Tag: Social

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Daily Crunch: Twitter walks back New York Post decision

A New York Post story forces social platforms to make (and in Twitter’s case, reverse) some difficult choices, Sony announces a new 3D display and fitness startup Future raises $24 million. This is your Daily Crunch for October 16, 2020.

The big story: Twitter walks back New York Post decision

A recent New York Post story about a cache of emails and other data supposedly originating from a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter looked suspect from the start, and more holes have emerged over time. But it’s also put the big social media platform in an awkward position, as both Facebook and Twitter took steps to limit the ability of users to share the story.

Twitter, in particular, took a more aggressive stance, blocking links to and images of the Post story because it supposedly violated the platform’s “hacked materials policy.” This led to predictable complaints from Republican politicians, and even Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey said that blocking links in direct messages without an explanation was “unacceptable.”

As a result, the company said it’s changing the aforementioned hacked materials policy. It will no longer remove hacked content unless it’s been shared directly by hackers or those “acting in direct concert with them.” Otherwise, it will label tweets to provide context. As of today, it’s also allowing users to share links to the Post story.

The tech giants

Sony’s $5,000 3D display (probably) isn’t for you — The company is targeting creative professionals with its new Spatial Reality Display.

EU’s Google-Fitbit antitrust decision deadline pushed into 2021 — EU regulators now have until January 8, 2021 to take a decision.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Elon Musk’s Las Vegas Loop might only carry a fraction of the passengers it promised — Planning files reviewed by TechCrunch seem to show that The Boring Company’s Loop system will not be able to move anywhere near the number of people the company agreed to.

Future raises $24M Series B for its $150/mo workout coaching app amid at-home fitness boom — Future offers a pricey subscription that virtually teams users with a real-life fitness coach.

Lawmatics raises $2.5M to help lawyers market themselves — The San Diego startup is building marketing and CRM software for lawyers.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

How COVID-19 and the resulting recession are impacting female founders — The sharp decline in available capital is slowing the pace at which women are founding new companies in the COVID-19 era.

Startup founders set up hacker homes to recreate Silicon Valley synergy — Hacker homes feel like a nostalgic attempt to recreate some of the synergies COVID-19 wiped out.

Private equity firms can offer enterprise startups a viable exit option — The IPO-or-acquisition question isn’t always an either/or proposition.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

FAA streamlines commercial launch rules to keep the rockets flying — With rockets launching in greater numbers and variety, and from more providers, it makes sense to get a bit of the red tape out of the way.

We need universal digital ad transparency now — Fifteen researchers propose a new standard for advertising disclosures.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Twitter is now allowing users to share that controversial New York Post story

Twitter has taken another step back from its initial decision to block users from sharing links to or images of a New York Post story reporting on emails and other data supposedly originating on a laptop belonging to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

The story, which alleged that Hunter Biden had set up a meeting between a Ukrainian energy firm and his father back when Biden was vice president, looked shaky from the start, and more holes have emerged over time. Both Facebook and Twitter took action to slow its spread — but Twitter seemed to take the more aggressive stance, not just limiting reach but actually blocking links.

These moves have drawn a range of criticism. There have been predictable cries of censorship from Republican politicians and pundits, but there have also been suggestions that Facebook and Twitter inadvertently drew more attention to the story. And even Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey suggested that it was “unacceptable” to block links in DMs without an explanation.

Casey Newton, on the other hand, argued that the platforms had successfully slowed the story’s spread: “The truth had time to put its shoes on before Rudy Giuliani’s shaggy-dog story about a laptop of dubious origin made it all the way around the world.”

Twitter initially justified its approach by citing its hacked materials policy, then later said it was blocking the Post article for including “personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers — which violate our rules.”

The controversy did prompt Twitter to revise its hacked materials policy, so that content and links obtained through dubious means will now come with a label, rather than being removed entirely, unless it’s being shared directly by hackers or those “acting in concert with them.”

And now, as first reported by The New York Times, Twitter is also allowing users to share links to the Post story itself (something I’ve confirmed through my own Twitter account).

Why the reversal? Again, the official justification for blocking the link was to prevent the spread of private information, so the company said that the story has now spread so widely, online and in the press, that the information can no longer be considered private.

