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President Trump shocked much of the country by defending some of the people who marched with Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville: “I think there is blame on both sides.” Meanwhile, six prominent business leaders in two days have stepped down from Trump’s business advisory councils. Follow Recode’s continually updated accounting of which executives have left and which remain officially advising the president. [The New York Times]
Apple is telling Holllywood it wants to spend $1 billion on its own content this year. That makes sense, since it has hired two well-regarded Sony TV execs to ramp up its programming efforts. For context: Netflix will spend $7 billion on content in the same time frame. [Tripp Mickle / Wall Street Journal]
Texts between Travis Kalanick and former employee Anthony Levandowski have surfaced in the Waymo-Uber court case, revealing Kalanick’s obsession with Tesla and Google. And these texts show Kalanick and Levandowski plotting a press blitz. Meanwhile, Uber’s developer platform product manager, Chris Saad, is leaving the company after nearly two years, saying in an internal email that “the cost of losing [Kalanick] as Uber’s CEO will be incalculable.” [Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]
Online crowdfunding sites including GoFundMe, Kickstarter and Indiegogo are refusing to support campaigns of financial support for the Charlottesville murder suspect. And some amateur internet sleuths have been doxxing the Charlottesville marchers, crowdsourcing the identities of suspected white nationalists from online videos and photos, but it’s risky, and sometimes misfires badly. Reddit and Facebook are banning and deleting posts linking to an obscene Daily Stormer article about the Charlottesville murder victim; the neo-Nazi site has moved to the dark web since being banned by GoDaddy and Google.
Several of the largest U.S. tech companies urged the Supreme Court to set new limits on the ways law enforcement can obtain a suspect’s smartphone location data. The companies — including Apple, Snap, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Cisco and Verizon — argued the need for greater Fourth Amendment safeguards “to ensure that the law realistically engages with Internet-based technologies and with people’s expectations of privacy in their digital data.” [Tony Romm / Recode]
Amazon is piloting “Instant Pickup” points to fulfill pickup orders within minutes of ordering online. The high-tech convenience store concept is already live near college campuses in Berkeley; Los Angeles; Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; and College Park, Maryland. [Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters]
Top stories from Recode
Uber investor Shervin Pishevar claims Benchmark wants to remove Arianna Huffington from the board.
The Travis Kalanick loyalist also alleges that the venture firm is working with Lowercase Capital.
In a settlement, Uber will have to submit to 20 years of privacy checkups.
Jeff Berman is leaving Whalerock, the company behind Kim Kardashian’s Kimoji.
He’s going to Greylock.
Will smartwatches ever become the general-purpose wearables we were told they’d be?
Even now, it’s still hard for most people to figure out exactly what these devices are, and what uses they’re best suited for.
The uproar about the anti-diversity memo may turn out to have been a good thing for Google.
I’m glad it’s calling out the code-ninja hero myth that only coding prowess matters, and that backchannel gripes about diversity in tech are now out in the open.
This is cool
Are you in too deep with the LaCroix?
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
