10 things in tech you need to know today, September 4

William Shatner said he
experienced a “screaming nightmare” in VR.
AP Photo/Steven Senne

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this
Tuesday.

1.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reportedly overruled staff on whether to
ban conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from the
service. Dorsey has personally made decisions
about whether some high-profile Twitter accounts were booted or
not from the social network, according to the Wall Street
Journal.

2.
Peer-to-peer lending company Funding Circle announced plans to go
public on Monday. It said it was looking to raise
around £300 million ($385 million) by issuing shares with its
IPO.

3.
A British senior minister demanded in a speech that tech
companies do more to curb child online sexual abuse.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he wouldn’t be afraid to “take
action” if tech companies didn’t up their game.

4.
The US and UK governments are looking to force chat companies to
give them obligatory “back doors” into encrypted
messages. A warning was issued by an intelligence
alliance comprising the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, that they want providers to create “lawful access
solutions” to encrypted texts.

5.
A group of top British broadcasting executives signed a letter
calling for an independent watchdog for digital
content. The letter was signed by the heads of the
BBC, Sky, ITV, Channel 4, BT, and Talk Talk.

6.
Moneysupermarket billionaire Simon Nixon invested in
Deliveroo. Filings showed that Nixon, one of the
UK’s richest men, has backed fast-growing food delivery startup
Deliveroo.

7.
China’s biggest online movie ticketing service announced it’s
going public. Maoyan Weiying, which is backed
by Tencent, filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

8. Skype is
removing wildly unpopular Snapchat-like features from its
app. The update was introduced in 2017, and faced
heavy criticism as the “worst ever update.” 

9.
Facebook has been blocked in Libya. Reuters
reports that Libyan citizens in multiple cities including Tripoli
have been blocked from Facebook since noon on Monday as fighting
between rival groups continues.

10.
William Shatner talked about his experience using virtual reality
and how terrifying it is. The former “Star Trek”
star spoke to the Guardian about how real using VR felt, and that
in one simulation he was attacked by a “screaming
nightmare.” 

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