Social media addiction has become a familiar phrase. Silicon Valley insiders and psychologists have fuelled media reports saying that tech companies sprinkle "behavioural cocaine" over their interfaces. They say platforms like Facebook use psychological tricks to get us hooked on our digital devices.

But scientists at the Oxford Internet Institute disagree.

Professor Andrew Przybylski is an experimental psychologist and Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute, and he thinks Silicon Valley "turncoats" don't understand the psychology they claim to manipulate.

The inventor of infinite scrolling talks about the 'Soup Bowl problem' - but that research is problematic

One such example comes from Aza Raskin, a Silicon Valley engineer who designed the infinite scroll function which allows you to keep scrolling endlessly down your feed, now used on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Raskin told the BBC's Panorama programme that he'd been inspired by the soup bowl experiment. This is a psychological experiment based on the thesis that if you give someone a bowl of soup that secretly replenishes itself, they will eat more soup than from a regular bowl.

"There's a famous experiment with soup bowls," Raskin told Panorama. "If a bowl, silently by itself just keeps refilling itself, where you don't see it. Do people eat more? It turns out yes people eat a lot more. Because you don't have the cue of 'I've finished.'"

He claimed that by mimicking the soup bowl experiment in his design, "it became so powerful that it just addicts people."

The Soup Bowl experiment has been heavily criticised.Sergiy Artsaba/Shutterstock

But according to Andrew Przybylski, this experiment has been heavily criticised within the scientific community. "We now know that that research has been very sloppily done. The researcher himself is under multiple investigations at the university of Cornell for self-plagiarism, for data manipulation, he doesn't keep very good records," he told Business Insider.

"If you actually knew anything about the research area, you certainly wouldn't tell BBC that you think that this research is the model that you use to create addictive technology."

People talk about the dopamine high from Facebook likes but it's not really addictive

Dopamine is a chemical released in the brain, often when we experience reward or pleasure. The "dopamine feedback loop" is sometimes held up as evidence that social media can affect our brains in the same way drugs do. The idea is that we become chemically dependent upon bursts of dopamine triggered by people 'liking' our posts on Facebook, or retweeting us on Twitter.

But while it's true that interacting with social media can give your brain a dopamine shot, that does not mean you're getting high. Your brain releases dopamine on an everyday basis.

While social media and cocaine both release dopamine, cocaine releases about 10 to 15 times more of the chemical. Shutterstock/vchal

"Dopamine research itself shows that things like video games and technologies, they're in the same realm as food and sex and learning and all of these everyday behaviours. Whereas things like cocaine, really you're talking about 10, 15 times higher levels of free-flowing dopamine in the brain," said Przybylski.

Amy Orben, a psychological researcher at the University of Oxford, is equally sceptical of the comparison between social media use and hard drugs. "Screens aren't a chemical that gets ingested and a certain dose causes X and another certain dose causes Y," she told Business Insider. "There's no real scientific reason to equate technologies and hard drugs."

Recently addiction expert and Clinical Director at Charter Harley Street Mandy Saligari told the same BBC Panorama documentary that giving a child a smartphone is "tantamount to giving them a gram of cocaine."

While Orben thinks that it's difficult to know how much technology parents should allow their children, the cocaine analogy exasperates her.

"If we have people who are seen as experts telling parents that giving their child a smartphone, which is a daily object of use, is like giving them a gram of cocaine it's causing unnecessary concern in people who are already concerned," she said.

The new tech antipathy might just be another type of marketing

To Andrew Przybylski's mind, the hype surrounding social media addiction is the flipside of the methods tech companies employ to sell their products.

"It doesn't mean that [tech companies] haven't been successful making money or convincing people that what they do has science behind it. But when they talk about colour [choices], or when they talk about soup bowl research, or they start talking about dopamine, you know they don't know what they're talking about," said Przybylski.

He believes this marketing of bad science is what turns Silicon Valley insiders into self-styled whistleblowers. "The same hype that hopefully sells stock in Facebook or whatever, that shows 'we can change people's minds' and 'we can change their opinions and purchasing decisions' or whatever, that same hype happens on the other side when people try to be scaremongers."

"It doesn't have any more or less science in it, it's just that the message has flipped. But the evidence hasn't," he said.

Amy Orben also believes that the media has played a role in whipping up a fear of addictive technology by using comparisons to drugs. "I think in that way they have become very useful metaphors in a kind of attention-led economy."

Social media might indeed be bad for people — but there isn't enough research yet

Professor Przybylski views the language of social media addiction as a new kind of moral panic. "It'll be like the other moral panics we've had. We used to be panicked about Dungeons and Dragons, and rap music, and violent video games. And now this is the thing we're panicking over."

He believes that getting swept up in panic and bad science could give big tech companies leeway to get away with serious ethical shortfalls. "Taking this hype for granted distracts us from very serious questions about who owns our data, very serious questions about privacy, and user consent. And it distracts us from doing good research," he said.

