• Sen. Ron Wyden said he will introduce a new privacy bill that would ban government agencies from buying people's personal information from data brokers to skirt standard court orders. 
• The proposed legislation would "be very specific about making sure that you just don't have this backdoor to throw in the Fourth Amendment in the trash can," Wyden told The Verge in an interview.
• The bill, named "The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale," is expected to roll out in the coming weeks.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said he is rolling out a new piece of legislation in the next few weeks that would ban government agencies, such as law enforcement, from purchasing people's data and obtaining their personal information.

In an interview with The Verge, Wyden outlined his plans for the bill, named "The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale," which would prevent governments from skirting the standard court orders and buying from data brokers.

"I don't think Americans' Constitutional rights ought to vanish when the government uses a credit card instead of a court order," Wyden told the outlet. "I mean, surveillance, folks, is surveillance. And what I want to do is close this loophole."

Wyden also notes that, as a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he's privy to more intel on "shady data brokers" selling American user data and said what the general public is informed of is the "tip of the iceberg." The bill is slated to roll out in the next few weeks, per the report.

The proposed legislation comes after Sen. Wyden introduced the "Mind Your Own Business Act" in October 2019. The act was designed to keep tech executives in check by threatening up to 20 years of jail time if they are caught lying to the Federal Trade Commission about privacy violations.

Wyden is a coauthor of Section 230, the provision made to a 1996 internet law that shields tech companies with an online presence, like Twitter and Facebook, from being regulated as third-party content publishers, meaning they are not liable for the content that users post on their platforms.

In his interview with The Verge, Wyden also said President Trump's handling of the Federal Communications Commission is a "disaster" following his renomination block of Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O'Reilly, who did not share the president's opposition to Section 230 as well as a strong desire to crack down on the platforms offered by tech companies.

"I shudder to think of a day in which the Fairness Doctrine could be reincarnated for the Internet, especially at the ironic behest of so-called free speech 'defenders,'" O'Reilly said last week according to a Deadline report.

Read Wyden's interview with The Verge here.

SEE ALSO: The Justice Department wants to weaken protections for internet companies like Facebook and Twitter, which have drawn Trump's ire

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Sony's PlayStation 4 has dominated the video game industry since it launched in November 2013, and deals on consoles, games, and accessories are frequently offered.
• Though the PlayStation 5 is due out in late 2020, Sony says it plans to continue supporting the PS4 for years to come thanks to its huge install base.
• The PlayStation 4 still has plenty of new games on the way, and you can find lots of great discounts on PS4 classics, even with a new console generation on the horizon.
• Right now, "Persona 5 Royal" is on sale for $39.99, which is $20 off its regular price.
  

The PlayStation 4 is one of the best-selling video game consoles of all-time, with more than 100 million consoles sold around the world since its debut in 2013.

Sony has dominated the current console generation with PlayStation 4-exclusive games like "God of War," "Horizon Zero Dawn," and "Marvel's Spider-Man." Hit franchises like "MLB the Show" and "Uncharted" also continue to keep fans dedicated to the PlayStation brand.

Beyond a library of more than 2,500 video games, the PlayStation 4 also serves as the anchor for countless home theater systems, providing Blu-ray and DVD playback, digital movie rentals, and support for popular streaming apps like Netflix, Spotify, and Twitch.

The PlayStation 5 is due to launch in fall 2020, but Sony says it will continue releasing games for the millions of PS4 owners while gamers gradually adopt the new console. As an added bonus, the PS5 will support hundreds of the most popular PS4 games, so you can start building a library now and bring them over to the new console when you're ready to upgrade.

Below, we've collected the best deals on PlayStation 4 consoles, exclusive games, and accessories. These discounts should all come in handy whether you're picking up a PlayStation 4 for the first time, building your library of games, or trying to find the cheapest price on a PlayStation peripheral.

Here are the best PS4 deals for August 2020: 

• "Persona 5 Royal," $39.99 (originally $59.99) at Best Buy [You save $20]
• "Borderlands 3," $9.99 (originally $39.99 at Best Buy) [You save $30]
• HyperX Cloud wireless headset, $69.99 (originally $79.99) at Amazon [You save $10] 
• Pre-owned DualShock 4 Wireless Controller, $49.99 ($59.99 new) at GameStop [You save $10 buying pre-owned]

Prices and links are current as of 8/4/2020. Added new deals for PS4 games. Removed deals that are no longer active. Updated by Kevin Webb.

