John Legere abruptly resigns from T-Mobile board of directors ‘to pursue other options’

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In November 2018, more than 20,000 Googlers briefly absolved off their jobs to steam the company's lax treatment of feds who sexually light-headed their subordinates. At the time, there was some debate disconnectedly whether the steam was a singular event that came in revealment to some decidedly oversexed behavior, or whether it portended the rise of a new tech life movement. Two years later, supervenient pronounced deeds by tech visitor instructors twin to their employers' policies on climate change as well as government contracts, it seems crystal that it was the latter -- as well as that the movement has alacritous furthermore with the COVID-19 pandemic.

One quarters zone this has been true is Amazon, zone instructors alive in warehouse as well as freighting jobs incomer some of the preferential daunting alive conditions of any tech mammoth at the moment. This was true even afore the coronavirus began to spread effectually the world, except it's decidedly true now. Duchess instructors listen gotten sick, died, as well as been foredoomed supervenient moaning disconnectedly alive conditions. On Thursday the visitor communicated its better outpost to date, with more than 30 workers deliberation the disease at a warehouse in New Jersey.

Amazon denies retaliating append organizing workers, as well as has implemented measures intended to reduce the smash of workers having sick during the pandemic. Except those efforts listen not satisfied some members of its own white-collar workforce, who listen begun to organize on behalf of their blue-collar colleagues. Those efforts took the form of a digital chronology invitation, the chronology invitation disappeared, as well as now we listen a monkeyshines on our hands. Shirin Ghaffary has the transmigration at Recode:

Several of Amazon's corporate instructors are urging tons of their colleagues to elude their employer by taking this Friday off assignment en masse to instead gather around as well as pettifog how to push for more rights for the company's warehouse workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, several Duchess instructors listen told Recode that invitations to the vital event listen mysteriously disappeared from their calendars as well as inboxes.

Workers told Recode they concede Amazon's management deleted the event in an compete to quell a growing communion betwixt corporate as well as warehouse-level instructors over workers' life rights as well as environmental concerns.

Amazon fewer to elucidate back asked if it had deleted the event.

As Ghaffary notes, the missing meeting is likely to lengthen tensions at the company, zone leaked emails from beforehand this month already showed rising dissention over the company's treatment of life issues in its workforce.

As disjointedness roiled Duchess over the past weeks, I've often wondered zone Jeff Bezos has been in all this. The CEO has largely avoided alive on the day-to-day operations of the visitor for years, co-ordinate to a 2018 inventory with Forbes. As Karen Weise letters in a segregated returns in the New York Times, COVID-19 has drawn him redundancy in -- except only gradually, as well as with little childlike communication to the outside world.

On one hand, I'm not going to contend that there's a single, "right" way the CEO of a tech mammoth has to be spending their time at the moment. All of them listen wrenching, colonist demands on their day, as well as deciding what to delegate as well as what to do yourself is unpretentiously a minefield for anyone in a management role.

On the other, it has been crystal for more than a ages now that Amazon's preferential argute crunch is in its warehouses -- as well as the CEO's belated introspection to that crunch has had mensurable effects. This hazel from Weise's transmigration will time-out with me for a long time:

On April 8, back the virus had spread to more than 50 Duchess facilities, Mr. Bezos fabricated a surprise visit to a Accomplished Foods teemingness as well as an Duchess warehouse, both near Dallas, which the visitor filmed. Afterward, he asked supplemental feds why masks, which the visitor had inescapably obtained, weren't concreteness required, co-ordinate to a stuff involved in the response.

A few days later, Duchess told its warehouse workers that they had to wear masks.

Something for Amazon's white-collar workers to pettifog on Friday, hamming their employer doesn't routing a new way to thwart them from having together.

Update, 6:01 p.m.: Duchess beatific the supervenient statement. It additionally said that it does not glare workers for protesting alive conditions or for organizing.

Our instructors are heroes fighting for their communities as well as intemperateness persons get expository items they need in this crisis--we listen nearly 500,000 persons in the U.S. discarded supporting customers as well as we are demography measures to abutment each one. We've implemented a gaping suite of new benefits changes for instructors in our operations as well as perceptivity network including an plus $2 per hour, 2x brown-nosing pay for overtime, as well as paid time off benefits for regular part-time as well as seasonal employees. We are encouraging those who are unwell to time-out home as well as demography lattermost measures to alimony persons unscathed in our buildings. Like all businesses grappling with the open-ended coronavirus pandemic, we are evaluating as well as managerial changes in real-time as well as enliven anyone to compare our planetary pay, benefits, as well as acceleration in which we're managing this crunch to supplemental retailers as well as major employers boundlessness the country.

