There's a massive shake-up afoot at Facebook.

The social networking giant is undergoing a huge restructuring, switching up its executives and rearranging the company into three core areas. Recode has a big report out with lots of the key details, and some Facebook execs are sharing info on Twitter.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the news of the re-organisation to Business Insider.

Facebook will now comprise of three key areas: Family of apps, led by chief product officer Chris Cox; New platforms and infrastructure, led by CTO Mike Schroepfer; and Central product services, led by VP of growth Javier Olivan.

The re-organisation comes after a bruising year for Facebook. The company has been battered by headlines about its misuse in the spread of Russian propaganda and disinformation, and more recently, the Cambridge Analytica scandal has ignited fears over security and data privacy.

Three big new categories

Facebook itself, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger all fall into the first category — they're the core, consumer-facing smartphone apps that Facebook offers. After the departure of WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum, Chris Daniels is taking over the encrypted messaging app, and Stan Chudnovsky is now heading up Messenger.

The second category is some of the more experimental stuff Facebook is working on. Andrew Bosworth is leading AR and VR. Jerome Pesenti is in charge of AI. And David Marcus, formerly the head of Messenger, is taking the helm of a newly announced blockchain unit.

Lastly, central product services is a lot of the core functionality that drives the company: Ads; analytics; integirty, growth, product management. Those three sections are being led by Mark Rabkin, Alex Schultz, and Naomi Gleit respectively.

Facebook is also adding a private equity executive, Cranemere CEO Jeff Zients, to its board of directors.

Facebook's apology tour

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on an apology tour in recent months, appearing before US Congress to discuss the company's failings and to promise to take a "broader view" of the company's responsibilities.

But Facebook is also attempting to move the conversation forwards, and at its F8 conference last week, the company made clear it doesn't intend to stop announcing new products and features while it fixes past mistakes.

This story is developing...

A millionaire British consumer rights champion announced this week that he is suing Facebook over fraudulent adverts — and he has been shocked with how the company has responded to the legal action.

Martin Lewis said scammers are using his reputation to ensnare people into bitcoin "get-rich-quick schemes" through fake adverts on Facebook.

The Money Saving Expert founder has counted 50 such adverts, but Facebook revealed this week in evidence to a British parliamentary committee that the number is actually more like thousands.

Lewis decided to sue after becoming frustrated with Facebook's sluggish response to his takedown requests. His attorney, Mark Lewis, said Facebook took up to three weeks to reply to his requests, by which time the damage was already done.

A sample of two Facebook ads described by Martin Lewis. Martin Lewis

Mark Lewis, a media lawyer at Seddons who was at the forefront of efforts to expose the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, said Facebook's response to being taken to court has not been much better.

Facebook's law firm White & Case has insisted he serves legal notice on the company in Ireland, which makes the process more drawn-out and bureaucratic.

"It's deliberately obtuse and unhelpful. You would expect that from a scam artist, but you wouldn't expect that from one of the biggest companies in the world," Mark Lewis told Business Insider.

Facebook said it has been in contact with Lewis' representatives "for some time" and has removed the offending ads and thousands of others that break its advertising policies.

A spokeswoman told Business Insider: "We have also offered to meet Martin Lewis in person to discuss the issues he's experienced, explain the actions we have taken already and discuss how we could help stop more bad ads from being placed."

Martin Lewis is pursuing exemplary damages against Facebook, which is extremely rare in UK defamation law. If successful, the High Court could take punitive action against Facebook, which means it not only has to compensate Lewis, but also cough up the profit from any of the fake adverts in his name.

The millionaire consumer rights champion does not intend to profit from the case. Instead, he will donate any of the damages he is awarded to anti-scam charities.

Facebook could be hit with a class action lawsuit

Winning his case will also set a precedent that will make it easier for others to take action if their reputation is damaged by fake Facebook adverts. This, Mark Lewis said, makes it less likely that he will settle.

The attorney, who is working on a no-win-no-fee basis, said he has had interest from another high-profile individual in joining Lewis to take joint action against Facebook. He would be keen to hear from others.

Duncan Bannatyne. Duncan Bannatyne

Lewis, who has a net worth of £125 million ($175 million) according to The Sunday Times, is not the only millionaire entrepreneur to raise concerns about fake Facebook ads. Deborah Meaden, the star of BBC show "Dragons' Den," has campaigned against the problem, as has her former co-star Duncan Bannatyne.

"Martin Lewis is very courageous taking on Facebook. Perhaps we should join together to bring a class action against them to try and halt this type of scam once and for all to stop ordinary people being duped," Bannatyne said in a statement.

Indeed, scammers have even traded off the "Dragons' Den" brand — the UK equivalent of "Shark Tank" — to try and entrap people. The BBC is aware of the issue and the broadcaster's lawyers have been in touch with Sony Pictures Television, which owns the intellectual property to the show. Asked if it is in touch with Facebook, Sony declined to comment. The BBC also declined to comment.

Facebook: Fake ads are "not welcome"

In evidence to British lawmakers on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee this week, Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer said fake adverts are "not welcome on our platform."

Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer. parliamentlive.tv

He said the fraudsters have invented ways of getting around the Facebook machine that takes down fraud ads, such as intentionally misspelling names of the individuals they are using to front their scams. This being the case, Schroepfer said it is vital Facebook roots out and removes the "bad actors" completely.

"In the case of Mr Lewis, he reported on the order of 50 ads to us. As a result of that, we did a more extensive investigation using our technical tools, found thousands of other ads, and took all of those down proactively," Schroepfer said.

"More importantly, we found the dozens of actors, the people who are fraudulently advertising on the platform, and took them off. It prevents them from advertising in the future."

He added that the company is hoping to use facial recognition, which it is currently rolling out in Europe, to assist with its efforts in removing fake ads. "It is challenging to do technically at scale and it is one of the things I am hopeful for in the future that would catch more of these things automatically," Schroepfer said.

When Armin Szegedi was working as a psychiatrist in Berlin, he felt as if he were running a lengthy experiment on his depressed patients.

After prescribing them an antidepressant, he'd wait up to a month to hear if the drugs were working, Szegedi, who's now a vice president of clinical development at Allergan, told Business Insider. Then he'd prepare for bad news, since only about one out of every three of his patients responded to the medications.

The rest of them clearly needed something else — but he had nothing to give.

"The frustrating thing is that all the approved antidepressants are remarkably similar," Szegedi said. "But you never know which patient will be treated best by which drug."

For the first time in decades, Szegedi thinks a better option is within reach: a drug inspired by ketamine.

A widely used anesthetic that is also known as a party drug, ketamine is now emerging as a rapid-fire antidepressant. Early studies suggest that it could help people who've failed to respond to existing medications and those who are suicidal.

Cristina Cusin, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard University, is one of the leading researchers studying ketamine. Although Cusin said the drug needs more research, she told Business Insider that it "absolutely has potential."

Pharmaceutical companies including Allergan and Johnson & Johnson are in hot pursuit of a new blockbuster depression drug that takes after ketamine, which acts on a brain mechanism that scientists have only recently begun to explore. Homing in on this channel appears to provide relief from depression that is better, arrives faster, and works in far more people than existing drugs.

Ketamine may reveal what depression really does to the brain

Unsplash / jesse orricoDepression is one of the world's leading causes of death. Our current treatments, which take roughly five weeks to begin to take effect, may not work well in up to 80% of the people who get them.

Most existing antidepressants, from Abilify to Zoloft, work by plugging up the places where our brain takes up serotonin, a chemical messenger that plays a key role in mood. The result is more free-floating serotonin and, in some people, relief from a dark curtain of depressive symptoms.

The new drugs being developed by Allergan and Johnson & Johnson, as well as one from San Francisco-based drug company VistaGen, capitalize on a different mechanism in the brain — the system that's engaged by ketamine.

"When we say this is a new generation of drugs, we mean it. This drug is fundamentally different from all the other antidepressants that have been approved so far," Shawn Singh, VistaGen's CEO, told Business Insider.

Ketamine affects key switches in the brain called NMDA receptors. Like serotonin receptors, those for NMDA play an important role in our mood and help keep our emotions in check. But NMDA receptors also keep our brain's synapses — the delicate branches that serve as the ecosystem for our thoughts — flexible and resilient.

Potentially because of depression's damaging effects on these brain switches, it appears to cause our synaptic branches to shrivel up and in some cases even to die. Scientists think existing antidepressants send help to those branches indirectly over time by way of serotonin. Ketamine, by contrast, delivers its aid directly to the source, plugging up NMDA receptors like a cork in a bottle and nipping depressive symptoms within hours.

A 2012 study published in the journal Science analyzed ketamine's rapid ability to reduce depressive symptoms in people who'd failed to respond to other drugs. The authors called ketamine "the most important discovery in half a century." Five years later, researchers concluded in a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry that the drug's antidepressant effects appeared to last at least a month.

Turning a 'party drug' into a blockbuster medication

Shutterstock

Today, roughly 50 to 100 clinics across the US offer ketamine off-label for depression. It's administered through an IV drip, a roughly 45-minute process that has to be done in a clinical setting.

Because ketamine is not FDA-approved to treat depression, most patients pay for it out of pocket. It isn't cheap, typically costing between $400 to $1,000 per infusion. (Some clinics recommend patients do up to 10 sessions for the best results.)

Another issue with ketamine in its current form is that it's a dissociative drug, so can induce powerful feelings of confusion, dizzy spells, and the sensation of being separated from one's own body.

Experts like Cusin worry those effects could lead patients to either react negatively to the experience and not want to repeat it, or react positively and want to repeatedly use, potentially leading to a drug-use disorder.

Those concerns may be relevant to Johnson & Johnson's work, since the company's formulation of the depression drug is a nasal spray with a chemical mirror image of ketamine.

The drugs being developed by Allergan and VistaGen, on the other hand, are inspired by ketamine but appear to produce fewer negative side effects. That's thanks to a slightly more sophisticated way of working on the brain's NMDA receptor.

Instead of plugging the receptor up like a cork in a bottle as ketamine does, Allergan's and VistaGen's drugs merely restrict its flow of activity.