Best PlayStation 4 console deals

After releasing the original PlayStation 4 in 2013, Sony released two new versions of the console in 2016 — a slim model replacing the original, and the more powerful PS4 Pro.

The PlayStation 4 Pro is capable of playing games at 4K resolution, while the standard PS4 is limited to 1080p. Despite the resolution limits, every version of the PS4 is capable of HDR color output, and a 1TB hard drive is now the PS4 standard.

Though there are no discounts currently available on new PlayStation 4 consoles, with the PlayStation 5 on the way, buying a used or refurbished PlayStation 4 could be a wise choice if you just want something to hold you over until you're ready to upgrade to the next generation console.

Unfortunately, stock for all PlayStation 4 consoles remains low at many retailers. With that in mind, the below products might not currently be available for shipment. We'll update this section with more retailer options as stores add more inventory. 

• PlayStation 4 Pro, $399.99 (originally $399.99) at Best Buy
• PlayStation 4 Slim, $299.99 (originally $299.99) at Best Buy
• Refurbished PlayStation 4 Pro, $359.99 ($399.99 new) at GameStop [You save $40 buying refurbished]
• Refurbished PlayStation 4 Slim, $279.99 ($299.99 new) at GameStop [You save $20 buying refurbished]

Best deals on PlayStation 4 games

There are thousands of games available for the PlayStation 4, so we've chosen to focus on the some of the console's most popular titles. Digital games are available through the PlayStation Network storefront, which also offers sales on a regular basis.

• "Red Dead Redemption 2," $29.99 (originally $59.99) at Best Buy [You save $30]
• "Persona 5 Royal," $39.99 (originally $59.99) at Best Buy [You save $20]
• "Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath Kollection," $39.99 (originally $59.99) at Best Buy [You save $20]
• "Borderlands 3," $9.99 (originally $39.99 at Best Buy) [You save $30]
• "MLB The Show 20," $29.99 (originally $39.99) at Best Buy [You save $10]

Best PlayStation 4 controller deals

The DualShock 4 is the standard PlayStation 4 controller but it's also compatible with Windows, iOS, MacOS, and Android devices.

With controllers like the Xbox Elite Series popularizing the use of rear paddle buttons, premium controllers like the SCUF Vantage have become popular choices for the PlayStation 4 as well. Sony released a special attachment to add back buttons to the DS4 controller in January 2020, but it's been hard to find in the months since.

Though there are no discounts on brand-new DualShock 4 controllers right now, you can save $10 by purchasing a pre-owned controller via GameStop.

• Pre-owned DualShock 4 Wireless Controller, $49.99 ($59.99 new) at GameStop [You save $10 buying pre-owned]

Best PlayStation VR and PS4 accessory deals

The PlayStation VR is the top-selling VR headset, thanks in part to the 100 million people who already own the required PlayStation 4. The headset connects directly to the console and can be used to play standard games in 2D as well as immersive VR titles like "Firewall: Zero Hour."

The PlayStation Move Motion controller has been around since the days of the PlayStation 3 and works in tandem with the PlayStation VR to track arm and hand movements. They're not mandatory for playing games in VR, but some games require them for proper motion control, like "Superhot."

The Gold Wireless Headset is one of Sony's official headsets for the PlayStation 4, but the PS4 console and controller are compatible with a wide range of third party audio devices.

There are no discounts currently available on brand-new PlayStation VR headsets or bundles, but GameStop has refurbished PlayStation VR units for $149.99 when they're in stock. We'll update this section with more PlayStation VR and accessory deals as they are announced.

• HyperX Cloud wireless headset, $69.99 (originally $79.99) at Amazon [You save $10]
• Refurbished PlayStation VR (HDR Compatible), $149.99 ($199.99 new) at GameStop [You save $50 buying refurbished]

Best PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now deals

PlayStation Plus is a subscription service that's required for online play with nearly all PlayStation 4 games.  The subscription also offers special discounts in the PlayStation Network store, and subscribers get free games each month that remain available as long as the PlayStation Plus subscription is active.

If you're already a PlayStation Plus subscriber, buying a discounted membership will add time to the length of your current subscription.

Meanwhile, PlayStation Now is a subscription streaming service that lets you stream hundreds of games to your PC or PS4. Think Netflix, but for PlayStation games. The service includes games for PS2, PS3, and PS4. As an added bonus, PlayStation 4 owners can download the full version of their PlayStation Now games to play offline.

