10 things in tech you need to know today, September 5

It turns out even Donald Trump could be kicked off
Twitter.
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Images

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this
Wednesday.

1.
Facebook’s opening statement to Congress today will say that it
was “too slow” to act on Russian
interference. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will appear before congress today.

2.
Tesla employees described the frenetic pace of working at the
company, revealing that CEO Elon Musk is a visionary but
unpredictable boss. They described an attitude
of worship that some employees have toward Musk, likening it to a
“cult.”

3. The
FCC boss who repealed net neutrality says Google, Facebook, and
Twitter might need “transparency
obligations.” Ajit Pai, the chairman of the
FCC, called for the big tech companies to be more transparent
about how they run their services on Tuesday.

4.
Google posted its testimony for the congressional hearing today,
but won’t have anyone there representing it. The
Senate Intelligence Committee said it rejected Google’s proposed
witness because he wasn’t senior enough.

5.
A watchdog group with ties to Oracle pretended to be Russian and
bought “divisive” Google ads. The group posed
as an infamous group of Russian trolls to find out how effective
Google was at combatting foreign agents from buying “politically
divisive ads.”

6.
Samsung might upstage Apple’s new iPhone by unveiling its
foldable phone in 2018. Samsung executive DJ
Koh said on Monday that the firm might unveil its foldable phone,
nicknamed the Galaxy X, in November — just when the new iPhone
would be hitting the shelves.

7.
Not even Trump is safe from being banned for tweets that go too
far, according to Twitter. Twitter says it’s
possible that President Trump could be banned if he exhibits
abusive, rule-breaking behavior on the platform.

8.
Elon Musk told a reporter to “stop defending child rapists” as he
doubled down on attacking Thailand cave rescuer Vernon
Unsworth. In an email to a Buzzfeed reporter,
Musk repeated unsubstantiated accusations against Unsworth and
said that “I f—ing hope” that he gets sued.

9.
Sony still refuses to allow “Fortnite” players on PS4 to play
with other platforms. Sony president Kenichiro
Yoshida reaffirmed the company’s stance on “cross-play” in a
recent interview.

10.
Google Chrome is playing with the idea of fundamentally changing
how we interact with the internet by changing the way URLs
work. The Google Chrome team is looking at ways
to revolutionize URLs, to make them easier to understand and more
secure.

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