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We need universal digital ad transparency now

15 researchers propose a new standard for advertising disclosures

Laura Edelson
Contributor

Erika Franklin Fowler
Contributor

Erika Franklin Fowler is Professor of Government at Wesleyan University where she directs the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP), which tracks and analyzes political advertising in real-time during elections.

Jason Chuang
Contributor

Jason Chuang is a researcher at Mozilla.

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Dorsey, Mr. Pichai and Mr. Spiegel: We need universal digital ad transparency now!

The negative social impacts of discriminatory ad targeting and delivery are well-known, as are the social costs of disinformation and exploitative ad content. The prevalence of these harms has been demonstrated repeatedly by our research. At the same time, the vast majority of digital advertisers are responsible actors who are only seeking to connect with their customers and grow their businesses.

Many advertising platforms acknowledge the seriousness of the problems with digital ads, but they have taken different approaches to confronting those problems. While we believe that platforms need to continue to strengthen their vetting procedures for advertisers and ads, it is clear that this is not a problem advertising platforms can solve by themselves, as they themselves acknowledge. The vetting being done by the platforms alone is not working; public transparency of all ads, including ad spend and targeting information, is needed so that advertisers can be held accountable when they mislead or manipulate users.

Our research has shown:

  • Advertising platform system design allows advertisers to discriminate against users based on their gender, race and other sensitive attributes.
  • Platform ad delivery optimization can be discriminatory, regardless of whether advertisers attempt to set inclusive ad audience preferences.
  • Ad delivery algorithms may be causing polarization and make it difficult for political campaigns to reach voters with diverse political views.
  • Sponsors spent more than $1.3 billion dollars on digital political ads, yet disclosure is vastly inadequate. Current voluntary archives do not prevent intentional or accidental deception of users.

While it doesn’t take the place of strong policies and rigorous enforcement, we believe transparency of ad content, targeting and delivery can effectively mitigate many of the potential harms of digital ads. Many of the largest advertising platforms agree; Facebook, Google, Twitter and Snapchat all have some form of an ad archive. The problem is that many of these archives are incomplete, poorly implemented, hard to access by researchers and have very different formats and modes of access. We propose a new standard for universal ad disclosure that should be met by every platform that publishes digital ads. If all platforms commit to the universal ad transparency standard we propose, it will mean a level playing field for platforms and advertisers, data for researchers and a safer internet for everyone.

The public deserves full transparency of all digital advertising. We want to acknowledge that what we propose will be a major undertaking for platforms and advertisers. However, we believe that the social harms currently being borne by users everywhere vastly outweigh the burden universal ad transparency would place on ad platforms and advertisers. Users deserve real transparency about all ads they are bombarded with every day. We have created a detailed description of what data should be made transparent that you can find here.

We researchers stand ready to do our part. The time for universal ad transparency is now.

Signed by:

Jason Chuang, Mozilla
Kate Dommett, University of Sheffield
Laura Edelson, New York University
Erika Franklin Fowler, Wesleyan University
Michael Franz, Bowdoin College
Archon Fung, Harvard University
Sheila Krumholz, Center for Responsive Politics
Ben Lyons, University of Utah
Gregory Martin, Stanford University
Brendan Nyhan, Dartmouth College
Nate Persily, Stanford University
Travis Ridout, Washington State University
Kathleen Searles, Louisiana State University
Rebekah Tromble, George Washington University
Abby Wood, University of Southern California

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Instagram’s 10th birthday release introduces a Stories Map, custom icons and more

Instagram today is celebrating its 10th birthday with the launch of several new features, including a private “Stories Map,” offering a retrospective of the Stories you’ve shared over the last three years, a pair of well-being updates, and the previously announced IGTV Shopping update. There’s even a selection of custom app icons for those who have recently been inspired to redesign their home screen, as is the new trend.

The icons had been spotted earlier in development within Instagram’s code, and it was expected they would be a part of a larger “birthday release.” That turned out to be true.

With the update, Instagram users across both iOS and Android can opt between a range of icons in shades of orange, yellow, green, purple, black, white and more. There’s also a rainbow-colored Pride icon and several versions of classic icons, if you want a more nostalgic feel.