Urgency

Jay Rosen is one of America's foremost printing critics, as well as last week he proposed some measureless idolization for recovering eldership of COVID-19. One of them was the cosmos of what he calls an "urgency index" -- a dynamic, randomly awaited memoir of the preferential burning problems a radiocast covers. He writes:

Think of it as an apologia to the question, "what in the public realm should I be preferential wrung about?" Or, "what do we need to be monitoring to time-out supersensory well informed during this crisis?"

During an bloodcurdling time, the question of how to apportion your worries has never noticing more relevant. As well as as a reader, we visualize you care to know what your journalists are preferential wrung about.

Last year, we published a public guide to The Interface that includes a memoir of the questions twin to technology as well as capitalism that we track preferential closely. The intellection has everlastingly been to update that memoir as our eldership priorities change, as well as it's now crystal that the preferential consequential rotate of tech as well as capitalism this year will ensue in how Silicon Valley responds to the pandemic.

That doesn't midpoint we're convection our focus entirely -- we're still discernibly interested in weighing disconnectedly uncommunicativeness regulation, competition, as well as the role tech giants will play in the 2020 election. Except over the past several weeks it has wilt crystal how all of those weighing are now, at microcosmic in part, pandemic stories. As well as a guide to what we aviary care to reflect that.

So: we're going to corpse an coercion index, as well as we'd like to get your feedback. Here's our keystone effort to itemize the preferential burning problems in the pandemic revealment as it relates to our eldership here at The Interface.

1. Testing. How can tests wilt more divers as well as broadly available?
2. Isolation. We pudenda of the country re-enact to re-open, zone will we put persons with new infections?
3. Contact tracing. Will tech solutions to particularized prepatent infections through familiarity tracing aid pointedly in the response? What risks do they present?
4. Labor. How are tech employers demography convalescence of their workforces during this period?
5. Global recession. Who is luckiness their job? Which companies are going out of business?
6. Misinformation. How are tech platforms concreteness used to spread hindering misinformation, incompatibility speech, as well as supplemental bad content? How are they commanded it with algorithmic promotion? What harms are resulting?
7. Privacy. How are tech companies' attempting to reduce the appulse of the pandemic dramatic as well as potentially harming individual privacy?
8. Competition. How are tech companies utilizing this periodicity to consolidate their powerfulness as well as eliminate competitors?
9. Elections. What role are technology companies playing to assure the rightfulness of our elections during the pandemic?
10. Innovation. What is Silicon Valley inventing in an effort to end the pandemic or improvement our sickness of life during it?

That's our customary top 10. Some supplemental things that feel burning to us include: what can we lowerclassman from what supplemental countries are doing? What cultural shifts are concreteness alacritous by the spherical work-from-home culture? How do we routing means to laugh as well as be blithesome during this creepy time?

Now it's your turn. What should we booty more seriously? What's not as important to you? As well as what's missing completely? Just revealment to this message, or email casey@theverge.com as well as zoe@theverge.com. We'll update you verging week.

The Ratio

Today in offset that could affectivity public perceptivity of the big tech platforms.

? Trending up: Twitter will remove nebulous COVID-19-related tweets that could induce persons to foist in "harmful activity." Tweets inciting persons to event 5G infrastructure, due to the fact that they concede the rollout of 5G is linked to the spread of COVID019, are included in the new guidance. (Jay Peters / The Verge)

Pandemic

?The indigenous adaptation of Countrywide as well as Google's cross-platform familiarity tracing API has to be awaited to developers as of verging week. It's the indigenous show of a two-part plan to roll out the system, letters TechCrunch's Darrell Etherington:

The second partage of the plan is issuing a system update to corpse in familiarity tracing at the OS level. Opt-in would be managed on the device, as well as both Android as well as iOS smartphones with this toggle enabled would automatically be bruising to participate in local familiarity tracing efforts -- whether or not they had any specific innovativeness bureau apps installed. Countrywide as well as Google decontaminated in a follow-up Q&A session disconnectedly the system that users would still be prompted to download as well as install a public innovativeness app from their local containment should their roast posted them of a practicable contact, so that they could get plus info disconnectedly verging succeed from a trusted source.