Allergan is currently testing a shot formulation of its drug, Rapastinel, which would take 10 to 30 seconds to administer. VistaGen is pursuing an oral tablet version of its drug, currently known only as AV-101.

"We're essentially going for a kinder and gentler version of ketamine without the requirement for an IV and without the nasty side effects," Singh said of VistaGen's approach.

The path ahead for ketamine-inspired depression drugs

All of the new drugs being developed have shown promise for rapidly decreasing the symptoms of depression in patients enrolled in clinical trials.

The most promising results have come from Allergan's Rapastinel and VistaGen's AV-101.

"We now have these larger studies that confirm what we hoped — that we have a rapid antidepressant with good safety and little or no abuse potential," Szegedi said.

The US Food and Drug Administration appears to agree: Rapastinel has twice been granted Breakthrough Therapy designation, a distinction designed to expedite vital new drugs through the development process. AV-101 was recently placed on the agency's Fast Track list of new treatments for serious conditions that have an unmet medical need.

Johnson & Johnson researchers are expected to present the results of the next stage of their research to the American Psychiatric Association in May but have not yet presented their findings to the FDA.

"To offer people who are depressed a treatment that could potentially help them within hours, is well tolerated, and has hopefully no significant abuse liability — that sounds to me like what I always wanted when I was treating my patients," Szegedi said.

comScore's new CEO Bryan Wiener comScore

Business Insider recently dug in deep on the rocky state of measurement in the TV advertising business. And among the industry's myriad challenges, would-be-contender comScore's outlook was particularly bleak.

One TV executive said even as incumbent Nielsen faced tons of legacy challenges, comScore was basically "nowheresville" when it came to nailing ad measurement in a multiscreen, time-shifted era.

Enter Bryan Wiener.

The ad industry veteran, who helped build the ad agency 360i over a decade ago, was named comScore's CEO earlier this week . An expected choice, Wiener instantly brings the beleaguered metrics firm credibility, but also inherits major problems.

The early reaction to his appointment has been encouraging. Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser called Wiener's appointment a "positive development for comScore and, to the extent that comScore has been restrained in its ability to compete aggressively over the past two years, incrementally negative for Nielsen."

A top TV ad buyer told Business Insider: "I think they do have a shot given access to the set top box data from Rentrak. I would not say Nielsen has blown past them given the challenges we still have in cross screen measurement. I definitely think it's a good opportunity."

Business Insider recently caught up with Wiener to talk about why he decided to grab this role.

Mike Shields: Why did you want to grab this job? People might have seen you running an agency or jumping to a media company.

Bryan Wiener: Well, I don't think of myself as an agency guy. I'm an entrepreneur. We built this company, and 360i started to explode, and then we started to apply that to all kinds of services and it grew. But still it was my first agency job.

My entire career has been about differentiated companies in fast changing industries

Shields: We recently talked to people about comScore, and the hope they had a few years ago when the company acquired Rentrak [which pulls data from cable TV boxes that can be used to target ads]. The feedback wasn't good.

Wiener:  We spoke to customers, and partners and investors. And the theme was the same. The marketplace would be better off with a strong comScore. And the market is worried about comScore. That's a fair comment by the way.

Shields: Why are they so worried?

Wiener: Well, it was the result of s elf-inflicted wounds that put the company in a two year fog. And that led to a lack of innovation. And that depressed morale at the company.

That being said, what comScore is trying to do [tying together digital media and TV measurement for advertisers], the marketplace is moving in that direction. So I think I can go in there, with the skills I have, and the opportunity is tremendous. The good thing is our customers stuck with us. But our customers weren't sure if we were going to be around anymore. So my number one job is to build optimism in the marketplace. The worst is behind us.

Shields: Explain the accounting issues to people who have only partially been paying attention.

Wiener: Basically, the previous management, more than two years ago, they recorded revenue improperly. When that happened, that was a singular event which led to the company getting reaudited, getting d elisted, an SEC investigation, activists. It probably cost the company $200 million plus, but it had nothing to do with running the company. It just cost an incredible amount of money and time. And there's a hangover.

Shields: That's going to be a tough job.

Wiener: I didn't need this gig. But I'm fired up. Besides morale, job one is, we have all the assets to build a cross-platform measurement company. Think about what NBCU just did [by announcing a new product designed to measure TV shows on multiple devices using lots of different data sources]. I think it you called them and told them we could offer something like that, they would tell you, 'Please, can you do this?'

People want to measure advertising, and they want to know how many people they reached, and then measure performance. We have the assets to do that. We have to put them together.

 Shields: H ow long is this going to take to get there?

Wiener: We have 90% of what we need. It's about putting it together. If the marketplace doesn't see significant progress in 2018, something's wrong. We need to get moving really quickly. This is about quarters, not years.

2018 Audi TT RS. Bryan Logan/Business Insider

The Audi TT is probably the most polarizing sports coupe on the market.

It's the compact, two-door, four-seater hatchback of the Audi lineup, and it's among the smallest cars the luxury automaker produces.

