On Friday, presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren laid out a plan to break up tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Google by forcing them to divest some of their biggest acquisitions.

Warren cited Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp and Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods as anti-competitive mergers she would "unwind."

It's a bold plan, but experts tell us it's unlikely to happen given the history of antitrust cases and how difficult it would be to carry out.

Read more:Elizabeth Warren says she wants to break up big tech companies, including Amazon, Google, and Facebook

To establish precedent, Warren wrote that "America has a long tradition of breaking up companies when they have become too big and dominant." But for NYU Law Professor and antitrust expert, Harry First, that interpretation is questionable.

"To say there's a long tradition of this would be charitable," First said. "There have been some major breakups based on violations of antitrust laws. You have American Tobacco, you have Standard Oil, you have AT&T, but over time, not so many because it's so hard to do."

Michael Pachter, Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities, says the difficulty would likely be political — getting both Democrats and Republicans to agree on the necessary policy changes needed to carry out Warren's proposal.

"If Congress changes the antitrust laws, perhaps it could [happen], but that is a remote possibility and unlikely to be a high priority for either the House or Senate," Pachter said. "[It's] about as likely as is Mexico paying for Trump's wall."

Scott Berg, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Needham & Company, doesn't see the feasibility in breaking up major tech companies because of the interconnectedness of their products.

"A lot of the value that Google has seen in the Maps platform, for instance, comes from all the data that they have from Search," Berg said. "So if you try to segregate some of those business units, you're actually going to remove a lot of the value there that you're giving to consumers."

In the past, Berg said, breaking up a telecoms or oil giants would have been easier because their product offerings weren't as integrated as they are today. Instead, businesses could be broken up simply by region, he said.

For Berg, needing to break up a company would also imply it had a monopoly over a certain industry to begin with and to him, that isn't the case with the example companies Warren provided.

"Take Amazon Web Services platform. AWS has done great, but Microsoft and Google are making big strides there as well." Berg said. "On the Google side, yes they've done a lot with search, but outside of search, which of their products is super dominant out there in terms of being about to have a monopoly?"

Regarding how he imagines investors will react to increasing talk of breaking up the tech industry, Berg doesn't think there should be too much cause for concern.

"It's headline news and in that particular day, maybe it has the chance to move the stock a percent or two, but over a longer term duration, I think the impact is minimal," he said.

On Friday, major tech stocks were relatively flat.

For University of Michigan Law professor Daniel Crane, the problem with Warren's plan to break up big tech can be summed up with her botched interpretation of Microsoft's antitrust suit in her statement on Friday.

"What's the punch line of Microsoft case? Let's not break up Microsoft," Crane said. "When you look at what [Warren] wants to do — which is two things, break up [tech companies] and transform them into public utilities — that's exactly the opposite of the concept of [the] Microsoft [case]. Microsoft is, 'Let's restore competition by eliminating the practices that Microsoft engaged in that were exploiting innovation.'"

In his 3,200-word blog post on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg illustrated a point about privacy using the example of a jailed Facebook executive.

Writing about the importance of end-to-end encryption — which means only the sender and receiver of a message can view its content — Zuckerberg said the privacy it offers is vital to dissidents in countries with a history of seizing citizens' data.

"Governments often make unlawful demands for data, and while we push back and fight these requests in court, there's always a risk we'll lose a case — and if the information isn't encrypted we'd either have to turn over the data or risk our employees being arrested if we failed to comply," he wrote.

Zuckerberg illustrated his point with a real-life case. "We've had a case where one of our employees was actually jailed for not providing access to someone's private information even though we couldn't access it since it was encrypted," he said.

Read more: Facebook says it will move to encrypted, auto-deleting messages — and warns that some countries might decide to ban it

In an interview with Wired, the Facebook CEO added it was a moment the "really shifted" his views. He said: "It shows if you put a data center in a place, or you store people's information in a country, then you're giving that government the ability to use force to get that data."

Diego Dzodan, former Facebook VP for Latin America. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker

In March 2016, Facebook's then-VP for Latin America Diego Dzodan was jailed for 24 hours in Brazil for not handing over encrypted WhatsApp messages pertaining to a drug trafficking investigation, even though the encryption meant he was physically unable to do so.

"The way that information is encrypted from one cell phone to another, there is no information stored that could be handed over to authorities," Dzodan said.

Dzodan's arrest was overturned by a judge the next day, who said the decision to arrest him was "unlawful coercion."

Dzodan left Facebook in September 2018 to found his own startup connecting beauty professionals with consumers.

British startup Hadean claims to have created a new simulation engine that would allow thousands of gamers to participate in a battle royale-style fight simultaneously.

Hadean will put its Aether Engine to the test on 9 March, and has partnered with Eve Online maker CCP Games to host a massive space fight involving 10,000 players.

The company has posted a demo of a 10,000-person dogfight on YouTube, though some of the footage is rendered:

CCP Games currently holds the record for the largest number of players in a single battle, at 6,142 players through EVE Online.

Underlying Aether Engine is Hadean's core product, a cloud operating system called HadeanOS. Aether Engine isn't a game engine to rival Unity or Unreal, but plugs into these third-party engines and handles the simulation side of games. Game engines handle the graphics side, among other functions.

