Fans are anticipating the return of Netflix's controversial series "13 Reasons Why" ahead of its third season this month. And Amazon's hit superhero series "The Boys" is climbing.

Every week, Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with a list of the nine most in-demand TV shows on streaming services. The data is based on " demand expressions," Parrot Analytics' globally standardized TV demand measurement unit. Audience demand reflects the desire, engagement, and viewership weighted by importance, so a stream or download is a higher expression of demand than a "like" or comment on social media, for instance.

Below are this week's nine most popular original shows on Netflix and other streaming services:

Founded in 1996, F5 Networks was named after the most powerful storm category in "Twister," the disaster film which came out the same year.

The movie's about people who loved to chase tornadoes, which was what the F5 founders were essentially doing then, riding the wave of the newly-unleashed World Wide Web by selling data center appliances to help businesses manage their Internet traffic. Nowadays, it's a publicly-traded company valued at some $8 billion.

F5 still helps businesses manage their networks today, though it's wrestling with a changing market: the appetite for hardware is fast diminishing, as enterprises increasingly outsource their IT infrastructure to the cloud — and those that remain on their own servers are often using software to get more efficient use from their existing gear.

That's the evolving market that Francois Locoh-Donou, who took over as F5 CEO two years ago, is navigating. An important part of his role is leading a global workforce of about 5,100 through the rapid market changes. It's a tough job, and Locoh-Donou likes to talk about the importance of listening to his people on the ground to make sure "their voices, their ideas get turned very quickly into action."

"If you create an environment where these voices are suppressed, you will fail," he told Business Insider.

That may sound like the kind of executive-speak one might overhear at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where Locoh-Donou got his MBA. With Locoh-Donou, however, it is rooted in something deeper, in another kind of storm that he went through personally.

Growing up under a dictatorship

His notions about leadership were formed in the west African nation of Togo, where Locoh-Donou spent his youth living under a dictatorship.

"In a dictatorship, there is rule by fear and rule by force," he said. "It doesn't matter who has the best idea. It matters who has the strongest stick or gun or authority. Everything in Togo was like that … I grew up with the absurdity of ruling by force, and by authority, with the stupid things that happen when the only thing that matters is I have a gun and you don't, and therefore you will do this."

Locoh-Donou lived in Togo in the 70s and early 80s when the country was ruled by Gnassingbe Eyadema. "He basically owned the country," Locoh-Donou said. He ran the country with an iron hand, backed by a powerful military that was loyal to him, and any form of opposition or dissent was repressed "very seriously," he said. A 1993 Amnesty International report pointed to human rights violations by Togo's security forces, "including extrajudicial execution, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention without charge or trial of suspected government opponents."

People lived in fear, distrusting even friends, Locoh-Donou said. "You knew there were certain things you could not say. Even between friends, there's always this worry, this lack of trust. You can come to my dinner table, but I wouldn't say anything to you because I'd be afraid who you might repeat it to," he said.

In public, the dictator was glorified, and people would sing songs about how great he was, he said.

"You feel like you're living in a fake world," Locoh-Donou said.

'A very strong aversion to leaders who rule by formal authority'

Memories of life under dictatorship still have a strong influence on Locoh-Donou. They come back, he says, when he encounters organizations where people "feel that they just have to flatter the leader" or in "an environment where it is not okay to challenge the leader."

"In tech companies, the best ideas have to win, not the best titles, not the hierarchy, so I have a very strong aversion to leaders who rule by formal authority," he said.

Having more open-minded, engaged leaders, who do not say, "do this because I said so" is also good for business, he said. "If you as a leader are not capable of explaining to your team that this is the strategic rationale for why you need to do this, because you don't have enough industry context or knowledge of our business, or knowledge of the customers, and you just say 'I want 'yes' people around me — then for me you are not a leader. You are a task master."

Such a leadership style also stifles creativity within a company, he said: "Great leaps happen in organizations when the voices of the people who know are empowered to create the next idea," he said.