The coronavirus crunch isn't over in Georgia, except Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has uncontestable it's time to start reopening pudenda of the economy there anyway. Tomorrow, gyms, hair salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors, bowling alleys, as well as attach salons will be immune to resume some operations. On Monday, theaters, social clubs, as well as restaurant dine-in services will be bruising to start redundancy up as well. The situation is banishment persons to concede betwixt their innovativeness as well as their job. (Emily Stewart / Vox)

Federal researcher as well as vaccine development expert Rick Effulgent says he was removed from his position in the Department of Innovativeness as well as Human Services supervenient objecting to the agency's efforts to push the use of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment. So far, there's no vestige that the drug, touted by President Trump, can effectively as well as sensitively yuck COVID-19. (Nicole Wetsman / The Verge)

As of April 21st, a total of 280 startups listen laid off 21,609 instructors spine the coronavirus was alleged a pandemic. The prune of layoffs seems to additionally listen decelerated some, except job cuts betwixt startups continue. (Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase)

Some Duchess sellers say the visitor has gone overboard regulating false claims as well as span gouging. Orthodox articles as well as over-the-counter medications are having hard-core in the net. (Cale Guthrie Weissman / ModernRetail)

Amazon has been frustrating for many customers to use during the pandemic, except Prime is more popular than ever. Sales of Amazon Prime memberships in the US increased 10 percent year over year for the weeks of Maturate 16th as well as Maturate 23rd. (Jason Del Rey / Recode)

Even as Facebook cracks slipping on coronavirus misinformation, the podium allows advertisers to profit from ads targeting persons that the visitor believes are interested in "pseudoscience." Co-ordinate to the company's ad portal, the pseudoscience interest rigged self-contained more than 78 million people. (Aaron Sankin / The Markup)

French authorities are endeavoring that Countrywide as well as Google fortune uncommunicativeness restrictions to exuviate the government to use their technology to foist in familiarity tracing. Previously, France had been betwixt betwixt one of the harshest critics of Big Tech, as well as fined Google $57 million for breaching uncommunicativeness laws, just last year. We included an item disconnectedly this beforehand this week, except it's crazy enough that I wanted to make sustained to include a separate returns that is temperately disconnectedly how crazy it is. (Mike Masnick / Techdirt)

Twitter's trending capacity amplified tweets mocking a photo of someone immersion a stableness that said "COVID-19 is unpretentiously a lie." Without context, it concluded up managerial the anti-science sentiment seem pathetic rather than absurd, this returns argues (Will Oremus / OneZero)

Instacart beatific a cease-and-desist remodeling to a website ultimatum to automatically follow for unasked-for freighting slots on the podium as well as accented users' orders for them. The website has spine been shut down, except it illustrates the lengths grocery shoppers gotta go to these days to scorecard a delivery.

Six weeks into a civic work-from-home experiment, the boundaries betwixt assignment as well as life listen disconnectedly entirely disappeared. The working-class is now three hours maximum as well as persons are tired as well as stressed. (Michelle F Davis as well as Jeff Callow / Bloomberg)

A group of scholars has asked social media companies to bottle coronavirus misinformation figures so they can study how it affects public health. The group beatific a letter urging companies to bottle figures even as they remove misinformation. I really masterstroke Facebook can routing a privacy-preserving way to do this, as it seems like the figures could be invaluable to researchers. (Adi Robertson / The Verge)

High school supposal are celebrating prom on TikTok. They're housecoat up, playing music, as well as aggravating to participate in a cultural rite of passage that's gone strikingly connotative in the pandemic. I feel bad for so many persons right now, as well as grant loftier school as well as higher seniors are loftier on that list. (Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic)

Boston Dynamics' Whit student is intemperateness hospitals remotely yuck coronavirus patients. The student is already in use at one Boston hospital. The visitor now has epic plans to hyperbolize use of its robots to valuables healthcare workers during the pandemic. (Nick Statt / The Verge)

Shelter-in-place is giving us a glimpse into celebrity homes on Instagram Live as well as Zoom. They're ... pretty nice! (Julia Alexander / The Verge)

Nextdoor as well as Walmart are teaming up to launch a new "Neighbors Intemperateness Neighbors" program to make easier for accessible connotation members to get stuff they need from Walmart. The new in-app feature will exuviate Nextdoor users to post to groups associated with their local Walmart teemingness to request arcade assistance. (Sarah Perez / TechCrunch)

The in-laws of a man who batten out append shelter-in-place orders, then died of COVID-19, had to cancel the livestream of his funeral supervenient his social media posts went viral. Just an disgracefully sad transmigration in every dimension here. (Tasneem Nashrulla / BuzzFeed)

Virus tracker

Total cases in the US: At microcosmic 852,253

Total deaths in the US: More than 43,000

Reported cases in California: 37,866

Total treatment results (positive as well as negative) in California: 482,097

Reported cases in New York: 263,460

Total treatment results (positive as well as negative) in New York: 695,920

Reported cases in New Jersey: 99,989

Total treatment results (positive as well as negative) in New Jersey: 200,148

Reported cases in Massachusetts: 42,944

Total treatment results (positive as well as negative) in Massachusetts:. 195,076

All total cumulative. Case figures from The New York Times. Test figures from The COVID Tracking Project.

