Meatspace is Lora and Sarah’s weekly digest of weird/wack/need-to-know tech news — and our warm takes on all of it.
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Dear friends,
Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that the future is private. We thought the Future was Female but okay...
This from a man who previously boasted that privacy was over! New measures Zuckerberg announced at F8 include eroding the news feed, focusing on groups, and testing getting rid of showing like counts on Instagram. The refocusing isn’t all from the goodness of FB hearts: as part of a settlement, the FTC is making the company create a privacy committee + a head compliance officer, according to Politico.
Pretty unbelievable that Zuckerberg is supposedly taking privacy seriously and he’s now trying to access the greatest secrets of all: crushes.
Facebook is at last returning to its original mission (as a way to check if hot ppl are single) with their new dating feature. How it works is you add someone to your “secret crush list,” and then they get a notification saying that somebody likes them. But before they can reveal WHOM, they must list their own crushes, and then FB will peep to see if they also like you, and then match you. It’s kind of like the med school matching system, lol. This seems like a lot more effort than a simple Poke, 2009’s most titillating form of flirt. The feature is launching in countries that already have Facebook dating features, currently not including the US.
(Unrelatedly/sadly, FB is shutting down Bonfire, which was supposed to be a HouseParty reincarnation, before it gets to the US :( )
Speaking of no secrets being safe, this beluga is a russian spy. Or should we say WAS -- it has since defected to norway. Bye.
And the NYT’s privacy project continues to be excellent. Here’s a piece about how ads are watching u.
THE HEALTH OF THE BODY POLITIC
This line appeared in Jia Tolentino’s New Yorker piece about how addicted we are to our phones. We finally got around to reading it and - damn!
For extremely predictable reasons, Apple doesn’t want you to have a real sense of how addicted you are to your phone because then you’d wisely cast it off into the ocean. So it’s quietly shutting down apps that help limit/track your time! “They are systematically killing the industry,” the head of a major parental control app told the NYT.
This header seems as good a reason as any to shoutout our pals at Body Politic, who do great work around queer feminist wellness in NY. Watch this space for collabs!!
In less fun health news, the NYT broke a story this week about Nurx, the pill startup that was storing birth control pills in a shoe organizer in a closet(!). Lots of interesting issues here, in particular how birth control is viewed by some as a perfect use for telemedicine (remote/online prescription without seeing a doctor IRL) but then some women suffer when they get BC from a website without proper doctor consultation first.
Un/fortunately, health tech is still booming even after Elizabeth Holmes. H/t Anthony K for this Financial Times piece about how Theranos isn’t spooking health tech investors.
We’ve written before about pregnancy tracking apps and startups that freeze eggs. And, ICYMI: men are now freezing sperm more and more. Also, there is new hope for the future of male birth control but it’s a gel smh. Work harder!
MEAL PLANNING
Woke newly-vegetarian brand Burger King has apparently pivoted to emotional honesty, slapping McDonald’s Happy Meals in the face by rebranding some of its meals into the Blue Meal, a Yaaas Meal, a Pissed Meal, a Salty Meal, and a DGAF Meal. The full range of human feeling. On Twitter, one former employee was like, yes incidentally working at Burger King made me feel *pissed meal.* (h/t Kaitlyn Tiffany!!) What’s honestly most interesting is that Burger King is partnering with Mental Health America which -- REMEMBER? -- also gave the Instagram egg depression. MHA is obsessed with brand synergy!!
(Speaking of meat, beyond burger IPO’d, and its stock rose to $3.83 bil in the first day!!)
Honestly please don’t click this lol you will gag but it is about all the fungus that lives in airpods. Good news is it’s probably not dangerous! There is also hope for those who somehow manage to swallow their airpods, bc this person did and the pods just cycled on through the digestive system, and came out at 4 percent battery. Put em right back in ur ears!
PARENT COMPANY TRAP
Picture this: two twins meet at summer camp, one British, one Californian, both eager to escape the metaphorical prisons of their own/their parents’ making. They trade places. They then go and find themselves and realize that what they wanted was right in front of them all along.
The twins, here, are Marriott and Airbnb (imperfect metaphor: Marriott was started in DC; neither was started in Britain). After years of “disrupting” hotels, Airbnb is sliding further into hotel-esque room rentals, starting at Rockefeller Center.
And Marriott is renting out rooms in upscale homes, basically mimicking the Airbnb experience. (Underrated player in this: who remembers VRBO.)
Also, this New Yorker piece about how Airbnbs invaded Barcelona paints an unflattering picture. Ty Sam W for the tip.
SLACK HACK
Slack was supposed to make us more productive! But this Vox investigation reveals that employees waste many hours sending memes and emojis. Doesn’t sounds like anyone we know… (No one tell the bosses of our shared slack workplace). Ty Karl O for link.
Our new galaxy brain approach will be exclusively to message on the WeWork app, which we assume (based on no real info) is prob monitored by the We Company powers-that-be and spat back into the We surveillance ecosystem to guide its social engineering plans. (if you’re listening, We God, we want Fry Day to start at noon not 2pm!! Hungry)
Or perhaps we could just start covertly meeting in a WePark, aka the parking spots with desks being rented out to workers in SF to make a point about how space for cars could be repurposed as space for people!
At least our words won’t be snatched by foreign intelligence, which is apparently a threat that Slack counts as credible! Beluga.... We’re on to you.
TRIPPY
Update from last week: the curvy wife guy Tripp is making a “body-positive” “music” video called the “curvy girl anthem” which will apparently drop this summer if his spring casting call went according to plan. He frames all valid criticisms (such as “if it’s a curvy girl anthem why would u be involved?”) as “haters.” We are happy for u and ur wife who is “carrying ur seed” but take a step back, Tripp! Not your place.
TASTY BITES
On the heels of the LA uber/lyft strike, drivers are getting off the app again in 6 cities on may 8 (Curbed)
Ring is hiring a news managing editor (Nieman Lab)
ICYMI last week we talked about a philly drama involving Ring (Meatspace)
And for more on Ring, read Caroline Haskins’ piece from Feb on its social network arm, Neighbors, lets ppl spy/report on their neighbors (Motherboard)
How does the instant playback of videos affect kids’ memories? (NYT)
Woodstock’s 50th anniversary festival was cancelled! We smell Fyre (Billboard)
SPEAKING OF FYRE, billy mcfarland is self-publishing a book omg (NYMag)
San Francisco could become the first city to ban facial recognition tech! And Oakland could soon follow (Engadget)
Baby phone :) (Wired)
Nellie Bowles on Jack Dorsey’s Goopishness (NYT)
Bernie has an organizing app called BERN which people are turned off by bc of data collection but counterpoint, election organizing is always about getting lots of voter data! ty Rachel G for the link (The Intercept)
We are interviewing Amanda Mull about this article -- on how Amazon helped turn daily life into a subscription -- and more on monday! Watch this space!
Blessings,
Sarah and Lora