In its base form, the TT's 220-horsepower, four-cylinder engine doesn't necessarily inspire thoughts of track days and breakneck zero-to-60 times. It is a design-focused car. On the outside, you get tastefully sculpted fenders, shapely haunches, a stern front fascia with a piercing LED headlight array.

The 2018 TT maintains the rounded wedge aesthetic that made the tiny coupe famous when it first hit the streets in 1998.

I first drove the current generation TT back in 2016 and loved it. I was a little bit head-over-heels with it, actually. I even called it a "mini-R8," and got my inbox flooded with fan mail from people who disagreed. (Some of them made good points, to be fair).

Since then, I have driven quite a few cars — from the actual R8, in V10 Plus guise, to the Tesla Model S P100D, the Cadillac CTS-V, Lexus GS F, and many others that are far more unhinged than a base TT.

But then there's the Audi TT RS. It's still a TT, yes, but that's in name only. Everything else about it is on an entirely different stratum. It's a 400-horsepower, all-wheel-drive misfit that grunts and snarls to life when you hit the start button and barks and growls at everything on the road.

But you want to know the quickest way to become jaded about fast cars? Drive a lot of fast cars.

When Audi let me borrow a TT RS for a few days this month, I obliged, but I wasn't expecting to be impressed. It took only a few drives to change my mind.

Keep reading to find out why ...

BII

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

Nearly every major messaging platform has spent the past few years rolling out tools to attract new users and give businesses tools to reach those users.

The consumer-oriented products are working: The combined total monthly active user (MAU) count of the top 4 messaging apps has grown to 4.1 billion in 2018, with the top three messaging apps touting user bases of 1 billion or more.

Not only are these consumer products drawing in more users, but they're effectively increasing the time consumers are spending within messaging apps. The average daily time US consumers spent in a messaging app in 2017 was 10 minutes, up 15.2% from 8 minutes in 2016, according to eMarketer. That 10 minutes is expected to grow to 11 this year, and 12 in 2019 (see chart).

This large and engaged consumer base is a prime market for businesses and publishers to target, particularly as social media networks like Facebook become more difficult to leverage. In order to capitalize on this opportunity, messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WeChat have developed a range of tools, from chatbots to payments methods, that businesses and publishers can use to reach and monetize consumers.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence sizes the messaging app market and examines how businesses, brands, and publishers can take advantage of the new features offered by these platforms. It compares and contrasts the largest messaging platforms by user base, and presents the types of opportunities that have emerged from the growing audience that uses messaging services daily. Finally, it explores how these messaging apps are likely to change in the months and years ahead.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

Wall Street responded favorably on Friday as the 15-year-old San Francisco e-signature company DocuSign made its debut on the public markets.

DocuSign shares closed at $39.73, about 37% above the company's opening price of $29 a share, proving that the markets still have a zeal for enterprise software — piling on the trend after Dropbox's blockbuster IPO at the end of March.

Once the confetti settled and the pop was well underway, DocuSign CEO Dan Springer and CFO Mike Sheridan hopped on the phone with Business Insider from a conference room at the Nasdaq in New York City.

Both Springer and Sheridan have taken companies public before — Responsys in 2011 for Springer, and SonicWALL in 1999 and FireEye in 2013 for Sheridan.

Now, the pair say that they're ready to take DocuSign on to its next chapter, as a public company.

Here's what they had to say about the future of DocuSign.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Becky Peterson: The stock is up 37% from your opening price. Is this good news to you, or are you concerned you priced too low?

Springer: We think of it as a strong reception. If you look at the whole process, we came out with a range of $24 to $26, which we thought was reasonable compared to other multiples that companies like ours has had. We saw strength on the roadshow, so we raised that to the $26 to $28 range. And as we got to the final steps, there was so much investor demand, we decided to price above that raised range at $29.

We could have probably priced at a higher point but we really take a long-term approach here, and our focus isn't about the day one price or pop. It's focused on making sure that the right long-term shareholders have the opportunity to participate at an attractive rate. We want to be a great long-term partner to them, and we hope they'll be the same to us.

So my view on it is that it turned out exactly how we wanted.

Sheridan: I would say that $29 a share is a very very strong valuation at this point.

First day trading is not a perfect science, and I don't think we should over-interpret exactly where it falls today. But it is nice to have it show some growth in that first day because it means that it is well-received and there is a lot of interest in our story.

I'm much more focused on, what do we look like 90 days from now.

Peterson: DocuSign still isn't profitable, right?

Springer: That depends on the metric. We're cash flow positive, but from a net-income perspective, we still have a small loss.

Sheridan: To put some numbers around that — our fiscal 2018 ended in January. In fiscal 2016, our operating loss was -32% and in fiscal 2018 it was -2%. For free cash flow, in 2016 it was 38%, and in fiscal 2018 is was 7%. So, in all our metrics we see very solid progress toward profitability.

Peterson: What does your growth plan look like? What are your focus areas?

Springer: We have a lot of opportunity to expand internationally; Right now, 17% of our revenue comes from out of the US. A few years ago it was just a couple percent, so we've already had a lot of growth there. It's now about a $90 million business, just what we have outside of the US. But we see significant opportunity to grow that.

