10 things in tech you need to know today

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

1. WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees, a source familiar with the matter told Business Insider. The cuts come as new CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham try to focus on WeWork's core business after a tumultuous lead-up to a shelved initial public offering.
2. ICE is reportedly using fake Facebook accounts to track undocumented immigrants and lure them into sting operations. The practice seemingly violates Facebook's terms of service, but it's unclear whether the social media company is aware of ICE's fake profiles or is taking action against them.
3. Europe's top court ruled that EU courts can order Facebook to take down illegal content worldwide. The case was brought by an Austrian politician after she demanded the removal of a defamatory Facebook post about herself.
4. Palmer Luckey's military tech company Anduril is sending drone destroyers to conflict zones. The firm says its new "Interceptor" drone weighs about as much as a bowling ball and is capable of smashing other drones out of the sky.
5. Palantir's tech was used by ICE in the controversial arrests of 680 people at a Mississippi chicken farm according to immigrants rights group Mijente. Mijente has been pounding the drums over Palantir's use by ICE, even as Palantir has insisted that its tech is used by a different group within ICE that is not responsible for deportations or family separations at the border.
6. Attorney General William Barr will ask Facebook to delay its plans for a fully encrypted, auto-deleting messaging platform. In March 2019 Zuckerberg announced that Facebook was developing a new messaging platform that would feature end-to-end encryption and auto-delete messages after a certain amount of time.
7. Instagram launched an app for instant messaging with people on your Close Friends list in an attempt to best Snapchat. The app, called Threads, acts as a dedicated standalone platform for communicating quicker and easier with the people users talk to most.
8. Dockless scooter startup Bird raised $275 million in a Series D funding round pegging its valuation at $2.5 billion, TechCrunch reports. Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital was a returning investor for the series D round.
9. Google CEO Sundar Pichai tried to appeal to conservatives by writing an op-ed in Fox Business News. This comes after 50 state attorney general announced last month they were launching a probe into Google.
10. It was revealed Thursday that Google cofounder Sergey Brin has secretly been married to tech startup founder Nicole Shanahan since 2018. Brin, 46, and Shanahan, 34, have been dating since 2015, and have one child together who was born last year.
    
    

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