10 things in tech you need to know today
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Monday.
- WeWork board members are talking about ousting CEO Adam Neumann amid turmoil around its IPO. According to The Wall Street Journal, the board could meet this week to discuss Neumann becoming WeWork's non-executive chairman.
- Facebook says it suspended 'tens of thousands' of apps for misusing data as part of its investigation into the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The company launched a full-fledged investigation into its apps and developers in March 2018 after it admitted to mishandling the personal data of more than 87 million customers, which was improperly obtained by data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.
- People are complaining that Apple's big new iPhone update is filled with bugs. The company will be shipping a software update called iOS 13.1 on September 24 to address the bugs.
- A former employee at software startup Chef triggered outages for customers after removing some core, open-source code from his account. Seth Vargo said he was upset that Chef had a $95,500 contract with ICE, which he described as an "evil" organisation.
- The CEO of YouTube says that it will no longer take verified checkmarks away from top YouTubers. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki wrote on Twitter that the company had "missed the mark," and apologized for the "frustration & hurt" caused by the new verification qualifications.
- Amazon says it received more than 200,000 job applications for its 30,000 open positions. According to Amazon, more than 208,000 people have submitted online applications since the company announced its Career Day events, which were held last week in six major US cities.
- A deepfake pioneer says 'perfectly real' manipulated videos are just 6 months away. Deepfake artist Hao Li said in an interview with CNBC on Friday that "perfectly real" digitally manipulated videos are just six to 12 months away from being accessible to everyday people.
- China is stepping up government presence at Alibaba and other private giants. According to a Bloomberg report, this is China's latest effort to exert greater influence over the country's massive private sector.
- A grassroots campaign to take down Amazon is funded by its biggest rivals, according to The Wall Street Journal. Walmart, Oracle and mall owner Simon Property Group are secret funders behind a nonprofit called the Free and Fair Markets Initiative, which has been highly critical of the e-commerce giant.
- A former WeWork executive who made $300,000 and is now suing the company has described its strange cultlike culture. Former executive Richard Markel told Business Insider about the deep "spiritual" discussions and a mandatory all-employee boozy summer camp where employees slept in tents.
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