Image: Ben Sweet / Protocol
Facebook wants to own your online identity

Good morning! This Wednesday, Facebook wants to own identity online, eBay wants to run its own payments, and Color of Change wants to fix Silicon Valley.
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Who are you on the internet? That question sounds deep and existential and like maybe the answer should be, I don't know, "a dog." But I mean it practically. When you tell someone who you are online, what do you say? "David Pierce" doesn't help. "@pierce" is true on Twitter but nowhere else.
The answer's probably an email address, or maybe your phone number. But those aren't very good solutions. Too hackable, too easy to find, too hard to control. Which is why everyone from Twitter to Google to Facebook to Microsoft to the open-source community has made efforts over the years to become something like Your Main Username.
Facebook might have the best chance to actually pull it off, I think. As it continues to consolidate and cross-pollinate its platforms, it's also building a single place where you'll be able to find basically anyone.
There's nothing obviously insidious about Facebook doing this, but it's an increasingly on-brand move. And let's push it out a bit: If every Instagram and WhatsApp user also has to get a Facebook account, a huge proportion of the internet would suddenly have a Facebook account. Your friends list would become your go-to contacts list, you'd use that login to get into all kinds of other websites.
Tuesday's Oculus announcement made some users angry because it felt invasive somehow. But other tech CEOs, especially those running other communication and social tools, should take note of what Facebook's doing here. All the practical reasons for combining everything are real and valid, but they're also the kind of thing we could look back on in a decade and realize were steps toward Facebook becoming the identity layer for the internet. Just as it always wanted.
As conversations about diversity and inclusion in tech finally move to the front of executives' minds, Color of Change has served an important role both in the public sphere and in the conversations tech companies are having with themselves and each other.
But the fight to take civil rights to Silicon Valley is a long one, which, as Protocol's Issie Lapowsky writes, Color of Change has been waging for years.
One of Color of Change's early efforts in tech was with Airbnb, and that work helped lead to the company's first internal civil rights audit and ultimately a long list of other changes at the company. Its current target, as I'm sure you've noticed, is Mark Zuckerberg.
Make sure you read Issie's whole story, because Color of Change is an organization you're not going to be able to ignore, fighting for a cause that's picking up much-needed steam all over the tech industry. And trust me: You don't want to be on its bad side.
Shakeel Hashim writes: EBay's experience with payments is … complicated. Back in 2002, it acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion, only to spin it off again in 2015 at a $52 billion valuation. Since then, an operating agreement has forced eBay to use PayPal as its payment provider — until last month, that is. Now eBay's striking out on its own again, and it's got big plans.
EBay's now transitioning to its own payments system, powered by Adyen. But Cutright is crystal clear about one thing: "It's not about creating a new PayPal 2.0 under the eBay umbrella." EBay's new payments team is solely focused on making payments better on eBay, not around the web.
Specifically, it wants to let users pay using different methods such as Apple Pay, if they want to, or installment payment methods such as Afterpay (which it's trialing in Australia). Down the line, Cutright said eBay wants to offer a whole range of financial services to buyers and sellers.
There's one other benefit to ditching PayPal, of course: costs. Cutright said that eBay can now negotiate processing fees on behalf of all its sellers, rather than them each negotiating with PayPal individually. That should lower sellers' fees, she said — which sounds like good news for everyone but PayPal.
During the 2020 national political conventions, Protocol will host a two-event series on the tech and policy needed to enable a diverse future workforce and a strong economy. Join us at noon ET today for the first event in the series, hosted in partnership with ITI.
Facebook hasn't taken much action against President Trump's posts, but Sheryl Sandberg said it would if it had to:
Forget national security — banning TikTok in the U.S. is about fairness, Tim Wu said:
Oracle reportedly wants to buy TikTok, and President Trump (a noted Larry Ellison fan) likes the idea:
Andrea Wishom is Pinterest's newest board member. She's the president of Skywalker Holdings, and is Pinterest's first Black board member. She joins at an interesting time, as the company reckons with a number of allegations about discrimination and sexism at the company.
DJI sent us a note disputing some of the numbers in the Reuters story we mentioned in yesterday's newsletter. From its statement: "In truth, DJI has made some important structural changes and our business is thriving, as both personal and professional customers around the world are embracing drones in an era of social distancing."
Alyssa Harvey Dawson is Gusto's new chief legal officer. She's a longtime tech exec, with stints at eBay, Netflix and Sidewalk Labs, and said she's going to help the company shift to a post-pandemic world.
David Kunst is Wing's new head of operations. He joins from Lyft, where he ran operations in Northern California (which seems like … not a fun job right now). Faisal Masud, Wing's former COO, is now officially out of the company.
Few things in tech history have given me as much joy as watching people scour the Earth in the early days of Apple Maps, looking for warped bridges and random mountains in the middle of highways. And now, with the new Microsoft Flight Simulator, I get to relive the experience. Here's Buckingham Palace, turned into a bunch of apartments! Here's a very important bridge that just doesn't exist! Flight Simulator is a great, impressive game — and this might be my favorite feature.
During the 2020 national political conventions, Protocol will host a two-event series on the tech and policy needed to enable a diverse future workforce and a strong economy. Join us at noon ET today for the first event in the series, 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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