François Locoh-Donou meeting with the at Cajou Espoir, a cashew nut processing factory he co-founded in Togo. in Togo. Family of François Locoh-Donou

Little tolerance for rule by force

Growing up under authoritarian rule "has affected me in a way that I have very little tolerance for when I see people rule that way," Locoh-Donou said. "I just have this allergy toward ruling by force because of what I have experienced."

This point is critical as F5 goes through a difficult transition from a hardware-centric company to one increasingly focused on software. F5 helps companies monitor their applications and other software, making sure they are secure and working properly.

But the company is trying to grow at a time when more businesses are embracing the cloud, setting up and running their networks on web-based platforms, and abandoning on-premise data centers which dramatically cuts their IT costs. For F5, this means the steady decline of its hardware business, and the growth of revenue from software.

"The challenge for us is how to manage and navigate that transition as our hardware continues to slow and our software accelerates," Locoh-Donou said. "You want to make sure the software accelerates faster than the hardware."

F5 hopes to do that with Nginx, the cloud based applications services company which had been F5's rival, and which the company bought in March for $670 million. Nginx is one of the startups that power the Internet, its web server software one of the most widely used in the world.

In a note to clients, Oppenheimer analyst George Iwanyc affirmed that there's "value behind the Nginx acquisition," but pointed to "trade-offs in faster than expected hardware sales declines," adding that the "transition could continue to add volatility to near-term results."

Locoh-Donou himself knows about difficult transitions. He was 14 when his parents divorced and his mother, who is French, announced that he and his two siblings were moving to France. He refused to leave Togo. "I was crying for many nights in a row," he said. "There were all these things that I knew I was going to lose."

These included his cousins and close friends, and the passion he embraced as a teenager: chickens. He owned 50 of them in their backyard and had big plans for them: "I thought I was going to take over the world with my chicken farm."

Leaving Togo

Eventually, he agreed to move to France on two conditions: that his mother would let him breed chickens in their new home, and that he would be allowed to play soccer professionally with the prestigious Paris St Germain. His mother agreed.

Locoh-Donou laughed as he recalled what happened next. He didn't get to resume his chicken breeding in their new home in a Paris suburb, although his mother bought him two mandarin birds. She also signed him up with a local soccer club, and told him: "You go play there and when you're good enough, the Paris St. Germain [soccer team] will find you.'"

"They never found me," Locoh-Donou said.

But he found a way to return to and stay connected with his homeland. In fact, Locoh-Donou returns regularly to Togo where he co-founded Cajou Espoir, a cashew nut processing factory. While he never made it as a professional soccer player, he's had a long, impressive career in tech at a time when big changes were taking place. Locoh-Donou worked 15 years for the networking giant Ciena, before he was tapped to lead F5.

His dream of a chicken farm with global reach has long been forgotten. But Locoh-Donou has high hopes for F5 even as the 23-year old company rides yet another storm.

"Every company that has a history of being in data centers with hardware is going through that transition," he said of F5's push toward a software-focused future. But "we have a very strong opportunity in front of us. The number of applications is exploding. So the companies that provide the tools to make apps work and secure are going to to be a lot more valuable in the future."

Got a tip about F5 Networks or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter@benpimentel. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Uber just reported yet another quarter of growth.

Despite some massive, one-time charges related to its IPO, Uber continued to grow its "gross bookings" segment, a closely watched measure that accounts for receipts from taxi rides and Uber Eats orders.

Wall Street remains bullish on the company, with an average price target of about $51 — about 27% higher than Friday's close — but there's plenty to worry about, too.

Here are the biggest concerns on analysts' minds following the company's less-than-stellar second-quarter earnings report:

To teens, the most popular figures on social media platforms like TikTok are well beyond mega-celebrity status in their eyes.

These TikTok stars claim millions of followers — many who are of Gen Z age themselves — and found fame by creating short video clips lip-syncing to soundbites, showing off viral dances, and crafting comedy skits that get shared thousands of times.