"If we're so busy being the boy who cried wolf, we're not actually going to get any better [at] detecting wolves."

Neither Professor Przybylski nor Amy Orben rule out the possibility that social media can negatively affect human behaviour, but both emphasise the need for further research.

"The main takeaway here is that we don't actually know these things," said Przybylski. "It is important for these large companies to share their data with researchers, and share their data with the public. This research needs to be done transparently, it can't just be a bunch of Cambridge Analyticas and one-on-one relationships between social media companies and researchers. It needs to be out in the open, but the problem is when this stuff gets hyped up, it distracts us from that."

Amazon's competitors better watch out.

By next year, the tech giant is already poised to account for about half of all US e-commerce sales, according to Daniel Ives of GBH Insights. But its acquisition last year of Whole Foods and the steps it's taking to cross-promote the high-end grocery chain with members of its Prime service, will likely only further boost its retail business, Ives believes.

In the short term, the investments Amazon's making in Whole Foods and other parts of its business may depress its profits, but in the not-too-distant future, they're likely to create a "flywheel effect" that speeds up sales in various parts of its operations, Ives said.

"With a major overlap between Whole Foods shoppers and Prime members there is 'golden opportunity' in our opinion to use both these distribution channels to catalyze higher grocery ... and retail sales among members, while driving non-Prime members that are Whole Foods shoppers into Prime members in the near-term," Ives said in a research note issued Monday. "This is part of the broader consumer flywheel strategy ... that will enable Amazon to become further entrenched in the daily lifestyle and spend cycle of consumers worldwide."

The strategy already seems to be paying off. When Amazon reports its second-quarter results later this month, Ives expects the company's North American retail business to post stronger sales than Wall Street has been forecasting. The company will likely respond to those results by offering better-than-expected earnings guidance for its third quarter, he said.

With that kind of bullish outlook, Ives raised his price target on Amazon's shares to $2,000 from the $1,850 target he had previously. Should the company hit that target, its market capitalization would be within spitting distance of $1 trillion, a level Ives had previously predicted Amazon would be the first public company to hit.

"While a trillion-dollar market cap will not happen overnight, we believe the path is now set for this to occur over the next 12 to 18 months," he said. He continued: 'Amazon remains a "green light' name to own at these levels in our opinion."

Long the iconic online retail company, Amazon made its first major foray into brick-and-mortar sales when it purchased Whole Foods. The company has been widely expected to use Whole Foods to promote its online retail business and vice versa.

Whole Foods stores are now touting extra savings for Amazon Prime members. Business Insider In recent months, Amazon has been taken the steps to do just that. It's set up lockers in some Whole Foods stores where Amazon customers can pick up packages they've ordered and drop off returns. Prime members in some areas can order groceries from Whole Foods and have them delivered within two hours. And now Whole Foods is offering extra discounts on certain items for Prime members.

Those steps are likely just the first of many more to come, Ives said. The increasing ties between Whole Foods and Amazon's online store are likely to not only boost sales at both, but also to make it harder for rivals to compete, he said. The moves are likely to encourage Whole Foods members to get a Prime membership if they don't have one already and Prime members to shop at Whole Foods.

"Prime growth remains the key jewel for Amazon going forward," Ives said. He continued: "Putting up more walls [or] barriers around its growing Prime competitive moat is a major ingredient in Amazon's ability to fend off competition."

In recent trading Amazon's shares were up $19.06, or about 1%, to $1729.69.

Enrique Marcarian/Reuters

Investors have been enamored with Netflix this year. But if there's an argument to be made against the streaming giant, Barclays may have it. 

"While we remain supportive of the story, we believe it is important to keep some perspective and how variables are shifting," Barclays analyst Ross Sandler wrote in a recent note out to clients. 

Netflix's ballooning valuation, which has it at a price-to-earnings ratio of 249.15, is in large part based on one hope investors have for the streaming-giant: international expansion. Netflix has conquered the US market for entertainment streaming, and has already gained an impressive foothold internationally.That strength has been a driving force for Netflix shares, which are up more than 116% this year.

Netflix's first-quarter earnings report in April showed it gained 5.46 million new international subscribers, beating the Wall Street estimate of 4.98 million subs. And Goldman Sachs analyst Heath Terry believes the streaming giant will add 34 million international subscribers in all of 2019.  

Sandler raised his price target to $450 a share, roughly 8% above where Netflix is currently trading, because of his confidence in Netflix's ability to accrue subscribers.

"If one were to value Netflix on a per subscription basis, valuation would not only have a stronger anchor but also be comparable to other media businesses," he said. It's the methodology that has Sandler believing "the stock looks cheap." 

However, amid his bullishness, Sandler warns there are four core risks that investors need to keep an eye on: 

Netflix reports its second-quarter results on July 16. Wall Street analysts surveyed by Bloomberg are looking for earnings of $0.79 a share on revenue of $3.938 billion. 

