10 things in tech you need to know today
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday. Sign up here to get this email in your inbox every morning.
Have an Amazon Alexa device? Listen to this update by searching "Business Insider" in your flash briefing settings.
- Facebook suspended Trump. The president won't be able to post until the end of his term on January 20, and the suspension could last for longer, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said.
- Plans to storm the Capitol circulated online for weeks. Far-right extremists publicly voiced their plans both on niche right-wing forums as well as on mainstream social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
- A lawmaker streamed himself breaking into the Capitol. Derrick Evans, a newly-elected Republican lawmaker from West Virginia, filmed himself storming the US Capitol Wednesday, posting the live video on Facebook and later deleting it.
- Exclusive: Tech investors want their peers to shun Jared Kushner. Horrified by pro-Trump rioters who stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday in an effort to stop Congress from ratifying the election results, VCs are calling on other investors to stop doing business deals with Trump's son-in-law.
- Shopify removed Trump's stores. "Shopify does not tolerate actions that incite violence," a Shopify spokesperson said in a statement to Insider.
- Elon Musk was briefly richer than Jeff Bezos. The Tesla chief has added more than $150 billion to his fortune in the past year, after shares in his electric-vehicle company rocketed up 740% in 2020.
- Exclusive: Oracle quietly replaced its EMEA execs. Two top former EMEA leaders have left the company, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, and the region's executive vice president may change positions internally or leave altogether.
- $2.1 billion year-old events startup Hopin made another acquisition. It has acquired live streaming platform StreamYard in a $250 million cash and stock deal.
- Tencent backed a self-driving software startup. Since being spun out of the University of Oxford in 2014, Oxbotica has grown from a small-time robotics firm to become one of the world's leading autonomous driving software companies.
- Exclusive: Etsy sellers panicked after the platform was slow to respond to sales tax changes. As a marketplace, Etsy is authorized to process and remit the VAT on behalf of its sellers, but was slow to make this change after the tax change kicked in January 1.