers as quickly as SpaceX had hoped,” the Wall Street Journal noted. The report also highlighted that the documents did not specify whether Starlink is currently profitable, leaving a cloud of uncertainty over the project’s financial health.

SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell stated in February that Starlink is expected to turn a profit this year. However, without specific numbers, it’s hard to gauge the project’s actual profitability. The company’s Q1 2023 numbers reportedly included a $55 million profit on $1.5 billion in revenue, but it remains unclear how much of this was attributed to Starlink.

One of the significant challenges facing Starlink is its struggle to penetrate high-density areas like cities. “The majority of the world’s population that the business could serve and that can afford high-speed broadband lives in cities. In those regions, Internet service is readily available, usually offers cheaper monthly costs than Starlink and doesn’t require specialized equipment,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Google Antitrust Case: Court Will Examine
Internet Giant’s ‘Effects on Innovation’

The ongoing antitrust lawsuit against Google has reignited debates about the company’s market dominance and the legal frameworks used to evaluate such cases. One expert believes the case and how the judge views Google’s stranglehold on the search market will come down to the consumer welfare standard and how the court views Google’s “effects on innovation.”

In a recent article published by the Hill and titled “How To Think About the Google Antitrust Case,” Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute, discusses how to view the current antitrust case that the Department of Justice has brought against Google.

Thayer believes the case comes down to the consumer welfare standard, writing:

Since the 1980s, courts have used the consumer welfare standard to evaluate whether the actions of a firm with market power violate federal law. The standard takes into account prices, of course, but also considers other factors that are harder to measure. As the D.C. Circuit in the AT&T/Time Warner case put it, the standard extends “beyond higher prices for consumers, including decreased product quality and reduced innovation.” Or, as former FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson explained, the standard considers the effect of “competition on quality … in the analysis of vertical restraints” and requires an evaluation of the “effects on innovation.”

...Microsoft had market power; it leveraged that market power to deny consumers the ability to choose a competitor, and the resulting lack of competition reduced innovation in the browser market. In other words, Microsoft had violated the antitrust laws with its “free” browser.

Google’s tactics mirror Microsoft’s. Google has arranged for service providers, browsers and device manufacturers to make its Search the default engine. For example, Google pays Apple over $15 billion per year to make Search the default search engine for Safari — a direct competitor to Google’s browser, Chrome. Google requires device manufacturers that use its Android operating system to preinstall certain apps that use Google Search as their default search engine.

Stephen Fry Claims His Voice Was ‘Cloned’ by AI
Using ‘Harry Potter’ Audio Book Narration

Fortune reports that AI is at the epicenter of the labor dispute gripping Hollywood. Among those raising the alarm is British actor and author Stephen Fry, who recently spoke at the CogX Festival in London about his unsettling experience of having his voice digitally replicated without his permission.
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The core issue for actors like Fry is the potential for studios to use AI to digitally clone their likeness without fair compensation. Union president Fran Drescher emphasized that AI “poses an existential threat” to creative industries. “Actors need protection from having their identity and talent exploited without consent and pay,” Drescher stated.

To drive home his point, Fry played a clip at the CogX Festival of an AI system mimicking his voice to narrate a documentary. “I said not one word of that—it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me,” Fry revealed. “They used my reading of the seven volumes of the Harry Potter books, and from that dataset, an AI of my voice was created, and it made that new narration.”

Fry is not alone in his concerns. Emmy-winning actor Brian Cox shared that a friend in the industry had been told “in no uncertain terms” that a studio would keep his image and do what they liked with it. Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey and Star Trek star Simon Pegg have also expressed apprehensions about the rise of AI in Hollywood.