A boycott of Facebook by major advertisers is hammering the social media giant's stock price and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's personal fortune.

Zuckerberg's net wealth is down by $7.21 billion as of Saturday, while Facebook's share price dropped more than 8% at the close of Friday trading, as the ad boycott snowballs.

Coca-Cola is the latest brand to back the #StopHateforProfit campaign by American civil rights groups.

Coca-Cola chief executive James Quincey said on Friday that the company would halt all social media ads for 30 days while it rethinks its policies.

"There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media," Quincey wrote on Coca-Cola's site. "The Coca-Cola Company will pause paid advertising on all social media platforms globally for at least 30 days. We will take this time to reassess our advertising policies to determine whether revisions are needed. We also expect greater accountability and transparency from our social media partners."

The #StopHateforProfit campaign launched on June 19 in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers and the subsequent worldwide protests. It was triggered by Facebook's refusal to remove a post by President Donald Trump, which threatened the protesters with violence.

Trump wrote in his post, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" and also called the demonstrators "thugs."

The campaign pressures major advertisers to rethink their ad spend on Facebook until it brings in stricter moderation policies.

Big corporations, including Unilever, the Hershey Co, the North Face, Verizon, and many others have over the last week, either paused or halted their advertising with Facebook and other social media platforms as a result.

The pressure appears to be working. Late on Friday, Zuckerberg announced the company will now label "newsworthy" posts from politicians that break its rules on, for example, hate speech or violent speech. It's a significant shift, given the company has up till now totally refused to moderate politicians' rhetoric.

Business Insider's Tanya Dua also reported that Facebook's ads team is trying to placate fleeing advertisers by saying the company is serious about addressing their concerns about hate speech, and had committed to a third-party audit of its policies.

Advertising accounts for almost 100% of Facebook's revenue, with the firm pulling in $17.4 billion in ad sales in the first three months of this year.

The civil rights groups behind the #StopHateforProfit campaign, NAACP, Color of Change, and the Anti-Defamation League, called on Facebook to take stronger action.

"We have been down this road before with Facebook," NAACP wrote on its site. "They have made apologies in the past. They have taken meager steps after each catastrophe where their platform played a part. But this has to end now."

Ever feel like you're looking in on an inside joke that everyone online understands besides you? Welcome to itiswhatitis.fm.

On Thursday night, the tech industry was introduced via Twitter, en masse, to this emoji combination: ???. Word spread about a mysterious app called "It Is What It Is," as Silicon Valley clamored to figure out what the hype was all about and how the elite could secure their own access to the invite-only platform.

But most of us have yet to figure out what's really going on and whether this is a real app — or something else — or merely an elaborate satire of tech marketing. The website doesn't help explain any further: The only clickable thing on it is a box directing you to "give us ur info," where you can enter your email to, presumably, get on the app's waitlist.

Nonetheless, the team behind IIWII has successfully captured the tech industry's attention ahead of whatever it has planned for Friday night at 7pm PT.

Both the name and the emoji associated with the app are, expectedly, based in meme culture, as Josh Constine first pointed out. The emoji can be traced back to this YouTube video from last year, and is now freely used across social platforms for "expressing surprise, shock, anger, or disgust," according to Urban Dictionary.

The name — It Is What It Is — goes beyond a commonly used idiom. The audio from this video of a group of teens echoing these words has, since then, become a popular soundtrack for short videos on the viral app TikTok.

It's unclear who is exactly behind the app (if that's what it is), but more than 40 young software engineers and recent college graduates in the tech industry are displaying the app's Twitter handle — @itsmoutheyemouth — in their profiles, with job titles like "cheerleader," "head of fun," "chief gay," and "chief optometrist." These faux titles are reminiscent of the trend on TikTok where users put "CEO of" in their account descriptions.

While the majority of tweets regarding the app have thus far been forms of trolling, and rows of ???, users associated with the "project" also have successfully gotten excitable techies to try scoring an invite. It Is What It Is has shared links to charities supporting the Black community and trans people of color, including the Okra Project, the Lovaland Therapy Fund, and Solutions Not Punishment. 

The people behind It Is What It Is seem to be onto something. The dramatic pull of exclusivity and secrecy in Silicon Valley was demonstrated earlier this year, after an invite-only audio-chat app called Clubhouse launched in beta. Although the app has just 5,000 users, it's already valued at $100 million.

Business Insider tried to reach out on Twitter to some of the users who seem to be associated with the app. The only response we got: "It Is What It Is."

Facebook's top ad executive assured advertisers that the company is serious about addressing the major concerns of civil-rights groups leading a boycott of the platform to protest hate speech and divisive content.

In a new memo sent on Friday, Facebook's VP of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson said that the company was committing to a third-party audit of its Community Standard Enforcement Report (CSER). She also said that Facebook was considering nine product recommendations by the boycott organizers, and outlined the steps it had already taken to that end.

A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the authenticity of Everson's memo but did not provide additional comment.

Everson said that while the report already includes figures on the total amount of hate speech that the company removes, and the proportion of hate speech that it detects proactively before it is reported, it would now also add the prevalence of hate speech to the report over the coming year. She added that Facebook was also working with the industry group Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to identify appropriate brand safety audit requirements, and would then work with the Media Ratings Council on an audit of its brand safety tools and practices.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his deputies, including Everson, have been making the rounds to assure top advertisers that the company is making progress on stamping down hate speech. The social media giant is reaching out to ad agencies as it faces mounting pressure over its content moderation policies and its handling of President Donald Trump's posts in the aftermath of George Floyd's death in police custody.

