President Trump follows through on his threat to challenge the legal protections enjoyed by social media and internet companies, Magic Leap\u2019s CEO is stepping down and China sees its biggest autonomous driving round yet.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s your Daily Crunch for May 29, 2020.<\/p>\n
1. Trump signs an executive order taking direct aim at social media companies<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Yesterday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting the legal shield that internet companies rely on to protect them from liability for user-created content. Next, we\u2019ll almost certainly see a court battle over whether the order is legal and enforceable.<\/p>\n While Trump and Attorney General William Barr have expressed interest in undermining Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act before, this week\u2019s action was prompted by Twitter\u2019s <\/a> decision to add a fact-checking link to the president\u2019s tweet about voting by mail. That conflict isn\u2019t going away either, with Twitter adding a \u201cpublic interest notice\u201d<\/a> to another of Trump\u2019s tweets for glorifying violence.<\/p>\n 2. Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz is out<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Magic Leap founder and CEO Rony Abovitz announced that the company has secured a new bout of funding \u2014 but that Magic will be attempting a major turnaround without him at the helm.<\/p>\n 3. SoftBank led $500M investment in Didi in China\u2019s biggest autonomous driving round<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n As China\u2019s largest ride-hailing provider with mountains of traffic data, Didi clearly has an upper hand in developing robotaxis, which could help address driver shortages in the long term. But it was relatively late to the field.<\/p>\n 4. Cisco to acquire internet monitoring solution ThousandEyes<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Cisco\u2019s Todd Nightingale, writing in a blog post announcing the deal, said that the kind of data that ThousandEyes provides around internet user experience is more important than ever as internet connections have come under tremendous pressure.<\/p>\n 5. Fintech regulations in Latin America could fuel growth or freeze out startups<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Promoteo co-founder Ximena Aleman looks at what impact regulation has had so far in Latin America, and what needs to happen to strike a balance between sector growth and public trust. (Extra Crunch membership required.)<\/p>\n 6. Uber UK launches Work Hub for drivers to find other gig jobs during COVID-19<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The ride-hailing giant rolled out a similar feature in the U.S. back in April, offering drivers the ability to respond to job postings from around a dozen other companies, as well as the ability to receive orders through other Uber units: Eats, Freight and Works.<\/p>\n 7. Join us June 3 for a contact-tracing and exposure-notification app development and deployment forum<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re working with the COVID-19 Technology Task Force, as well as Harvard\u2019s Berkman Klein Center, NYU\u2019s Alliance for Public Interest Technology, Betaworks Studios and Hangar. We\u2019ll be playing host to their live-streamed discussion around contact-tracing and exposure-notification applications, including demonstrations of some of the cutting-edge products that will be available in the U.S. to tackle these challenging, but crucial, tasks.<\/p>\n The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch\u2019s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you\u2019d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n