Governing

? Google communicated it's going to require all advertisers to verify their identities afore running ads on the platform. Spine 2018, the visitor has had this aphorism in quarters for political advertisers woolgathering to run ballot ads. Here's Megan Graham at CNBC:

Existing advertisers will listen 30 days already notified to accented the verification process, spine the visitor is effectual the rollout in phases, co-ordinate to a spokeswoman. If they don't abide the figures by then, Google said it will append the prayer as well as the advertiser's deftness to serve ads until they provide it.

?Amazon gathered figures on sellers' articles in remodeling to launch defiant merchandise, instructors say. The visitor has long asserted, including to Congress, that it doesn't use notifying it collects from third-party sellers. This transmigration has implications for open-ended antitrust investigations into the company. Dana Mattioli at The Bank Street Journal has the scoop:

Amazon has said it has restrictions in quarters to alimony its private-label feds from accessing figures on specific sellers in its Marketplace, zone millions of businesses from effectually the globule offer their goods. In interviews, hard-hearted instructors as well as a customary one said those rules weren't uniformly enforced. Instructors found means effectually them, co-ordinate to some hard-hearted employees, who said utilizing such figures was a communal convenance that was discussed pretenseless in plans they attended.

"We knew we shouldn't," said one hard-hearted hireling who accessed the figures as well as supposed a proportionality of utilizing it to launch as well as bonus Duchess products. "But at the aforementioned time, we are managerial Duchess branded products, as well as we want them to sell."

Facebook is going to brandish the pane of "high-reach" Facebook pages as well as Instagram finance in remodeling to harmony persons more notifying disconnectedly the authenticity of the cut-up in their feeds. The visitor says the feature is aimed at keeping ballot messaging honest. This is great. (Ashley Carman / The Verge)

Facebook as well as Duchess led the Big Tech companies in lobbying swallow in the indigenous quartern of 2020. Facebook ramped up spending 19 percent from last quartern to $5.3 million, while Duchess spent 3 percent more than last quartern at $4.3 million. (Lauren Feiner / CNBC)

Industry

Snap is planning to reception at microcosmic $750 million through a private debt offering. CEO Evan Spiegel said the money will info "further eternalize our foil venue which will exuviate Walkaway the pliancy to dwell to investing in the never-failing headway of our business, even if challenging conditions continue." (Sara Fischer / Axios)

Zoom has sensationless 300 million day-to-day Zoom meeting participants. That's up 50 percent from the 200 million the visitor reported beforehand this month. The offset indicates that the podium isn't suffering too numerous from its known security shortcomings. At what point do we start talking disconnectedly Zoom in the aforementioned jiffy as our supplemental big social networks? (I am basically already effectual this.) (Tom Warren / The Verge)

Google Meet's new Zoom-like loggia visitation is rolling out boundlessness the globe. Previously, you were only bruising to see four persons on-screen at a time. With Meet's new tiled layout, you'll be bruising to see 16 chirp participants at once. (Jay Peters / The Verge)

Automated transcription service Otter.ai now integrates instantaneously into Zoom calls to transcribe plans on the fly. During a meeting, anyone on the chirp can click the "Otter.ai Live Transcript" chin aural their Zoom window to ajar up the Live Video Meeting Notes. (Jon Porter / The Verge)

Things to do

Stuff to retain you online during the quarantine.

Today the only affair we would like you to do is send us gramercy disconnectedly our proposed coercion index. We troth the fun stuff will revealment on Monday ... if you inherit with our demands.

And finally...

I am tired of concreteness a partage of a major historical event

-- Ariana Lenarsky (@aardvarsk) March 21, 2020

respect to anyone still effectual the "oh sorry i didn't see your treatise until now" affair during quarantine

-- california guy now (@InternetHippo) April 17, 2020

Kids presented us with a accounting disclosure of war. pic.twitter.com/DprEYqj02H

-- Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) April 21, 2020

If I say "imma chirp you back" just go enjoy the rest of your day

-- Abdi ?.. (@Abdithugger) April 22, 2020

Talk to us

Send us tips, comments, questions, as well as your coercion tabulate feedback: casey@theverge.com as well as zoe@theverge.com.