The new Stories Map feature, meanwhile, introduces a private map and calendar of the Instagram Stories you’ve shared over the past three years, so you can look back at favorite moments. Though this may surprise some users who thought Instagram Stories’ ephemeral nature meant they were deleted from Facebook servers over time, it’s not the first time Instagram has pulled up your old Stories to build out a new feature.

Instagram’s “Story Highlights,” for example, first introduced in 2017, allowed users to create a permanent home for some of their formerly ephemeral content.

Image Credits: Instagram

Two other new features also rolling out with the latest release are timed alongside the kickoff of National Bullying Prevention Month. The first, which will begin as a test, will automatically hide comments similar to others that have already been reported. These will still be visible under the label “View Hidden Comments” if you want to see what’s been removed from the main comment feed.

Image Credits: Instagram

This feature is somewhat similar to Twitter’s “Hide Replies” feature that launched globally last year. Like Twitter, the feature will place the inappropriate or abusive remarks behind an extra click, which supposedly helps to disincentivize this sort of content, as it could be hidden from view. Except in Twitter’s case, the original poster had to manually hide the replies. The Instagram feature, however, is attempting to automate this functionality.

Instagram says it’s also expanding its nudge warnings feature to include an additional warning when people repeatedly try to post offensive remarks. Already, Instagram provides an AI-powered feature that notifies people when their comment may be considered offensive by giving them a chance to reflect and make changes before posting. Now this feature will target repeat offenders, suggesting that they take a moment to step back and reflect on their words and the potential consequences.

Image Credits: Instagram

The company also released new data about trends across its platform as well as an editorial look back at Instagram’s major milestones.

Here, it revealed trends across music — like how KPOP is the No. 1 most-discussed genre — along with other trends, like top songs, AR effects, top Story Fonts and more. Instagram said more than a million posts mentioning “meme” are shared on its platform daily, 50% of users see a video on Instagram daily, there are over 900 million emoji reactions sent daily and the average person sends 3x more DMs than comments.

The updated app is available across iOS and Android.

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Twitter will make users remove tweets hoping Trump dies of COVID-19

President Donald Trump’s positive COVID-19 result has made Twitter a busy place in the past 24 hours, including some tweets that have publicly wished — some subtly and others more directly — that he die from the disease caused by coronavirus.

Twitter put out a reminder to folks that it doesn’t allow tweets that wish or hope for death or serious bodily harm or fatal disease against anyone. Tweets that violate this policy will need to be removed, Twitter said Friday. However, it also clarified that this does not automatically mean suspension. Several news outlets misreported that users would be suspended automatically. Of course, that doesn’t mean users won’t be suspended.

Motherboard reported that users would be suspended, citing a statement from Twitter. That runs slightly counter to Twitter’s public statement on its own platform.

On Thursday evening, Trump tweeted that he and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, had tested positive for COVID-19. White House physician Sean Conley issued a memo Friday confirming the positive results of SAR-Cov-2 virus, which often is more commonly known as COVID-19. Trump was seen boarding a helicopter Friday evening that was bound for Walter Reed Medical Center for several days of treatment.

The diagnosis sent shares tumbling Friday on the key exchanges, including Nasdaq. The news put downward pressure on all major American indices, but heaviest on tech shares.

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Daily Crunch: Twitter confronts image-cropping concerns

Twitter addresses questions of bias in its image-cropping algorithms, we take a look at Mario Kart Live and the stock market takes a hit after President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. This is your Daily Crunch for October 2, 2020.

The big story: Twitter confronts image-cropping concerns

Last month, (white) PhD student Colin Madland highlighted potential algorithmic bias on Twitter and Zoom — in Twitter’s case, because its automatic image cropping seemed to consistently highlight Madland’s face over that of a Black colleague.

Today, Twitter said it has been looking into the issue: “While our analyses to date haven’t shown racial or gender bias, we recognize that the way we automatically crop photos means there is a potential for harm.”

Does that mean it will stop automatically cropping images? The company said it’s “exploring different options” and added, “We hope that giving people more choices for image cropping and previewing what they’ll look like in the tweet composer may help reduce the risk of harm.”

