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Elon Musk tweets put him in more hot water, Google’ smart home display may arrive soon and WordPress has removed alt-right conspiracy theorist blogs.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Monday, August 20th and I’m your host Meagan Simpson.
First up from LinkedIn: Last week was a hard one for Tesla, and this week may not prove to be any better. More tweets from Elon Musk last week put him and his company in a bit of hot water. Tesla was subpoenaed last week by the Security and Exchange Commission (or SEC) over Musk’s tweet about taking the company private. The CEO also faced criticism from his fellow board members for the tweet and according to the New York Times they even asked him to stop tweeting. Tesla is set to meet with the SEC at some point this week to discuss the concerns. Tesla was already under investigation by the SEC for potentially misleading investors on product concerns. And last week, for the second time this summer a Tesla whistleblower stepped forward, this time alleging the company had been spying on employees at its Gigafactory, had failed to disclose a $37 million theft and possibly allowed drug trafficking there as well. In an interview with the New York Times Musk said “The worst is over from a Tesla operational standpoint.” But for him on a personal level, “the worst is yet to come.”
Next up from Google trends: Google itself is trending thanks to reports that it will be releasing its new smart home display later this year. The latest device is essentially a smart home speaker with a built in screen. A Gizmodo article calls it a move into the smart home hub versus just having a smart home speaker. It was announced earlier this year that Google had teamed up with Lenovo to create the product and reports are saying it will likely be released at some point this year. This will be Google’s answer to Amazon’s similar product the Amazon Echo Show. So far this year Google’s home devices have surpassed all Amazon Echos for the first time ever according to Gizmodo. So it will be interesting to see how its new smart display competes.
Finally from Twitter: WordPress has removed some alt-right blogs that were spreading Sandy Hook shooting conspiracy theories. The move comes after an article from the New York Times last week accused the blogging platform of allowing these types of blogs to remain online. WordPress cited a policy that bans blogs from the “malicious publication of unauthorized, identifying images of minors.” According to a New York Times report, the content was previously left up because it apparently didn’t violate WordPress’ Terms of Service. Despite the fact that the content has been flagged as false. The removal of these controversial sites comes at a time when other social media platforms are also facing tough questions around policies that let them arbitrarily allow or disallow certain content and users.