Our second area is that we have a lot of customers, and we think we can expand what we already do with those customers. To give you the magnitude, we have some customers that have up to 300 different ways that they utilize DocuSign. But the vast majority of our customers have just five use cases turned on already. At this point, we think there is a huge expansion opportunity.

Third thing is that we're going to make significant investments in our product, and continue to innovate so that customers get more value and success from using DocuSign, and that in turn hopefully will be a huge impetus for them to spend more and grow our business.

Peterson: DocuSign was founded in 2003 — 15 years ago. That's a long time to be private. How are people responding internally?

Springer: I've only been here 15 months, but Mike's been here a little longer so I'll let him take that question.

Sheridan: It's been very well received. Of course it's a moment of liquidity, and that's important, but I don't think that's the primary driver of the excitement. What we're hearing and seeing from the offices around the world is that it's a real pride moment for people — they're very proud to be with the company.

We had the scale in past years and were big enough to go public. We waited for this time for the right reasons: to move our international expansion, our enterprise expansion, and our profitability from aspirations to proof points. So now is the right time to go.

Our employees have been patient with that, and now that we're here at the right time, there is a lot of excitement around the company.

Peterson: Is there anything about the process that's surprised you?

Springer: This is sort of a weird, non-answer to your question, but the surprising thing to me is how there is nothing surprising. It was so straightforward.

It's a testament to the fact that, as Mike said, we waited until we had all of our ducks in a row. It was incredibly well orchestrated.

If there's one thing, it's an odd sort of surprise — I thought there would be a larger number of investors that would say to us that they cannot understand the story and would not invest. But virtually every firm that we saw came in and placed an order on the IPO. So that was somewhat surprising to me.

MoviePass just delivered what many could find a huge setback, especially as "Avengers: Infinity War" comes to theaters this weekend: subscribers are no longer allowed to see the same movie more than once in theaters with the service.

When Business Insider checked the MoviePass app Friday, we were greeted with a notification that "subscribers are not permitted to see the same movie more than once in theaters."

MoviePass updated its Terms of Use Friday to reflect the change, stating in all caps: "THE SERVICE PROHIBITS REPEAT VIEWINGS OF THE SAME MOVIE."

This is another huge departure from what the service has typically offered. The company also recently capped the number of movies new subscribers were able to see a month at four, instead of the movie-a-day plan. MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe told The Hollywood Reporter he didn't know if the movie-a-day plan would ever return.

The only plan MoviePass currently offers new subscribers is a bundle that includes four movies a month in theaters and a trial of iHeartRadio All Access, for $29.85 for three months. Subscribers will be billed at that rate every quarter.

Lowe told THR that "there's like 100 new features we're working on," including potential premium plans for 3D and IMAX movies that have always been restricted on the services.

But these new strategies — capping the number of movies and forbidding repeat viewings — could also reflect the company's financial situation.

Earlier this month, the auditor for MoviePass' parent company, Helios & Matheson Analytics, said it had "substantial doubt" about the company's ability to stay in business, and Helios & Matheson disclosed that it was losing money on every MoviePass subscriber.

Google is developing a mysterious multi-device operating system called "Fuchsia," and it looks like the company recently added a feature to the software that could drastically improve its chances of catching on with consumers.

On Thursday, it was revealed by a member of the XDA Developers forum that Google seemingly added native support for Android apps on Fuchsia. In theory, that means Android apps should be able to run on the Fuchsia operating system without much intervention or tweaking from an app developer. And that's a critical feature.

Letting Android apps run seamlessly on a new operating system will be crucial for Google if it were to replace the Android operating system with the so-called Fuchsia operating system, or even if it wanted to introduce Fuchsia as an alternative to Android.

An early version of Fuchsia running on a smartphone. YouTube/Kyle Bradshaw

App developers have shown they're not so willing to create separate versions of their apps for less popular operating systems. Just look at Microsoft's Windows Phones, which died out towards the end of 2017. Few were willing to use Windows Phones because comparatively few apps were being made for the Windows Phone operating system.

Without the same offering of apps as Android, the new Fuchsia operating system would likely be doomed to failure, just like Windows Phones. After all, why would anyone use an operating system that doesn't have the apps they want? That's what a lot of people thought about Windows Phone.

It's also not exactly clear what Fuchsia's purpose is at the moment. From the looks of a YouTube video supposedly showing the Fuschia operating system and posted earlier this year, Fuschia could be an operating system that works across smartphones, tablets, and computers.

Fuchsia running on a laptop. YouTube/Mitch Blevins

It might be mysterious, but Google isn't being too secretive about Fuschia. Google acknowledged the existence of Fuchsia in 2016, when Android VP of engineering Dave Burke called it an "early-stage experimental project." Whether it'll ever emerge from the experimental phase into a fully released operating system is not clear.

AP Images

Social media stocks are losing ground Friday after Bloomberg Law's Michaela Ross reported that some GOP lawmakers are kicking around the possibility of new regulation.

Twitter is the biggest loser on the day, down almost 5%, while Snap and Facebook are lower by 3% and 1%, respectively. 

Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee are concerned that social media companies may be censoring conservative viewpoints. 