• 12 Month PlayStation Plus Membership, $59.99 from GameStop
• 12 Month PlayStation Now membership, $59.99 from GameStop

• Apple announced in June that it will start making its own chips for future Mac computers, enabling its laptops and desktops to run iPhone and iPad apps.
• But that will pose a challenge for Apple's iOS developers, who are used to creating apps centered on touch-based interactions and smaller screen sizes, developers say.
• Apple isn't the first to tackle the challenge of creating an app ecosystem that works seamlessly across mobile and desktop — Microsoft has made attempts at this as well.
• Overall, app developers will have to do a lot more than simply recompile their apps for Apple's Mac software, developers say.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple dropped a bombshell announcement at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June: It would begin making its own chips for future Mac computers, moving away from its longtime chip partner Intel. The move was expected, as reports from Bloomberg had previously detailed, but it was still the most significant news to come out one of Apple's biggest events of the year.

Apple spent the latter portion of its keynote detailing the benefits that such a shift would yield for both the customers using Apple's products and the developers creating apps for them. Andreas Wendker, Apple's vice president of tools and frameworks engineering, showed how iPhone apps like the Calm meditation app and the game "Monument Valley 2" would run seamlessly on the Mac since both platforms would now run on the same architecture.

But there's a big question that will largely be left up to developers to answer: Why would anyone want to use touch-based iPhone apps on a Mac computer to begin with?

Apple has always maintained that apps should be designed and tailored for a specific platform rather than simply replicated across devices. That approach was a key driver behind the success of the iPad and Apple Watch, as apps for those platforms are much more than just retooled iPhone apps.

That's likely to be the biggest challenge for developers looking to bring their iPhone apps to the Mac once new computers powered by Apple's chips launch, developers say.

"I think developers are going to require essentially a whole new kind of a learning experience, figuring out what works on the Macintosh," James Cuda, cofounder and CEO of Savage Interactive, the company behind the popular sketching and drawing app Procreate, said to Business Insider.

'They just don't have that experience'

App makers looking to bring their programs to the Mac will likely have to rethink how their apps will work since they'll have to be compatible with mice and keyboards rather than touch screens.

"These are people who have had their careers as mobile developers for over a decade now," Eric Puidokas, president of the weight loss app Lose It!, told Business Insider. "And they just don't have that experience."

Yaron Inger, the chief technology officer at Lightricks, the firm behind the photo editing app Facetune, cited the app's touch-centric tools for editing portraits as a big driver behind its appeal. For Mac devices that lack a touch screen, Lightricks will have to find other ways to make an app like Facetune stand out.

Another question is whether it's worth it for app developers to invest in redesigning their apps for the desktop. Some companies, particularly game developers and publishers, might prefer to prioritize iOS development because of the iPhone's scale and reach, says Thor Fridriksson, CEO of Teatime Games, which makes the mobile trivia game called Trivia Royale.

"The developer has to kind of decide whether it makes sense to use the resources to make a better experience on the mobile app and try to access the billions of users that are in the mobile market, or if it's worth its while to try and create an experience on the Mac," Fridriksson said to Business Insider. "And I think it's just going to be different from game to game."

Succeeding where Microsoft has struggled

Apple has already been laying the groundwork for this type of switch by making tools available for developers to port their existing iPad apps to the Mac through its Catalyst program. The company also began requiring developers to shift all their apps to 64-bit architecture rather than 32-bit as far back as 2017. 

Even so, creating programs that are just as useful, enjoyable, and intuitive on the Mac as they are on the iPhone may not be so simple for mobile app makers. Developers have struggled with the tools available as part of Apple's Catalyst program, Bloomberg reported in October, as some app makers told the publication they encountered user interface issues with scrolling, the keyboard, and other features.  

Microsoft, with its ill-fated Windows 8 operating system from 2012, had also tried to create software that could work universally across all types of computers, whether they were touch-based or relied on the mouse and keyboard. What it ended up with, however, was a less user-friendly interface that didn't excel as a mobile or desktop operating system.

Of course, Microsoft's approach was much different than Apple's. Unlike Windows 8, macOS is still a completely separate operating system designed for laptops and desktops, while Apple's iPhones and iPads are powered by its iOS and iPadOS software.

And Apple's history in creating its own chips for other products like the iPhone and offering programs like Catalyst for developers could give it an advantage.

"Partly just historical and structural, Apple is better prepared for this than Microsoft and Windows are," Frank Gillett, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, previously said to Business Insider.

The advantages of bringing iPhone apps to the Mac

Despite the obstacles that might lie ahead, developers are confident that the shift to Apple silicon will ultimately mean more choice and flexibility for both app creators and Apple device owners.