In the memo, Everson also said that Facebook is exploring how to extend the offerings in its Brand Safety Hub more broadly, after launching several new tools last month to give advertisers more control over where their ads appear within in-stream placements. She did note, however, that Facebook was unable to provide complete access to the content it deletes, but did provide metadata like the publisher name, video title, and ad impressions.

"We have absolutely no desire to profit from hate or misinformation of any kind, and while there are substantial technical challenges to extending the offerings in the Brand Safety Hub more broadly, we are exploring what is possible," she wrote.

Facebook is also exploring giving moderators better tools for moderating content and membership to Groups on its platform, and ways to make moderators more accountable for the content in groups they moderate, according to the memo. 

Everson also pointed to the new policies that Facebook announced on June 26 to address growing calls from civil rights groups to clamp down on racist and hurtful content on its platform. In a livestreamed address, Zuckerberg said that the company would expand its ad policy to prohibit claims that people with a specific race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion are a threat to anyone else. Facebook said it would also begin labeling content deemed "newsworthy" like a speech from a politician — even if it violates the company's policies.

Read Everson's memo below:

Hi All,

I wanted to update you on several new developments and provide you with a response to the 9 product recommendations by the boycott organizers. We have significant work underway to address the major concerns expressed by those calling for the boycott but acknowledge there is much more work to do. 

Mark just announced some important changes:

Changing our policies to better protect immigrants, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. We've already prohibited dehumanizing and violent speech targeted at these groups - now we're banning ads suggesting these groups are inferior or express contempt, dismissal or disgust directed at them.

Banning posts that make false claims about ICE agents checking for immigration papers at polling places, or other threats meant to discourage voting. We will use our Election Operations Center to work with state election authorities to remove false claims about polling conditions in the 72 hours leading up to election day.

Labeling content that we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case. We'll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what's acceptable in our society -- but we'll add a prompt to tell people that the content they're sharing may violate our policies.

These changes are the result of direct feedback from the civil rights community collected through our civil rights audit. That audit has been led by Laura Murphy, a noted civil rights expert, Megan Cacace, a partner at the respected civil rights law firm of Relman & Colfax.

In addition to the changes that Mark announced, I want you to know that we are also committing to the following important steps:

A third-party audit of our Community Standard Enforcement Report (CSER) which will be completed by a Big 4 Firm, and will include the incidence of violating content.
Adding the prevalence of hate speech to CSER over the coming year (CSER already includes the total amount of hate speech that we remove, as well as the proportion of hate speech that we detect proactively before it is reported).
We are working with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to identify appropriate brand safety audit requirements. We are committed to then working with the Media Ratings Council on an audit of our brand safety tools and practices.

I also want to respond to the 9 product recommendations from the boycott organizers to describe work that is already underway and areas where we are exploring further changes.

The first set of recommendations ask that we provide more support to people who are targets of racism, antisemitism, and hate.

The first recommendation is to create a separate moderation pipeline staffed by experts on identity-based hate for users who express they have been targeted because of specific identity characteristics. Today, hate speech reports on Facebook are already automatically funneled to a set of reviewers with specific training in our identity-based hate policies in 50 markets covering 30 languages. In addition, we consult with experts on identity-based hate in developing and evolving the policies that these trained reviewers enforce.

The second recommendation is to put targets of hate and harassment in touch with Facebook. We agree it is important to provide support to people who have been targeted on our platform. Our approach, developed in consultation with experts, is to follow up with people who report hate speech and tell them about the actions we've taken. We also provide user controls that allow people to moderate comments on their posts, block other users, and control the visibility of their posts by creating a restricted list. We are open to exploring ways to put people who report hate speech in touch with additional resources to find support, as we do do when people report content for suicide and self-injury. That could include helping people connect with organizations who counter hate speech and harassment in their communities.

The third recommendation is to provide more granular information about identity-based hate speech reports. We are committed to continuing to improve transparency about our Community Standards enforcement, and as I mentioned above, we intend to include the prevalence of hate speech in future CSER reports, pending no further complications from COVID-19.

We also hear the request to understand the kinds of hate speech that people report to us - including whether a report is based on a specific protected characteristic like ethnicity. As we have been improving our ability to recognize hate speech proactively across languages and geographies, we have prioritized speed and our ability to remove hate speech. While that has helped us tackle hate in the aggregate, we understand there are gaps felt for how hate can impact individuals or specific groups. We deeply value the views and experiences of groups wounded by hate. We will continue to support efforts to understand how particular communities are targeted by hate on our platform and the connections between online and offline hate, but we don't yet have specific detail on the frequency of attacks on specific groups on our platform.

The next set of recommendations focuses on how we can ensure we do not generate revenue from hate speech or misinformation - including preventing ads from appearing near content labeled as hate or misinformation, telling advertisers how often their ads have appeared next to this content, providing refunds to those advertisers, and providing an audited transparency report.

In response, we first want to emphasize again that hate speech violates our community standards and we remove it as soon as possible. We also work with third-party fact checkers to identify misinformation, and we put prominent labels and reduce the distribution of content or disapprove related ads if the content is rated false or partly false on our platform.