Markets Insider

 

Meet the Microsoft Surface Go, a teeny-tiny new 1.15-pound laptop/tablet hybrid with a 10-inch screen that can fit in a handbag, fanny pack, or maybe even a particularly deep pocket.

Surface Go pricing starts at $400, but don't be fooled: Just as with the bigger, more powerful Surface Pro, you're going to want Microsoft's specially-made $99 keyboard cover to get the most out of the Surface Go. In other words, you're looking at $500, all-in, for the Surface Go setup you really want. You'll be able to buy it August 2nd.

I got to play with one, briefly, a few weeks ago, and my first impression is that Microsoft has done a good job shrinking its Surface Pro form factor into something more portable, but still incredibly usable and comfortable to type on.

Under the hood, Microsoft says Surface Go owners can expect about as much computing power as 2014's Surface Pro 3. This means it'll be more than good enough for browsing the web, watching Netflix, and putting together a PowerPoint presentation. Maybe don't expect to play "Fortnite" with the graphics settings cranked way up, though.

It runs an Intel Pentium processor. The base model has 4GB of RAM and 128GB of hard drive space, while a more expensive model, starting at $549, will have 8GB of RAM and 256GB of hard drive space.

A closer look at the Microsoft Surface Go shows that it has a headphone jack, a Surface Connect charger port, and a single USB-C port. Microsoft

Microsoft further claims that the Surface Go gets 9 hours of battery life, which comes with the caveat that this was tested by playing a video file that was stored on the device. It also includes facial login by way of Microsoft's Windows Hello system, similar to Apple's FaceID, as well as a MicroSD card slot to expand its storage.

In terms of ports, the Surface Go is more limited than its larger brethren. It includes Microsoft's proprietary Surface Connect port, which is mostly used for charging but can also be used to plug it in to a docking station. Otherwise, you get a single port for USB-C — a new universal standard that replaces the USB slot you might be familiar with.

The USB-C port can be used for plugging in monitors and other accessories, as well as for charging the Surface Go itself in a pinch. However, the vast majority of devices, including most smartphones, still rely on regular old USB to work, meaning that Surface Go owners might need to get in the habit of carrying around some adapters. It does have a headphone jack, though.

The Surface Go will ship with Windows 10's "S Mode" enabled, which means you can only install apps from the Microsoft Store — a tradeoff for better battery life and generally smoother performance. If you want, though, it's easy to disable "S Mode" and go back to regular old Windows, which is good if you want Google Chrome as your browser.

Finally, Microsoft says that a model with LTE cellular connectivity is in the works, but won't be ready until later this year.

Go against Apple

In the bigger picture, Microsoft is using the Surface Go and its price point to take aim at two Apple devices at once.

First, as a tablet, the Surface Go will square off against Apple's productivity-focused iPad Pro, which starts at $649 for a 10.5-inch model. And second, as a fully-functional Windows 10 laptop, The Surface Go will try to eke some share away from Apple's whole line of MacBook laptops, which starts at $999 for the cheapest MacBook Air.

In both cases, Microsoft is employing the same sales pitch as the rest of the Surface lineup.

The Microsoft Surface Go can be used as a lightweight tablet, too. It's compatible with any Windows stylus, but doesn't include one. Microsoft

Because the Surface Go runs a full version of Windows 10, you can run most every piece of Windows software, past or present. That's especially clutch in both schools and corporations, both of which often rely on specialized software. And because the Surface Go is a tablet, it's both more portable than any Mac, plus it has a touchscreen.

Make no mistake, Microsoft's Surface business in total is still a fraction of Apple's enormous hardware revenues. And while the Surface has its diehard fans, myself included, it's still a relatively niche product for Windows power users.

Still, at $399, the Surface Go costs far less than the $699 starting price for the larger Surface Pro. That could open up some doors for Microsoft's hardware business, especially among budget-conscious consumers.

History lesson

On a final note, some Microsoft fans are sure to be disappointed by the reveal of the Surface Go.

It's been rumored for a long time now that Microsoft was working on a tinier Surface: Microsoft released the 10.8-inch Surface 3 back in 2015, but there hasn't been anything even sort of like it since. In that sense, the announcement of the slightly smaller Surface Go is just picking up where the Surface 3 left off.

However, in recent weeks, it's been rumored that Microsoft was closer than ever to revealing Andromeda, a brand-new pocketable Windows device with two screens. While ZDnet recently reported that the Andromeda project was on thin ice and unlikely to ever come to market, Microsoft enthusiasts were optimistic that it was close to debut.

Well, it's certainly possible that Andromeda is still in the works. But while the Surface Go is indeed pocketable, it only has one screen, meaning that this ain't it.

Elon Musk has posted on photos and video from inside the cave in Thailand where four boys and their soccer coach remain trapped, but SpaceX won't confirm or deny his whereabouts.

Musk posted photos on his Twitter account at around 5:00 a.m. local time Tuesday, reportedly from inside and outside of the cave.

