Alphabet cuts, Twitter bans third-party customers and Netflix’s Reed Hastings resigns • TechCrunch

Howdy folks! Happy Friday. While our Fearless Review Week leader Greg is on parental leave, I’m filling in, curating the latest on the tech news front. It’s been a week-long roller coaster ride again as economic headwinds take their toll on devastating, demoralizing consequences and as chaos reigns on Elon Musk’s Twitter. Somewhere in between, Boston Dynamics showed off an improved bipedal robot, Wikipedia launched a redesign, and major universities banned TikTok from their campus networks. Yes – a lot happened.

Before we get down to business, a friendly reminder that Early stage TechCrunch 2023 is on April 20 in Boston. This is a one-day summit for founders who are in the early stages of growing their company, who have built a product but don’t know how to make money, and who have an idea but don’t know how to make money. didn’t know where to find the resources to make it a viable business. In the Early Stage, experts will share advice on intellectual property protection, limit table structure, developing a target customer profile, etc. You won’t want to miss it.

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The alphabet makes deep cuts: Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced on Friday that it will cut about 6% of its global workforce, or about 12,000 roles, Paul report. In one open letter published by Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the story follows a similar trajectory to that of other companies that have downsized in recent months, noting that the company has “hire for a different economic reality” than it faces today.

Twitter bans third-party clients: Afterward cut out Popular app makers like Tweetbot and Twitterific, Twitter has quietly updated its developer terms to ban third-party Twitter clients entirely. Twitter’s “limited” section is 5,000 words long developer agreement has been updated with a prohibition of “using or accessing [to] The material is licensed to create or attempt to create an alternative or similar service or product to the Twitter App,” a decision that doesn’t seem to promote much goodwill at a time when Twitter is facing challenges on a number of the matrix.

Defeat a Hastings retreat: Netflix founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings announced Thursday that he is stepping down after more than two decades at the company, Taylor write. While the news of his passing came as a shock, Hastings noted in Notification that Netflix has been planning its next era of leadership “for years.” Netflix will maintain a co-CEO structure in Hastings’ absence, promoting COO Greg Peters to a role alongside Ted Sarandos.

College students, no TikTok for you: Public universities across multiple US states have banned TikTok in recent months, and two of the country’s largest colleges followed suit earlier this week. Like Taylor The University of Texas and Texas A&M University have taken action against the social app owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, which bans users of devices and networks on campus from accessing TikTok. The recent series of bans was inspired by executive orders issued by several state governors.

Wikipedia gets a makeover: This week, Wikipedia, a resource used by billions of people every month, made its first desktop change in over a decade, Sarah write. The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs the Wikipedia project, has released an updated interface to make the site more accessible and easier to use, with additions such as improved search, a More prominently positioned to switch between languages, an updated header provides access to commonly used languages. links, and more.

Pour one for AmazonSmile: Just a few days after announcing an important round lay offAmazon said that it will end AmazonSmile, the donation program redirects 0.5% of the cost of all eligible products to charities. Amazon claims that the program has “not evolved to make an impact .” [it] was initially hoping, but like salad note, since 2013, Amazon donated 400 million USD through AmazonSmile. Ending it seems like a move to cut costs.

Date of payment to data breach victims: If you were one of the nearly 77 million people affected by last year’s T-Mobile breach, you might have a few dollars on your way. Devin reports that the company will pay $350 million to split between clients and attorneys, plus $150 million “for data security and related technology.” The apparent breach occurred early last year, after which T-Mobile’s collection of customer data was put up for sale on various criminal forums.

Robot grabs as well as throws: TechCrunch brave Matt burns writes about a demo video this week that shows Atlas, a humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics backed by Hyundai, equipped with grippers that can pick up and drop anything the robot can independently pick up. create. The claw gripper consists of a fixed finger and a movable finger; Boston Dynamics says the grips are designed for heavy lifting tasks, such as Atlas holding a crate overhead in a Super Bowl commercial. Convenient.

Dungeons & Dragons: After weeks of backlash and protests from fansWizards of the Coast — Dungeons & Dragons publisher owned by Hasbro — announced it will now license the core mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This gives the community a “global, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license” to publish and sell works based on Dungeons & Dragons — an alternative Big change for the game giant, which is considering a new plan. that license will request some Dungeons & Dragons content creators start paying 25% royalties.

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Whether it’s to pass the time while commuting to work or to kickstart your morning jog, TechCrunch may have a podcast to suit your taste. Focus on Entrepreneurship Equity this week, Natasha, Mary Ann and Rebecca turned on the mic to talk about a week of varied news, including deals from Sophia Amoruso’s new fund, Welcome Homes, and a review of praise-focused social media apps. Findmeanwhile, featured Mir Hwang, the co-founder and CEO of GigFinesse, who spoke about his difficulties in booking music gigs as a teenager. Teenagers pushed him to start a company that connects artists with live performance venues.

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TC+, TechCrunch’s premium channel for insights, surveys, guest posts, and general analysis, has a ton of content this week (as always). Here are some of the most popular posts:

Regarding Twitter’s data leak response: Carly write about Twitter’s allegation data breach exposed the contact information of millions of users. In one blog posts are not attributedTwitter said it had conducted a “thorough investigation” and found no “evidence” that Twitter user data recently sold online was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability in its systems. Twitter. But as she notes, it’s unclear if Twitter has technical means, such as logs, to determine if any user data was stolen.

The Last Unicorn: Venture capitalists think the majority of unicorns are no longer worth $1 billion. Rebecca examines the current investment landscape, finding that many companies that achieved unicorn status last year are at risk of losing it as economic conditions deteriorate.

Sexism in the workplace: Women-founded startups raised 1.9% of all venture funds in 2022, down from 2021, Dominic-Madori write. That percentage is a significant drop from the 2.4% of all-female teams raised in 2021. The drop was expected, but nonetheless evident. Apart from 2016, the last time women-led startups raised such a low percentage of capital was in 2012, another period of capital decline due to economic uncertainty and elections.