We already take some steps to help advertisers understand how their ads show up on our services, and to provide refunds in certain circumstances. For example, we have built a Brand Safety Hub where advertisers can review publishers, individual in-stream videos, and instant articles in which their ads were embedded. We refund advertisers when ads run in videos or instant articles that are later rated false or partly false by our third party fact checkers. We are not able to provide complete access to content that has been deleted, including for violating our Community Standards, but we do provide metadata such as the publisher name, video title, and ad impressions in these circumstances.

We have absolutely no desire to profit from hate or misinformation of any kind, and while there are substantial technical challenges to extending the offerings in the Brand Safety Hub more broadly, we are exploring what is possible. It will take some time for us to do this, and to obtain more detailed feedback about the systems and controls that would work for our advertisers and our community.

With respect to transparency and audits, our Community Standards Enforcement Reports provide extensive information about our efforts to keep our community safe. We've also set the standard in our industry by publishing regular transparency reports so people can hold us accountable for progress. We will continue investing in this work and will commit whatever resources are necessary to improve our enforcement.

We also have received certification from independent groups, like the Digital Trading Standards Group which specifically examines our advertising processes against JICWEBS' Good Practice Principles and is a requirement for achieving the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Gold Standard. We will continue to work with advertising industry bodies such as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media and the Media Ratings Council to audit our brand safety tools and practices.

The last set of recommendations relate to improving the safety of private Groups on Facebook. Our team of 35,000 safety and security professionals, including 15,000 content reviewers, actively review potentially violating content today, including in private Groups. Our proactive, AI-based detection tools are also used to identify hateful content and Groups that aren't reported to us.  We clearly have more work to do here.

We believe that Group moderators already play a vital role in maintaining their Groups, and we therefore hold them to a higher standard. If moderators post or permit posting of violating content, the Group incurs penalties that can result in the Group being removed from Facebook (or, for less severe violations, prevented from being recommended to others). We are exploring providing moderators with even better tools for moderating content and membership, as well as ways to make moderators more accountable for the content in groups they moderate, such as providing more education on our Community Standards and increasing the requirements on moderatoring potential bad actors.

In summary, we have thoroughly reviewed the 9 product recommendations from the boycott organizers and know we share the goal of limiting hate and divisive content on our platform. 

To reiterate, our immediate next steps include:
A third-party audit of our Community Standard Enforcement Report (CSER) which will be completed by a Big 4 Firm, and will include the incidence of violating content.
Adding the prevalence of hate speech to CSER over the coming year (CSER already includes the total amount of hate speech that we remove, as well as the proportion of hate speech that we detect proactively before it is reported).
We are working with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to identify appropriate brand safety audit requirements. We are committed to then working with the Media Ratings Council on an audit of our brand safety tools and practices.
Last, as Mark announced today, we are updating our policies effective immediately:
Changing our policies to better protect immigrants, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. We've already prohibited dehumanizing and violent speech targeted at these groups - now we're banning ads suggesting these groups are inferior or express contempt, dismissal or disgust directed at them.
Banning posts that make false claims about ICE agents checking for immigration papers at polling places, or other threats meant to discourage voting. We will use our Election Operations Center to work with state election authorities to remove false claims about polling conditions in the 72 hours leading up to election day.
Labeling content that we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case. We'll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what's acceptable in our society -- but we'll add a prompt to tell people that the content they're sharing may violate our policies.

This isn't work that ever finishes. Hate is an insidious feature of every society, and that is reflected across all platforms. But we also believe in our responsibility to help change the trajectory of hate speech - and while we know we can't eradicate it, we will continue to do everything in our power to shatter its presence on our platform. We are proud of our efforts to improve proactive detection of hate speech, and we'll continue to invest there. We won't permit hate to have a home on Facebook, and we want to work with you as we have through the years, to continue improving on our efforts. We will continue to be your partners, and we will continue to value the feedback you give us on where you see us falling short.

Thanks so very much
Carolyn

Alexis Ohanian is leaving the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Initialized, according to an Axios report. 

Initialized specializes in more traditional seed-stage investing. Ohanian, per Axios, is interested in pursuing "pre-seed" investments, which would entail working with companies in the earliest stages of development. He'll still work with the firm's existing portfolio companies.

Ohanian cofounded Initialized with Garry Tan in 2011. Starting in 2014, Ohanian was less involved as he began to focus on operations at Reddit, but returned full-time in 2018.

The departure comes weeks after Ohanian announced he was stepping down from Reddit's board, urging the company to fill his role with a Black candidate amid widespread demonstrations protesting systematic racism in the US.

"I believe resignation can actually be an act of leadership from people in power right now," Ohanian said at the time, citing his family as one of the reasons for spurring the act. Ohanian is married to tennis star and champion Serena Williams.

President Donald Trump jokingly accepted responsibility for the aesthetic design of the US Navy's latest series of guided-missile ships.

"The ships that they were building, they look terrible," Trump said in a Thursday speech at the shipyard in Wisconsin where these warships are built. "I would change designs, I looked at it. I said, 'That's a terrible-looking ship, let's make it beautiful. It'll cost you the same, and maybe less.'"

"You know, sometimes, you can make it look great for less money," Trump added. "I said, 'This is not a good-looking ship. Let's change the design of it.' And I got people in, and we looked at different designs, and as long as we're going to do it and ... how beautiful it is, they gave me a beautiful model that's absolutely, it's like a yacht with missiles on it."