"Just returned from Cave 3," read the caption, likely referring to Chamber Three, a crucial part of the cave system about 0.3 miles (0.5 kilometers) from the entrance. "Mini-sub is ready if needed. It is made of rocket parts & named Wild Boar after kids' soccer team."

In another post around 5:30 a.m., this time on Instagram, several people are seen wading through the waters of the cave with headlights guided by rope.

"Just got back from Cave 3," the caption reads.

Musk has been posting on social media about wanting to help rescue efforts in Thailand, but there has been no confirmation that he actually traveled to the Southeast Asian country himself.

Business Insider reached out to SpaceX to confirm whether Musk was actually in Thailand.

"We're not allowed to comment on his whereabouts," a SpaceX official said.

Musk floated a plan on Twitter on Friday that could help rescue the boys and said engineers from his companies would travel to Thailand on Saturday. He suggested that a tube or series of tubes could be sent through the cave network and inflated to create a tunnel for the soccer team to travel through, without needing scuba gear.

He has also suggested using a "kid-sized submarine," posting videos of the device on Sunday.

But Musk tweeted Sunday morning that his team of SpaceX engineers didn't actually go to Thailand because rescue operations were already underway.

Experts have previously weighed in on the Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company CEO's proposed plans, and said Musks' team may not be of much use due to huge numbers of experts already working on the rescue.

"It doesn't matter how much equipment you throw at it or how many dollars you throw at it, you may be reaching the limits of the technology in this particular situation," Anmar Mirza, National Cave Rescue Commission National Coordinator, told Slate on Saturday.

Rescue efforts over the last few days have managed to bring eight out of the 12 boys to safety, with divers going in and out of the caves to rescue them in groups of four. The rescued boys are currently in the hospital receiving treatment.

The remaining four boys and their 25-year-old coach remain in the cave, with highly-anticipated rescue efforts likely to resume on Tuesday morning.

California may soon have strongest net neutrality protections in the country.

A bill making its way through the state legislature would guarantee California residents net neutrality, which prevents Internet Service Providers from blocking or slowing down traffic to particular applications or websites.

The Golden State is one of several US states working to create such safeguards after federal rules protecting net neutrality were repealed in December.

If the bill passes, California would be one of three states — along with Washington and Oregon — that have passed individual net neutrality laws. California's bill would also be the toughest of the three.

In fact, California's rules would go further than even the original FCC guidelines.

Here is everything you need to know.

How is the California bill different?

California's net neutrality bill would, if passed, prohibit ISPs from blocking or slowing down particular websites. It would also ban ISPs from charging websites fees to reach customers. But what makes the bill go further than the original FCC regulations and other state laws is the prohibition of so-called zero-rating.

Zero-rating is the practice of letting customers access certain websites or applications without it counting against their monthly data cap. That sounds like a good thing. But consumer groups say that when zero-rating plans are used to promote services owned by the broadband providers, or by companies that pay the providers to market them, they are akin to fast lanes — they give preferential treatment to favored websites, and make smaller, independent sites less desirable.

While the California bill doesn't ban all zero-rating altogether, it does ban anything that is anti-competitive or favors one website or application over another. For example, plans that would exempt Netflix and not Hulu from data caps wouldn't be allowed. But exempting all traffic between the hours of 12 a.m. and 5 a.m. would be.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Alex Wong/Getty Images

Zero-rating programs weren't specifically barred under the now-defunct net neutrality protections, they were reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Late in the Obama administration, the FCC opened up an inquiry to see if they violated the general conduct provisions. But FCC Chairman Ajit Pai ended that inquiry after he took over as head of the agency.

What do ISPs think about California's bill?

In a statement to Business Insider, CTIA, a trade association representing the telecommunications industry, called the California bill "flawed"

"By banning cost-saving programs that consumers have come to rely on, it will jeopardize the benefits of technology in the state and lead to increased costs for Californians," the statement reads.

Is this is a long term solution?

No. Most people on either side of the debate agree that since ISPs operate across states, a federal law is the best way to govern them. Plus, when the FCC rolled back the 2015 net neutrality rules, it included a provision that preempted states from creating their laws, making it likely the law will be challenged in court.

One possibility is for Congress to create legislation that codifies net neutrality into law, essentially superseding the FCC's power to rollback the guidelines. But that seems unlikely in the near term given that Republicans, who generally have opposed net neutrality rules, currently control both house of Congress.

So what happens next?

The California state senate and state assembly reached a compromised on their respective net neutrality bills on Friday. But the resulting bill still needs to be approved by the full legislature and signed by the governor.

Like the "Avengers: Infinity War" villain himself, the Thanos subreddit r/ThanosDidNothingWrong sought perfect balance among its more than 700,000 members, up from the 200,000 subscribers it had last week.