The hottest accounts on the two-year-old TikTok don't have nearly as many followers as the top channels on the more-established YouTube (where T-Series has blown past 100 million subscribers). However, TikTok has now been downloaded more than 1.2 billion times, and can be credited as the launchpad for many of the memes criss-crossing the internet, including Lil Nas X's chart-smashing hit "Old Town Road."

At one point, a pair of German twins named Lisa and Lena had the most popular account on TikTok, with 32.3 million followers, but they deleted their account at the end of this March to "break new ground." So far no other account has topped their lead, although creators are prolifically producing content and quickly gaining ground.

Note that this list consists of independent creators who got their starts as influencers on TikTok or its predecessor, Musical.ly. The rankings exclude accounts run by companies, and those from users who got famous first through other means — like former Vine stars Cameron Dallas and Zach King, and JoJo Siwa of "Dance Moms" fame.

Read more: Inside the rise of TikTok, the video-sharing app with 1 billion downloads that's owned by a massive Chinese internet company

These are the 26 biggest stars on TikTok, all of whom have amassed more than 10 million followers:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of taking money from an established venture capital fund vs. an established angel investor?

— Kate Clark (@KateClarkTweets) August 6, 2019

Apple has officially launched its much ballyhooed credit-card, in collaboration with Goldman Sachs. Within a few years the card could reap as much as $1 billion in annual profit for the tech giant, with little downside risk.

That's according to estimates that Wall Street research shop Alliance Bernstein put out in May, which analyzed the potential profit prospects of Apple Card and other new business lines against plateauing sales of the iPhone and slowed growth from existing services like iTunes, iCloud, and Apple Care.

Apple Card doesn't represent the largest revenue opportunity of services Apple has planned — that distinction goes to the advertising and TV programs, according to Bernstein — but the card could wind up being some of the easiest cash Apple ends up pocketing.

Here's how the math breaks down.

The revenue split

There are several ways the fee-free card will make money— primarily via swipe fees and interest payments from customers who carry a balance — and if Apple's co-brand partnership is in line with industry standards, the iPhone maker will take a percentage of the revenues.

Typically, this figure is in the 5% to 10% range, but as Bernstein pointed out, Apple is a premium brand and Goldman is a newcomer to the credit-card business, so the terms were likely sweeter for the tech company. Apple was also more intimately involved the technology behind the card, which integrates with the iPhone and Apple Wallet.

That notion is further reinforced by the fact that there were several bidders for the Apple Card partnership, and that Citigroup backed out after advanced negotiations over fears the card's consumer-friendly, anti-fee framework would make it a money loser, according to a report from CNBC.

"The split is likely more in favor of Apple given its relative negotiating leverage over Goldman Sachs," Bernstein wrote in the research report.

But how much revenue can the card generate? Bernstein notes that the two largest rewards cards today, the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Amex Platinum, each likely earn in excess of $4 billion in annual revenue.

The analysts thought it is plausible for the Apple Card to match this over time, though they're aware that doing so for a brand-new card "is obviously a high hurdle."

Millions of iPhone users and unmatched brand cachet give Apple an edge

What the Apple Card has going for it, Bernstein noted, is seamless integration via the iPhone and thus a massive cache of easy-to-reach customers, as well as "brand cachet" among those customers that "is obviously unmatched."

Bernstein has estimated there will be roughly 935 million installed iPhones in circulation worldwide by the end of 2019.

Much of that user base is outside the US — only 42% of Apple's revenues came from the Americas region in 2018, according to financial filings — and the credit card will only be available in the US to start with. But the US alone still represents vast and wealthy group of customers.

Moreover, the instant cash-back feature along with a competitive 2% cash-back rate for digital purchases should make it popular with low- to middle-income customers.

If adoption is strong, the card could make Apple as much as $1 billion annually within the next three to five years, but Bernstein said "hundreds of millions" is a more likely scenario.

'This revenue should be almost pure profit to Apple.'

Even if Apple takes 20% of the revenues — double the high end of the traditional co-brand range — that's $800 million a year if the card matches the success of the Sapphire Reserve and the Amex Platinum.

