i'm katie porter and i approve this message. he suffers a mass outage. was it human error or hacking? and why does this leave us so vulnerable? and what we can do about it? a new lawsuit filed here in the bay area claims that dating apps are hurting people with their intentional, addictive platforms that have, according to the suit, altered social reality. how so? and san

francisco police watchdog votes to ban a certain type of traffic stops ahead of a march ballot measure that would have likely tie the watchdog groups hands. we'll take a closer look. you're watching, getting answers. i'm kristen sze. thanks for joining us. we'll have those interviews coming your way. but first we just want to start with these new pictures just in from president biden's visit to the bay area yesterday and today. this afternoon, he met with the widow and daughter of the late russian dissident alexei navalny in san francisco today. navalny, of course, died last week in a russian penal colony and was the leader of the opposition movement against vladimir putin, his wife yulia. earlier this week vowed to continue his fight . she flew to the united states to be with their daughter, who is the other person you see pictured here? she's a current student at stanford. so again, the mother and daughter meeting with president biden today and we'll have much more on this story on abc seven news at four. now to our top segment. the fbi

and homeland security are in investigating after today's attack. cellular service suffered widespread outages. at&t has just announced it has fully restored all service, but its impact was disruptive, including to emergency services joining us live now to talk about what might have caused it, how to prevent it. cnet technology reporter abrar al abrar, nice to see you. >> nice to see you. thank you for having me. >> so glad you can explain this. can you summarize what went down? yeah just around 1 a.m. pacific time. >> a lot of people lost access who had at&t. they weren't able to make calls. they weren't able to text. you basically weren't able to do anything on your on your network. and we don't have an exact number, but there's a website called downdetector. this tracks outages and that's self reported. so about 74,000 people self reported that there were some issues that they were having. we know that that number is going to be a lot higher because most people don't self report when something is down.

but this was restored right around noon pacific time. but just imagine not having any type of service for about 12 hours. and just how strange that must be. >> i know, super strange, right? in fact, it could be dangerous. the san francisco department of emergency management actually put out this post on x saying we are aware of an issue impacting at&t wireless, blah blah blah monitoring. they put out that the nine over 11 911 center, pardon me, is still operational with a very important information about, you know, well, if you can't get through via at&t and can't get to 911 when you need it, then maybe try calling from a landline. so clearly abrar, this has a safety, you know, public safety implications. so let's just talk about how this might have happened. i mean is this whoops somebody did something or is this something more nefarious. >> yeah. people are kind of you know, at&t hasn't specifically said what has happened. we haven't gotten an outright answer yet. we'll see if we get one anytime soon. but what some people are suspecting is it's perhaps just human error. that's

what some experts are speculating. thankfully it doesn't seem like there's any malicious intent behind this. it doesn't seem like there's any cybersecurity threat here. so that's good news. um, because it's something so major. i mean, having a nationwide wide outage that lasts for that long. just very rare. so people were, you know, not surprisingly, very concerned. and there were some speculations. >> yeah. well, the fact that the fbi and homeland security are looking into it suggest that they haven't ruled out cybersecurity or hacking as a possibility. right. and this is something tech experts do talk about, right? how to safeguard our cellular networks, communication networks. >> absolutely. and yeah, you're right. i mean, the fcc is digging into this too. this is something that's very sererious, again, because it impacts things like emergency services. there's something called firstnet, which is part of at&t as well, that allows, you know, first responders to still use the network. that wasn't down, which is good. but if you are someone who needed to call 911, you probably ran into issues. so this is something that's very serious. and so the federal government is working into the digging into what happened here, seeing how they can avoid it,

working with other tech partners to see what can be done. now and then in the future to avoid something like this. yeah. >> and again, not to suggest this is hacking. we do not know, but has there been a successful hacking of this type on this kind of a network anywhere in the world before that? we know of recently, you know, not really. >> networks go down pretty frequently, but it's usually not this big. it's not usually this prolonged either. and so this was just kind of a shock cause, you know, in recent memory we can't really think of a time when something was was you know, lasted for this long and it affected this many people. so that's why it's kind of it's making headlines. it's a big deal. >> and no other cellular providers were affected today. right? >> that's right. so there were some verizon and t-mobile customers who also went to down detector and said that they were facing issues. but both companies have said they did not have any outages. what likely happened is if someone has at&t or if someone has verizon and t-mobile, they were trying to contact somebody on at&t and that's why they ran into issues. >> got it. you know, is this an argument for people to keep their landline phones? i know so many people are ditching them