Read more: High-flying gaming startups Unity and Improbable have ended their feud peacefully after a very public battle that involved the creator of 'Fortnite'

Some of this may sound familiar given rival UK startup Improbable offers SpatialOS, another platform for running huge simulated worlds. Improbable is backed by SoftBank, has partnered with Chinese gaming giant NetEase, and has at least one deal with the US military. But the startup ran into some trouble in January after gaming engine provider Unity complained that SpatialOS violated its terms of service.

While Aether Engine could make sense for game studios looking to create seamless, massively multiplayer online games, Hadean believes its software will eventually have much bigger applications than gaming. It's worth noting that the startup is at an early stage and, according to LinkedIn, currently has fewer than 30 employees.

Hadean says its software is good not just for simulations, but for building applications that might require processing huge amounts of data. It says Aether Engine is used for handling simulation, and that it's compatible with Unity and any other gaming engine, which render the graphics.

The startup has just raised £7 million ($9.1 million) in a fresh round of funding led by Draper Esprit, with Aster, London Venture Partners, Luminous Ventures, and Entrepreneur First all participating.

And it is already working with biomedical research centre the Francis Crick Institute to simulate cancer cells undergoing metastasis. The idea is to understand how cancer cells migrate to different parts of the body.

"Technology companies today are hampered by their ability to scale their platforms to meet demand and exploit data," said Hadean CEO Craig Beddis in a statement. "Our technology, which was derived from first principles, eliminates the significant manpower and time wasted on engineering and DevOps. I am excited to have an investor of the calibre of Draper Esprit on board, with its proven track record in deep tech investment leading this round."

Tesla unveiled a next-generation Supercharger that it says will recharge its vehicles faster than ever.

The new V3 unit can charge at a maximum rate of 250kW, according to a press release posted on Tesla's website Wednesday night.

The V3 charger was designed with the Tesla Model 3 sedan in mind. Its newer battery composition can accommodate the newer charger right away, while Model S and Model X vehicles will remain limited to 120kW charging for the time being, The Verge reported. A planned software update will raise that cap to 145kW, Tesla said.

According to Tesla, the new V3 chargers can add up to 75 miles of range to a Model 3 Long Range sedan in just five minutes.

"Combined with other improvements we're announcing today, V3 Supercharging will ultimately cut the amount of time customers spend charging by an average of 50%, as modeled on our fleet data," Tesla said in its statement Wednesday night.

Read more: 2019 was supposed to be easy for Tesla, but now it's a circus

The electric-car company has been keenly focused on developing its charging infrastructure — an effort that's been kicked into high gear since the Model 3 sedan, its first mass-market vehicle, went on sale.

Echoing its previous remarks on the matter, the company said "charging needs to be even faster, and the number of vehicles able to charge at a location in a day needs to be significantly higher."

To that end, Tesla says its new V3 chargers will also be able to charge vehicles at optimal rates, even at Supercharger stations where multiple vehicles are charging at once.

"With thousands of new Superchargers coming online in 2019, the launch of V3, and other changes we're making to improve throughput, the Supercharger network will be able to serve more than 2x more vehicles per day at the end of 2019 compared with today," Tesla said.

Tax season is upon us with some people getting a break from the Republicans' new tax reforms, others paying more and corporations paying at a much lower base rate.

Former President Barack Obama says he knows how painful a big tax bill can be. But he's also learned to have appreciation for what his taxes do thanks to a career in politics and eight years as President No. 44. Lately he's been talking to companies trying to get them to understand this point of view on taxes. So he told a crowd of 11,000 people speaking at the Qualtrics tech conference in Salt Lake City, Utah on Wednesday.

Read: Obama warns that if the world isn't careful, democracy could be in danger: 'Democracy is a garden that has to be tended'

"I always used to laugh when people would say about my tax policies, oh, he just wants to tax you to death. First of all, I'm the guy who pays the max tax," Obama told the crowd.

That's because, since the early 1970's, presidents and presidential hopefuls have routinely released their tax returns for public scrutiny. (Donald Trump is an exception. He has not shared his tax returns.)

"Everybody's looking at my taxes so I could never take a deduction. I couldn't exercise any loopholes. Whatever the maximum rate is, I'm paying," he said.

Barack Obama (left) with Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith Qualtrics Now that he's a private citizen again, he doesn't share his tax returns. But in 2015, the last year he released them, he paid over $81,000 in taxes on nearly 448,000 in income.

"I don't enjoy writing big checks to the Treasury Department any more than you do. But I have been so blessed by this country," he said.

"For me to be able to pay my fair share of sustaining this amazing nation so kids coming up behind me are going to have the same opportunities that I do, is something that I insist upon," he said.

He said his attitude toward paying taxes can be summed up from a quote by Olive Wendell Holmes, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the early 1900's, who said, "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

Read: Bill Gates says he's paid $10 billion in taxes and he thinks rich people like himself should pay more

While everyone wants great government services, no one wants to pay for it, he lamented and this attitude has real-world impacts.

"Teachers are so grossly underpaid in this country," he said. "If you live in San Francisco on a teacher's salary, you literally have no place to live. And part of that is we don't want to pay enough taxes to make sure those teachers can support their families."