By comparison, Amazon's co-brand credit cards likely earn the firm $500 million to $1 billion annually, Bernstein estimated.

But the kicker for Apple is this revenue stream comes with with very little work or risk going forward.

Goldman Sachs is essentially paying Apple for access and marketing to its lucrative customer base. The bank will do all the work of operating the credit-card — assessing and managing credit exposure, dealing with angry or confused customers, and collecting bills from delinquent cardholders.

"This revenue should be almost pure profit to Apple, as Goldman Sachs bears all of the operational and credit risk for the program," Bernstein wrote in the note.

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California slammed Walmart for its decision to limit advertisements for video games following two shootings at its stores in recent weeks.

"Dear [Walmart], remember how: Mario Kart caused people to drive faster? Pac-Man caused folks to eat more? Fortnite radicalized a white supremacist to shoot Hispanics at your store," Lieu tweeted on Friday afternoon.

"You disrespect the victims of mass shootings by making up stupid s---," Lieu added. "Stop blaming video games."

The tweet follows the release of an internal memo in which the company ordered its employees to immediately "remove signing and displays reference violence" in all of its departments.

The company specifically ordered employees to "turn off or unplug any video game display consoles that show a demo of violent games," and "cancel any events promoting combat style or third-person shooter games."

Asked for comment about the congressman's tweet, a senior director for Walmart's communications team directed INSIDER to a recent statement by Dan Bartlett, the company's executive vice president for corporate affairs.

"Don't be confused by us asking our teams to be sensitive about violent images on the sales floor right after innocent people were murdered at our store," Bartlett said on Twitter. "We're not suggesting this is the answer to gun violence."

Walmart has been under intense scrutiny following two shootings at store locations. Two workers were killed in Southaven, Mississippi on July 30 by a "disgruntled employee." A police officer was injured in the incident.

A separate shooter opened fire in a Walmart at El Paso, Texas, on August 3, killing 22 people before being arrested.

"We've taken this action out of respect for the incidents of the past week, and this action does not reflect a long-term change in our video game assortment," Walmart spokeswoman Tara House previously told INSIDER.

Republican lawmakers and commentators, including President Donald Trump, have widely suggested mental health and video games were to blame for mass shootings. Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California blamed "video games that dehumanize individuals," while Trump targeted the "glorification of violence in our society."

"This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace," Trump said in prepared remarks on Monday.

Critics of the suggestion have pointed to numerous statistics that show an inverse correlation between video games and violent behavior or gun deaths.

Walmart, which sells firearms at certain locations, has been urged by gun control activists to cease the practice. Thomas Marshall, an employee for the company's e-commerce division, called on his colleagues to go on strike to pressure the company.

"In light of recent events, and in response to corporate's inaction, we are organizing a 'sick out' general strike to protest Walmart's profit from the sale of guns," Marshall said in an email.

Walmart is one of the world's largest firearm dealers, according to CNN. The company stopped selling assault-style rifles in 2015.

Coworking space startup WeWork could unveil its IPO filing as soon as next week, according to a Bloomberg report Friday.

The company, which is part of The We Company, confidentially filed to go public in April and was valued at $47 billion in its most recent private funding round in January. The S-1 filing in question would give us our best look yet at the high-profile startup's business yet.

According to its most recent financial report in July, WeWork still isn't profitable, but it's growing fast, with its losses and revenues both doubling in 2018 to $1.9 billion and $1.8 billion, respectively, from the year prior.

WeWork has been sharing select financial information with the public since it began issuing bonds in 2018, but the filing will be the most comprehensive look at its finances yet. According to the Bloomberg report, WeWork is planning to raise more than $3.5 billion in its IPO, which, if it comes to fruition, would make it the second largest IPO in the United States this year.

The company has raised $10 billion in venture funding and debt funding since cofounder and CEO Adam Neumann started the company in 2011. The IPO would allow its roster of prominent investors, including SoftBank, to cash out their shares.