The online community began banning half of its members at 5:00 PM PDT sharp on Monday, in a purge that was actually planned weeks in advance — a purge that was, indeed, instigated by its own members, who cheered the culling as honoring their hero, Thanos.

The joke among members was that if r/ThanosDidNothingWrong truly embraced what Thanos was all about, it would seek balance by banning half of their own number. To that end, group moderator The-Jedi-Apprentice said that Reddit's own administrators approved a ban on a random selection of half of the community's subscribers.

Members of the group spent the next several weeks eagerly anticipating the so-called "Snappening," so named because of the finger-snap with which Thanos ends half of all life in the universe at the movie's conclusion.

The actual "snap" itself was livestreamed on Amazon's Twitch, with Reddit engineers broadcasting to over 50,000 viewers as they activated a custom tool that banned hundreds of thousands of r/ThanosDidNothingWrong members, one by one.

Screenshot/Twitch

People aren't mad about it. In fact, most members of r/ThanosDidNothingWrong wanted to make Thanos proud by getting banned in the name of balance: "༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ GIVE BAN ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ" has been a common refrain on Reddit, in the weeks leading up to the event.

If they were turned to figurative dust, users were directed to subscribe to the subreddit "r/inthesoulstone." That already had over 29,000 subscribers Monday afternoon prior to the "Thanos snap." It's a reference to a common fan theory that everyone who died at the end of "Infinity War" actually now resides in Thanos' Soul Gem.

The good news is, Thanos did seem proud — or at least, the actor who played him in "Infinity War" did. Joe Russo, co-director of the video, posted a video on Sunday of actor Josh Brolin saying "here we go, Reddit users" and snapping his fingers. The Russo brothers themselves tweeted, too, that they "have both submitted to the culling."

While the July 9th date for the "Snappening" was set two weeks ago, users didn't know exactly when it would occur. And The-Jedi-Apprentice warned users that it would take a lot of work from the Reddit side, as nobody had ever asked for a tool to ban so many people all at once, and at random.

Members of the group were very excited, but also very impatient — especially as the day went on without even a tiny snap.

"If the snap doesn't happen in 15min the I am legally allowed to report r/thanosdidnothingwrong for messing with my emotions for 24hrs," said one user earlier on the big day.

"Let's manually balance this sh-- by unsubscribing ourselves! This is taking forever!" said another.

Users even went straight to The-Jedi-Apprentice with their distress.

"You built up the hype for the last 9 days and now you have been teasing the ban ALL DAY and people are starting to lose interest and you say you didn't know it would be a huge deal?" said one user. Another said, "Petition for u/The-Jedi-Apprentice to lose half his karma if he bamboozled us on the ban."

Luckily, the ban finally happened, and all was right in the universe. But what did it cost? Everything.

YouTube continues to take steps to snuff out fake news and conspiracy theories on the Google-owned video site.

The company on Monday announced that it will change how it responds when major news events occur and begin steering users towards news stories and video reports from "authoritative sources."

This is part of Google's broad response to the rise of fake news across the globe in recent years. Misinformation campaigns that sought to exploit the openness of the internet and social networks, including YouTube, are suspected of attempting to sway elections in the United States and elsewhere.

'Quality news sources'

YouTube's new news format is due to be rolled out in coming weeks, according to post on the company's blog, signed by Neal Mohan, the company's chief product officer, and Robert Kyncl, chief business officer. The managers said that shortly after a news event occurs, YouTube will provide a brief preview of related articles in YouTube's search results that will link to the full article.

Google noted that they will focus first on text-based stories because print journalists typically are the first to post stories about news events.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks with reporters at the 2018 I/O conference. Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

"Authoritativeness is essential to viewers especially during fast-moving, breaking news events," Mohan and Kyncl wrote. "So, we've been investing in new product features to prominently surface authoritative sources."

Not long after that, YouTube will turn its attention at directing users towards video reports -- again from "quality news sources."

Part of a bigger plan

"When a breaking news event happens, we want users to know about it," YouTube's managers wrote. "That's why our Breaking News shelf highlights videos from news organizations about that event directly on the YouTube homepage."

Google said in March that it planned to tweak the company's mighty search algorithms to help filter out fake news. The company also promised to assist news organizations struggling in a time of shrinking profits to try and find new sources of revenue as well as lend them its technological expertise.

Google also promised at the time to spend $300 million on the effort.

Can the TV advertising industry work together to fight off the duopoly?

AT&T's new ad boss, Brian Lesser, thinks so, but TV insiders are torn.

As Business Insider reported a few weeks ago, AT&T has some bold plans for the TV ad industry. The telecom giant, following its recent acquisitions of Time Warner and AppNexus, wants to build a TV ad hub that is used by the entire industry.

That includes competing cable and satellite companies as well as TV networks that aren't part of the Turner family.

The vision is to make TV advertising more like a "platform," à la Google and Facebook, through which advertisers can buy ads across multiple networks using automated software.