because, you know, why do you want to pay the $30 extra a month or whatever it is? but what do you think? >> that's a very real conversation that's happening even in our newsroom. we were discussing this. you know, we've kind of overlooked landlines. we've phased them out, but they're very reliable still. and it's getting harder to kind of keep it and find a reason to keep it, especially as the infrastructure is updated. you know, there's less of a draw for people to keep those things. but in cases like this, that is a surefire way to kind of make sure that you can contact people . so i think we'll see a lot more people talking about how convenient landlines can be in situations like this. >> right. all right. now let's talk about solutions. right. what can at&t or perhaps other providers do to try to prevent this, or at least reduce the chances for this going forward? >> yeah, this is definitely something that, you know, falls on the networks in terms of making sure that sometimes human error happens, but, you know, making sure that whatever happened here doesn't happen again, closing closing all those loopholes. but in the meantime, something that at&t suggested, which is also just a good idea,

is to enable wi-fi calling on your device. and so what this does is as long as you're connected to a wi-fi network, even if you know your carrier is down, you will be able to still call emergency services or your, you know, your loved ones. so what you do is you just go into your settings on android or iphone and you'll see an option there. if you're on an iphone, you tap cellular. and if you're on an android, tap connection and then you can just enable wi-fi calling to just to make sure that you're safe there. >> that's good advice. i think san francisco emergency officials have mentioned that as an option, too, along with landline. but are there new regulations in the works being proposed that might also, though, help prevent this and strengthen these networks? >> you know, i'm not as familiar with that, but i i'm sure that this is something that will trigger more federal agencies to kind of make sure i think that's really the big lesson that's coming out of this is how do we make sure this doesn't happen again? again it doesn't happen that frequently, but even once is a bit too much. right. and so there is going to be a push, i'm sure, where federal agencies make sure that there isn't a repeat of this incident. all

right. >> cnet reporter abrar al-hadi. thank you so much for joining us today. appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. >> next, our dating apps like hinge and tinder using secret features to get you hooked on swiping and actually preventing you from finding your forever love. a new lawsuit filed in federal court in san francisco claims that's exactly what's happening. the attorney behind the suit will conservative republican steve garvey is the wrong choice for the senate. ...our republican opponent here on this stage

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general for getting kids addicted with devastating consequences, lowering their self-esteem, isolating them from their friends and family, and even in some cases leading to suicide. this week, a similar

argument is being made in a class action lawsuit filed in federal court in san francisco about adults and dating apps. joining us live now to talk about it, the attorney for the plaintiffs, ryan clarkson, managing partner of the clarkson law firm. ryan, thank you for making the time for us today. thanks very much for having me. all right. so you filed a suit. the defendant is the match group, which i understand owns about a dozen dating apps, including the popular hinge and tinder. what are you alleging about them and their products? >> yeah, what we're alleging is that these apps are are designed specifically to addict users. um, there is a tagline that one of the apps uses that the app is designed to be deleted, implying that it's designed to help people find love. but what they're really designed to do is to trap users into in a cycle, an endless cycle of ever increasing subscription fees and, um, and turning them into

addicts. >> how did the suit come about? >> well, you know, our law firm is a public interest law firm. we filed some groundbreaking lawsuits over the past year against big i, against google, openai, um, microsoft, just to name a few, in connection with the way in which their algorithms, um, uh, you know, are created and, and so we've been speaking with people all across this country about the way in which, um, the kind of tech bro mantra of moving fast and breaking things is, um, is doing just that. and so what's happening is you've got black boxes of algorithms that are exporting all kinds of horrible consequences to a generation of children and teenagers and young adults. and this is another manifestation of that locking people looking to find love and achieve their relationship goals into this, you know, this state

of loneliness and depression and guilt thinking that something, something is wrong with them for not being able to find love on these addictive apps. >> i know you can't go in depth. we don't have the time about each of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, but you describe some experiences, maybe share one person's experience with us. >> yeah, well, you know, our the problem we're seeing is that people all across this country using these apps have forked over hundreds and thousands of dollars in some cases for their shot at love and they start to wonder why it is that they haven't been able to achieve success on these apps, thinking that they're the problem. but the and so they feel lonely. they feel guilty. they feel less than right. and they know of stories of others who have been able to find love on these apps. but it's not because there's anything wrong with with our clients or, or subscribers or