He'd particularly like to see businesses change their point of view. Thanks to the wide variety of tax breaks in the tax code, some of the richest corporations in the land pay the lowest effective tax rates. Amazon, for instance, is said to have paid little to no federal taxes for years.

Companies used to feel that being good to their communities was good for their business because everyone lived in the areas where they worked. But companies are global today and are under pressure from shareholders to exploit every loophole and to offshore their cash, Obama said.

"This is something we have to have a public conversation on," he said because everyone depends on taxes to pay for schools, mend our interstate roads and so on. And "I love to pay high taxes," said no one, ever, not even Obama when he pays his.

Former US President Barack Obama considers himself a diehard optimist but he couldn't help but vent some frustrations over the current political climate when he spoke to a crowd of 11,000 on Wednesday at a tech conference put on by Qualtrics, a software company in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Obama never mentioned the Trump Administration by name but he occasionally expressed his disapproval through quips and jokes.

"I like the rule of law, democracy, competency and facts. Those things aren't partisan but they also don't happen automatically," Obama warned in a rare moment of seriousness. "Democracy is a garden that has to be tended."

When asked by his interviewer, Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith, about leadership during difficult times, Obama threw another gentle jab: "I'm old fashioned and believe in values like facts and reason and logic," which got a big cheer from the crowd.

He said there are several keys to good leadership and, doubling down on his theme of competency, he said one of the big ones was hiring.

When running a large and complicated organization, leaders need to surround themselves with people who are more knowledgeable than themselves, he said.

On top of that, good leaders then have to actually listen to those experts. "Have confidence that you can understand what they are saying and if not, you'll keep on asking questions until you do," he said.

Sometimes the people who rise to become the big boss "start feeling, 'I have every answer.' When in fact, most of the time you have not," he warned.

Barack Obama (left) with Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith Qualtrics He told the story of what it was like for him during the Deep Water Horizon oil spill crises in the spring of 2010.

An oil drilling rig owned by British Petroleum and built by Halliburton exploded in such a way, and in such deep water, that engineers from those companies could not easily fix it. Oil flowed for 87 days, dumping massive amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama described it on Wednesday as "the largest environmental crisis to happen in our lifetimes, in terms of an oil spill."

"Fortunately I had recruited as my Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who was a Nobel Prize winning physicist," he said.

As the weeks went by, his daughters started asking him about it, concerned about the people and wildlife being harmed. They asked him, "Daddy when are you going to shut down the hole?" he said and then laughed. "Now I"m feeling bad because my daughters think I'm not handling this well."

About three weeks into the crises Chu came in with a sketch on a napkin. "It looked like a little hat. There were some numbers next to it." They sent it off to BP who fleshed out the idea and it worked. The engineers capped the oil spill with a literal cap.

"My role as the leader in the organization was not to come up with the little hat because I wouldn't have thought of that. I would have thought, 'that doesn't look complicated enough to stop this hole in the ground,'" he joked.

"My job was to have Steven Chu there, who has a Nobel Prize in physics and that's who should be in charge of the Department of Energy."

The audience gave Obama another big round of applause in response. (The current Secretary of Energy is former Texas governor Rick Perry.)

The upside for Obama as a leader who hired such experts is that it "gave me a lot of confidence. I had confidence in the talent I had around me."

He said it's not just about someone's resume either. Motivations also play a role.

"I was good at making sure the people working with me were there for the right reasons, that there was a core integrity to what they were doing," he said. He wanted people who believed in the mission of using government to support citizens and solve problems.

Everyone from his volunteers to staff members to campaign donors were clear on that, he said. "This is not about us, you or me, it's not about you getting an appointment or a contract or a position, it's about the mission," he said. "So by the time we got to the White House, we had weeded out the mercenaries."

That set up the culture and "it also means you don't have big scandals and indictments. That's a bonus," he joked to another round of applause. Although it was only a passing reference, he was clearing referring to the growing list of people involved in Donald Trump's presidential campaign to be indicted, charged or to have pleaded guilty of crimes.

There's Michael Dell, Adolph Coors, and Tim Apple.

Well, almost.

President Donald Trump seems to have gotten a bit confused about the name of Apple's CEO on Wednesday.

During a meeting with the Apple CEO and other members of his American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, Trump referred to Tim Cook as "Tim Apple" while praising him for investing in the US.

"We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple," Trump said.

You can watch the gaffe in the video clip embedded in this tweet:

Here's a longer version of Trump's remarks (emphasis added):

"We're going to open up the labor forces because we have to. We have so many companies coming in people like Tim, you're expanding all over and doing things that I really wanted you to right from the beginning.

"I used to say, 'Tim you've got to start doing it over here.' And you really have.

"I mean you've really put a big investment in our country, we appreciate it very much, Tim Apple. But we're opening it up. We have to bring people in. We want them to be people based on merit. And we want them to come in legally."

It's possible that the apparent gaffe could actually be a case of awkward phrasing. Under this interpretation, Trump may have intended the words "Tim" and "Apple" to be separated by a comma, such that his comments were meant to express gratitude to both Tim Cook and Apple, in sequence.