Some experts think it's the perfect time for TV networks to put aside competition and work together, or risk getting buried by digital media. Others see no chance of TV's blood rivals joining hands anytime soon.

It's that tension — and whether it can be resolved — that will make or break the success of AT&T's ambitious initiative.

It's not clear what exactly AT&T is planning

The first option would be tricky but not impossible, insiders say. But option No. 2 is where things get dicey.

Why it will be hard to get the TV industry to work together

For one thing, it's hard to get any competitors in an industry to work together. And TV has some unique factors at play.

For one, TV has had a terrific business for a long time. It's still a $70 billion market, despite digital media's ascendancy. Most TV ads are sold up front through person-to-person negotiations, an old-school sales dynamic that has made everybody money for a long time, even if there's not a whole lot of transparency into what different advertisers pay for ad space.

Thus, when some TV ad-sales execs hear terms like "programmatic" and "open exchanges," they think "losing control" and "plummeting prices."

"An industry platform unifier? Good luck! Fat chance!" said Tim Hanlon, the founder and CEO at The Vertere Group, which consults media companies. Hanlon said other media giants like Comcast would never work with AT&T.

20th Century Fox

But not everyone feels that way. Marcien Jenckes, President, Advertising, Comcast Cable, did not dismiss the idea. Like others, he's unsure about the scope of AT&T's plans. Yet he sees an urgency for the TV ad business.

"The idea that the industry coalesces on standards and technology, that for certain is a necessity," he said. "Either it happens or TV gets decimated."

Why? Jenckes says the TV business as a whole has been way too slow in investing in data and technology because it didn't have to for so long.

And now, he contends that media giants will end up building their own proprietary digital ad systems and tools that don't work together.

Amanda Kigel, a senior vice president for partner innovation at the ad-buying firm Magna, would seem to concur. "The challenge in this space is that everything is so fragmented," she said at a recent Roku event.

In fact, Roku's recent aggressive push into TV advertising is yet another example of how complicated TV's advertising future is becoming.

'Something needs to happen'

"Even the biggest TV players only see a portion of the market," Jenckes said. "Something needs to happen in order to unify those TV players. So a marketer can buy across them in an easier way than they have in the past."

Could he see a universal TV ad exchange? "I think there is some promise for it," he said. "The idea has merit." One problem: AT&T owns Turner, which presumably would sell inventory on such an exchange. Would non-Turner networks be OK with that?

"The issue they have to overcome is this bias issue," he said. "Can a marketplace be operated in a way that is neutral?"

What TV executives are saying publicly

Some of the biggest TV ad executives have shared very different thoughts on the potential for a TV ad exchange.

NBCUniversal's sales chief, Linda Yaccarino, was asked about the concept of a universal TV ad platform a few months ago at the Collision tech conference in New Orleans.

"I think it's really smart," she said. "The only thing that has stopped TV to date is technology limitations ... It's not as simple as a tech platform that you just plug into like Facebook and Google."

Yaccarino said three to five years from now we may see "accelerated steps to that vision."

NBCU sales head Linda Yaccarino NBCU

Contrast that with recent comments from David Lawenda, an executive vice president of digital sales and sales strategy for CBS, at the VideoNuze Ad Summit.

"I don't see that happening," he said. "We're still in a relationship business. We sell sponsorships, we focus on having an advertisement be contextually relevant. You lose some of that ability when you start to automate."

TV has a lot to lose

Not only are TV ratings falling and Google and Facebook eating the vast majority of new ad dollars, but platforms not supported by ads are becoming the dominant vehicles of TV viewing for young people, spurring all sorts of proposed media mergers.

Advertisers are questioning TV's value like never before. So TV needs to change fast, argues Lorne Brown, the CEO of the TV ad-software firm Operative.

"It's the play they have to make, no question," he said. TV needs to be able to digitally deliver unique ads targeting viewers the way Google and Facebook do if it wants to hold on to ad revenue, he argued.

In fact, he said, "If you're a midsized network, you may just want to outsource all of your sales to this kind of platform."

He believes AT&T has a compelling pitch. "Who do you want partner with, me or Google?" he said. "Neither are great, but at least AT&T can say, we do business together."

Tomas Hirst

The history of TV consortiums isn't promising

Those with long memories in the ad business will point to Canoe Ventures as a cautionary tale. Back in 2008, the six largest US cable distributors, including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Charter Communications, joined forces to help accelerate the growth of targeted and interactive TV ads, using cable set-top boxes.

It was plagued by challenges, including lots of competing agendas. By 2012, Canoe's ambitions were seriously curtailed, as it laid off workers and shifted its focus toward providing video-on-demand ad technology.

The ad-industry veteran David Verklin, now a senior adviser at The Boston Consulting Group, was at one point Canoe's CEO. "The vision for this has been there for a long time," he said. "What was so hard for Canoe is that we were just so early."

Indeed, Canoe's formation mostly predates smartphones and OTT. And TV was under far less economic pressure than it is today. "We didn't have the inventory," he said. "The ad buyers were ready. The ad sellers were just terrified about losing control."