users across the country, um, trying to achieve relationship goals. it's because these apps are deliberately designed, and to get them to pay more money. >> all right, let's drill down on that claim a little bit. you specifically say swiping is a problem, making it addictive and game like. explain that. i mean, and has it changed? i mean, wasn't it always like that or did they up the ante, so to speak? >> sure. they have upped the ante. um, and, and a lot of these design features are hidden in surreptitiously in a black box of algorithms. but what we do know is that there's psychological manipulation being used with many of the design features. so endless swipe and scroll, um, the use of psychological rewards to, you know, try to convince users to pay more money for another pull of the slot machine, you know, for another dopamine hit. and that's that's what's happening. >> i mean, you don't have any data or you're not alleging, are

you, that they are, for example, serving up people who won't match with you. so therefore you you don't find your forever love. so therefore you stay on the apps to continue using subscribing. there's nothing like that discovered right? >> well, you know what i we don't know the full extent of what what tricks they're using to lock people into these perpetual cycles. um, but what i can say is, you know, match group five years ago got slapped by the ftc for creating fake user profiles. um, so it's certainly part of their track record. we'll have to get into discovery to see what the full scope of these design features is. i see. >> all right. well, match's response to your lawsuit and i'll just read part of it. this lawsuit is ridiculous and has no merit. our business model is not based on advertising or engagement metrics. we actively strive to get people on daetz every day and off our apps. so you're saying that is their stated mission, but the actual usage of the app says otherwise?

>> well, that's just a fundamental. that response shows that they fundamentally misunderstand our lawsuit. um, we're not challenging their advertising model. we recognize that 98% of their revenue is generated from subscribers option fees and so if you could lock in a user into a perpetual state of payment of subscription fees, um, instead of helping them get off app and find love, then you're adding to the bottom line. and that's exactly what they're doing. so that response is a red herring. >> so then let me ask you, isn't that what all businesses do? they try to keep their users so they can, you know, improve their bottom line. how would you advise a business act differently? >> well, they should give consumers choice. they should put a warning on the label. they shouldn't use psychology manipulation to encourage compulsive use. people all have a right to agency over how they spend their time and their money

. and so, you know, you can make the argument that not every smoker is going to develop cancer. but does that mean that there shouldn't be a cancer warning on the box? well, of course there should. and this is the exact same situation. it's just in in in involving technology. >> well, with that, you know, cigaret cancer warning for example, they're not going to do it willingly. it takes government regulation. it takes a court order. it takes being forced to do it. is that what you're hoping for here? is that what you're asking? >> absolutely. we're looking to change the way that that this company's business runs. um, and . and to, to re, uh, allow our users and clients to regain agency over how they spend their money and their time and, and to, you know, reimburse them for some of the hundreds and thousands of dollars that they've spent on these, these apps. they didn't realize they were manipulating them. >> and part of your lawsuit is to compel the turning over of

sort of the black box, if you will, right. the algorithm or some of the, you know, whatever the manipulation that you think they're doing. >> yeah. we in discovery, we expect to take a look inside of that black box. we're not asking for them to, you know, share with the world trade secrets or, you know, anything like that. but they should, um, be transparent about their design features so that people understand and exactly what, what it is that they're purchasing. >> all right. well, i'm not asking you to step into the role of a product manager or a software engineer, but if you think swiping and there are things like that, that, uh, addict people, then what do you think? how would you change it, like for example, are there 1 or 2 features you can point to and say, hey, if they only did it this way. >> sure. and you know, there are some startups out there that are are trying to do it the right way. and so there's a competition aspect to this too. when you've got a big corporation that's stifling

competition and taking market share away from, you know, smaller players who want to do things the right way, that just doubles the problem. but, you know, you could put limits on on swiping, on use, um, and, and, and just be more transparent generally. and there should also be a warning during the signup process that informs people of the risks of, of addictive use so that you know, they, they don't have their guard down when they're engaging with these apps. >> all right. ryan clarkson, managing partner of the clarkson law firm, talking about the dating app lawsuit. thank you so much. >> thank you very much. >> public safety policing tactics and racial profiling collide in san francisco. the police commission votes on a controversial policy. with the clock ticking, we'll be right