Still, this wouldn't be the first time Trump has gotten confused about an executive's name. Last March, he flubbed the name of Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson, referring to her as "Marillyn Lockheed."

Read more: Trump flubbed the name of Lockheed Martin's CEO, calling her 'Marillyn Lockheed'

And of course, Trump is a longtime enthusiast of turning people's names into taunts, as he did in a January tweet referring to Amazon's Jeff Bezos as "Jeff Bozo."

Cook used his time at the meeting to tout the importance of learning how to code software and Apple's efforts to help train students and other people on how to do that.

"We believe strongly that it should be a requirement in the United States for every kid to have coding before they graduate from K-12 and become somewhat proficient at it," Cook said.

Cook has had a mixed relationship with the White House, participating in other meetings with Trump but also criticizing the president's immigration policies.

At age 87, Japanese architect Arata Isozaki has left an indelible imprint on the world's cities.

His recognizable designs include a 700-foot skyscraper in Milan, a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, and an Olympic sports venue in Barcelona. The buildings span continents, genres, and time periods.

Now, that work has earned Isozaki the highest honor in his field: the 2019 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Isozaki was awarded the prize on March 5 for buildings that, in the words of the jury, "are constantly evolving, and always fresh in their approach."

Read more: 30 architectural masterpieces everyone should see in their lifetime

Take a look at some of the most remarkable structures from his decades-long career.

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests autonomous driving systems may have more difficulty detecting pedestrians with dark skin than those with light skin.

The researchers responsible for the study had eight image-detection systems analyze images of pedestrians. The people in the photos were separated into two groups based on how their skin tones aligned with the Fitzpatrick skin type scale, which divides skin tones into six categories. One group consisted of pedestrians who fell into one of the three lightest categories on the Fitzpatrick scale, while the other group consisted of pedestrians who fell into one of the three darkest categories on the Fitzpatrick scale.

Read more: How dummy pedestrians help test car safety systems

The image-detection systems then attempted to identify all of the pedestrians in the images, and the researchers compared the systems' abilities to detect light-skinned pedestrians versus dark-skinned pedestrians. On average, the image-detection systems were 5% less accurate at detecting dark-skinned pedestrians, even when the researchers controlled for variables that may have been able to explain the disparity, like pedestrians who were partially blocked from view or the time of day the photo was taken.

The researchers suggested that the differences in pedestrian-detection accuracy could result from not having enough dark-skinned pedestrians in the images used to train the systems, as well as the systems' insufficient emphasis on learning from the smaller population of dark-skinned pedestrians.

While Vox notes that the study has not been peer-reviewed and did not use the same image-detection systems or image sets featured in current self-driving vehicles, the study suggests that companies developing autonomous-driving technology should be attentive to the methods they use to train vehicles to identify pedestrians.

On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg published a long Facebook post explaining his intentions to make the social network more "privacy-focused."

To do so, Zuckerberg said Facebook would begin by making messages encrypted by default, and automatically deleting them after a period of time. No definite timeline was provided, as the chief exec said these changes would come "over the next few years."

The announcement is a major change in direction for a company that's mission statement as recently as 2017 was to "make the world more open and connected." And given Facebook's history of security and privacy blunders — including, but not limited to, the Cambridge Analytica scandal — many people expressed their skepticism.

Here are some of the top reactions to Facebook's proposed new focus on privacy:

There was some praise for Zuckerberg's statement on Tuesday.

But given the company's history of security issues, Zuckerberg's comments were met with plenty of skepticism.

Some pointed to the difficulties that encryption introduces.

Others wondered how a more private social network would be feasible from a business perspective, given Facebook's revenues depend almost entirely on ads displayed in the News Feed.

Many were left to question the timing of it all.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (209) 730-3387 using a non-work phone, email atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Telegram at nickbastone, or Twitter DM at@nickbastone.

Mark Zuckerberg just announced in a blog post that Facebook would shift its focus from public posts to private, ephemeral communication on its messaging apps.

The 3,200-word post mainly talks about protecting people's privacy when they use Facebook properties, after the company has come under fire for permitting the misuse of users' data. But it also has potential big implications for its lifeblood, advertising, and the marketers that use the social network to reach its 2 billion users.

Read more: Instagram is already running out of room for ads, and that's a threat to Facebook as it looks for new avenues to keep revenue growing

The move could have an "enormous" impact on Facebook's advertising business, said Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer. "Facebook so far has not gained much traction with advertising in Messenger, and advertising in WhatsApp still hasn't emerged. That creates huge unknowns about how Facebook will generate significant ad revenue while users are engaged in private communications."

Facebook's evolving to keep up with how people are using its products

Of particular note to marketers was Zuckerberg saying in the post that "We plan to build this the way we've developed WhatsApp: focus on the most fundamental and private use case — messaging — make it as secure as possible, and then build more ways for people to interact on top of that, including calls, video chats, groups, stories, businesses, payments, commerce, and ultimately a platform for many other kinds of private services."

Facebook's message shows that it's evolving to keep up with how people are using its products, shifting from the public feed to one-to-one communications, said Nick Cicero, VP of strategy for Conviva, an online video analytics company. He added that marketers should be thinking about how they can tailor their communications strategies accordingly.