He sees the market conditions as being much more receptive this time around. "AT&T-Time Warner allows all this to happen," he said. "It has all the pieces." The question in his mind is whether companies like Disney and Comcast will want to get on board or go their own way.

The tech challenge is very real

That's a big question. As big media companies make larger tech investments, will they be more resistant to outsource any of their ad operations? For example, if and when Disney completes its acquisition of Fox, might it want to build its own advanced ads product via the company's billion-dollar Bamtech platform?

Or could the company even expand upon Hulu's ad system once it takes control of that platform?

Either way, such factors make it harder for AT&T to unify everyone.

Jacqueline Corbelli, co-Founder and CEO of the interactive TV ad firm BrightLine, put it this way: "Lesser is trying to create one connected marketplace. It's brilliant, correct and exciting for the marketplace, but there are so many very big things that have to happen very fast in order to succeed, and the headwinds are fierce."

New Line Cinema

"There will never be one ring to rule them all," said Chris Pizzurro, the head of sales and marketing at Canoe. "But there will be a few different rings that will play nice together."

Pizzurro's theory, shared by others, is that as TV advertising becomes more digital, there may end up being several large ad exchanges operated by some of the larger players like AT&T, Comcast, and Google.

OK, but maybe this time is different

Opinions vary, but privately some ad-sales leaders are more willing than in the past to push into a programmatic ad future, even one that involves some uncomfortable cooperation.

"It would not be a bad thing if the TV market, and the advertising ecosystem in general, was more efficient," one insider said.

George Blue is a veteran TV and digital ad seller who recently logged a long stint at Fox. He's bullish on the AT&T plan, given its timing in an uncertain market. "The key is to be the solution for ad buyers," he said. "If the ad buyers and client side say yes, well Viacom, CBS, and others may have to go along to get along."

Don't forget OpenAP!

Several industry executives point to the fact that rival media firms are already getting along when it comes to OpenAP. That initiative was kicked off in 2017 by Turner, Fox, and Viacom to make it easier for advertisers to define specific ad targets in a unified fashion across networks.

NBCU signed on to OpenAP earlier this year. Each partner has committed to spending millions on the project over the next five years.

While OpenAP has primarily been focused on making data and analytics simpler, phase two of the project is to build a transactional platform where people will be able to buy and sell ad space, people familiar with the matter say.

It's not clear whether OpenAP's planned ad platform meshes or conflicts with what Lesser's AT&T ad team is planning. AT&T hasn't said much about OpenAP, though according to sources there are no plans to alter the OpenAP rollout for the foreseeable future.

NBC

'I'm optimistic'

Regardless of whether OpenAP, AT&T or another solution emerges as the foundation on which TV's advertising future is built, the industry is clearly in line for a ton of change in the near future.

The fact that such TV titans are talking to one another speaks to how their position has changed in a world dominated by Google and Facebook.

"My hope," Comcast's Jenckes said, "is that the industry comes together fast enough to save itself."

Tech workers and community activists gathered in front of the Salesforce headquarters in San Francisco Monday morning to protest the tech giant's contract with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.

The protest comes on the heels of a letter signed in late June by 650 Salesforce employees who sought to persuade CEO Marc Benioff to end the company's contract with the CBP, which uses the company's Analytics and Community and Service Cloud programs.

Nothing came of the letter, prompting an uproar amongst tech workers and local activists who showed their solidarity with the 650 Salesforce employees by marching outside its headquarters Monday.

The issue at the heart of the protest is a part of a larger movement in the industry that has tech workers from various companies speaking out against how the technology they build is used. In June, Amazon employees wrote an open letter to CEO Jeff Bezos protesting the company's facial recognition contracts with law enforcement. Like the letter penned by Salesforce employees, it went unaddressed by its CEO.

"The workers here need to have a voice and need to have a seat at the table," said protest attendee and tech employee Stephanie Parker. "If we don't want to build it, we're not going to build it and we're going to have our voice heard one way or another about this."

Here's what the protest looked like:

Snapchat could be teaming up with Amazon in the near future.

TechCrunch was tipped off to a feature that appears to be in the works for the mobile camera app — which was found in the app's code after a recent Android update.

The feature appears to be able to scan and identify objects that the Snapchat camera is pointed at, and then link users to the Amazon pages for the product.

One line of code contains a prompt that would supposedly appear to users: "Press and hold to identify an object, song, barcode and more!"

Further in the code, there are options to "share product" and "send product," or "see all results at Amazon."

Snap and Amazon both refused to comment to TechCrunch, but the potential feature could be part of an effort to increase revenue for Snap after the company reported a $385 million loss last quarter. There isn't confirmation that there would be an affiliate bonus for Amazon purchases made through Snapchat's referrals, but companies like Wirecutter have been able to stay afloat by relying on referral revenue from linking to Amazon products in their reviews.