The Navy's Guided Missile Frigate (FFG) program calls for 20 of the ships — the first two costing a little over $1 billion and subsequent ships costing $940 million each, according to a government report in June. These less-expensive, small surface combatants are designed to support larger Navy groups and operate independently; and are equipped with anti-air, anti-surface, and anti-submarine capabilities.

Wisconsin-based shipbuilding firm Marinette Marine Corporation, whose parent company is based in Italy, was awarded a $5.5 billion initial contract for the design and construction of the first 10 frigates by 2035. The frigate's design is based off of an Italy's Fregata Europea Multi-Missione frigate.

"The Navy's Guided-Missile Frigate ... will be an important part of our future fleet," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said in April, adding that it was "the evolution of the Navy's Small Surface Combatant with increased lethality, survivability, and improved capability to support the National Defense Strategy across the full range of military operations.

"It will no doubt help us conduct distributed maritime operations more effectively, and improve our ability to fight both in contested blue-water and littoral environments," Gilday added.

When you buy through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners. Learn more.

 

On This Page

The market for 65-inch TVs in the under $1,000 price range has changed dramatically over the last five years. Impressive bang-for-your buck display models from companies like Vizio and TCL have been game-changers in this space, packing advanced features into surprisingly affordable packages. 

A third manufacturer, Hisense, has also been making strides in the value-priced TV arena, but its displays have typically fallen short of similarly priced models from Vizio and TCL. Starting with its 2019 lineup, however, the company began to step up its game in color and contrast, thanks in large part to the addition of full-array local dimming and quantum dots to more models in its lineup.

This improved quality now continues with Hisense's brand-new 2020 Quantum Series. The collection is led by the flagship H9G, but it's the slightly less advanced H8G that might offer the best overall value. In fact, the H8G is the first Hisense TV I've reviewed that I can wholeheartedly recommend as a comparable or, in some cases, even superior alternative to similarly priced models from Vizio and TCL.     

Design

The H8G isn't exactly a standout when it comes to style, but considering its budget-friendly pricing, the display offers a decent enough design. 

At 3.1 inches deep, the panel is a little thicker than some similar offerings. Metal left and right feet stands are also included and must be screwed into the bottom of the panel after unpacking. The top and sides of the panel feature a virtually bezel-less frame, while a thicker border rests at the bottom of the screen. With that said, the image itself does not reach the edges of the panel when the TV is turned on. Instead, a thin black border is visible around the image.

Most of the display's inputs are located on the back left side of the panel, including three side-facing HDMI (one audio return channel, or ARC). A fourth HDMI port is located in a rear-facing position to the right of the rest of the connections. Though many new 2020 TVs from other brands are starting to include HDMI 2.1 ports, the H8G sticks with older HDMI 2.0b ports. This shouldn't be a big issue for most people, but it does prevent the TV from supporting a few advanced features, like enhanced Audio Return Channel (eARC) and Variable Refresh Rate (VRR).

A black remote with rubber buttons and integrated Google Assistant voice control is also included. The remote is nothing special but it functions well, and it's an improvement over older Hisense remotes which had plastic navigation buttons that all sat flush with one another. This made it hard to feel your way around different buttons when watching movies in the dark. Thankfully, the new remote makes it easier to distinguish between different buttons. 

Specs

When you buy through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners. Learn more.

When Apple's iOS 14 update launches this fall, iPhone owners will finally be able to set their email app and web browser of choice as their default option — a change that Apple fans have wanted for years.

That means if you prefer a web browser other than Apple's Safari — like Google Chrome —or an email app besides Apple's Mail app, you'll be able to set those services as your default apps when you click a link or compose an email.

Although it's a welcome addition that will add convenience for iPhone users, many were left wondering why Apple is only offering the option to choose defaults for web browsers and email apps and not other popular categories like maps or music.

Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, recently answered that question when speaking with tech critic and YouTube personality Marques Brownlee. Apple is essentially taking a cautious approach to prevent developers from trying to work around Apple's rules and potentially mislead users, Federighi said during the interview with Brownlee.

"We know how platforms can sort of descend into chaos," Federighi said. "Particularly when apps that might not honestly even be browsers decide they're going to be a browser, and try to hook into being your browser because maybe they could redirect you to a different tracked ad experience when you click on something." 

But he also added that this is just where Apple "started," possibly hinting that Apple may expand the available choices in the future. Apple started with email and web browsers because those were two categories consumers wanted to customize the most, Federighi said.

Apple has criteria in place that apps will have to meet in order to be set as a default email service or web browser. Only general purpose web browsing apps, like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, for example, will be able to be chosen as default web browsing options. This should prevent developers behind other types of apps, like games, from building web browsing capabilities into their apps just so they can be set as defaults. 

"We are very careful about making sure that that experience, that we don't have people getting misled," Federighi said.

The change could also help appease app developers at a time when Apple and other large tech companies have been caught in the middle of antitrust concerns. Critics like Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have argued that Apple's position as being the operator of the iOS ecosystem and App Store gives its own services like Apple Music an unfair advantage against competitors. The European Commission also recently launched two antitrust probes into Apple over Apple Pay and its App Store policies.

Apple announced its new version of iOS as well as other critical updates for its most important products during its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday. The update will roll out to iPhones this fall. 

You can watch the full interview below. 

 

As the pandemic forces companies to tighten budgets and cut staff, the cloud industry appears to be thriving during the crisis, including within Google. 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced during April's quarterly earnings call that the company would "slow down the pace of hiring for the remainder of 2020, while maintaining momentum in a small number of strategic areas." One of those strategic areas: its cloud unit.