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voted in favor of a policy that will ban officers from making what are known as pretextual traffic stops a pretext stop is when an officer pulls someone over for something minor, but behind it is the possibility that the person may be responsible for a more serious crime. critics say this practice targets minorities, and that's why the san francisco police watchdog voted narrowly last night to curb these traffic stops. but a new article by our media partner, the san francisco standard, investigates whether there's more to that vote. joining us live now is san francisco standard senior reporter michael barba, who wrote that story. hi, michael. >> hey. how you doing? >> i'm good, i'm good. i know you're busy covering this last night. what did the police commission effectively say and do last night with this vote? >> yeah. so this was really one of the last opportunities that the police commission would have had to push through this policy before a measure will be voted on next month. that will really

dilute its abilities to pass policies quickly. so this is a contentious policy. it's about limiting the traffic stops that officers can make as a means for reducing racial disparities. and like you said, it squeaked through with a four three vote. okay so what are the pros and cons usually put forth as they consider this in terms of pretextual stops. so if you talk to the police union, they'll they'll tell you that, you know, pretext stops. they're useful tool for getting guns and drugs off the street. um, on the other side of the argument, people worry that they're used to, you know, target black and latino drivers in particular. so basically, if an officer has a hunch that a driver may have committed a crime, may have a gun on them, they can pull them over for something like having a broken tail light. um, so what this policy will do is it won't outright ban low level stops, but it will restrict officers

from making low level stops, um, that they would normally be able to make uh, under california law. >> and is that really a dramatic change or difference from what has already sort of been, you know, the practice? >> um, that's a good question. we'll see how this is implemented. it's going to be implemented in in 90 days. i know there's already been a precipitous drop in traffic stops by sfpd. yeah. what proponents argue, though, is that the list of stops that officers will be restricted from making are limited from making. these are stops that don't normally result in guns getting taken off the street, don't normally result in arrests. um, obviously. i mean, the, the proponent or um, you know, folks who think that stops are a good thing. uh, they'll say that it's still useful if you get drugs off the street. maybe you make a big bust anecdotally or something like that. but but the commission really tried to target these stops that they don't think are really useful

and are really a waste of time and money at a moment when our police department is really short staffed, a ton of officers . >> so what's the police officer's association stance on this? >> well, so, you know, this policy was first voted on by the police commission more than a year ago. uh, it ended up receiving a unanimous vote. uh, and then it went into negotiations with the police union, and they negotiated for a really long time before the union declared an impasse, saying that, you know, they couldn't negotiate with the city anymore, that they wanted an arbitrator to get involved and saying that the policy was unlawful and that it would be unlawful for the police commission to basically take the vote, that it took last night. so it's looking a whole lot like the police union could be filing a lawsuit to seek to block this policy from, from going into effect in the next 90 days, like it's supposed to. >> and there's one other wrinkle, right? because this is happening as proposition e is on the ballot in san francisco,

which addresses public safety and the use of technology. explain the importance of this vote, given it's two weeks until election. >> yeah. so that's what i was getting at at the beginning was that, you know, the elections were rolling around. there's proposition e on it and proposition e will do a lot of things, but one of the things it's going to do is require the police commission to go through this very cumbersome process. public input process before it takes any changes, makes any changes of police policy. and so, you know, if prop e had gone into effect, there's an argument to be made that it this policy would have had to go through that cumbersome public meeting process before, or it could have gone into effect. and as i said earlier, it already went through a public meeting process. um, you know, it already went through labor negotiations. so it wasn't explicitly discussed yesterday. the commission can't talk about ballot measures at city hall, but i think that was sort of the elephant in the room was, you know, this this, this

measure is going to be voted on. it might be passed as, as the mayor wants it to. >> right? i mean, everybody knows there's a clock and the clock was ticking. okay. so you mentioned that this would take effect in 90 days. currently could the police department ask for the date to be pushed back for, you know, whatever reason, additional training this and that? >> yeah. they can. so negotiations are over at this point. it sounds like um, the commission's basically giving the department 90 days just to train its officers on how they should actually follow this policy. and if the department decides, hey, you know, we need a little bit more time to really roll this thing out. then you know, the commission has said that they could have that. so i think a maximum of 120 days though. >> all right. michael barba with the san francisco standard, thanks so much. thank you. you can read michael's story and check out more of the standard's other original reporting on their website, sf standard dot com and abc7 news will continue to bring you their city focused journalism twice a week right here on getting answers

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tonight, breaking news. tens of thousands of cell phones in the u.s. stopped working. the fbi on this tonight. and what we know so far. also breaking as we come on tonight, the first u.s. attempt to land on the moon in 50 years. reports coming in now of unexpected issues. will they pull this off? and the sad news on well-known tv host wendy williams tonight. first, this evening, the fbi, homeland security investigating why tens of thousands of at&t customers lost cell phone service for hours. other carriers tonight explaining why their users were