Snapchat has around 191 million users per day, Statista estimates, which could make this partnership lucrative if it comes to fruition.

One of the largest icebergs ever documented is still mostly intact one year after it broke off Antarctica, despite losing a big chunk and having its northern flank smashed to bits.

The huge ice block, called A68 or A68a, calved from the Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017. It's hard to say exactly when A68 was born due to limited satellite coverage and thick cloud cover, but it happened sometime last year between July 10 and 12.

Scientists at the time estimated iceberg A68 to be about the size of Maryland. It measured 1,000 feet thick and weighed 1.1 million tons — roughly the weight of 20 million Titanic ships.

Iceberg A68 appears mostly intact today; satellites are watching as it floats in the Weddell Sea about 40 miles off the ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.

However, an animation shared by the Antarctic research program Project Midas shows that the 'berg has taken a beating.

"The iceberg has been pushed around by ocean currents, tides, and winds, and its northern end has repeatedly been grounded in shallower water," the authors of a Project Midas blog post wrote on Monday. "These groundings led eventually to further pieces of the iceberg being shattered off in May 2018. Whilst not quite large enough to be given labels themselves, the total area of icebergs lost from A-68 in May was the size of a small city."

The time-lapse animation below shows part of the Antarctic Peninsula from March 12, 2017 through July 5, 2018. You can see a huge crack in the Larsen C ice shelf creep north until the iceberg completely breaks off, then follow the path it has taken since.

"Over the last year A-68 has not drifted far because of dense sea-ice cover in the Weddell Sea," Project Midas said.

Antarctic icebergs calve naturally as snow piles up, forming ultra-dense ice that gravity then drags toward the ocean.

From there, a predictable yet erratic story plays out.

Red lines illustrate the paths of previous Antarctic icebergs.NASA Scatterometer Climate Record Pathfinder; ESA

Most icebergs that calve from the Antarctic Peninsula get caught up in wind and water currents that drag them clockwise around the Southern Ocean as they move north.

Scientists can't be sure where iceberg A68 will ultimately float, though some think it could drift more than 1,000 miles north to the Falkland Islands. The largest 'bergs can even reach South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands before vanishing.

Martin O'Leary, a researcher at Swansea University and Project Midas, said on Reddit last year that A68 could take a couple of years to drift that far.

It could be many years before it completely melts.

In the case of B15, the second-biggest iceberg in recorded history, the process has taken nearly two decades. B15 snapped off Antarctica's Ross ice shelf in 2000. It had a surface area of 4,200 square miles — about the area of Jamaica and twice that of A68. Today it's drifting in warm waters near South Georgia.

St. Andrews Bay on South Georgia Island.Shutterstock

Warmer air causes surface melt that "works its way through the iceberg like a set of knives," Kelly Brunt, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a NASA Earth Observatory post in October 2017. "This is often the end of the life cycle of a lot of Antarctic icebergs."

Scientists continue to study and debate what caused A68 to break off, including the role of climate change driven by human activity.

"To me, it's an unequivocal signature of the impact of climate change on Larsen C," Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA JPL, told CNN in July 2017. "This is not a natural cycle. This is the response of the system to a warmer climate from the top and from the bottom. Nothing else can cause this."

Selling a company is usually cause for celebration, but for the founders of fantasy sports company FanDuel, the moment is likely to be bittersweet.

The nine-year-old company, which was once one of Britain's most closely watched startups, was said to be valued at over $1 billion just three years ago. Now, it's valued at less than half that amount by the company that's buying it, Dublin-based bookmaker Paddy Power Betfair.

According to documents first reported by Legal Sports Report that detail the specifics of the deal, FanDuel is now valued by its investors at around $465 million.

FanDuel's current valuation is about $50 million more than the total amount of funding it's received since 2009: A whopping $416 million from investors including private equity firms Shamrock Capital and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Now, those investors are cutting FanDuel's founders a raw deal: As majority shareholders, they're exercising their "drag along rights," which allow them sell the company, even if the minority shareholders don't want to.

In this case, the minority shareholders are FanDuel's original founders, Nigel and Lesley Eccles, Tom Griffiths, Rob Jones, and Chris Stafford. None of the original co-founders still work at FanDuel, and it doesn't look like their original efforts will be rewarded — according to the deal documents, they're not going to make any money at all off of the company's sale.

Because the amount FanDuel is being sold for is hardly more than the amount its investors originally gave, its co-founders are losing out. The deal stipulates that "no part" of the payable offer will go to the "company's ordinary shares," along with no options to purchase the company's ordinary shares. In this case, those shares belong to the startup's minority shareholders, which include its founders.

FanDuel's founders' loss is a classic case of the dangers of a sky-high valuation, in which the founders' original shares are so diluted that their original involvement reaps little compensation when it comes time to sell the company.

The biggest winners of FanDuel's sell? The company's current executives, who are set up to make at least a few million dollars a piece.