It'll be beneficial for developers who are interested in expanding to the desktop but may not have the resources to build a full macOS app. Companies that prefer pointing users to their app rather than their website may also find the ability to port iPhone apps over to macOS useful. 

Puidokas considers Lose It! to be one of those companies.

"I could see this starting to supplant web apps," Puidokas said. "For a company like Lose It! — where we have our website and our iPad app — I would prefer people use the iPad app."

Plus, some app makers are looking forward to performance gains that may come from using Apple's own chips over Intel's. Sharad Shankar, cofounder and CEO of Andor Communications, which offers a photo-editing and retouching app called LightX, said the shift to Apple silicon will be helpful for apps that heavily rely on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

For an app like LightX, this would likely mean a boost in performance when processing edits.

"Doing high-resolution image processing becomes quite easy," Shankar said to Business Insider. "Understanding your portraits becomes quite easy, and segmenting your image becomes quite easy."

All told, the introduction of Apple's own silicon for the Mac should make it easier than ever for app makers to bring their mobile programs to MacBooks and iMacs. But developers will still have to make sure they're doing more than simply porting their apps over to the Mac.

"I don't think it's going to be as easy as just compiling their iOS app for Macintosh," Cuda said. "I think that to really make a beautiful product, something that customers really enjoy, I think there's going to have to be a lot of time spent on the interface and on the user experience to really embrace what a Macintosh is."

SEE ALSO: 'We've all been neutered by what Apple did:' App makers are rallying against Apple's claims that it creates a level playing field for everyone

Join the conversation about this story »

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• The Xbox One X is still the most powerful video game console on the market, and Microsoft has confirmed that Xbox One games will be playable on its upcoming Xbox Series X as well.
• Low cost subscription services, like Xbox Live and Xbox Game Pass, also bring tons of value and affordable games to the Xbox One.
• Below, we've compiled the best deals on Xbox consoles, games, accessories, and subscriptions.
• Right now, "Rage 2" is on sale for $10.99, which is $49 off its regular price.

Microsoft debuted its first Xbox console less than 20 years ago, but the brand has blossomed into one of the titans of the video game industry. Its current flagship console, the Xbox One, has shipped more than 50 million units worldwide and dedicated fans are eagerly awaiting the launch of the next Xbox console, the Xbox Series X, later this fall.

For now, the Xbox One X is the most powerful video game console on the market, out performing the PlayStation 4 Pro and Nintendo Switch. The Xbox One S is a strong console as well, boasting 4K resolution playback, HDR support, and a host of media center features that make it an ideal centerpiece for your home entertainment setup.

Microsoft has worked to create a robust ecosystem for Xbox fans, which will include letting them play Xbox One games on the upcoming Series X. Services, like Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass, also bring extra value to the console, offering thousands of games to players for a low price.

We've collected the best deals on Xbox One consoles, games, subscriptions, and accessories below. These should come in handy whether you're an Xbox veteran looking forward to the Series X, or looking to pick up your very first video game console.

Here are the best Xbox One deals for August 2020:

• "Gears 5," $24.99 (originally $39.99) at Best Buy [You save $15]
• "Rage 2," $10.99 (originally $59.99) at Best Buy [You save $49]
• Pre-owned Xbox One Wireless Controller, $44.99 ($59.99 new) at GameStop [You save $15 buying pre-owned]
• Three Month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership, $32.99 (originally $44.99) at CDKeys.com [You save $12]

Prices and links are current as of 8/4/2020. Added new Xbox One video game deals. Removed deals that are no longer active. Updated by Kevin Webb.

Best Xbox One console deals

Due to high demand, stock for all Xbox One consoles remains low at many retailers, especially for the Xbox One X. With that in mind, the below products might not currently be available for shipment. We'll update this section with more retailer options and discounts as stores add more inventory. 

• Xbox One S Bundle with "NBA 2K20," $299.99 at Best Buy
• Pre-Owned Xbox One X, $359.99 ($399.99 new) at GameStop [You save $40 buying pre-owned]
• Pre-Owned Xbox One S, $269.99 ($299.99 new) at GameStop [You save $30 buying pre-owned]
• Refurbished Xbox One (500GB original model), $199.99 at GameStop
• Xbox One S, $299.00 from Microsoft
• Xbox One X Bundle with free copy of "Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order," $399.00 from Microsoft 

Best deals on Xbox One games

There are thousands of games available for Xbox One, so we've chosen to focus on just a few of the console's most popular titles. Digital games are available through the Microsoft Store, which offers sales on a regular basis.