"Right now, marketers can get up messenger bots, and what they should start doing today is think of the touchpoints of personalization that can occur after someone consumes some content on Instagram," he said.

Cicero said that questions for marketers to ask are: "How can we interact with customers in a more one-to-one or small-group way? How can they make it inspire more conversation instead of just consumption? How do we create content that sparks a dialogue?"

Facebook watchers see opportunity in Stories ads and chat bots

Two ways marketers have dipped a toe into messaging apps are with utility-based messaging bots and Stories, Facebook's two-year-old ad format that runs across its properties and which Facebook has been pushing hard as its news feed reaches its saturation point with ads.

"Stories ads have just started to blossom and you'll see more shift to that format. That's going to mean strategies will have to evolve," Cicero said.

Anita Walsh, VP, social strategy & marketplace buying at Horizon Media, said this is a good time for marketers to double down on Stories and messenger bots, which some brands have mastered for utility-based transactions like doing returns and making reservations.

"If people are moving to and get more used to using bots, it creates a way to move past utility and more into informational ones," she said. "It's not right for every brand; it costs to create and maintain a bot."

Walsh also took talk about making commerce and payments part of messenger apps as another positive for advertisers. It means that Facebook is trying to figure out how to make those apps stickier with, and trusted by, users, which in turn will make those apps good places for advertisers to reach potential customers.

The shift in focus could also create more data

As for whether advertisers should worry about the future of data targeting on Facebook, Facebook watchers weren't concerned. The social network is still spending heavily on features like its Watch video section to keep people using its public social feed, and that usage throws off a lot of user consumption data that advertisers depend on, Walsh said.

"Facebook is investing heavily in content partnerships so that level of consumption seems to be also on the roadmap and that will help with any concerns about rich targeting," she said.

In another possible plus for advertisers, Facebook's move towards encryption could open up new data opportunities for marketers in SMS data, said Rosenblatt Securities analyst Mark Zgutowicz. In theory, Facebook wants its messenger apps to integrate with SMS data from phone messages.

"The benefit of connecting all these messaging devices is more data linkage across devices," Zgutowicz said. "If you're able to connect WhatsApp as well as Messenger communication with somebody who's communicating with them on Instagram, you can potentially link what those two individuals have in common. As you connect more messaging together, you're theoretically creating a bigger data graph with information that you can then sell to advertisers."

To be sure, there are still plenty of unanswered questions raised by the post, which makes the advertising implications hard to evaluate.

The Media Kitchen CEO Barry Lowenthal wondered if Facebook would still collect data on people while they're using messaging apps and if that could be used for advertising purposes.

And as Facebook makes its messenger apps more utility-based, will it open up ways for it to make money from transactions, making advertising less important to its business?

In any case, it's clear Facebook had to make big changes to its business.

"They realize Facebook can't keep going down the same path with fake news and trust. Unless they're willing to blow up the business model to solve for that, they'll go away," Lowenthal said.

Lauren Johnson contributed to this story.

Mark Zuckerberg's vow to overhaul Facebook with new privacy rules is likely to spell the end of its years-long campaign to enter China.

Facebook's CEO said in a blog post on Wednesday that the social network will not build data centers in countries that have a record of violating privacy and freedom of expression.

That moral stance would likely make it impossible for Facebook to offer its service in China, where recent data localization laws require that internet service providers keep all personal data produced by its citizens — from emails to selfies — on computers within the country's borders.

"As we build our infrastructure around the world, we've chosen not to build data centers in countries that have a track record of violating human rights like privacy or freedom of expression," Zuckerberg wrote. Facebook decided not to build data centers in those countries because it can make it easier for governments to access people's sensitive data, he said.

To many observers, the implication was obvious.

"In other news, Zuck has clearly given up on entering China, as these changes makes that impossible. Good," Alex Stamos, adjunct professor at Stanford and Facebook's former chief security officer, tweeted after Zuckerberg published his comments.

A senior source inside Facebook told Buzzfeed News on Wednesday that the company "does not see a path forward in China" and has given up efforts to enter the world's largest internet market by users.

Read more:China has withdrawn approval for Facebook's new venture in the country, where it remains banned

Facebook's service is currently blocked in China, but the company has long said that entering the market is crucial to its mission of connecting the world. As Facebook's growth slows, China's 800 million internet users represent an attractive untapped market for Facebook, which generates almost all of its revenue by showing ads to users.

Facebook had previously confirmed that it had at least four data sharing partnerships with Chinese companies, including smartphone company Huawei, which is under scrutiny from the U.S. government. Facebook had said it would end those partnerships.

Facebook would almost certainly have run into compliance issues if it built a data center in China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, talks with Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg Ted S. Warren-Pool/Getty Images For example, data that's collected in China must be stored in that country, and companies must comply with strict rules like undergoing a security assessment if they want to send or move the data outside of China. China also requires companies to assist authorities when they conduct security investigations.

Apple already has a data center in China to host the local version of its iCloud online services. It complies with Chinese regulations and is operated by a Chinese company, raising concerns among privacy advocates that the Chinese government will be able to more easily access this data.

Facebook may see its stance on China as an opportunity to claim a moral high ground in an escalating war of words with tech rival Apple over consumer privacy.