Google Cloud saw the largest employee increase in 2019, and is still hiring rapidly despite the slowdown across other product teams, the company says. 

"What we're doing in Cloud is being very deliberate about which targeted areas we need growth," Brigette McInnis-Day, Google Cloud's vice president of human resources, told Business Insider, adding that the unit is focused on its technology divisions, customer success, and emerging markets teams. 

In the eight months since McInnis-Day joined Google Cloud to help grow its team, she's found that there are a set of valuable interpersonal skills that help employees thrive. 

Now that Google's hiring process — which includes multiple interviews, often over several days — takes place entirely online, it can actually help those more subtle skills stand out. Talking with potential hires when both parties are at home "provides more confidence and comfort in themselves versus coming into a new environment," McInnis-Day said. 

"I think it's beneficial both for the candidate and for the interviewer because you see them in a more of a personal environment," she said, "So you get to see more of what the candidate shares with you."

McInnis-Day walked us through what Google is looking for in new hires, so if you want to impress a Google Cloud recruiter, here are the traits you should try to emphasize:

Facebook will start affixing labels to post from politicians violate its rules but it chooses to leave up because they are "newsworthy," in a major reversal of its prior policies.

On Friday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a bevy of new policies around elections, voter suppression, and hate speech, as the company faces increasing ire from civil rights groups and an unprecedented advertiser boycott that has grown to include Unilever, Verizon, Patagonia, and others.

Zuckerberg did not directly address the advertisers fleeing the social network, but asserted his company's work to tackle hate speech was more advanced than competitors, and announced new rules including banning ads that claim that specific groups, races, religions, gender identities, and others are a "threat to the physical safety, health, or survival of others."

Facebook will also prohibit ads that express "contempt, dismissal or disgust" for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, or suggest that they're "inferior."

Facebook has struggled in recent weeks with how to deal with controversial posts by President Donald Trump, including one that discussed "shooting" in relation to protestors and looting. Twitter determined that the post glorified violence and attached a warning label to it — but Facebook disagreed, saying that it wasn't rule-breaking and arguing against adding such labels.

Facebook's decision sparked internal fury at the company, with hundreds of employees taking part in a "walk-out" protest — the largest worker revolt in the company's history.

Zuckerberg is now changing course, writing in a Facebook post: "We will soon start labeling some of the content we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case. We'll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what's acceptable in our society — but we'll add a prompt to tell people that the content they're sharing may violate our policies."

Facebook will also add links to the "Voter Information Center" the company is building to all posts people make about voting, including ones from politicians. He said that "this isn't a judgement of whether the posts themselves are accurate," but it appears to be at least partially a response to Trump, who has shared false or inaccurate information about mail-in voting online.

Early signs suggest that the steps announced on Friday may not be enough to quell the growing advertiser boycott, however. Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, one of the civil rights groups leading the campaign, responded on Twitter: "A few minutes into the statement, Mark Zuckerberg has already said that he won't be fact-checking politicians' claims. Already, this is nowhere near enough."

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), standard email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

When you use HBO Max, it remembers where you left off in whatever TV shows and movies you've been watching. To pick up where you left off, you can select the show from the Continue Watching row on the Home page. 

This way you can continue watching without missing a beat, even if you return to a program on a different device than the one you started the program with. 

HBO Max keeps a show in the Continue Watching list for 30 days. If you don't finish it within that time, HBO assumes you aren't going to complete it and removes it from the list. 

You can manually clear your Continue Watching list too. Here's how to do it using any browser on a Mac or PC, or the mobile app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Apple Macbook Pro (From $1,299.00 at Apple)

Acer Chromebook 15 (From $179.99 at Walmart)

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Apple)

iPad (From $329.99 at Apple)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $699.99 at Walmart)

How to clear Continue Watching on HBO Max

The steps to clear shows or movies from your Continue Watching list are the same regardless of which device you're using, and when you clear a show or movie on one device it'll be removed on all your devices.

1. Click or tap your profile icon. On the mobile app, you can find it in the lower-right corner, while it's in the upper-right in a browser on your computer. 

2. Click "Continue Watching."

3. Click "Edit" on the right side of the screen.

4. Select "Remove" or the "X" to the right of the show or movie you want to clear.

Amazon's acquisition of the autonomous-vehicle startup Zoox may amplify the rivalry between the retail giant's CEO, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX.

"@JeffBezos is a copy [cat emoji] haha," Musk tweeted on Friday in response to a story about the deal.

Experts have predicted that Amazon will use Zoox's technology to eventually deliver packages in self-driving vehicles, but a blog post Amazon published on Friday, titled, "We're acquiring Zoox to help bring their vision of autonomous ride-hailing to reality," indicates the retail giant is also interested in launching a robotaxi service. Such a move would place Amazon in direct competition with Tesla, which is attempting to develop its own robotaxi service.

"We see Amazon (and other tech players) as clear competitors, not partners, vs. the likes of Tesla and GM," Morgan Stanley wrote in a note to clients published in May, after The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon was in discussions to buy Zoox.

Bezos and Musk are already rivals in the rocket industry, where Bezos' Blue Origin and Musk's SpaceX are developing rockets and spaceships to send people to space. To that end, they are competing for billions of dollars worth of NASA contracts to create lunar-landing systems for the agency's astronauts. SpaceX has achieved more visible milestones so far, such as successfully landing and reusing rocket boosters and, in May, becoming the first company to send people into space on a privately developed and operated space vehicle.