• • "Forza Horizon 4," $37.99 (originally $59.99) at Best Buy [You save $22]
  • "Borderlands 3," $9.99 (originally $39.99) at Best Buy [You save $30]
  • "Mortal Kombat 11 Aftermath Kollection," $39.99 (originally $59.99) at Best Buy [You save $20]
  • "Gears 5," $24.99 (originally $39.99) at Best Buy [You save $15]
  • "Rage 2," $10.99 (originally $59.99) at Best Buy [You save $49]
  • "The Evil Within 2," $10.99 (originally $39.99) at Best Buy [You save $29]

Best Xbox One controller deals

The Xbox One controller has become the standard for PC gaming thanks to its compatibility with Windows and countless indie games. Newer versions of the Xbox One controller make it easy to connect to your computer or phone with Bluetooth too. While most controllers use rechargeable batteries, the Xbox One controller still relies on AA batteries.

Microsoft also makes a premium Xbox One gamepad, the $180 Xbox Elite controller. The Elite series offers some notable improvements, like a rechargeable battery with 40 hours of playtime, four rear paddle bu tons for extra control, customizable thumbsticks, and a rubber grip.

There are no discounts currently available on brand-new Xbox controllers, but you can save $15 if you buy a pre-owned controller from GameStop.

• Xbox One Wireless Controller, $59.99 at Target
• Pre-Owned Xbox One Wireless Controller, $44.99 ($59.99 new) at GameStop [You save $15 buying pre-owned]

Best Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass deals

Xbox Live Gold is a subscription service that's required for online play with nearly all Xbox One games. The subscription also offers free games each month that remain available as long as the Xbox Live Gold subscription is active.

If you're already an Xbox Live Gold subscriber, buying a discounted membership will add time to the length of your current subscription.

Meanwhile, Xbox Game Pass is a subscription gaming service that lets you download hundreds of games to your Xbox One or Windows PC. The service costs $5 a month on PC or $10 a month on Xbox One. New Game Pass subscribers will only pay $1 for their first month thanks to an ongoing promotion.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate includes an Xbox Live Gold subscription and will give you access to Game Pass on both PC and Xbox for a regular price of $15 per month. 

• Three Month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership, $34.59 (originally $44.99) from CDKeys.com [You save $10.40]

• Disney's parks and products business missed out $3.5 billion in operating income during the third quarter, as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered its theme parks around the world. 
• Disney's theme parks, including its flagship Walt Disney World location, are reopening in phases. 
• But Wall Street analysts have said the business still faces a long recovery.
• Analysts at Goldman Sachs, while optimistic about the long-term recovery of Disney's parks, projected in July a downside scenario in which Disney's parks business doesn't fully recover until 2023 because of social-distancing constraints.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

This post was originally published on July 16, and has been updated to reflect Disney's third quarter earnings.

Disney's parks and products division missed out on billions in potential operating income last quarter as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered its theme parks around the world. 

The media giant said on Thursday that the segment took a $3.5 billion hit to operating income during its third quarter, ending in June, as revenue fell 85% year over year. The parks segment, which posted a $2 billion operating loss, was the hardest hit business within the company, according to the company.

Disney's US and Disneyland Paris locations were closed for the full quarter, while its parks in Asia were closed for part of the period.

Disney is reopening, in phases, many of its parks including its flagship, Florida-based location, Walt Disney World.

But Wall Street analysts have said the business still faces a long recovery.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs, UBS, and Wells Fargo estimated that Disney's park business, which had been its most stable business until the pandemic, could weigh on the company's financials through its next fiscal year, or until a vaccine for the coronavirus is publicly available. The parks aren't yet reopening to full capacity, as part of the company's safety precautions.

"Until the time at which there is significantly improved testing and/or a widely available vaccine, it's tough for us to imagine long lines for Rise of the Resistance, no matter how much folks might want to go to WDW deep down," Wells Fargo analysts wrote in April.

During the second quarter, Disney also missed out on $1 billion in operating income due to park closures. Disney World, Disney's largest park by attendance, was closed for about two weeks during that period.

Goldman Sachs analysts wrote on July 13 that they're assuming attendance and revenues at Disney's parks, resorts, cruises, and experiences won't fully recover until fiscal year 2022 as a base case, or 2023 at worst. However, the analysts said they expect to update their models based on the latest earnings report. 