"People want to know their data is stored securely in places they trust," Zuckerberg wrote. "Looking at the future of the internet and privacy, I believe one of the most important decisions we'll make is where we'll build data centers and store people's sensitive data."

That said, Facebook has already built a data center in Singapore— the company's first in Asia. Compared to China, Singapore has a more relaxed stance on data storage, but Singapore's government has also put restrictions on freedom of speech and press.

How Facebook justifies its presence in some countries versus others, already a thorny issue freighted with politics, is likely to become even more controversial under the company's new policy.

Facebook declined to comment beyond the blog post.

Dozens of General Motors employees surrounded a white Chevy Cruze on Wednesday. The car, the last to be produced at GM's Lordstown, Ohio facility, was draped with an American flag as the employees posed for one final photo.

In their arms, signs read "GM: We invested in you. Now it's your turn to invest in us."

Dozens of emotional photos, Facebook posts, and tweets were shared Wednesday as the Lordstown plant got ready to sit idle after more than 50 years in action. The factory's 1,700 workers, meanwhile, will be left without jobs.

The 6.2 million square foot plant will be placed into a "state of readiness," GM spokesperson Dan Flores told the Associated Press, meaning it will be heated and fully maintained to allow for a resumption of operations. The facility's future awaits upcoming contract talks between GM and the United Auto Works Union, which are set to being this summer.

Still, the pain from the job losses is rippling through Northern Ohio. As protesters gathered outside, many residents — including politicians — shared photos online:

Dan Reed's two-part HBO documentary, "Leaving Neverland," examines the lives of two men— Wade Robson and James Safechuck — who say they were sexually abused by Michael Jackson in the 1980s and 1990s. And the director wants to continue telling the stories of those who say why were abused by the King of Pop.

Reed told Business Insider he'd be interested in a follow-up to "Leaving Neverland" if he could speak to Jordan "Jordy" Chandler and Gavin Arvizo, the two people who accused Michael Jackson of child sexual abuse while the artist was still alive.

Read more: "Leaving Neverland" director explains why he didn't interview Macaulay Culkin for his brutal Michael Jackson documentary

"Wade and James' story hadn't been explored until now, but they didn't make allegations when Jackson was alive," Reed said. "So they never felt the brunt of the attack machine of the Jacksons. Jordan Chandler and Gavin Arvizo, they felt the full force of that."

In 1993, Chandler and his parents filed a civil suit claiming Jackson molested 13-year-old Jordy. The singer agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to settle the case before it went to trial. In 2005, Jackson was acquitted of molesting 13-year-old Arvizo in a criminal trial. Throughout his life, Jackson denied molesting children.

Read more: "Leaving Neverland" director explains which part of his Michael Jackson doc disturbs him the most and why

Reed believes the claims of sexual abuse made by Robson and Safechuck in "Leaving Neverland" prove Jackson was a pedophile, and also suggest there could have been a massive cover-up to keep it from coming out.

"The mechanics of the cover-up is what really interests me," he said. "How did it really happen that this guy that we now know was a pedophile hiding in plain sight, how did he get away with it for so long? Who were the people who were part of allowing this crime to go unpunished for so long? There is an inside story that should be told."

Currently, Reed said a sequel is only in the idea phase. He has not been contacted by Chandler or Arvizo about telling their stories.

Amazon Prime members can no longer stream anti-vaccination movies for free, but DVD's of those movies still remain available for purchase for free — and one was listed as Amazon's Choice for an unknown amount of time.

On Friday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) sent an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on concerns that Amazon is recommending products that discourage vaccination on its platform — for example, anti-vaccination movies. Later that day, anti-vaccine documentaries were pulled from Amazon Prime Video, BuzzFeed News reported.

"I am writing out of my concern that Amazon is surfacing and recommending products and content that discourage parents from vaccinating their children, a direct threat to public health, and reversing progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases," Schiff wrote.

The anti-vaccine movies "Man Made Epidemic," "Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, Shoot 'Em Up - The Truth About Vaccines," and "The Greater Good" are no longer available to Prime members for free streaming. However, DVDs of those films are still available for purchase on Amazon.

At the time of the BuzzFeed report, The "Man Made Epidemic" DVD was given the distinction of "Amazon's Choice" on the platform. However, as of Monday evening, it appears that the "Amazon Choice" distinction has been removed.

Meanwhile, the "Vaxxed" DVD is the #1 bestseller in the "Special Interests" category. "The Greater Good" is still available for streaming on Amazon Prime, but requires a third-party channel subscription. Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Man Made Epidemic, an anti-vaccine movie, was listed as "Amazon's Choice." Screenshot

The anti-vaccination movie Vaxxed is a #1 bestseller in the "Special Interests" category. Screenshot

According to the World Health Organization, immunization is proven to eliminate life-threatening infectious diseases and is estimated to prevent 2 and 3 million deaths annually.

However, there is a rising trend of parents choosing not to vaccinate their children. In his letter, Schiff brought up Washington state declaring a public health emergency because of a measles epidemic that broke out in Clark County -- a disease that can be easily prevented with vaccines.

Schiff said that one of the causes of this trend is medically inaccurate information about vaccines online.

