10 things in tech you need to know today

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

1. Former Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox will return after a year-long absence to his previous role at the company, which includes overseeing the main Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Cox, one of Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenants, left in March 2019 over "artistic differences" with the CEO over his plans to make Facebook more privacy-focused.
2. Microsoft President Brad Smith says the company does not sell facial recognition to US police departments and committed not to unless a nationwide law is passed to regulate the technology. Smith's comments follow similar announcements from IBM and Amazon.
3. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel addressed concerns of racism at the company during a company all-hands on Tuesday but said he would not release diversity numbers, sources told Business Insider. Snap's decision not to release diversity reports is a break from major tech companies, which have generally released their diversity numbers to the public.
4. Joe Biden's campaign has demanded that Facebook fact-check political ads and crack down on misinformation. Facebook is refusing, arguing that it's up to elected officials to decide the rules on political advertising and campaigning.
5. Sony will launch the PlayStation 5 during the 2020 holiday season with a standard model and a digital edition with no disc drive. Upgrades include a solid-state hard drive and a graphics card capable of ray-tracing technology.
6. The secretive data analytics firm Palantir is preparing to file an S-1 ahead of a potential September IPO, Business Insider has learned. The IPO prep, first reported by Bloomberg, has been long anticipated at the 17-year-old company whose earliest backers include Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the US intelligence and defense communities.
7. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan responded to criticism over Facebook's moderation policies following a letter written by dozens of scientists who receive funding through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Chan and Zuckerberg said that while they are "deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric," Facebook operates independently from CZI and follows its own policies on moderating the platform.
8. Tim Bray, the senior Amazon engineer who resigned in protest in May over the company firing internal critics, on Thursday said the company should be broken up. Bray was speaking during a union meeting on Zoom attended by Amazon warehouse workers, engineers, and organizers.
9. Online events platform Hopin is in talks to raise around $40 million in fresh funding led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), according to two market sources with knowledge of the deal. Hopin is only a year old and has yet to publish its first financials, but appears to have attracted frenzied interest from backers as the coronavirus puts paid to conferences and live events.
10. A customer is suing Apple for $1 trillion over claims that the company stole his iPhone after he brought it in for a repair. Raevon Terrell Parker claims that Apple kept the phone because it had "new features" that were used to aid in the development of iOS 12.

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