Image: Sausage / Protocol
Every tech fight is public now

Good morning! I'm back from three days without cell service or screens, which I highly recommend doing occasionally. This Monday, why all of tech's big fights are suddenly in public, how Mark Zuckerberg influenced China policy, and how to roll the dice for your passwords.
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A group of WeChat users is suing the U.S. government, saying Trump's ban on the app is unconstitutional. TikTok is planning to sue the U.S. government, saying the same thing. Apple and Epic continue to duke out their App Store issues one court filing at a time.
Actually, let's catch up on the Apple-Epic stuff, because a lot happened over the weekend.
These are the sorts of fights Apple has from time to time — the company's been dealing with disgruntled developers since time immemorial — but hates to have in public. Apple doesn't like issuing statements, doesn't like talking to reporters on the record, doesn't even tweet publicly. Now it's being forced to engage.
A fight in the court of public opinion is clearly what Epic and others want, because that's seemingly the only place it has leverage against Apple. And between all these legal fights and the steady drumbeat of hearings involving Big Tech CEOs, more of tech's internal monologue is being publicly broadcast than ever before.
This isn't a fad, by the way. This is the new normal. Tech is big enough, sprawling enough, and important enough that its issues are inevitably going to play out much more publicly from now on. If you've been hoping your company could just hole up and ride out the chaos, you're going to need a new plan.
Remember the dinner Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump had last fall? Turns out, one of the topics of conversation was a little app called TikTok. The Wall Street Journal reported that Zuckerberg was in Washington on something of an offensive against TikTok, and also spoke with several senators about the subject.
All this zeal surely stems partly from the threat of TikTok to Facebook. And it's a bit of a departure for Zuckerberg: For someone whose products are blocked in China, and who now takes great moral offense at the country's policies, he's spent a lot of time working with the country.
Rereading the transcript of Zuckerberg's Georgetown speech, there's a lot of the current White House playbook in there. American internet supremacy; free expression; framing the whole thing as a question of safety and freedom. But I guess even Zuckerberg didn't expect things would go this far.
This could be a busy week for companies planning to go public. Bloomberg reported that Unity, Asana and Snowflake could all be revealing their plans and financials this week, ahead of public debuts in September. Luminar, too.
And why wouldn't you go public right now? The S&P 500 is at a record high, tech companies are routinely popping on their first day of trading — annoying Bill Gurley in the process — and enough people are saying this can't last that it must feel like now's the time.
Of the three companies in Bloomberg's report, Snowflake's likely to be the largest IPO. But I'm most interested in Unity, which could be going public right as its greatest competitor, Epic, is fighting an existential battle with the richest company in the world.
Join us Wednesday at noon ET for the second event in our National Political Conventions series 'Building the Future'. This event series is hosted in partnership with ITI.
On Protocol: Want to hire a better, more diverse team? Use data, EQT Ventures' Zoe Jervier Hewitt said:
Facebook CMO Antonio Lucio is leaving Facebook to focus on diversity and inclusion, which feels like a bit of a backhanded burn:
Speaking of quitting jobs, Jeff Wilke is leaving Amazon next year, and his reason is much simpler:
There's no perfect advice for founders, but "stay in control" is a good place to start, Aaron Levie said:
Protocol's next Building the Future event is on Wednesday, looking into how we can use tech to get people back to work and get the economy back on track.
Y Combinator's virtual Demo Day runs today and tomorrow, and as Biz Carson wrote it's been an interesting time for the accelerator.
Kafka Summit 2020 also starts today, with all the data-streaming talks and info you could ever want.
Box, Salesforce, HP and VMware all report earnings this week.
It looks like a Boggle board, and has enough dice to make a dungeon master jealous. But DiceKeys is no game: It's a simple system for creating a super-secure key. Created by a Berkeley computer scientist named Stuart Schechter, it becomes the basis for all the passwords, encryption keys and everything else in your life. And best of all? If you forget it, just go check the board. It's much harder to lose than a piece of paper or a flash drive.
Join us Wednesday at noon ET for the second event in our National Political Conventions series 'Building the Future'. This event series is hosted in partnership with ITI.
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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