Even before Musk's Friday tweet, he and Bezos had criticized each other's business practices and ideas. Earlier this month, Musk said Amazon should be broken up after it initially declined to publish a book written by a coronavirus skeptic (the company later reversed that decision). And in 2019, Bezos took an apparent jab at Musk's goal to send people to Mars, saying, "Go live on the top of Mount Everest for a year first and see if you like it, because it's a garden paradise compared to Mars."

In interviews with Business Insider, Asad Hussain, a mobility analyst at PitchBook, and Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, were split on whether Amazon or Tesla would be more likely to roll out a robotaxi service first.

"Right now, when it comes to robotaxis, you look at Tesla and Uber as the two that in this swim lane are well ahead of the competition," Ives said.

"We're more optimistic on Amazon/Zoox's prospects than Tesla's prospects in terms of rolling out a robotaxi service," Hussain said.

Some experts have said Tesla vehicles don't have the necessary hardware to drive without human assistance, and the electric-car maker has missed multiple deadlines related to autonomy. But the company has continued to expand the capabilities of its partially automated Autopilot system beyond what other automakers offer.

The research firm Guidehouse Insights placed Zoox ahead of Tesla in its 2020 ranking of companies developing autonomous mobility services (the list was published before Amazon's interest in Zoox was first reported), and Ives said having access to Amazon's vast financial resources should accelerate Zoox's progress.

"When Musk talks about a technology, just given SpaceX and Tesla and everything he's achieved...it has a lot more credibility with investors then maybe some other companies," Ives said. "But there's only one other person," who matches Musk's reputation for delivering on research-and-development projects, "and that's Bezos."

Are you a current or former Tesla employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., on Signal at 646-768-4712, or via his encrypted email address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

As protests against police brutality and racism stretch into their fourth week across the US, the Trump administration is pressuring tech companies to take action against posts that encourage the toppling of statues, describing them as "criminal activity."

Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf sent letters to companies including Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Snapchat Friday. They claim that social media sites have enabled "burglary, arson, aggravated assault, rioting, looting, and defacing public property," according to copies of the letters obtained by Business Insider.

"It is up to you to decide how to handle content on your platforms. I hope you will do your
part in countering the misuse of your platforms to promote, incite, and coordinate criminal activity
that threatens the security of all Americans," Wolf wrote in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues across the US in the past month. The majority of them were monuments to Confederate soldiers, which protesters see as a glorification of slavery.

The DHS letters to tech companies don't mention any specific posts, but rather ask the platforms to "put an end" to posts that encourage the vandalism. The letters were first reported by The Washington Post.

A Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider it received the letter and intends to respond, but did not comment further.

Representatives for Apple, Google, Facebook, and Snapchat did not respond to requests for comment.

President Donald Trump has railed against protesters over the past month, and has repeatedly clashed with tech companies in the process.

After Trump tweeted about protests that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," Twitter applied a disclaimer to his tweet stating that it broke Twitter's rules against glorifying violence, igniting more fury from the president. Twitter applied a similar label to a more recent Trump tweet threatening "serious force" against DC protesters.

More recently, Trump tweeted that he wants to imprison protesters for 10 years as punishment for destroying monuments.

Amazon announced the acquisition of the self-driving startup Zoox on Friday, signaling its first big foray into the autonomous-vehicle space.

The deal is expected to be worth over $1 billion, according to The Information. Amazon declined to share the financial terms.

In a blog post announcing the deal, Amazon shared few details on how it planned to use Zoox's technology. Zoox's leadership team, including CEO Aicha Evans and Chief Technology Officer Jesse Levinson, will continue to run the company as a standalone business, Amazon said.

"Zoox is working to imagine, invent, and design a world-class autonomous ride-hailing experience," Jeff Wilke, Amazon's CEO of worldwide consumer, said in a statement. "Like Amazon, Zoox is passionate about innovation and about its customers, and we're excited to help the talented Zoox team to bring their vision to reality in the years ahead."

Analysts say the Zoox acquisition gives a good look into Amazon's thinking over a number of different areas, including its delivery expansion and future merger and acquisition strategy.

Here are five main takeaways from Amazon's Zoox acquisition:

It's a 'stepping stone' toward expanding Amazon's delivery network and capacity

Amazon's delivery network is likely the biggest beneficiary of this deal, according to Loup Ventures managing partner Andrew Murphy. It's no secret Amazon wants to automate more parts of its logistics operations, and Zoox's self-driving technology can help by ultimately eliminating the need for human drivers.

"Amazon has made it clear that they don't want to rely on third parties for delivery, and this is a logical progression of their efforts in the space," Murphy said. 

Anthony Chukumba, an analyst at Loop Capital, told Business Insider that the Zoox acquisition was a "stepping stone" toward eventually offering free same-day delivery to all Prime members. While the technology and regulatory issues remain for a wider deployment of self-driving delivery cars, he said Zoox's underlying technology would help Amazon significantly expand its delivery capacity and cost efficiency.

"Amazon needs more final mile delivery capacity," he said.

It can save billions of dollars for Amazon

In a note published on Friday, RW Baird analyst Colin Sebastian wrote that the $1 billion price tag was a bargain for Amazon, as Zoox's team could help save "many years of R&D" and "many billions of dollars" in logistics costs. 

