10 things in tech you need to know today

AP Photo/Steven Senne

William Shatner said he experienced a "screaming nightmare" in VR.

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Tuesday.

1. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reportedly overruled staff on whether to ban conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from the service. Dorsey has personally made decisions about whether some high-profile Twitter accounts were booted or not from the social network, according to the Wall Street Journal.

2. Peer-to-peer lending company Funding Circle announced plans to go public on Monday. It said it was looking to raise around £300 million ($385 million) by issuing shares with its IPO.

3. A British senior minister demanded in a speech that tech companies do more to curb child online sexual abuse. Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he wouldn't be afraid to "take action" if tech companies didn't up their game.

4. The US and UK governments are looking to force chat companies to give them obligatory "back doors" into encrypted messages. A warning was issued by an intelligence alliance comprising the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, that they want providers to create "lawful access solutions" to encrypted texts.

5. A group of top British broadcasting executives signed a letter calling for an independent watchdog for digital content. The letter was signed by the heads of the BBC, Sky, ITV, Channel 4, BT, and Talk Talk.

6. Moneysupermarket billionaire Simon Nixon invested in Deliveroo. Filings showed that Nixon, one of the UK's richest men, has backed fast-growing food delivery startup Deliveroo.

7. China's biggest online movie ticketing service announced it's going public. Maoyan Weiying, which is backed by Tencent, filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

8. Skype is removing wildly unpopular Snapchat-like features from its app. The update was introduced in 2017, and faced heavy criticism as the "worst ever update."

9. Facebook has been blocked in Libya. Reuters reports that Libyan citizens in multiple cities including Tripoli have been blocked from Facebook since noon on Monday as fighting between rival groups continues.

10. William Shatner talked about his experience using virtual reality and how terrifying it is. The former "Star Trek" star spoke to the Guardian about how real using VR felt, and that in one simulation he was attacked by a "screaming nightmare."

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