"As the largest online marketplace in the world, Amazon is in a unique position to shape consumption," Schiff wrote. "Yet the algorithms which power social media platforms and Amazon's recommendations are not designed to distinguish quality information from misinformation or misleading information and, as a result, harmful anti-vaccine messages have been able to thrive and spread."

Schiff also said he was concerned about Amazon accepting and promoting paid advertising that includes misinformation about vaccines. He expressed concerns over parents seeing information on Amazon searches and recommendations and then choosing not to have their children vaccinated. In addition, he said that parents who are looking for accurate information could end up finding videos with misinformation about vaccines.

Amazon still hosts and algorithmically suggests other conspiracy films as documentaries, including ones on the Illuminati, 9/11, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Read more: Amazon and Hulu's algorithms are recommending conspiracy theory films, and the consequences could be more serious than you might think

Previously, Schiff had written similar letters on anti-vaccination content to Google and Facebook. Afterwards, YouTube banned channels that promote anti-vaccination content from running ads, BuzzFeed News reported. Facebook told Business Insider it is exploring ways to make educational information about vaccines more accessible while reducing misinformation, but it is still "thinking through what the right approach for this effort might look like."

Over the weekend, SpaceX pulled off the first leg of a space mission that NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine described as an "historic achievement."

On Saturday, Elon Musk's rocket company successfully launched Crew Dragon, the world's first commercial spaceship designed to ferry humans to and from space. The new vehicle then docked to the International Space Station (ISS).

Crew Dragon carried no people into space — just cargo and a female crash-test dummy named "Ripley." But the demonstration mission, called Demo-1, represents a turning point for the US. The last time an American rocket launched an American spaceship to the ISS was during NASA's final space shuttle mission in July 2011.

"Our sincere congrats to all earthlings who have enabled the opening of this next chapter in space exploration," Anne McClain, a NASA astronaut and Expedition 58 crew member on the space station, said on Sunday during a welcoming ceremony for Crew Dragon. "And congratulations to all nations, private space firms, and individuals who wake up every day driven by the magic of exploration. This day belongs to all of us."

Yet in pulling off the first major parts of the six-day mission (Crew Dragon is due back on Earth this Friday), Elon Musk's rocket company inadvertently caused a small problem on Earth. It wiped out inventories of a soccer-ball-size plush Earth doll.

That doll, which wears a look of surprise on its face, was launched into space inside Crew Dragon. The owners of the company that makes the toy, Celestial Buddies, were similarly taken aback.

"We apologize for our current lack of Earths," Jessie and Jon Silbert said in a message posted on their company's website. "We have never had one of our products launched into space before, and we were taken totally by surprise."

They added that their warehouse will be empty of the little Earths at least until the end of April.

How SpaceX's Demo-1 mission wiped out the stock of a cute toy

An illustration of SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle, a spaceship designed to fly NASA astronauts, docking with the International Space Station.SpaceX

On Saturday at 2:49 a.m. ET, Crew Dragon launched on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

About three hours before launch, Musk posted two images of the plush Earth doll. One showed the product up close, while the other showed the toy inside the Crew Dragon, a few seats away from Ripley the mannequin.

"Super high tech zero-g indicator added just before launch!" Musk tweeted.

Read more: Elon Musk says he would ride SpaceX's new Dragon spaceship into orbit — and build a moon base with NASA

The toy was attached to a seat by a long tether so that it could float around once Crew Dragon reached its Earth-orbiting speed of about 17,500 mph. Sure enough, camera feeds inside the space capsule broadcast footage on NASA TV showing the little Earth moving about once in orbit.

About 27 hours later, McClain and her two colleagues on board the space station — David Saint-Jacques, a Canadian astronaut, and Oleg Kononenko, a Russian crew member — greeted SpaceX's new vehicle.

"On behalf of Ripley, little Earth, myself, and our crew, welcome to the Crew Dragon," McClain said. "These amazing feats show us not how easy our mission is, but how capable we are of doing hard things. Welcome to the new era in spaceflight."

She then spun the Earth toy with a gentle nudge.

Due to the high-profile nature of the mission — hundreds of thousands of people tuned in Saturday morning to watch it via webcast — countless people went looking for the Earth toy online. The toy sells for approximately $20.

'We apologize for our current lack of Earths'

Celestial Buddies says its small plush toy Earth product sold out after SpaceX put it inside their new Crew Dragon spaceship for NASA and launched it into orbit.Celestial Buddies

Over the weekend, Celestial Buddies said on its website that it quickly sold out.

Below is a portion of the message that the Silberts posted:

At 2:49 AM EST on Saturday, March 2, 2019, SpaceX launched its Dragon Crew Rocket toward the International Space Station. On board were "Ripley" an anthropomorphic test device (aka test dummy) named for Sigourney Weaver's character in the movie "Alien," and Celestial Buddies' own Earth, which SpaceX founder Elon Musk dubbed a "super high tech zero-g indicator."

We at Celestial Buddies had no advance information about Earth's participation in the launch, although a sudden flurry of orders for Earth in the 48 hours prior to lift off had made us wonder if something was afoot. By the time the rocket left Cape Kennedy, however, our entire inventory of Earth had been completely sold out, with scores of orders still unfilled.