The tech giants

Nintendo’s new RC Mario Kart looks terrific — Mario Kart Live (with a real-world race car) makes for one hell of an impressive demo.

Tesla delivers 139,300 vehicles in Q3, beating expectations — Tesla’s numbers in the third quarter marked a 43% improvement from the same period last year.

Zynga completes its acquisition of hyper-casual game maker Rollic — CEO Frank Gibeau told me that this represents Zynga’s first move into the world of hyper-casual games.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Elon Musk says an update for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft development program is coming in 3 weeks —  Starship is a next-generation, fully reusable spacecraft that the company is developing with the aim of replacing all of its launch vehicles.

Paired picks up $1M funding and launches its relationship app for couples — Paired combines audio tips from experts with “fun daily questions and quizzes” that partners answer together.

With $2.7M in fresh funding, Sora hopes to bring virtual high school to the mainstream — Long before the coronavirus, Sora was toying with the idea of live, virtual high school.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Spain’s startup ecosystem: 9 investors on remote work, green shoots and 2020 trends — While main hubs Madrid and Barcelona bump heads politically, tech ecosystems in each city have been developing with local support.

Which neobanks will rise or fall? — Neobanks have led the $3.6 billion in venture capital funding for consumer fintech startups this year.

Asana’s strong direct listing lights alternative path to public market for SaaS startups — Despite rising cash burn and losses, Wall Street welcomed the productivity company.

Everything else

American stocks drop in wake of president’s COVID-19 diagnosis — The news is weighing heavily on all major American indices, but heaviest on tech shares.

Digital vote-by-mail applications in most states are inaccessible to people with disabilities — According to an audit by Deque, most states don’t actually have an accessible digital application.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Ethel’s Club founder is launching Somewhere Good, a social platform that centers people of color

Naj Austin, founder and CEO of subscription-based physical and digital community Ethel’s Club, is building Somewhere Good to be a one-stop shop for people of color. Beyond being a place for people of color to connect, it’s also about creating a safe space for folks to be their authentic selves.

“A lot of how we’re talking about Somewhere Good with investors is this idea of a new online world where our identities are centered,” Austin told me. “The vision for Somewhere Good is you take your phone out of your pocket and, as a Black person or person of color, all of your needs are met there in that one place.”

That means folks could access communities around things like wellness, art, music and film, and engage in commerce through those groups. It’s not that some of these communities don’t already exist, it’s just that they’re fragmented across the web and not always easy to find.

Through operating wellness community Ethel’s Club, Austin said many members keep asking her if she knows of other types of spaces for Black people and people of color that focus on more granular topics, like jazz music from the eighties or an online space specifically for Black women who don’t want children.

“We’ve had so many of those,” Austin said. “We just need to create a platform where they can do it themselves. It goes back to my core belief of building a company that provides space for people of color. My whole thing is, are we providing more space, are more people of color feeling empowered. As long as that’s a yes, it doesn’t matter the vehicle.”

When Somewhere Good launches in beta in January, Austin said users will be able to input their general info and then choose a selection of interests. For example, someone could identify themselves as a mother who likes painting, has a dog and works as a baker.

“We would then spit out communities we think are the best fit for you,” Austin said.

That will enable Somewhere Good to foster an additional level of connection for users, Austin said. One way of achieving that extra layer will be through a matchmaking tool.

“We’re trying to give people a more tangible reason for connection,” Austin said. “Other than you’re both Black.”

Ethel’s Club, the wellness platform for people of color that currently lives on Mighty Networks, will be just one of many communities on Somewhere Good. The plan is to bring on a number of other communities to the platform that center Black people and people of color. From there, Austin envisions users of those communities may then create communities of their own on Somewhere Good.

“We want to give space to people who are already creating community, allow people who want community to build it and then for the audience, once they’re feeling empowered, to be able to build community,” she said.

When you go to Somewhere Good right now, you’ll engage in a Stumble Upon-esque experience where you click “Take me somewhere new” to see a brand geared toward Black people or people of color. There are a little over 100 brands currently featured on the site, including Black hair brand Nappy Head Club, Black designer directory Black Fashion Fair and cereal and culture brand OffLimits.

