Daily Crunch: Facebook bans Trump for two weeks

Online platforms take action against President Trump, Lenovo tries out a swiveling screen and Roblox raises $250 million. This is your Daily Crunch for January 7, 2021.

The big story: Facebook bans Trump for two weeks

After a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol yesterday, a number of online platforms moved to suspend accounts connected to the outgoing president.

For example, Twitter locked Trump’s account for 12 hours after he posted several (subsequently deleted) tweets repeating his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud and expressing support for the rioters (while also calling for an end to violence). Twitch also disabled his channel until the end of his term and Shopify pulled down stores tied to the president and his campaign.

But the most notable move came from Facebook, which banned Trump from both Facebook and Instagram for “at least the next two weeks,” until the end of his term. Mark Zuckerberg wrote that this was necessary due to the “use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”

The tech giants

Waymo is dropping the term ‘self-driving,’ but not everyone in the industry is on board — Alphabet-owned Waymo will no longer use the term “self-driving” to describe its technology.

Lenovo’s new all-in-one has a swiveling screen, because sure, why not? — When it comes to staid product categories, why not try something weird?

Samsung simplifies with a lower-priced premium Chromebook — Samsung just dropped what’s almost certainly one of its biggest pieces of news for CES, with the arrival of the Galaxy Chromebook 2.

Startups, funding and venture capital

SoFi to go public in merger with Chamath Palihapitiya’s newest SPAC — The deal, confirmed by SoFi, would value the fintech company at $8.65 billion.

Roblox raises at $29.5B valuation, readies for direct listing — Roblox is now one of the world’s most valuable private companies in the world.

Local news app News Break raises $115M — CEO Jeff Zheng said there’s “strong user demand” for local news but “weak supply.”

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Decrypted: How bad was the US Capitol breach for cybersecurity? — The breach will likely present a major task for Congress’ IT departments.

The tech-powered wave of smart, not slow, tutoring sessions — While starting a tutoring marketplace is easy, scaling is often where the troubles begin.

With 5 new unicorns in first week of 2021, are we in for a stampede this year? — The pace at which new unicorns are being announced feels incredibly rapid.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Hopin might be the fastest growth story of this era — The Equity team discusses Hopin’s acquisition of livestreaming company StreamYard.

Elon Musk has a new title: world’s richest person — He reached the pinnacle Thursday thanks to Tesla’s skyrocketing share price, along with a substantial pay package.

Remembering TechCrunch Japan’s Hirohide Yoshida (1971-2020) — On New Year’s Eve, TechCrunch Japan’s Editor-in-Chief Hirohide Yoshida passed away at age 49.

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