We apologize for our current lack of Earths...we have never had a product on backorder before...but we have never had one of our products launched into space before, and we were taken totally by surprise. Thus, our reorder will not be in our warehouse until the end of April.

By Monday, Amazon.com had sold out of its standard inventory as well, and secondary sellers were asking for $78.69 per doll.

Auctions of the toy also appeared on eBay, where sellers were marketing them as "SpaceX Plush Celestial Buddy Earth."

However, the little Earths are sold in gift shops at museums and science centers, among other physical locations. So if you're looking for a decently priced Earth toy before May, that'd be a good place to start.

Yesterday, over the course of a single afternoon, Lee County, Alabama was ravaged by back-to-back tornadoes.

The one-two punch brought winds of 170 miles per hour, which ripped homes off their foundation, destroyed property, injured dozens, and killed at least 23 people.

But these twisters were only two of some three dozen tornado reports across the southeastern US yesterday.

According to the Weather Channel, tornadoes were reported in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina — as far west as Mobile, Alabama, and as far north of Columbia, South Carolina. All the reports came within a span of a few hours, from early afternoon into early evening.

When multiple tornadoes occur in a short amount of time across a large region as a result of a single weather system, it's called a "tornado outbreak."

While the exact number of tornadoes that swept this part of the country has yet to be determined, it was undoubtedly the "deadliest tornado day" since 2013, when an Oklahoma storm with winds gusting 200 miles per hour killed 24 people.

Yesterday's tornado outbreak caused double the number of tornado-related deaths that the US saw in all of last year.

It also confirmed a trend that climatologists and scientists have been worriedly watching: Tornado outbreaks in the southeastern US are getting worse.

A tree fell on a car where two back-to-back tornadoes touched down in Lee County near Beauregard, Alabama. Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters

North America sees dozens of tornado outbreaks annually, and the number of tornadoes that occur per outbreak seems to be increasing.

A 2016 study found that the average number of tornadoes in these outbreaks has increased since 1954, from 10 to 15. Between 1972 and 2010, outbreaks were associated with 79% of all tornado fatalities. The chance of these extreme outbreaks has also increased.

"When it comes to tornadoes, almost everything terrible that happens, happens in outbreaks," Michael Tippett, lead author of that study, said in a press release. "If outbreaks contain more tornadoes on average, then the likelihood they'll cause damage somewhere increases."

Tippett's current research tracks where tornado outbreaks might become more intense. His data suggests that the part of the southeast that was hit yesterday, particularly Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, are seeing trends of increasing activity.

Sunday's tornado outbreak was "consistent with trends that we've been seeing for several years now," he said.

Lee County, Alabama — which sits 80 miles north of Montgomery — suffered the most in the recent outbreak. Two tornadoes touched down there in a span of 10 minutes, and all of yesterday's reported deaths were in that area. According to the National Weather Service, one of the tornadoes that hit Lee County was a EF-4 storm, the second-most severe designation possible, with 170-mph winds.

The track of that "monster tornado" was at least 24 miles long, the New York Times reported. The average distance tornadoes travel is about 3.5 miles, according to the Storm Prediction Center, so this was far above average in that regard.

An even more deadly tornado outbreak occurred in 2011. It spawned 363 tornadoes across North America, caused $11 billion in damages, and killed more than 350 people.

Ashley Griggs, left, helps Joey Roush sift through what is left of his mother's home after it was destroyed by a tornado in Beauregard, Alabama. David Goldman/AP

Climate change has been suggested as a contributing factor to the trend Tippet has observed, but he said the jury is still out on that.

"The consensus is we'd expect to have more thunderstorms and tornado activity in a warmer climate, but it's not completely clear that these trends we're seeing now are a result of climate change," he said.

On Monday, Chronicle — a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet — announced Backstory, a cybersecurity product designed to help companies figure out how to protect themselves from hackers.

And Splunk, a publicly-traded company that makes a similar product to Backstory, saw its shares dip as low as 7.7% following the announcement, and ultimately closed about 5% down from its opening price.

What the two companies have in common: They want to make it easier for companies to analyze the ever-growing amount of data generated by modern computing infrastructure to figure out when and how attacks happen, and provide the information how to fix them.

"We believe the power of the security community is our best defense against aggressive and determined attackers," Chronicle wrote in a blog post. "By offering a global platform with the ability to apply massive computational capacity to an ever-growing set of enterprise security data, our goal is for Chronicle to help enterprise customers, as well as other vendors, to better protect what matters most."

Chronicle originally began as a cybersecurity division in X, formerly Google X, Alphabet's so-called "moonshot factory." It was spun out of X in January 2018, but took the interim to develop and announce its new product.

In an interview with CNBC, Chronicle CEO Stephen Gillett said that he didn't see Backstory as being competitive with other security products, but rather complimentary.

Read more: Google's parent company just announced a new project to give the digital world 'an immune system'

For its part, just Thursday, Splunk announced that it generated $622 million in revenue last quarter, beating Wall Street's estimates of $561 million, NASDAQ reported. The company has been trying to focus on using cloud subscriptions to grow its business, and provide more security products to IT teams.