Files from Jori Negin-Shecter
Twitch has its entire source code leaked, Canadian Amazon workers begin organizing, and Facebook top brass quietly made some staggering political donations.
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It’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Thursday, October 7, and I’m your host, Samira Balsara.
A massive leak of Twitch’s source code, user payment information, and more, has shown up on the imageboard website 4chan. According to videogameschronicle.com, the hack appeared on Wednesday after an anonymous user linked a 125GB torrent to the nefarious site. The leak has been confirmed as legitimate, and the individual responsible for the leak stated that they sought to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space.” The leaked info includes Twitch comment history, creator payout reports from 2019, and an unreleased digital video game marketplace codenamed Vapor. Additionally, concerns have been raised about encrypted passwords being contained in the leak, which has experts urging users to change their passwords as well as enable two-factor authentication.
Canadian Amazon workers have begun unionization efforts at facilities across the country. According to an article from Jacobin, the most prominent of unionization drives has occurred at a facility just outside of Edmonton, Alberta, where it has gained at least 40% of workers’ support. In over a year, the Alberta warehouse has become the site of over 100 COVID-19 infections. Notably, while the warehouse never shut down due to the Alberta Government’s decision to declare it a critical industry, the workplace was deemed as “in outbreak,” where workers “bore the risk (of infection), throughout this time, without a sustained pay raise,” per the story. Other Canadian warehouses are reportedly dealing with similar conditions, which has led to a continuing wave of support for the measures. If these Canadian sites were to unionize, they would become the first Amazon warehouses in North America to do so, following last year’s union-busting efforts in Alabama by Amazon late last year.
Finally, according to an article from Forbes, Facebook’s top executives have made nearly $4 million in political donations to various candidates and committees, including to Senators on the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security. Facebook executives have also donated to over 50 different senate campaigns, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s campaign and Senator Cory Booker. President Joe Biden’s campaign also received over $200,000, while Donald Trump’s campaign did not receive any donations, perhaps unsurprisingly given his famous clashes with various social media outlets. As far as Mark Zuckerberg himself, Forbes found that the Facebook CEO had given a paltry $91,000 in donations, with payments going to both Democratic and Republican candidates.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Friday at 3 pm. If you have a suggestion or tip, please drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thanks for listening, I’m Samira Balsara.