Image Credits: Screenshot

While OffLimits, for example, doesn’t currently have a community, the brand centers around thinking about food differently, Austin said. But OffLimits, which tells its story through “emotionally unstable, counterculture cartoon characters,” could run a community on Somewhere Good centered around product design or food. She also envisions makeup brand Fenty running a community centered around skin care.

Each community on Somewhere Good will have a moderator and all members will need to follow Somewhere Good’s code of conduct. The platform will not allow any hate speech, abusive behavior, bullying or other types of violence.

“Any users acting against out code of conduct will be immediately removed from the Somewhere Good platform,” the platform’s mission statement says.

Somewhere Good will be a 100% ad-free environment and says it will never sell data. Its business model relies on users paying to join communities and then taking a percentage of that transaction.

“That means we have to create a compelling opportunity for people to create communities,” she said.

Down the road, Somewhere Good plans to enable communities to charge for live-streamed events, sell products and enable other types of peer-to-peer transactions. The company would then take a percentage from those transactions, as well.

Somewhere Good soft-launched with a tweet last week and began taking signups. Already, there are more than 2,500 people on the wait list.

It’s a similar strategy Austin said she had with Ethel’s Club. With Ethel’s Club, she didn’t quite know the functionality of the product before launching but went ahead and started talking about it to see if there was interest. Once Austin saw there was interest, Ethel’s Club embraced the community to help the company build products they wanted. That’s the same framework she’s now using for Somewhere Good, she said.

Ethel’s Club, which got its start as a physical community space in Brooklyn before expanding into the digital realm as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, has currently raised a little over $1 million from Dream Machine, Shrug Capital, Canvas Ventures, Color, Debut Capital and angel investors like Katie Stanton, Roxane Gay and Hannibal Buress.

Since transitioning into digital, Ethel’s Club has grown to more than 1,500 members. But the biggest issue is that people just want more, Austin said. And Somewhere Good aims to be just that, she said. It aims to be the one platform where people of color can go to for everything.

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Facebook names VP of product growth Alex Schultz as new CMO

To fill its empty CMO position, Facebook just promoted to the C-suite a longtime Facebook executive focused on product growth.

Former VP of product growth and analytics Alex Schultz, who has been with the company since 2007, announced the move Tuesday in a Facebook post. Schultz will fill the position left open by Antonio Lucio, who joined the company from HP in 2018 and announced his departure last month. Lucio said he was leaving the company to “dedicate 100% of my time to diversity, inclusion and equity.”

In his Facebook post, Schultz said he planned to bring “experience in segmentation, targeting, and measurement” to the table to extend Facebook’s already massive reach. Schultz, who is the executive sponsor of Facebook’s LGBTQ resource group, added a personal note to the news, writing that Facebook is the first workplace where he has “truly safe to be gay and be open about it.”

Stepping into the role late in the U.S. election, an intensely consequential time for the company, Schultz acknowledged Facebook’s precarious position in the public eye. Touching on Facebook’s failures around platform enforcement, Schultz mentioned that he spent “most of my energy” over the last four years working on safety at the company. That work includes projects like Facebook’s community standards enforcement report, a new quarterly accounting of the company’s efforts to rid its platform of hate speech, harassment and other rule-breaking behavior.

“I believe deeply in the good Facebook’s products do,” Schultz said in his Facebook post. “We have all seen it through this pandemic as billions of people have connected with family and friends socially online while staying physically apart and slowing the spread of the virus. At the same time I think scrutiny of any new technology is appropriate and there are ways we can, and should, improve without losing all the good.”

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Apple is (temporarily) waiving its App Store fee for Facebook’s online events

Last month, Facebook introduced support for paid online events — and because many of the businesses offering those events have struggled during the coronavirus pandemic, the company also said it would not collect fees for the next year. At the same time, it complained that Apple had “dismissed” its requests to waive the App Store’s customary 30% fee on in-app purchases.

Today, Facebook is announcing a reversal on Apple’s part: Online event fees will be processed through Facebook Pay, without Apple collecting its 30% cut, meaning businesses will receive all of the earnings from their online events, minus taxes. This arrangement will last until December 31 and will not apply to gaming creators.