"I'm not for more government regulation," Rep. Louie Gohmert said, according to Bloomberg. "But I do think, since they are deciding what goes on and what gets censored, they should be liable. And I'm working on laws to make that happen." 

Social media companies have been under intense scrutiny by both the government and the media, in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Twitter and Snap have been hit hard, down 17% and 13%, respectively. Meanwhile, Facebook is little changed thanks to strong earnings after seeing a sharp drop in the wake of the scandal. 

Twitter is up 17.55% on the year while both Snap and Facebook are down about 5%. 

Markets Insider

Messenger Kids, Facebook's messaging app aimed at children between the ages of six-12, is getting a major parental control feature.

The company announced Friday that parents will now be able to activate "sleep mode," which prevents children from using the app at certain times. A parent could, for example, choose put the app in "sleep mode" during bedtime, dinner, or homework time.

When a child opens the Messenger Kids app in sleep mode, they will see this screen. Facebook

Messenger Kids already lets parents see their child's messages and control their contact list, but Tarunya Govindarajan, a Facebook product manager, wrote in a blog post that parents had been asking for more control. The app itself only lets children send messages, photos and videos. It doesn't have many of the features of a regular Facebook account, such as a News Feed, a "like" button, or advertising.

Since Facebook introduced the app in December last year, it has been met with backlash from health experts and child advocates, who have called on the app to be shut down completely. In a letter to Facebook in January, a group of more than 100 organizations and health professionals warned that children under 13 using the app could "undermine children's healthy development."

If there's one thing that we know from history, a deadly new disease will arise that will spread around the globe.

That could happen easily within the next decade. And as Bill Gates reminded listeners while speaking at a discussion about epidemics hosted by the Massachusetts Medical Society and the New England Journal of Medicine on Friday, we're not ready.

As Gates said, he's usually the optimist in the room, reminding people that we're lifting children out of poverty around the globe and getting better at eliminating diseases like polio and malaria.

But "there's one area though where the world isn't making much progress," said Gates. "And that's pandemic preparedness."

The likelihood that such a disease appears continues to rise. New pathogens emerge all the time as the world gets more populous and humanity encroaches on wild environments. It's becoming easier and easier for individuals or small groups to create weaponized diseases that could spread like wildfire around the globe. According to Gates, a small non-state actor could rebuild an even deadlier form of smallpox in a lab. And in our interconnected world, people constantly hop on planes, crossing from megacities on one continent to megacities on another in a matter of hours.

According to one simulation by the Institute for Disease Modeling presented by Gates, a new flu like the one that killed 50 million in the 1918 pandemic would most likely kill 30 million within just six months now. And the disease that next takes us by surprise will most likely be one that we see for the first time when the outbreak starts, like happened recently with SARS and MERS viruses.

If you were to tell the world's governments that weapons were under construction right now that could kill 30 million people, there'd be a sense of urgency about preparing for the threat, said Gates.

"In the case of biological threats, that sense of urgency is lacking," he said. "The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war."

John Moore/Getty

The one time the military tried a sort of simulated wargame against a smallpox pandemic, the final score was "smallpox one, humanity zero," according to Gates.

But as he said, he's an optimist, and he thinks we could better prepare for the next viral or bacterial threat.

In some ways, we're clearly better prepared now than we were for previous pandemics. We have antiviral drugs that can at least do something to improve survival rates in many cases. We have antibiotics that can treat secondary infections, like pneumonia associated with the flu.

We're getting closer to a universal flu vaccine. During his talk, Gates announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would be offering $12 million in grants to encourage the development of such a vaccine.

And we're getting better at rapid diagnosis, too, something essential since the first step against a new disease is quarantine. Just yesterday, a new research paper in the journal Science announced the development of a way to use the gene-editing technology CRISPR to rapidly detect diseases and to identify them using the same sort of paper strip used in a home pregnancy test.

Yet we're not good enough yet at rapidly identifying the threat from a disease and coordinating a response, as the recent global reaction to the last Ebola epidemic showed.

There needs to be better coordination and communication between military and government to help coordinate responses. And Gates thinks that government needs ways to quickly enlist the help of the private sector when it comes to developing technology and tools to fight against emerging deadly disease.

As Melinda Gates said recently, the threat from a global pandemic — whether one that emerges naturally or one that's engineered — is perhaps the biggest risk humanity faces right now.

"Think of the number of people who leave New York City every day and go all over the world — we're an interconnected world," she said. Those connections make us all vulnerable.

A growing preponderance of at-home DNA testing kits, coupled with online forums where people can post and share their results, is making it easier for people to track down long lost relatives online.

Now, it seems, that also made it easier for one California district attorney's office to pinpoint a suspected killer who'd been at large for more than 30 years.

Investigators think that the so-called Golden State Killer — also known as the East Area Rapist or the Original Night Stalker — committed 12 murders, more than 45 rapes, and upwards of 120 burglaries in 10 California counties between 1974 and 1986.

The case remained largely a mystery until this week, when investigators arrested 72-year-old former cop Joseph DeAngelo.