Zoox's experience in advanced hardware engineering, electric-battery technology, and other automation software could help Amazon move two to three years ahead in the autonomous-vehicle space, Sebastian wrote. He also said the Amazon-Zoox combination could help serve as a "counterbalance" to the growing market share of Uber and Alphabet's Waymo.  

Morgan Stanley's Brian Nowak wrote in a note published last month that a Zoox acquisition could help save more than $20 billion per year in shipping costs, saying it is be a "natural extension" of Amazon's efforts to build its own third-party logistics network.

It's a sign of bigger deals to come

At over $1 billion, Zoox is the second-largest acquisition in Amazon's history, following the $13.7 billion deal for Whole Foods in 2017. 

But Tom Forte, an analyst at DA Davidson, said deals of this size could become the norm for Amazon going forward. Amazon is a much larger company today than it has ever been, with a market cap well over $1 trillion, and it only makes sense to do larger deals if it wants to the acquisition to make a meaningful impact on its business.

"It takes more to move the needle for the company than it ever has in the past," Forte said.

RW Baird's Sebastian wrote in his report that it was worth noting Amazon's strong track record with M&A. Amazon has historically allowed acquired companies to run independently, partnering only in areas that could help both ways. Twitch, Ring, Zappos, Kiva, and Whole Foods are all good examples of that approach, though some acquisitions, like the Chinese online retailer Joyo.com, were duds.

It shows Amazon's ambitions in the auto industry and other markets, like ride-hailing and food delivery

The Zoox acquisition reaffirms Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' growing interest in the general auto industry. Bezos previously told employees he was "very excited" about the auto industry because of all the innovation taking place, adding that it's a space he's willing to "participate in." The Zoox acquisition follows Amazon's investments in other auto-related startups in recent years, including the self-driving startup Aurora and the electric-vehicle maker Rivian.

Nowak at Morgan Stanley wrote in his report that in the long term, Zoox's acquisition could open the door for Amazon to get into the ride-hailing and food-delivery markets as well. For example, a discounted ride-hailing service for Prime members could be a meaningful driver of growth for Prime subscribers, he said. 

In fact, Amazon said in the blog post announcing the deal that it's acquiring Zoox "to help bring their vision of autonomous ride-hailing to reality."

It helps improve Amazon's energy efficiency and leadership diversity

Though the Zoox acquisition is mainly directed at improving Amazon's delivery capacity, it could have side benefits of improving the company's energy efficiency and leadership diversity, according to Loop Capital's Chukumba.

Part of Zoox's vision is to build zero-emission vehicles, which is in line with Amazon's commitment to be carbon-neutral by 2040. On Thursday, Amazon also announced it was renaming Seattle's KeyArena to the Climate Pledge Arena, inspired by the Climate Pledge initiative it cofounded last year.

On top of that, the fact that Zoox CEO Evans is a Black woman can help add much-needed diversity to Amazon, which is known for having very few women or people of color in its upper ranks. 

At a town hall last week, an employee of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative demanded that Mark Zuckerberg resign, either as its leader or as CEO of Facebook, if he didn't get tougher on moderating hate speech on the social network, Recode reported Friday.

"I mean, no. None of those things would make sense," Zuckerberg replied, according to Recode, adding: "Quite frankly, the idea that we would resign from CZI is ridiculous."

CZI, a philanthropy led and funded by Priscilla Chan and her husband Zuckerberg, is legally separate from Facebook. However, according to Recode, Zuckerberg told employees to "make whatever decisions you think are right" with regards to working somewhere where they disagree with leadership's decisions.

The CZI employee's ultimatum came following controversial social media posts by President Donald Trump earlier this month in response to protests over George Floyd's death in the hands of police custody, which Twitter had taken action against while Facebook refused to, causing a revolt among its employees.

"Our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies," Zuckerberg told Facebook employees at the time in his defense of the company's inaction.

At CZI's town hall last week, Recode reported that the employee told Zuckerberg: "It only reflects reality to say that our leader's idea of free speech values calls to murder people for demonstrating over the political speech of the demonstrators themselves."

CZI's affiliation with Facebook — through Zuckerberg — has caused problems for its work and employees there who feel Facebook's reputation is undermining its mission.

According to Recode, CZI pulled the plug on a voter data project and Color of Change, a racial justice organization, turned down CZI money due to Facebook's reputation. In 2018, New York Magazine's the Intelligencer reported that students and parents in Brooklyn protested the group's education initiative over concerns about Facebook's track record on data privacy.

Zuckerberg has also been under pressure from his employees to do more to directly address systemic racism. More than 70 CZI employees signed a letter last week demanding major changes at the organization, and at least one Facebook employee resigned over the company's stance on Trump's posts.

The chorus of critics outside Facebook is also growing. Civil rights groups including the NAACP and Anti-Defamation League called last week for advertisers to boycott the platforms, and several major brands including Unilever, Verizon, Ben & Jerry's, The North Face, Patagonia, REI, and Eddie Bauer have already said they will temporarily pull ads from the platform.

CZI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took a jab at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Twitter Friday, just a day after the Financial Times reported the Seattle tech giant acquired the self-driving-taxi company Zoox for $1.2 billion.

In the tweet, Musk called Bezos a copycat but used a yellow cat icon instead of the word "cat."

Amazon declined Business Insider's request for comment.

The tweet comes as Amazon's acquisition puts the company at a more leveled playing field with Tesla in the self-driving arena.