Read More: WeWork cofounder and CEO Adam Neumann reportedly sold shares he owned in the company and took loans worth $700 million

The company's financials have come under scrutiny in the run-up to its public debut as it struggles to turn large real estate investments into a profitable business model. Neumann himself came under fire in July for cashing out a portion of his stake in WeWork and taking loans worth $700 million in total, an uncommon move ahead of such a highly-anticipated IPO.

WeWork declined to comment.

Facebook is looking for a handful of top-drawer publishers to launch a dedicated news section that it would pay them to participate in, and it's taking a page from Apple News by planning to do a mix of curation and personalization, according to people familiar with the proposal.

Apple has compared itself favorably with Facebook with its news aggregation app that is guided by an editorial team, enabling it to avoid the fake news problem that's plagued Facebook. Apple also recently added a subscription component to the app that shares revenue with publishers.

One publisher said Facebook reps repeatedly referenced Apple in discussing its own planned news tab.

Read more: Joe Marchese has been saying for years that advertising is broken. Now he's creating a new holding company, Attention Capital, to fix it. Facebook is looking to do deals with publishers in the coming weeks as it prepares to launch a test version of the news section in the fourth quarter. The terms of the proposed deals contrast sharply with short-lived past initiatives by Facebook to compensate publishers for sharing their stories on the platform.

According to The Wall Street Journal and our sources, Facebook reps told news executives they would pay as much as $3 million a year for three years to license headlines and previews of their articles. Publishers were told they could have their articles displayed in the tab or have readers click through to their sites, which would let the publisher monetize those visits directly.

Fees are expected to vary by publisher size

Sources briefed by Facebook believed the licensing fee would be commensurate with the news outlet's story volume and some could get less than $1 million. One publisher was quoted $1 million, for example.

The three-year term detail is significant given how Facebook has compensated publishers in the past. It funded shows for its Watch video section a year ago, but Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of news partnerships, repeatedly used the words "test" and "experiment" when describing the news shows, and most of the publishers that got money only got it for a year.

One publisher whose show was canceled, Mic, shut down, blaming Facebook for its demise.

Back in 2016, Facebook paid $50 million to a number of publishers to make live video, but that money faded after a year.

The payments will only help a few publishers

Facebook is expected to launch with a small handful of publishers as it has in the past with news initiatives. It launched Facebook Instant Articles in 2015, one of its first significant news publisher efforts, with nine outlets. As it's done with new news initiatives in the past, it's pitching the news tab to prestige publishers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, and New York magazine, according to our sources and the Journal.

That means many publishers won't make the cut, which raises questions about how much the initiative will help the struggling news industry.

Facebook will also have to convince some publishers that the news tab will get a sizable audience, given news isn't the primary reason most people use Facebook, and that Facebook will stay committed to the tab, since news isn't core to Facebook's ad business.

Looking to set up a smart home? The Home Depot is offering a bundle that will help get you started. If you by a Nest Hello Video Doorbell for $229, you'll also get a free Google Nest Hub (normally $129).

The Nest Hello is one of the best video doorbells you can buy. You can view its live feed from your phone, computer, or smart display, and you'll get a notification when someone's at your door. It has some advanced capabilities as well, including an optional facial-recognition feature that lets you know who's at the door if it's someone you know.

The Google Nest Hub (formerly the Google Home Hub) is a Google Assistant-powered smart display with some nifty features. It sports a decent LCD screen that can display videos, photos, recipes, directions, and other visual elements. Plus, you can use it to control Google-compatible smart home devices and can view the live feed from your Nest Hello on its screen.

If you're trying to start up a smart home, or you're an enthusiast who doesn't yet have these devices, you won't want to miss this deal.

It's important to note that when you add the Nest Hello to your cart, Home Depot doesn't add the Nest Hub automatically. Instead, you'll need to add each product independently. The website will deduct the Nest Hub's $129 price at checkout.

Get a free Google Nest Hub with the purchase of a Nest Hello Video Doorbell from The Home Depot [You save $129]

Marshall has a long and storied history in the audio industry. Originally known for its incredible guitar amplifiers, in recent years, the company has started selling consumer products with a ton of success.

Notably, Marshall now offers a range of awesome wireless speakers, like the Kilburn. For a limited time, you can get the Marshall Kilburn for an even better price than usual thanks to a sale on Amazon and Walmart.

Normally, the speaker costs $300, but it's being discounted by $116 at Amazon, bringing the price down to a super affordable $184. At Walmart, you'll get a $111 discount and pay $189.

The Marshall Kilburn has a relatively unique design, at least in the world of consumer wireless speakers. It's designed to look like a guitar amplifier and has that classic Marshall logo on the front, along with controls on the top for power and pairing via Bluetooth. You can even tweak the speaker's bass and treble by twisting the knobs on the top. That way, you can tune the speaker to your sound preferences.

The speaker is able to get pretty loud, and it has a battery that will give you 20 hours of playback on a charge. That makes it great for taking on the road or listening around the house. In case you don't want to listen to music via Bluetooth, there's even a 3.5mm aux input for a wired connection.

The deal is available from both Amazon and Walmart, but, if you get it on Amazon, you'll save an extra $5. However, you may have to wait longer for it to ship from Amazon, as it was out of stock at the time of writing. You can still order it and get the sale price, though.

Although the Walmart price isn't quite as low, it's also a great deal and it should ship sooner, so if you prefer buying through Walmart, it's still worth it.

Get the Marshall Kilburn portable Bluetooth speaker from Amazon, $184 (originally $299.99) [You save $115.99]

Get the Marshall Kilburn portable Bluetooth speaker from Walmart, $189 (originally $299.99) [You save $110.99]

President Donald Trump is planning an executive order that could have huge ramifications for how tech companies moderate online content.

According to a report from CNN on Friday, the White House is drafting an order that would give the Federal Communications Commission responsibility for overseeing how tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest keep their services clear of unwanted content.

It comes amid the American right-wing backlash against big tech, which has repeatedly been accused — without proof — of censoring conservative voices and being politically biased.

At the heart of the issue is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In short, this law means tech companies can't be blamed for content users post on their platforms. According to CNN, the White House is planning to narrow the immunity tech companies get "if they remove or suppress content without notifying the user who posted the material, or if the decision is proven to be evidence of anticompetitive, unfair or deceptive practices."

Meanwhile, if the executive order ultimately goes ahead, the Federal Trade Commission will be tasked with opening a "public complaint docket" to receive allegations of anti-conservative bias from the public, and will "work with the FCC to develop a report investigating how tech companies curate their platforms and whether they do so in neutral ways," CNN reported.

The full text of the draft executive order has not yet been made public and could be changed before being formally introduced — or not introduced at all.

But it highlights how Section 230 is becoming an increasingly hot-button issue politically, with potentially huge ramifications for how tech companies moderate themselves. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, a frequent tech critic, has introduced a bill that would end Section 230 protections for a company if its conduct wasn't considered "neutral" politically — despite the fact that the original regulation was never intended as a way to ensure political neutrality.

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Image via Kobalt Music

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10 lineup is now available for preorder. You can reserve your Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy Note 10 Plus, or Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G from Samsung's site, Microsoft, and Best Buy, as well as every major US carrier.

While you should take a look at your carrier's deals, your best bet is likely to preorder your device from Samsung directly. If you're upgrading from an older phone, Samsung is offering up to $600 in credit toward your purchase of a new Note 10.

The trade-in deal applies to a wide range of phones, including almost all Samsung, Apple, and Google Pixel devices from the past few years. However, if you're trading in a much older phone, you may get around $200 of trade-in value.

If you preorder from Samsung's site before August 22, you'll also get a $100 Samsung credit for the Note 10 and a $150 for the Note 10 Plus or Note 10 Plus 5G. Plus, you'll get a free 6-month subscription to Spotify Premium.

Preorder from Samsung

Carrier prices and deals for the Galaxy Note 10

You can also preorder the unlocked versions of the Note 10 and Note 10 Plus from the Microsoft store and Best Buy. Microsoft offers the same coupon and Spotify free trial as Samsung does.

