10 things in tech you need to know today
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday.
1. US president Donald Trump attacked Google several times on Tuesday, claiming its search results were rigged against conservative news outlets. Trump claimed Google was "really taking advantage of a lot of people" and warned Silicon Valley firms needed to be "careful."
2. Conservative Facebook employees are reportedly organizing to attack the liberal company's 'intolerant' culture. More than 100 politically conservative Facebook employees have formed a new internal group to complain that the famously liberal company is "intolerant" of opposing political thought, according to a report from The New York Times on Tuesday.
3. Some Google employees allegedly threw a party in 2015 with 'controlled substances' after a successful self-driving car demo. The so-called "Cocaine Cowboys" were reportedly fired.
4. YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul probably generated up to $11 million with their boxing match last week. Meda reports suggested that around 20,000 fans attended the match, while 773,000 paid to watch a livestream on YouTube.
5. Riot Games, one of the world's biggest game studios, has been hit with multiple allegations of fostering a hostile, sexist work environment. A former manager, Barry Hawkins, detailed numerous incidents in a devastating blog post this week.
6. Instagram says users can now evaluate the authenticity of accounts. The company is introducing a new feature to let users find out more information about the ads that various accounts on the service pay for.
7. The CEO of the company that makes 'Fortnite' spent days attacking Google for scoring 'cheap PR points' by exposing a flaw in the game's security. Tim Sweeney said the firm revealing the flaw so quickly just gave hackers the chance to exploit the bug.
8. YouTube has expanded its 'digital wellbeing' tools to include a new metric telling users how much time they spend watching videos. The new feature will track how much time the user has spent watching videos over the previous 7 days.
9. Amazon is preparing to roll out a new, free video streaming service for Fire TV users. The ad-supported service, tentatively called Free Dive, would be available free to users of the Amazon Fire TV device.
10. Oath - the Verizon business that includes Yahoo and AOL - reportedly scans user emails for ad targeting. The practice isn't new, but Oath has recently been pitching advertisers a service that scans more than 200 million inboxes for buying habits.
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