Bulletins

Alloy, the Reid Hoffman-backed Democratic data firm, is shutting down

The company broke the news in an email to its partners Monday, according to Recode. The decision to shut down follows a tumultuous two years for the company, which was backed by $35 million in funding from both Hoffman and former United States chief technology officer Todd Park.

Alloy set out to reinvent Democrats' data operations, but ended up being rejected by the Democratic National Committee and other leading Democratic organizations amid competing efforts within the party and concerns about the accuracy of Alloy's data. The company instead carved out a niche, focusing on data related to unregistered voters. In an interview with Protocol this fall, Alloy CEO and co-founder Haley Van Dyck acknowledged that Alloy's future was uncertain. "There's going to be a lot of reshuffling after the election and a lot of unknowns for what will happen for the whole ecosystem," Van Dyck said at the time.

In the email to partners, Alloy said it would continue operating some of its tools through January 2021. Alloy's communications director did not immediately respond to Protocol's request for comment.

Read more: Protocol's investigation into Alloy's evolution.

 Issie Lapowsky

Issie Lapowsky ( @issielapowsky) is Protocol's chief correspondent, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. She also oversees Protocol's fellowship program. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University's Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing.

Latest Bulletins

Facebook's metaverse spending will top $10 billion this year

Facebook expects to spend more than $10 billion on AR, VR and related hardware as well as the development of metaverse apps and services this year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors during the company's Q3 earnings call Monday that the company will ramp up investment in the area, and warned that it won't see a return on that investment any time soon.

Keep Reading Show less

Jeff Bezos wants to build his own space station

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin wants to build a private space station in low-earth orbit in the next decade, intended for research, commerce, space tourism or as a leasable "address for orbit."

Keep Reading Show less

Tesla is now a $1 trillion company

Tesla became a $1 trillion company Monday when its share price soared above $1000, ending at $1,024 when the market closed Monday.

Keep Reading Show less

The State Department is creating a Bureau of Cyberspace

The State Department has decided to create a bureau of cyberspace and digital policy, as well as a new point person or group for issues of emerging or critical technologies, in order to address international concerns with hacking, ransomware and internet freedom, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Keep Reading Show less

Spotify tops 'America's Most Loved Workplaces 2021' rankings

Spotify, Dell and SAP topped this year's "America's Most Loved Workplaces" rankings from Newsweek.

The first-ever rankings from Newsweek took into account several criteria for inclusion for the 100 companies that made the cut, including collaboration and teamwork, opportunities for advancement, doing good and a "practice-what-you-preach" culture, as well as how employees feel about the organization.

Keep Reading Show less

Memory prices may rise after Taiwan earthquake impacts chip production

Global memory prices may rise after a magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck early Sunday in Taiwan and impacted production at a Micron Technology facility responsible for nearly 10% of the world's memory supply.

Keep Reading Show less

Faze Clan to go public through $1 billion SPAC deal

Faze Clan, the gaming company known best for its roster of social media personalities and esports teams, is going public through a SPAC merger next year in a deal valuing the company at $1 billion.

Keep Reading Show less

You can get a crypto rewards Mastercard soon

Mastercard providers will be able to issue crypto debit and credit cards and offer crypto rewards thanks to a new partnership with digital assets exchange Bakkt announced today.

Keep Reading Show less

Russian hackers targeted 140 US tech companies — and breached 14 of them

Guessing poor passwords and basic email phishing attacks really seem to work, according to a report out from Microsoft today that the Russian hackers behind the SolarWinds attack have been using this basic technique to successfully breach as many as 14 U.S.-based companies.

Keep Reading Show less

Elon Musk owns only three cryptocurrencies, and one of them is Dogecoin

A Twitter account promoting the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency did not get what it was hoping for when it asked Elon Musk how much $Shib he owns. "None," was Musk's one-word response.

Keep Reading Show less

Hertz is buying 100,000 Teslas for more than $4 billion

Hertz has purchased 100,000 Tesla vehicles for its rental offerings in the U.S. and in parts of Europe, as the company pushes to try to electrify its fleet of rental cars, the company announced today.