Business Insider's Mark Matousek reported in May that Amazon was interested in Zoox to help round out its package-delivery process

Zoox's vehicles are designed for ride-hailing, unlike Tesla's, which are designed to go directly to customers.

Tesla and Zoox have traded jabs before. Musk said in 2019 that by mid-2020, his company's self-driving cars would be fully operational without human interaction, meaning drivers wouldn't have to look at the road while driving. At Business Insider's 2019 IGNITION conference, Zoox cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Jesse Levinson said there was no chance of that happening.

"They don't have enough sensors or computers to do that given any remotely known technology that exists that humans have ever created," Levinson said at the conference, adding "they're great cars" and that the Tesla Autopilot system "on the freeway is, I think, the best out there ... I think if he focused on that aspect it would be better received."

Tesla's Autopilot feature, even in its "full self-driving" options, is not yet fully autonomous and still requires human interaction. 

Zoox was recently valued at $3.2 billion. Like other autonomous-vehicle companies, Zoox has taken a hit from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and laid off 120 employees in April. The company has struggled to raise capital recently, according to Axios, and this deal could help it stay afloat.

AI startup 7bridges has raised $3.4 million in seed funding after being backed by major VCs such as LocalGlobe and Crane Venture Partners. 

The London-based firm has designed an LEO ("Logistics Engine Optimization") platform suitable for all kinds of businesses, from retail through to manufacturing and healthcare. 

Artificial intelligence is playing an ever-increasing role in businesses' operations, with analysts at Infoholic Research suggesting the AI logistics market will be worth $6.5 billion by 2023. 

7bridges says its platform "transforms outdated, rules-based logistics processes ... into agile and automated systems that continuously adapt to change". 

Philip Ashton, co-founder and CEO of 7bridges, said: "Customer expectations of deliveries have fundamentally shifted over the past few years, in terms of both speed and sustainability.

"While this dramatically increases the costs and complexity of the logistics category, it has created an opportunity to gain an enormous competitive advantage."

Scott Sage, partner at Crane Venture Partners, added: "Like many other industries, from banking to construction, supply chains are becoming rapidly digitised across the economy. This creates an incredibly important opportunity for disruption.

"We're always on the lookout for passionate founders who have experienced the problem they're working to fix, and are proud to be working alongside the 7bridges team - there's no substitute for their level of expertise."

George Henry, partner at LocalGlobe, said: "COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of logistics resilience, for large businesses and SMBs alike. 7bridges is offering a unique AI-powered solution for building scalable, adaptive logistics systems - so that organisations can continue to fulfil their customers' orders whatever the future holds.

"We're excited to be part of the 7bridges journey, as the team leads the way in logistics evolution."

European seed investor Connect Ventures has raised $80 million for its third fund to invest in early-stage tech startups across the continent.

The venture capital firm is perhaps best known for its early investment into Citymapper, the London-headquartered transport app that helps people calculate journeys by public transit, taxi, bike, and other methods of transport.

Connect's fundraise news comes after peer early-stage investors in Europe including Hoxton Ventures and Fly Ventures also closed new funds, suggesting capital remains available to growing tech startups even as a pandemic-induced recession bites.

Sitar Teli, a partner at Connect Ventures, said the firm has historically invested on product-oriented companies. That will continue into the third fund, which will zoom in on digital health, consumer, enterprise software, and fintech.

Asked how the pandemic was influencing the firm's thinking, she said: "It's definitely accelerating trends. Part of the job of a VC is to try and predict what technology does to society. We have this thesis of what will happen, and part of it is timing, like you'll think something will happen in the next few years ... What we've seen with COVID-19 is that some of those times are really being brought forward. So instead of something happening in five years, it's happening in a year."

One example, perhaps, is Connect's investment in Fiit, which provides virtual fitness classes through an app.

"They grew 100% in April," said Teli. "We're going to get to see whether these were permanent shifts in behavior, or whether they were temporary shifts and people actually want to go back to the gym."

Not everything is influenced by COVID-19. Connect has made two investments so far out of its new fund since lockdown, and neither are correlated to the coronavirus. "We're pretty much on pace, and it hasn't really slowed us down or sped us up," Teli said.

She added that Connect is pretty select about where it allocates its funding, with partners only doing two to three deals per year. "The core strategy is ... build the portfolio of 25 to 30 companies where we think those founders have a real shot at building a really compelling product-centric business starting in Europe."

Backers of Connect's new fund include Top Tier Capital Partners, Isomer Capital, and British Patient Capital. The latter is managed by the state-funded British Business Bank, which has stepped in to provide funding to UK venture capitalists after the EU's European Investment Fund cooled off following the UK voted to leave the union in 2016.

Connect Ventures has experienced some change in 2020 as one of its managing partners, Bill Earner, left in January and transitioned into a venture partner role. Teli says the fund changed its approach, and Earner felt it no longer made sense to stick around. His startup board seats will transfer to other partners at Connect Ventures.

AI startup 7bridges has raised $3.4 million in seed funding after being backed by venture capital investors such as LocalGlobe and Crane Venture Partners. 

The London-based firm has designed an LEO ("Logistics Engine Optimization") platform suitable for all kinds of businesses, from retail through to manufacturing and health tech. 

Artificial intelligence is playing an ever-increasing role in businesses' operations, with analysts at Infoholic Research suggesting the AI logistics market will be worth $6.5 billion by 2023. 

Check out their pitch deck below: 

NOW WATCH: