Image: Danilo Alvesd / Protocol
Elon’s anticlimax

Good morning! This Wednesday, Tesla has a (kind of) new battery, TikTok's asking the social world to come together, virtual events are becoming big business, and a YouTube moderator said the company didn't do enough to protect them and their colleagues.
Also, don't forget to sign up to come to Protocol's next virtual event, The Evolution of Cybersecurity. It's this Thursday at noon ET, and has a great group of speakers coming to chat.
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There's a new Tesla coming next year: The Model S Plaid, which Elon Musk said "will achieve the best track time of any production vehicle ever, of any kind. Two-door or otherwise." If you can wait a bit longer, Musk also said Tesla's about three years away from selling a $25,000, fully autonomous vehicle.
But the point of Tuesday's Tesla event was batteries. Elon Musk has always tried to explain Tesla as an energy company, not a car manufacturer. "The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good," Musk wrote in his Master Plan, Part Deux in 2016.
At Tesla's aptly named "2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day," which I can only describe as a drive-in science lecture exclusively for Tesla-driving Tesla shareholders, Musk showed off the company's latest, more efficient car battery, which Tesla plans to manufacture itself.
This is not the million-mile battery some had talked about, though, and Tesla's share price showed some seriously disappointed investors, dropping more than 5% after hours. (Musk was careful to set expectations ahead of the event, saying the new tech "will not reach serious high-volume production until 2022," but it didn't temper the hype much.)
As the electric car industry heats up, and as CATL and Porsche and so many other companies start to put out their own tech, some looked at Battery Day as the moment Tesla would prove it was still a decade ahead. And it didn't quite live up to its billing.
TikTok's Vanessa Pappas sent a letter to nine "social and content platforms" yesterday, which means Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, Emmett Shear, Ben Silbermann, Jack Dorsey, Susan Wojcicki, Evan Spiegel and Steve Huffman all received a copy.
TikTok is looking for collaboration, which Pappas thinks is the only way to solve social media's problems.
This strikes me as an obviously good idea, and one that should have existed a long time ago. No social company wants this kind of content on its platform, and some already have a history of working together to fight some things like child pornography. In general, these platforms all have so many of the exact same problems, and rather than all try to solve them alone they could go much faster and farther together. Folks I've talked to for years have wondered why this hasn't happened yet, and maybe this will be the spark that finally gets it done.
TikTok also released its global Transparency Report yesterday, and it's an eye-opening read. It took down more than 104 million videos in the first half of this year, more than double the number from the previous six months, and of those 30% were removed due to adult nudity or sexual activities and 20% were removed for violating "minor safety" guidelines. It also received 1,768 government requests for user information. Oh, and the word "China" appears exactly … zero times.
Someday we'll be allowed to socialize in the real world again, but the virtual events industry is here to stay. From Airbnb to ClassPass to all those conference passes that have suddenly become Zoom links, getting together without getting together is now a part of life.
So there's a void to be filled by whatever company can become the place that people go to find stuff to virtually do. A leading candidate? IRL, which announced $16 million in new funding yesterday and has found success by turning a calendar app into something significantly more social.
IRL inverts the whole idea of the calendar. Instead of scheduling events directly, you just tell IRL that you're an Arsenal fan and it fills in the time for you. Or tell it your favorite Twitch star, and IRL will put their streams right onto your schedule. IRL's working with colleges to the same end: Sign in with your .edu account, and you can quickly access class schedules, fraternity events, and lots more.
Stronger care … from more efficient operations
In a defining moment for healthcare, it's even more crucial to deliver patient-centered care efficiently. At Philips, we are committed to providing intelligent, automated workflows that seek to improve patient care. More efficient healthcare means stronger, more resilient healthcare.
On Protocol: The fintech industry is too fragmented, One CEO Brian Hamilton said, which is also what he'd like to change about it:
Barry Diller said what pretty much everyone is thinking about the TikTok deal:
An anonymous former YouTube moderator is suing the company for failing to take care of the people who see the worst of the platform:
Andrea Wong is Roblox's newest board member. She's a longtime entertainment exec, with stints at Sony, ABC and Lifetime. Her appointment is a pretty good indication of exactly how Roblox sees itself, and its opportunity going forward.
Stephen Stokols is the new CEO of Boost Mobile. He's a longtime telecoms exec who actually made a play to buy Boost in 2019. Now, he'll try to turn it into the fourth big American carrier.
Morgan Beller is leaving Facebook. She was one of the founders of the Libra currency and the Novi wallet, but she's leaving her post as Novi's head of strategy to be a partner at VC firm NFX.
Saf Yeboah-Amankwah is the new CSO of Intel. He joins from McKinsey, where he ran the firm's telecom, media and technology transformation practice, and he'll be expected to help Intel figure out where to go next as the internet creeps into every corner of the planet.
This is the best thing that happened on the internet yesterday. If you don't think it's funny, don't taco me.
Stronger care … from more efficient operations
In a defining moment for healthcare, it's even more crucial to deliver patient-centered care efficiently. At Philips, we are committed to providing intelligent, automated workflows that seek to improve patient care. More efficient healthcare means stronger, more resilient healthcare.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce, with help from Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
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