Munch.
It goes without saying that what is happening at the Capitol right now is repugnant, shameless, and wrong. Even more so, it is seditious, baseless, and disgustingly hypocritical.
While I am at least hopeful for change as President-Elect Biden nears his lawfully-elected term in office, I also cannot imagine the fear and distrust I know so many individuals — especially Black Americans — must be experiencing as these events unfold. I’m so sorry America is failing you.
If these last few months have shown me anything, it is the importance of factual, truthful, journalistic writing. Conversely, it’s also shown me the opposing power of lies and premeditated narrative. So, with this medium, I’ll continue to report on tech and startups and fight for the truth where I can, as trivial as that might be. At this moment, I am so grateful for the journalists standing up for truth, even as it puts them in harm’s way.
And for anyone reading who feels endangered, threatened, or otherwise adversely affected by this week’s events, please let me know what I can do to be an ally and supporter for you.
Today’s issue is focused solely on tech updates relevant to the current political moment. Stay informed.
Black lives matter. Check out this page to help and support. Don’t let this be a moment.
🥄 Today's Spoonful
Twitter finally says enough 👋
For much of his presidency, Trump has used Twitter as a means for inciting unrest and conveying baseless claims to his followers. Even when the platform scaled its efforts against misinformation and launched campaigns like false information tagging to fight Trump’s mongering, the president even threatened — and signed — an executive order targeting critical free speech protections for any and all social media companies.
Wednesday night, Twitter finally took the next step. Contrary to established policy, it has locked the president out of his account and forcibly removed 3 tweets that were flagged due to a ‘risk of violence’:
One such tweet was a video in which Trump told the rioters, “We love you. You’re very special.”
The account will stay locked for at least 12 hours (and more if the tweets are not removed) with Twitter adding that future violations will result in permanent suspension.
Buh-bye 👋
Twitter acqui-hires Ueno for future products 🚀
The acquisition - reported by TechCrunch as an ‘acqui-hire’ to integrate Ueno team members into Twitter’s internal orgs - brings the two companies together to focus on designing future products. Ueno has previously helped companies like Google, Facebook, Reuters, Uber, ESPN, Sotheby’s, Walmart, Visa, NYT, Apple, and Slack, as well as startups like Superhuman, Strava, Credit Karma, and many more.
Quite the resumé. Let’s hope the new team can productize a solution against misinformation.
🥣 Cereal of the Day
For today’s Cereal of the Day, I wanted to profile a startup that I feel helps operationalize the sharing of truth and fact. For research, I turned to Higher Ground Labs, a fund that invests committed capital into progressive technology. Here’s one of their portfolio companies, Countable, which raised $2M with HGL as an investor in its seed round.
Countable, which can now be found at causes.com, is a company that powers movements. Their platform — and its UI, which is not entirely dissimilar from Twitter’s UI — enables individuals, organizations, and movements to engage with and meaningfully understand relevant issues.
The platform’s feed (a scrollable list of ‘causes’) is updated in realtime by the company. On top of that, individuals or users can log into each ‘cause’ and discuss/debate with others as events unfold.
What makes this 10x better than current news outlets is that Countable aggregates data, compiles in realtime, enables easy access to information through scrollable dedicated feeds on each cause, and provides related links/resources. Just check this out for example.
Plus, the platform is free.
Here’s to the truth.
Against my own policy, I won’t be publishing the A Health Serving of… segment today. That’d be ridiculously tone-deaf. Instead, I encourage you to stay informed, check in on your friends, and even take some time to breathe away from the internet.
Much love to you all.
Munch.
The Cereal Intern.017