Investigators told the San Jose Mercury News that by consulting an open-source DNA-sharing website called GEDmatch, they were able to find the genetic information of a distant relative of DeAngelo's.

That relative seems to have uploaded their sample online on their own. The data was apparently similar enough to DNA information that officers had recovered at the crime scenes to enable investigators to pinpoint DeAngelo as the suspected killer and rapist.

He'd been at large for 32 years when officers arrested DeAngelo at his home outside Sacramento earlier this week.

Humans are all around 99.9% the same, genetically speaking, but that extra 0.1% of variation is what scientists, investigators, and family members zero in on when studying DNA data.

Genetic testing companies 23andMe and Ancestry both say they won't share genetic information with law enforcement unless they're served a court order. But they can't stop people from sharing their genetic information online, which many people do when trying to connect with long lost relatives or find a biological parent like a sperm or egg donor.

Scientists are also using the onslaught of DNA information that's becoming available online to better track and understand genetic diseases, as the Atlantic reported last year.

GEDmatch said in a statement to Business Insider that the site was not approached by law enforcement "or anyone else about this case or about the DNA." The site administrator said he's always made it clear in the site's policy that the information people upload "could be used for other uses" besides connecting with potential relatives.

"While the database was created for genealogical research, it is important that GEDmatch participants understand the possible uses of their DNA, including identification of relatives that have committed crimes or were victims of crimes," the statement said.

But this kind of labor-intensive DNA matching isn't likely to happen often, since most criminal investigators don't have time to cruise online DNA forums and search for potential matches.

"The man-hours and resources needed to follow up on these leads is extremely limited in many jurisdictions," Sara Katsanis, a scholar at Duke University's Initiative for Science and Society, told Buzzfeed News.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney's office, which made the arrest, did not immediately respond to questions about how they used the publicly available data to crack the case.

By 2020, Sidewalk Labs— the urban innovation subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet— plans to break ground on a high-tech neighborhood along Toronto's waterfront.

Called Quayside, the 12-acre development will prioritize "environmental sustainability, affordability, mobility, and economic opportunity," according to Sidewalk Labs. The City of Toronto and Sidewalk Labs call the larger project "Sidewalk Toronto."

On March 20, Sidewalk Labs held its first public roundtable with 800 Toronto residents, who told the tech giant what they do and don't want in the new neighborhood. The company released a summary of the meeting this week.

There were eight common themes. Many locals asked about Sidewalk Lab's approach to sustainability, public space, community services like medical facilities and schools, affordable housing, transportation, building construction, embedded sensors, and data privacy.

In this photo taken Oct. 5, 2017, a man skates past a row of RVs where people live and sleep in the heart of Silicon Valley in Mountain View, California. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Residents were also concerned that Quayside could become a "new Silicon Valley characterized by income inequality and rising costs for surrounding areas," according to the report. Many also expressed concerns that Quayside would become an exclusive neighborhood targeted at only those who could afford to live there.

Their worries are not unfounded. Income inequality in Silicon Valley— home to tech giants like Google, Apple, and Facebook — is among the nation's highest. According a 2018 report, in the larger San Francisco Bay Area, families on top make more than 10 times the salaries of those at the bottom.

And Silicon Valley as a whole is richer than the rest of the state. In 2016, the region's poverty rate was 8.6%, compared to 14.4% in California and 14.1% nationwide, according to the 2018 Silicon Valley Index released by Joint Venture Silicon Valley. At the same time, researchers say that over 10% of Silicon Valley's population lacks regular access to basic necessities, like nutritionally adequate food.

Silicon Valley has experienced a rise in housing costs and homelessness in recent years as well. While San Francisco median home prices have leveled out to around $1.2 million since 2015, Silicon Valley home prices have continued to climb. In just the last two years, median inflation-adjusted home prices in Silicon Valley have risen by 7.4%, compared to 3.7% statewide. San Francisco is well-known for its homeless tent encampments, and the area's homelessness crisis has now appeared to spread to Silicon Valley.

The Apple Campus 2 is seen under construction in Cupertino, California in this aerial photo taken January 13, 2017. Reuters

Some longtime residents have accused tech companies of perpetuating gentrification in the region, because tech workers are often siloed from the rest of the Bay Area.

"If a tech company sets up shop in a economically depressed part of a city, the interactions between the white employees and the black and Latino people in the neighborhood might be hostile," Richard Ford, a civil rights and anti-discrimination lawyer at Stanford told Wired in 2017. "Those interactions could increase bias by 'confirming' stereotypes. And this problem is especially pronounced because employees do not leave the building."

While Sidewalk Labs emphasizes that it will not prioritize tech companies' needs in Quayside's design, the project will likely draw more tech companies to Toronto due to its focus on innovation.

The meeting wasn't all negative, however. Residents were reportedly optimistic about how the project could improve Toronto's environmental sustainability, community services, and transportation.

But their concerns — sprinkled throughout the summary — are symptomatic of the public's larger distrust of tech companies that has grown in the past year. When Silicon Valley sprouted in the '70s and '80s, Bay Area locals were mostly optimistic about how tech could make their neighborhoods — and the world — better. But today, North Americans are much more skeptical of Sidewalk's plan to create the "world's first neighborhood built from the internet up."

