Image: Lorie Shaull / Protocol
Tech is torn over social activism at work

Good morning! This Tuesday, Epic and Apple might go before a jury, search engines aren't happy with Android's search choice screen, and a Coinbase blog post divides tech Twitter.
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Biz Carson writes: The legal battle between Apple and Epic Games happened the only way it could: The Zoom call maxed out its number of attendees, so Fortnite fans violated court rules and started streaming the hearing onto YouTube and Twitch as part of the #FreeFortnite campaign.
But the judge was no huge Fortnite fan. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wasn't "particularly persuaded" by some of Epic's arguments — but then, she also called some of Apple's reactions overblown. She said she would be issuing a written order, but didn't give a timeline on when she would make a decision.
The trial went as you'd expect: Apple's core arguments continued to center around customer privacy and security; Epic said its recent actions were proof that controls are needed.
Epic's lawyers said its actions are justified, arguing that they showed that there was consumer demand for an alternative payments system after over half the buyers used Epic's option. (Apple's lawyers argued that the fact that it was only half showed that users still trust Apple's products more.)
The fight may now go before a jury at the recommendation of the judge: She said that she assumed the losing party would file an appeal and that the appellate court looks more favorably on jury verdicts.
Earlier this year, in response to a 2018 European antitrust ruling, Google started offering new European Android users a choice: They could pick which search engine would be the device's default, from a list of four. One of those would always be Google, but competitors could bid to be included as one of the other three in each country.
According to DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, the whole system is flawed.
"It hasn't worked," DuckDuckGo's Kamyl Bazbaz told me. While DuckDuckGo has previously won some of the auctions, this time around it lost out in most big countries, with Bing, Info.com and PrivacyWall the big winners announced Monday. Ecosia, meanwhile, had previously boycotted the auction. "We decided to participate in this round," CEO Christian Kroll said, "because we really didn't see that we had a choice." But it lost in every country other than Slovenia.
"What we wanted to do at the beginning was get data to understand what it would be like to profitably bid," DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg said. So back at the start of the program DuckDuckGo bid high amounts. Now, it knows how much it can afford to pay per user, and it turns out to be less than other companies. Weinberg attributed that to the engine's business model: It shows fewer ads, and it makes less money per ad because it doesn't collect as much data.
Being excluded from the choice screen probably won't have an immediate impact on DuckDuckGo, Weinberg and Bazbaz said: It's simply not prevalent enough yet. But it has the potential for impact, they think, and being excluded could harm their business long term. "The idea of it is actually a really good remedy, it's just Google has hijacked it and made it look bad," Weinberg said.
DuckDuckGo has its own designs, supported by Ecosia, for what a "good" screen looks like: More than four options shown to every Android user, not just new ones, with no auction behind it all. And it has big ambitions for that design:
On Sunday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong published a blog post about the company's mission. One part in particular caught the attention of tech Twitter.
"We focus minimally on causes not directly related to the mission," Armstrong wrote. That means not engaging with "broader societal issues," or advocating "for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission." Social activism, Armstrong thinks, has "the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division."
"I recognize that our approach is not for everyone and may be controversial," he said.
No kidding.
One thing to watch now is how Coinbase employees respond. Some people expect a mass exodus of talent; others think this might attract less politically engaged people to work there. We'll find out soon enough which one's true.
This Twitter controversy was almost immediately overtaken by Clubhouse drama, by the way, after a discussion about "anti-Semitism and Black culture" reportedly became anti-Semitic. As Gabe Rivera pointed out, it's one a16z portfolio company taking the fall for another. That's what I call teamwork.
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Kara Swisher asked Elon Musk who he's voting for:
Uber's ex-CTO Thuan Pham is worried about the company's self-driving division:
NAACP Vice President Jamal Watkins wants more information from Facebook about the 2016 election after Channel 4 reported that the Trump campaign targeted Black voters marked as "deterrence."
Amazon is hiring 5,300 people in Vancouver over the next three years, and will open a new 1.1 million-square-foot office in the city.
Rinki Sethi is Twitter's new CISO. She most recently did the same job at Rubrik, and now has the unenviable task of making sure July's hack doesn't happen again.
Krishna Tammana is Talend's new CTO. He was previously VP of engineering at Splunk.
Adrienne Gormley is now COO at N26, and Diana Styles is its new chief people officer. Gormley joins from Dropbox, and Styles was previously an executive at Adidas.
Ivanti bought MobileIron for $872 million, which the two companies said will create a market leader in "unified endpoint management."
It's the end of an era: FarmVille is shutting down on Facebook on Dec. 31. It's a casualty of Adobe killing Flash Player, and brings an end to 11 years of really annoying notifications. Don't worry though: FarmVille 3 is coming soon.
Introducing QuickBooks Commerce, a new way for small businesses to grow
Small businesses need to attract and sell to new customers, but many worry about adding operational complexity – especially right now. QuickBooks Commerce is a new platform to manage multiple online and in-store sales channels and better maintain inventory while getting profitability insights – all from one central hub.
Today's Source Code was written by Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to shakeel@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
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