Best Buy sells the phone unlocked or through AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon. You can access each carrier's deals if you buy the phone at Best Buy. The store also offers up to $600 in Best Buy gift cards for trade-ins, and all recent iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, and Google Pixel models are eligible.

If you order at Best Buy, you can also get Samsung's coupon and Spotify trial, as well as a $100 discount if you activate your unlocked phone at the time of preorder.

In the US, you can buy both phones in Aura White, Aura Black, and Aura Glow (iridescent). The Note 10 Plus also comes in Aura Blue.

We spent some time with the Note 10 and Note 10 Plus at Samsung's launch event. Keep reading to find out why they're better than Samsung's previous phones, and why they're worth buying — if you can stomach the price.

Uber lost a whopping $5.2 billion in the second quarter of 2019, the company revealed on Thursday, its deepest quarterly loss ever, thanks to an expensive initial public offering earlier this year.

It's a tremendous amount of money for any company, though a major chunk was thanks to one-off expenses, and the spending is set to decline in coming periods, the company said. Still, investors weren't happy with the results, and the stock plunged as much as 8% when markets opened Friday morning.

"The big picture is we want to be there any way you want to get around your city, and I think we're well on a path to do so in a profitable way," CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told analysts on a conference call following the results.

Most Wall Street analysts viewed the quarter as in line with what they expected, even as certain line items might have disappointed. Some even suggested the big sell-off was a buy-the-dip opportunity.

"We see Uber shares as one of the best long-term stories in the Internet and would take advantage of the weakness to add to positions," Lloyd Walmsley, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, told clients. "We think a continued improvement in unit economics and better visibility into the path to profitability could draw more investors to do the work, and given compelling potential upside in a bull case, near term and long term, we would not wait to get involved."

Here are the costs that led to Uber's massive loss in the second quarter:

With billions of visitors every month, YouTube is the largest video platform on the planet.

Alongside that massive size comes a massive issue: Moderation. YouTube has repeatedly run into controversies over how it polices content that violates its own guidelines, whether it's filming a dead body or one creator harassing another creator (or any number of other YouTube-related controversies over the years).

According to a new Washington Post report, there's a good reason for all the issues: Some of YouTube's most popular creators are allowed more flexibility with the platform's rules.

Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg. YouTube

The report cites 11 past and current YouTube moderators who claim that big names like Logan Paul, Steven Crowder, and Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg are given more rope when receiving YouTube content moderation.

For its part, YouTube denies the claim and says that it applies the same policies "consistently, regardless of who a creator is."

Read more: YouTube's week from hell: How the debate over free speech online exploded after a conservative star with millions of subscribers was accused of homophobic harassment

The relationship between YouTube and its biggest creators is mutually beneficial.

Simply speaking: The more subscribers a channel has, and the more views a channel gets, the higher the price to run ads. YouTube makes more money from those ad sales, and the channel's owner makes more money from YouTube. And, often, the first step in moderating YouTube's content is demonetizing a video — taking away its ability to make money on ads.

It's for this reason, the moderators who spoke with the Washington Post say, that YouTube lets its biggest creators get away with more.

Foursquare's play to become the biggest location-based advertising company is getting clearer.

In May, Foursquare acquired the location-measurement firm Placed from Snap with a $150 million funding round led by The Raine Group.

Read more: Marketers see Foursquare's acquisition of Snap's Placed as a game-changer for location-based advertising but question how it'll all work

Marketers have long been excited about using location-based advertising to track what people do after seeing an ad, but privacy regulations have thrown that into question. Europe's General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act, set to go into effect next year, limit advertisers' ability to use people's mobile data for ad targeting. Some location-targeting firms have shifted their businesses to focus on data software and struggled to stay profitable.

Foursquare claims it's an outlier, though, with Foursquare and Placed together making more than $100 million last year.

David Shim, the founder of Placed and now Foursquare's president, shared the company's pitch with Business Insider.

