Trending Stories from vox.com
Apple's VP of communications Steve Dowling is leaving the company after five years in the role; Dowling joined the company 16 years ago
Facial recognition tech is a problem; Bernie Sanders became the first presidential candidate to call for a total ban on the use of facial recognition software for policing
Sources: federal investigators, including the FBI, are probing the conduct and practices of Mithril Capital, the VC firm co-founded by Peter Thiel
Why Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Epstein’s money
Gig workers’ win in California is a victory for workers everywhere – Millions of people have been working without basic labor protections.
The anti-liberal moment – Vox
Dozens of Google employees say they were retaliated against for reporting harassment
Etsy’s free shipping push asks sellers to compete with Amazon – Vox
Pinboard · 2 weeks ago
You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”
It looks like Uber is getting into the small loan business for its drivers. Uber told drivers this week that it’s building a new financial product and asked them about loans. Critics are concerned it could be a payday loan system that’s predatory.
Google's FTC settlement, essentially a rounding error, shows the US political system and its outdated laws aren't ready to rein in powerful tech companies
Uber and Lyft just lost another battle in California – Silicon Valley can’t seem to escape California’s crackdown on the gig economy.
Every telecom company can be hacked and “everybody should be suspect,” Huawei USA’s chief security officer says
Bernie Sanders takes on Facebook and Google for destroying local media
Google says it’s making Chrome more private, but advertisers will still track you
A snapshot of Amazon's financial history and why free cash flow, which Bezos called Amazon's "ultimate financial measure", is always higher than its profits
Techmeme · 4 weeks ago
DoorDash is still pocketing workers’ tips, almost a month after it promised to stop – It’s been almost a month since the delivery company promised workers it would offer details about its new tipping policy “in the coming days.”
Study: leading AI models to detect hate speech are 1.5x more likely to flag tweets by African Americans as offensive or hateful, partly due to social context
After the El Paso and Gilroy shootings, tech leaders are saying platforms must stop amplifying hate speech – In a new letter, a collective of tech CEOs, activists, and researchers are calling on their industry peers to take action.
Buying Ring surveillance cameras saves Amazon money on stolen packages: Its social app Neighbors makes Ring more effective on criminals — and customers.
Reddit · 1 month ago
Economist Raj Chetty has found a surprising tool to fight housing segregation
How facial recognition became the most feared technology in the US – Two lawmakers are drafting a new bipartisan bill that could seriously limit the use of the technology across the US.
Why Amazon pays warehouse employees to tweet about their jobs: It’s part of the e-commerce giant’s ongoing public relations campaign to quash unions and rewrite the narrative around its workforce.
Reddit · 1 month ago
America has a terrible digital divide. Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that too. Warren introduced a plan that would allocate $85 billion in federal funds toward developing broadband networks.
8chan struggles to stay up after Cloudflare quit servicing it; 8chan appears to have switched domain registrars to Epik, now hobbled by one of its own vendors
Video games don’t cause violent crime Research indicates that, if anything, it’s the opposite.
Political tension at Google is only getting worse – Another former engineer has alleged that the company fired him over his political beliefs.
“The $300 textbook is dead,” says the CEO of textbook maker Pearson – On the latest Recode Decode, John Fallon explains why the education company is pivoting to digital textbooks.
Cambridge Analytica made “ethical mistakes” because it was too focused on regulation, former COO says: “It felt like, well, once that was done, then we’ve done what we needed to do, and we forgot to pause and think about, ethically, what was going on.”
Google employees have donated more to Elizabeth Warren than any other presidential candidate; some staffers think antitrust action wouldn't hurt Google's value
Ohio just passed the worst energy bill of the 21st century – A corrupt bailout for dinosaur power plants that screws renewable energy in the process.
Will Reddit un-quarantine its biggest pro-Trump community? CEO Steve Huffman isn’t holding his breath | /r/The_Donald was punished for hosting “violent content,” and Huffman isn’t convinced the community’s moderators are taking that problem seriously enough.
Amazon warehouse workers in Chicago say the company cheated them of overtime hours
Reddit · 2 months ago
Microsoft wants to build artificial general intelligence: an AI better than humans at everything
“We’re not ready” for foreign election interference in 2020, says Rep. Adam Schiff – Schiff, the Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, has warned Facebook, Twitter, and Google to be on notice for deepfakes and other dirty tricks.
The Amazon dilemma: how a tech powerhouse that fulfills our every consumer need still lets us down – Despite increasing criticism, Amazon refuses to acknowledge many of the unintended consequences that its rise to dominance has spawned.
Reddit · 2 months ago
Elizabeth Warren’s simple case for breaking up big tech
Password sharing could be a good thing for Netflix and Hulu. People only steal content if they think it’s good. That’s bad news for Amazon Prime Video.
Reddit · 2 months ago
Pete Buttigieg says Americans should have the right to hide personal details from the internet
Microsoft might crush Slack like Facebook crushed Snapchat – Vox
Sources: Postmates has had talks with DoorDash, Walmart, Uber, and others about being acquired, is still considering following through with its much-delayed IPO
Apple effectively has a monopoly on fixing your iPhone. There’s now a fight to change that.
Sources: Walmart is projecting losses of $1B+ for its US e-commerce division this year; e-commerce CEO Marc Lore is exhausted by internal politics
Techmeme · 3 months ago
How a lawsuit could reveal secrets about Silicon Valley’s favorite philanthropic loophole – Today’s “working robber barons” have used a tax break to create a $110 billion charity stockpile, called donor-advised funds. It isn’t getting any smaller.
Guns and the left: I’m an anarchist. It’s time to reclaim guns from the right. – Vox
Uber/Lyft drivers say they were misled into petitioning against workers rights
A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US
Friendly policies keep US oil and coal afloat far more than we thought
How the firearms industry relies on female influencers to skirt the restrictions imposed by social media platforms on advertising guns and related services
Techmeme · 3 months ago