Keep Reading Show less

PayPal says it isn't acquiring Pinterest after all

Responding to rumors from last week, PayPal said Sunday that it was "not pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest at this time."

Keep Reading Show less

Adobe will place unvaccinated employees on unpaid leave

Adobe said it will place employees on unpaid leave if they're not vaccinated by Dec. 8, CNBC reported Friday. The company cited President Joe Biden's executive order on vaccines as rationale for the new rule, according to a notice the company sent to employees.

Keep Reading Show less

Report: Epic Games ends every-other-Friday-off policy

Epic Games will no longer give employees every other Friday off, Bloomberg reported Friday.

Keep Reading Show less

New Facebook whistleblower says platform let hate speech flourish

A new Facebook whistleblower is accusing Facebook of prioritizing money over the fight against hate speech and misinformation, The Washington Post reported Friday. The whistleblower, who is a former member of the platform's Integrity team and spoke under the condition of anonymity to The Post, made those claims to the SEC as well.

Keep Reading Show less

Walmart will let customers buy bitcoin at select locations

Walmart will now let customers buy bitcoin. And it's not a hoax this time.

Keep Reading Show less

Snap said Apple's privacy push hurt its business, and investors are panicking

Snap shares fell around 22% as the market opened Friday morning, the day after Snap announcing Apple's ad-tracking changes is presenting more of a challenge than it thought. "We grappled with industry changes to the way advertising is targeted, optimized, and measured on iOS that created a more significant impact on our business than we had expected," Snap's Chief Business Officer Jeremi Gorman said on the company's earnings call Thursday.

Keep Reading Show less

Lyft recorded over 4,000 sexual assault reports between 2017 and 2019

Lyft users reported over 4,000 instances of sexual assault between 2017 and 2019, according to the ride-hailing app's first community safety report released Thursday. The report comes two years after Uber released a similar report on its own platform.

Keep Reading Show less

Intel's bet on contract manufacturing will take four years to pay off

The plans that Intel announced earlier this year to reinvigorate its manufacturing business and regain the throne as chipmaking king may cost more and take longer than we may have thought.

Keep Reading Show less

US forges pact to mitigate EU tax on Big Tech

The U.S. government announced on Thursday that it reached an agreement with Austria, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom on the digital services tax for Big Tech.

Keep Reading Show less

Plaid moves into payments with pay-by-bank product

Plaid is moving into the payments business, with a new program that would make it easier for consumers to make digital payments from their bank accounts.

Keep Reading Show less

Worldcoin emerges from stealth to pursue its UBI infrastructure ambitions

Worldcoin emerged from stealth on Thursday after raising $25 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and others. The company most recently raised funds at a $1 billion valuation. It was co-founded by Sam Altman, who led Y Combinator and co-founded OpenAI alongside Elon Musk.

Keep Reading Show less

Google is lowering its Play Store app fees even further

The latest blow to the mobile app economy's once-standard 30% cut is coming from an unlikely player: Google. The search giant on Thursday announced it would collect a lower fee from both subscription and music-streaming apps, reducing its standard cut from nearly a third of all digital transactions down to a flat 15% for eligible app categories.

Keep Reading Show less

Google may end its Roku distribution deal in December as stalemate continues

The ongoing dispute between Roku and Google may result in Google pulling its YouTube and YouTube TV apps from the Roku app store on Dec. 9, both companies confirmed this week. Roku painted this move as anti-competitive in a blog post published Thursday morning, while Google accused Roku of making "unproductive and baseless claims" in a statement sent to Protocol. Sen. Amy Klobuchar chimed in as well, calling the dispute proof for the need for new competition laws.

Keep Reading Show less

Apple mandates daily COVID-19 tests for unvaccinated workers

Apple isn't requiring employees to get vaccinated, but it is making the requirements for unvaccinated workers more stringent: it will soon require unvaccinated employees and those who won't report their vaccination status to get COVID-19 tests every day in order to enter the office. The company's new rules will go into effect Nov. 1.

Keep Reading Show less