10.20.2019
Good to Know: Many of y’all are saying good morning to everyone except your managers. 64% of workers said they’d trust a robot more than their manager.
THE SKINNY
When You’ve Gotta Watch What You Say … China’s not into getting its feelings hurt. Who is?
What’s Going On? Earlier this month, the National Basketball Association (NBA) learned that the hard way. Its Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey posted and deleted his tweet supporting Hong Kong protestors. Even Lebron James piped up and said its ‘his belief’ that Morey was ‘misinformed’ before tweeting. After all that, it was too late for Morey and the NBA to say sorry. Chinese tech company Tencent told the NBA and the Houston Rockets to say bye to the company’s digital streaming of Rocket games. The NBA apologized anyway.
When It’s a Normal Situation … It’s not just the NBA apologizing for saying something China doesn’t like. It happens time and time again – just ask video game company Blizzard Entertainment, Justin Beiber, and Katy Perry. Quartz investigates and says the Chinese market is just too big for foreign companies, organizations, celebrities, etc to risk ruffling China’s feathers. Bottom line? China’s censorship is impacting folks across the globe. Check out the full video.
When You Need to Jump into Drama … During a Georgetown University speech, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped into the convo to partially defend his company’s political ads policy that we talked about last week. He says he’s not tryna be like China, and none of us should want that either. Political ads are free expression and shouldn’t be censored. Hmmmm, ok Mark – tell us anything.
When You Want to Learn More … Listen to NPR’s Marketplace with Daphne Keller to learn why free speech on the internet … is complicated.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
When You Took It a Little Too Far … In his 40 minute speech, Zuck went on to make his free expression argument and mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr to make his point. Bernice King, MLK Jr.’s daughter, took to Twitter to tell Zuck to keep her father’s name out of his mouth. She let him know that her father was the target of disinformation campaigns. She says she’s available to educate Facebook about this.
Speaking of campaigns … Democratic presidential hopeful for 2020 Elizabeth Warren is continuing with her push to break up Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and companies ‘that earn $25bn or more in global annual revenue.’ She raised it during the last debate and said they’ve got too much power. Andrew Yang disagreed. Yang says he’ll pass on breaking them up but would rather see them more heavily regulated. The Dem candidates then really got into hot topics in tech like data privacy, banning 45 from Twitter, political fundraising etc.
When Income is Anything But Basic … Andrew Yang’s been running on what he calls his ‘Freedom Dividend’ – ‘a universal basic income of $1,000/month, $12,000 a year, for every American adult over the age of 18.’ Universal Basic Income experiments have been going on for some time now. It’s happening right now in Stockton, California. Since February of this year, the city has been running 125 Stockton residents an unconditional $500 check per month. It’s called the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED). The 18-month program is halfway over. And, the verdict? Well, people are still working – 45% to be exact are either working full or part-time. People are spending their extra cash money on food (40%), sales and merchandise (25%), and utilities (~12%) according to the recently released data from the program so far.
THE STREETS ARE TALKING …
Get you an app that can do both. Video app Tik Tok isn’t just for funsies. It’s also teach English in India via EduTok.
While we’re talking about India, Flipkart wants to be an original – in terms of its content.
Lebanese citizens said the government tried it. Lebanon attempted to put a tax on voice calls made via Whatsapp. It was the last straw for citizens already royally p*ssed over the government’s handling of the country’s economic crisis. Things got pretty bad so the government said just kidding about that tax.
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING …
Royals. On Sunday night, British channel iTV aired its documentary with Harry and Meghan where it covered their recent Africa tour. iTV’s Tom Bradby asked Meghan about her well-being. She got emotional and said, “Not many people have asked if I’m ok.” We didn’t cry, but you did. #WeLoveYouMeghan trended. The documentary airs in the U.S. this Wednesday at 10 PM ET on ABC. We’ll be watching …
CAREER THINGS …
Netflix’s looking for product designs and engineers. Hit up product designer Travis McCleery’s DMs for more info or tweet at him (@cleerdesign)
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