10 things in tech you need to know today
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1. Facebook's oversight board condemned the platform for withholding information. The board said Facebook withheld critical information about the way it shields high-profile users from its content-moderation rules, the Wall Street Journal first reported. More on Facebook's "unacceptable" omission of information.
2. We wrote a guide to securely sharing whistleblower information. With news of whistleblowers dominating headlines lately, we put together a list of secure ways to share information about corporations, governments, and other powerful institutions. Read our guide here.
3. YouTube became a $1 trillion company by not being Facebook. CEO Susan Wojcicki has steered the company away from scrutiny and staved off pitfalls to keep the giant largely clean from the scandals other Big Tech orgs face. But this balancing act may be coming to an end soon.
4. Google's AI researchers say internal lawyers are slowing their output. Following a string of high-profile exits from the division, the number of research papers being published has dropped in 2021. More on the "chilling effect" here.
5. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is reportedly being funded by the founder of eBay. According to Politico, Pierre Omidyar, a Big Tech critic and eBay's billionaire founder, donated $150,000 to the nonprofit backing Haugen. From PR to legal aid, here's how her fight against Facebook is reportedly funded.
6. Elon Musk got the green light to connect the Las Vegas Strip with tunnels of Teslas. The Boring Company just got approval for the Vegas Loop, a 29-mile network of tunnels underneath the Strip. Everything you need to know about the upcoming Vegas Loop.
7. It's not just Facebook - China's big tech firms are also piling into the metaverse. Facebook pushed the metaverse into the limelight, but Chinese tech giants like Tencent, ByteDance, and Alibaba are also pushing into the space. See the plans each firm has.
8. Former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann hosted a 9 a.m. party to celebrate the company going public. Neumann invited 100 of the company's first employees to a New York City hotel as WeWork started trading on the stock market on Thursday, the Financial Times reported. More on WeWork's trading debut.
9. The Elizabeth Holmes trial: The prosecution produced a smoking gun. A former Theranos project manager and close friend of Holmes' brother laid out how Holmes misled her investors and business partners in five crucial areas - from staging elaborate demos for VIPs to overstating its relationship with the military.
10. A slate of Cisco acquisitions have left company salespeople with harder jobs and confused clientele, according to insiders. Since January 2020, Cisco has acquired at least 14 companies - but staffers say its compensation structure pits teams against each other internally. To them, the company continues to grow more unwieldy.
Compiled by Jordan Erb. Tips/comments? Email jerb@insider.com or tweet @JordanParkerErb.
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