👉 What Happened on Tech Twitter Last Week - Oct 20

What the Zuck, how to start a hot company, robot dogs, food delivery market share, and more!

Yo! Here’s what happened on Tech Twitter the week of October 20th - 27th.

As always, reply with feedback and forward this to your friends!

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What the Zuck

Zuck spent another hilarious few hours getting bat around by Congress last week. He lead off with thoughtful perspective on free speech in America and the rise of what he calls the Fifth Estate, where, due to social media, “people no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard.” His position: Facebook is an enabler of free speech and democratic values. Unfortunately, that’s not how everyone else saw it. AOC was particularly fierce as she questioned Zuck about his knowledge of Cambridge Analytica before the scandal broke and about why the hell blatant lies are allowed on political ads on Facebook.

The wokest human in the universe, Jack Dorsey responded this week by eliminating political advertising from Twitter entirely. Influencer advertising is a quick work-around but still a noble move.

🔥 The Hottest Take 🔥
Allowing politicians to lie their way into office isn’t a win for free speech. Free speech is about sharing ideas without fear of persecution in order to make progress. Ideas are only worth sharing if there is common set of agreed-upon facts that allow anyone to understand and evaluate them.

Facebook has enabled free speech at a scale that has never been seen before. But allowing blatant lies to propagate within echo chambers on the platform erodes our ability to agree on basic facts required to make progress through free speech anyway.

jason@calacanis.com @Jason

Oh my gosh, @AOC destroyed zuckerberg — with ease. This women is going to be president.

Balaji S. Srinivasan @balajis

So many founders, VCs, execs watching this #Zuckerberg hearing with the same thoughts. - So much grandstanding & scapegoating! - So much hysteria about minutiae - Demands are contradictory - Impossible to satisfy these people - But they have guns… - This is the US government…

nell thomas @nellwyn

as a @facebook alum, i'm proud of my former coworkers today for standing against current FB political ad policies, which allow misinformation (e.g. lies) from politicians to run on the platform. i hope facebook leadership listens.

nytimes.comRead the Letter Facebook Employees Sent to Mark Zuckerberg About Political AdsHundreds of Facebook employees signed a letter decrying the decision to let politicians post any claims they wanted — even false ones — in ads on the site.

jack 🌍🌏🌎 @jack

We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…🧵

Stratechery @stratechery

The Internet and the Third Estate stratechery.com/2019/the-inter… Mark Zuckerberg suggested that social media is a "Fifth Estate"; in fact, social media is a means by which the Third Estate — commoners — can seize political power. Here history matters.

stratechery.comThe Internet and the Third EstateMark Zuckerberg suggested that social media is a “Fifth Estate”; in fact, social media is a means by which the Third Estate — commoners — can seize political power. Here history matters…

Amazing Threads & Discussions (click)

Brianne Kimmel @briannekimmel

1/ “The next generation of applications for the workplace sees people spinning out of Uber, Coinbase and Airbnb,” Kimmel said. If you're thinking about building something for the workplace, here's what you should know ⚠️ Tough feedback ahead ⚠️

Sriram Krishnan @sriramk

👋🚨[new] I love reading great internal company memos for the insight they give into institutions and behavior. Over the years, I've been collecting public ones and I started putting up a few on my site --> sriramk.com/memos Some previews below.

sriramk.comMemos

Advice, Ideas, & Data

Andrew Chen @andrewchen

Signs that a consumer tech product is in a good position on user acquisition: - organic new users is increasing over time - spikes of traffic create stepwise changes in permanent rate of new user signups - there’s a subreddit or it’s posted to Reddit/twitter with high NPS

Natalie Dillon @ntdillon

Food Delivery Apps: 🇺🇸25% Americans used food apps 📈Sales in this sector grew 40% YoY 🥇DoorDash owns 35% mrkt share 🥈UberEats owns 25% 🥉Grubhub - 23% 🏅Postmates - 6% 🎖Caviar - 2% ☄️DoorDash most popular: Houston 🌴UberEats: MIA 🗽Grubhub: NYC 🎥Postmates: LA 💻Caviar: SF

Daniel Gross @danielgross

Remote teams will accidentally stumble into Apple’s cultural moat: secrecy reduces politics. Large companies over-communicate. Chatter friction is useful, counterintuitively.

Ina Herlihy @inaherlihy

Forecasted Halloween spending: 👘 $3.2 billion on costumes 🍭 $2.6 billion on candy 🎃 $2.7 billion on decorations ✉️ $390 million on greeting cards 💸 $86: average amount the consumer will spend this holiday

Christopher Mims 🎆 @mims

I think someday we will allow things like quadrupedal robots to monitor our kids, cities etc. and think nothing of it. What’s scary and expensive today will be utterly mundane in the not too distant future, is my guess.

Blake Robbins @blakeir

This might be obvious, but it's amazing to see how AIM buddy lists have evolved over times (and become commonplace in video games). - Availability status - Utility (chat/video vs. play game together) - A network of close friends There is still so much opportunity here.

Random & Funny

Zak Spookoff 👻 @zck

💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💵 🏃 💸💨🏃 💨 🏃 🏃 🚶 🚶‍♂️oh fuck I missed the IPO window

Natalie Sportelli @N_Sportelli

Investors, #1 fans. Presenting Life with @LererHippeau 👇V

Nikita S @singareddynm

Hiding yourself using AI-generated facial features, a 🔥 AR filter from @parker_gibbons Reminds me of obscuring oneself in Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, Stephenson's Snow Crash3

Machine Pix @MachinePix

2,018 Intel Shooting Star drones flying in formation acting as a 3D display.

Grace Segers @Grace_Segers

Me, writing an email: I'm using an exclamation point so you know I'm friendly and excited! But now I'm using a period so that you know I'm not crazy. Here's another sentence with a period as a buffer, proving my normalness. Thanks so much!

Brianne Kimmel @briannekimmel

How to start a hot company: 1. Find a product designer 2. Choose a $1B+ workplace product 3. Build hero feature or use case w/ modern UX/UI 4. Iterate based on feedback from closed beta cc: @rsg

Gravelord NEETo @coherentstates

How is it that the Madame Tussauds wax model of Mark Zuckerberg looks way more like a real person than Mark Zuckerberg does? Oh my god