British television star Martin Lewis is suing Facebook for defamation after discovering more than 50 "scam" adverts bearing his name.

Lewis is perhaps Britain's best-known consumer rights expert, dispensing guidance through popular ITV television show "The Martin Lewis Money Show" and his website MoneySavingExpert.com.

But he said scammers are using his reputation to ensnare people into bitcoin and Cloud Trader "get-rich-quick schemes" through fake adverts on Facebook. The ads are fronts for binary trading firms, which he said are a "financially dangerous, near-certain money-loser."

A sample of two Facebook ads described by Martin Lewis. Martin Lewis

The adverts pose as news stories on websites including the BBC and The Metro, but link off to the scam websites.

Lewis has repeatedly reported the fake adverts, but said they can take "days or weeks" to be pulled down by Facebook. Once removed, he said "scammers just launch a new, nearly identical campaign very soon afterwards."

"I don't do adverts. I've told Facebook that. Any ad with my picture or name in is without my permission. I've asked it not to publish them, or at least to check their legitimacy with me before publishing. This shouldn't be difficult," Lewis said in a blog on his website.

"It's time Facebook was made to take responsibility. It claims to be a platform not a publisher — yet this isn't just a post on a web forum, it is being paid to publish, promulgate, and promote what are often fraudulent enterprises."

Lewis has issued High Court proceedings against Facebook and is working with Seddons media lawyer Mark Lewis on the case. Mark Lewis was at the forefront of efforts to expose the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

Martin Lewis, who has a net worth of £125 million ($175 million) according to The Sunday Times, said the legal battle is not being done for personal gain. Any damages will be will be donated to anti-scam charities, he said.

Facebook said: "We do not allow adverts which are misleading or false on Facebook and have explained to Martin Lewis that he should report any adverts that infringe his rights and they will be removed.

"We are in direct contact with his team, offering to help and promptly investigating their requests, and only last week confirmed that several adverts and accounts that violated our advertising policies had been taken down."

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange. Reuters Pictures

Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to know this Monday.

1. Aleksandr Kogan, whose quiz obtained millions of users' Facebook profiles for Cambridge Analytica, is considering suing Facebook for defamation. He admitted to violating Facebook's developer policies.

2. Google is under fire for trying to avoid the "spirit" of the law as it prepares for the EU's strict privacy regulation, GDPR. Google said it will act as a data controller under the new regulation, giving it more latitude with people's data.

3. UK health minister Jeremy Hunt wants to introduce new laws that protect children using social media. Hunt wants to do more to cut cyber-bullying and addiction, and promote healthy use of social media.

4. Florida detectives investigating a fatal police shooting went a funeral home to use the dead man's finger to unlock his phone. It didn't work.

5. WikiLeaks says cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has frozen its bitcoin account. Coinbase hasn't confirmed the suspension, and WikiLeaks is calling for a boycott of the exchange.

6. A secretive Israeli service called Terrogence used Facebook data to build a massive facial recognition database, according to Forbes. Both Terrogence and its owner Verint are contractors for the US government.

7. Iran's central bank has banned the country's banks from cryptocurrency trades. The ban is due to money laundering concerns as the country tries to halt a currency crisis.

8. Amazon expects groceries and household products to account for half its business in India next five years. The company hinted that it would bring AmazonFresh to the country.

9. Bill Gates and SoftBank have backed EarthNow, a satellite startup which provides livestreaming from almost anywhere on earth to smartphones and tablets. The footage could be used to track illegal fishing, animal migration patterns, or forest fires, EarthNow said.

10. A poll by the Independent has found that most British people think Facebook should be fined for the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Just 10% thought the firm shouldn't be fined.

Congestion in Beijing can be unbearable.

With far more than 5 million registered cars, traffic can crawl at half the speed it does in New York City. And aside from toxic air pollution, the noise pollution from constant horn honking has made Beijing the sixth noisiest city in the world.

But the government, which at one point created a noise map of the city, wants that to change.

After a pilot project last year, Beijing's Traffic Management Bureau has installed 20 acoustic cameras across the city that can identify honking cars, according to Inkstone News.

The cameras, installed near schools and hospitals, use 32 microphones and a HD camera to film a two second video and capture the number plate of each honking car. The footage will then be analyzed by police to determine if car's honking was warranted and, if not, whether a $16 fine will be issued.

But noise pollution isn't limited to Beijing's streets.

Roughly 40 cities, including Shenzen, have installed acoustic cameras that can catch honking drivers with an accuracy rate of 92-95%.

Part of the problem is the chaotic nature of driving in China where there are just too many vehicles on roads that just weren't designed for vehicles. There's also some interesting engineering, such as one road that requires drivers to merge from 50 lanes into 20.

According to the World Health Organisation, China had more than 260,000 road traffic deaths in 2013, making it one of the world's most dangerous countries for drivers.

While the current technology doesn't immediately identify drivers, it likely won't be long before the acoustic cameras include facial recognition technology that links to social credit scores, deducting points for repeated honking just as China plans to do for repeat jaywalkers.