Daily Crunch: Social media struggles with shooting tragedy

NelsonG · March 15, 2019

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1. Videos of shooting tragedy in New Zealand continue resurfacing on social media

Earlier today there was a horrendous mass mosque shooting in New Zealand that killed 49 people — and because this is 2019, social media was used by the apparent murderers to plan, announce, broadcast and virally resonate what they did.

Some of that — such as the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the perpetrator — have been deleted. Yet nearly 12 hours later, you can still find multiple copies of the shooting videos on YouTube and Twitter, with some being used to promote other things.

2. Facebook loses CPO Chris Cox and WhatsApp VP Chris Daniels

Chief Product Officer Chris Cox is departing the company after two years of supposedly seeking to do something new. More surprising is today’s departure of Chris Daniels, an eight-year employee who was moved from being head of Internet.org to VP of WhatsApp just last May.

3. Apple addresses Spotify’s claims, but not its demands

In a lengthy statement on its site called “Addressing Spotify’s Claims,” Apple walks through and dismantles some of the key parts of Spotify’s accusations about how the App Store works — covering app store approval times, Spotify’s actual cut on subscription revenues and Spotify’s rise as a result of its presence on iOS.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk views the new Tesla Model Y at its unveiling in Hawthorne, California on March 14, 2019.

4. The Tesla Model Y is a 300-mile-range Model 3 doppelgänger coming in fall 2020

After years of teasers and hints, Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally unveiled the Model Y, a mid-sized all-electric vehicle that is slated to hit the marketplace in fall 2020.

5. Bird lays off up to 5 percent of workforce

“As we establish local service centers and deeper roots in cities where we provide service, we have shifting geographic workforce needs,” a Bird spokesperson told us.

6. Slack removes 28 accounts linked to hate groups

To date, Slack has managed to stay out of the conversation around what happens when sometimes violent politically extreme organizations use popular social platforms to organize.

7. Apple’s iCloud recovers after a four-hour outage

Facebook has only just recovered from one of its worst outages to date, and Gmail and Google Drive also experienced a worldwide outage this week. Now, apparently, it was Apple’s turn.