The news comes after Facebook publicly pressured Apple to change its stance. It even submitted an iOS app update stating that “Apple takes 30% of this purchase” in the events payments flow. (Facebook said Apple rejected the update for including information that’s “irrelevant” to users.)

And while the two companies appear to have come to an agreement, today’s statements from Facebook are still a bit barbed.

“This is a difficult time for small businesses and creators, which is why we are not collecting any fees from paid online events while communities remain closed for the pandemic,” said Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne. “Apple has agreed to provide a brief, three-month respite after which struggling businesses will have to, yet again, pay Apple the full 30% App Store tax.”

Similarly, in discussing the exception for gaming creators, Facebook Gaming Vice President Vivek Sharma said, “We unfortunately had to make this concession to get the temporary reprieve for other businesses.”

When asked about the change, Apple provided the following statement: “The App Store provides a great business opportunity for all developers, who use it to reach half a billion visitors each week across 175 countries. To ensure every developer can create and grow a successful business, Apple maintains a clear, consistent set of guidelines that apply equally to everyone.”

More specifically, Apple said it’s giving Facebook until the end of the year to implement in-app payments for these events and bring them into compliance with App Store rules.

This also comes as Fortnite-maker Epic Games is waging a legal battle and publicity campaign against Apple’s App Store fees, with Fortnite removed from the iOS App Store. Epic is also part of a just-announced group of publishers called the Coalition for App Fairness, which is pushing for app store changes or regulation.

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Daily Crunch: This TikTok deal is pretty confusing

Companies send out conflicting messages about the TikTok deal, Microsoft acquires a gaming giant and the WeChat ban is temporarily blocked. This is your Daily Crunch for September 21, 2020.

The big story: This TikTok deal is pretty confusing

This keeps getting more confusing. Apparently TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has reached a deal with Walmart and Oracle that will allow the Chinese social media app to continue operating in the United States, and the deal has been approved by Donald Trump. But it’s hard to tell exactly what this agreement entails.

ByteDance said it would retain 80% control of TikTok, while selling 20% of the company to Walmart and Oracle as “commercial partner” and “trusted technology partner,” respectively. However, Oracle released a seemingly conflicting statement, claiming that Americans will have majority ownership and “ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global.”

So what’s going on here? We’re trying to figure it out.

The tech giants

Microsoft set to acquire Bethesda parent ZeniMax for $7.5B — ZeniMax owns some of the biggest publishers in gaming, including Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog and Roundhouse Studios.

Trump administration’s WeChat ban is blocked by US district court — More news about the Trump administration’s efforts to ban some high-profile Chinese apps: A district court judge in San Francisco has temporarily stayed the nationwide ban on WeChat.

Nikola’s chairman steps down, stock crashes following allegations of fraud — This comes in the wake of a report from a noted short-seller accusing the electric truck company of fraud.

Startups, funding and venture capital

With $100M in funding, Playco is already a mobile gaming unicorn — Playco is a new mobile gaming startup created by Game Closure co-founder Michael Carter and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron.

Indian mobile gaming platform Mobile Premier League raises $90 million — Mobile Premier League operates a pure-play gaming platform that hosts a range of tournaments.

A meeting room of one’s own: Three VCs discuss breaking out of big firms to start their own gigs — We talked to Construct Capital’s Dayna Grayson, Renegade Partners’ Renata Quintini and Plexo Capital’s Lo Toney.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Edtech investors are panning for gold — At Disrupt, investors told us how they separate the gold from the dust.

Despite slowdowns, pandemic accelerates shifts in hardware manufacturing — China continues to be the dominant global force, but the price of labor and political uncertainty has led many companies to begin looking elsewhere.

The Peloton effect — Alex Wilhelm examines the latest VC activity in connected fitness.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Ireland’s data watchdog slammed for letting adtech carry on ‘biggest breach of all time’ — The Irish Council for Civil Liberties is putting more pressure on the country’s data watchdog to take enforcement action.

Pandemic accelerated cord cutting, making 2020 the worst-ever year for pay TV — According to new research from eMarketer, the cable, satellite and telecom TV industry is on track to lose the most subscribers ever.

Original Content podcast: ‘Wireless’ shows off Quibi’s Turnstyle technology — I interviewed the director of the new Quibi series.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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