Foursquare wants to supply all marketers' data needs

Foursquare collects location data from 13 million people who voluntarily share it in return for money or the use of Foursquare's apps to check in and discover locations. Foursquare said it is also approved to measure more than 450 partners including Twitter, Amazon and Roku.

Placed matches ad exposure with location data to see the stores and locations people visit after viewing an ad. But until it was acquired by Foursquare, Placed lacked other kinds of location data that marketers use for ad targeting or tools that help developers and publishers plug location into apps, Shim said. Now it can provide the entire location tech stack — similar to The Trade Desk's tech stack that powers programmatic ads across display, mobile, and connected TV.

"In two months, we've seen a lot of traction in getting deeper with agencies," he said. "Agencies are telling us that they want a single solution that can do all things well."

These two slides in Foursquare's pitch deck show its scale and the breadth of its business.

Foursquare

Foursquare

Marketers are asking new questions about privacy

With California's privacy law coming, Shim said advertisers were asking how Foursquare gets people's permission to use their location and where its data comes from. It's similar to the questions they asked several years ago when they realized that many ads were going unseen because of ad fraud and bots.

Shim said Foursquare's first-party panel data gave it a leg up over competitors. Under Snap's ownership, Placed was required by the Federal Trade Commission to follow the same security rules Snap must meet as a public company. Foursquare has a direct relationship with consumers through its own apps, which distinguishes its first-party data, he said.

Foursquare is working toward faster measurement

Foursquare said it was speeding up its delivery so advertisers would get location-data reports daily instead of after weeks or months. Marketers will also get weekly reports comparing the performance of digital and TV ads, Shim said.

By this fall, it plans to have eliminated any audience overlap between Foursquare and Placed, addressing an agency concern.

It's also working to measure metrics like incremental lift to show how ads affect people's decisions to go to a given location.

"In the early days, measurement in location was about seeing an ad and going to a store," Shim said. "A lot of the partners we work with now are looking at the cost per incremental visit versus the cost per visit."

Image: PASIEKA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images

Image via Getty Images / KTSDESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Online travel giant Booking Holdings, which spends billions in advertising on Google, is turning to TV and online video ads to diversify its spend, CNBC first reported this week.

The parent company of online travel aggregators including Booking.com, Priceline and Kayak spent $1.19 billion on performance marketing, most of which went to Google, in the second quarter.

Performance marketing, which advertisers use to measure direct results such as clicks and sales conversions, has not been yielding efficient results, so Booking is doing more brand advertising to drive people directly to its sites, Booking's CFO David Goulden said during the company's earnings call Wednesday.

"We have observed a long-term trend of decreasing performance marketing returns on investment, a trend we expect to continue," the company wrote in its quarterly filing.

"I think brand advertising is always going to be important for anybody who's in the retail business," CEO Glenn Fogel said during the company's earnings call. "I do believe that we need to continue to work on this and improve upon it. And I'm looking forward to us doing that."

Fogel also criticized the performance of other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snap.

"The ROIs are not as effective and it's not as easy to scale yet as some of our other long-term use channels like Google, for example," he said on the call.

The change in advertising strategy comes as the company's flagship brand Booking.com hired Google marketing exec Arjan Dijk as its CMO, Skift reported last week.

Business Insider reached out to Google and Booking Holdings. Booking Holdings did not reply by press time. Google said it optimizes results to cater to users, not websites, and that Google was one of many options available for users to research their travel plans.

Google has been encroaching on online travel companies' turf with its Flights and Hotels services that allow users to book directly from search results.

That move has made it harder for travel companies like Booking, Expedia, Trivago and even Airbnb to reap the same rewards they once did on search ads, said a media agency executive who is familiar with Google.

"It's not just Booking; it's happening arcoss the board as Google is making inroads in the e-commerce transactions space," the executive said. "Google's losing search share on e-commerce to Amazon, so their entire strategy is to drive more e-commerce transactions that originate on search within Google."

But the executive expressed doubts that TV was the best way for a travel company like Booking to fend off Google.

"Social media is a better environment, where people are sharing so much more aspirational travel content," the exec said.