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10 things in tech you need to know today

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Protests in Minneapolis, George Floyd

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

  1. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the controversial decision not to take any action on a post from President Trump that apparently threatened the Minneapolis protesters with violence. Zuckerberg said Facebook's role was to "enable as much expression as possible."
  2. Unlike Facebook, Twitter slapped a warning label on the post from Trump that stated "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Twitter placed a click-through block on the tweet, saying that it was "glorifying violence."
  3. Leaked emails obtained by The Verge show considerable dissent among Facebook employees over whether the platform should remove Trump's post. One employee wrote that "history will not judge us kindly."
  4. SpaceX on Saturday successfully launched into orbit its first human passengers: NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. On Sunday morning, the astronauts caught up to the International Space Station inside their Endeavour spaceship and docked it there.
  5. SpaceX's Elon Musk said he was "overcome with emotion" after after the successful astronaut launch. Though his adrenaline was at "100%" during the first launch attempt on Wednesday, the SpaceX CEO said he didn't feel nervous at all this weekend.
  6. Amazon-owned Whole Foods fired a worker who had been tracking COVID-19 cases across the grocery chain's stores. The worker said Whole Foods accused her of "time theft" after she took a break to recover from a panic attack, but she suspects she was actually fired for "dissent," according to Vice. 
  7. Google has rescinded thousands of job offers to temporary and contract workers, as the company continues to feel the sting of the pandemic. According to The New York Times, Google is seeing its advertising business hit hard by the pandemic.
  8. Senators want an investigation into TikTok's privacy practices after it allegedly broke its promise to delete videos posted by young kids. In a letter sent Friday, the four senators cited a report from leading child advocacy groups claiming TikTok failed to take down videos posted by children under 13, as it had promised to do in a 2019 consent decree.
  9. An Irish drone company has been making deliveries of prescription medication, cake, and pizza to the remote Irish village of Moneygall during the pandemic. The company, called Manna, has been designated an essential service by Ireland's health service and is serving a population of around 1,000 people.
  10. A former Googler has raised $2.1 million for his augmented reality marketplace startup Poplar in the midst of the pandemic. Founder David Ripert began raising in January, but closed the round in May despite a general slowdown in investment.

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