"When Disney reopened its Shanghai park in May, the company operated well below the 30% capacity constraint imposed by the government and ramped up to 30% over the following weeks," the analysts wrote. "While operating at these levels may reduce operating losses in both Disney and Comcast's parks divisions, it may not lead to a significant positive contribution to operating profit either."

Goldman Sachs' downside scenario for Disney estimates 30% less revenue from Disney's parks and experiences in 2021 than the firm's $15.75 billion projection, and 20% less revenue in 2022 than its $22.8 billion projection.

During Disney's 2019 fiscal year that ended in September, the parks and experiences division posted $26.2 billion in revenue, more than any other segment. The division brought in $13.9 billion in revenue during the first nine months of fiscal 2020, 30% less than during prior year.

As of now:

• Walt Disney World is open
• Disney's Shanghai and Tokyo theme parks are open
• Disneyland Paris is open
• Hong Kong Disneyland, which reopened on June 18, was forced to close again, after a surge in cases led the local government to bring back social-distancing measures
• Disneyland in California is still closed due to state restrictions

Disney World is by far Disney's largest theme park by attendance. It recorded 58.8 million visitors in 2019, 80% more than its next most-visited park, the Themed Entertainment Association estimated. Disney took the rare step of shutting Disney World's gates on March 15, as the coronavirus pandemic first gripped the US.

The Goldman Sachs analysts said they're confident Disney's parks business will eventually recover, with a little help from the broader Disney machine, including its new streaming service, Disney Plus.

"We believe Disney's track record of material outperformance in Parks and Film will persist as the economy recovers from the COVID pandemic, and that synergies between these segments and Disney+ are underappreciated by investors," the note said. "For example, we anticipate that over time marketing costs for tent-pole movie franchises such as Marvel and Star Wars films and for its parks and resorts could trend down as some of this spend could be supplemented or replaced by interconnected Disney+ series."

Evidence from UBS also suggests that a subset of parkgoers are eager to get back to Disney World, pandemic or not. 

The firm surveyed 2,000 adults in June, and found that about 30% of respondents had to either cancel or postpone planned visits to a Disney park due to the pandemic. Of those respondents, 48% planned to return within the first six months of reopening, while 12% had no plans to return in the first 18 months.

Social distancing was the most common reason given among those who didn't plan to return to Disney parks right away.

"We believe this provides a good sign for demand once parks are able to open," the UBS analysts wrote in a June 25 note, which also said "a vaccine is key not only for demand but capacity limits."

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Democratic Senator Ron Wyden slammed Trump for withdrawing an FCC commissioner's renomination and accused him of "working the refs," in an interview with The Verge.
• The White House abruptly pulled its nomination of MIchael O'Rielly to serve another term as FCC commissioner following his criticism of Trump's executive order taking aim at social media platforms.
• Wyden co-authored Section 230, which granted legal protections to internet companies, helping pave the way for the modern internet and, more recently, drawing the ire of Trump and other lawmakers.
• "This is a colossal Constitutional mess," Wyden said of the order, which experts have called legally dubious.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In an interview with The Verge this week, Sen. Ron Wyden, a key voice in Congress on internet policy issues, accused President Donald Trump of "working the refs, bullying the tech companies, and forcing Twitter and other platforms to print his lies."

In a surprising move Monday evening, the Trump administration withdrew its nomination of Michael O'Rielly, a Republican, to serve another term as one of the five commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission.

Wyden called the administration's reversal a "disaster" and warned that pushing nominees to the FCC — an independent agency — who only swear loyalty to the president could cause the agency to lose "any sense of independence," according to The Verge.

"One nomination after another is brought up, and the litmus test is: will the nominee do exactly what the president of the United States wants to do on any given issue at any particular moment?" Wyden told The Verge.

The Trump administration pulled O'Rielly's nomination just days after he expressed concerns about the FCC regulating how social media companies moderate content on their platforms, which Trump's controversial executive order seeks to do by empowering regulators to curb the companeies' legal protections.

"The First Amendment protects us from limits on speech imposed by the government — not private actors — and we should all reject demands, in the name of the First Amendment, for private actors to curate or publish speech in a certain way," O'Rielly said during a virtual event hosted by The Media Institute.

"Like it or not, the First Amendment's protections apply to corporate entities, especially when they engage in editorial decision making," he said.

Trump issued the executive order— which specifically named Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube — in May after Twitter fact-checked his tweets falsely claiming that mail-in ballots lead to voter fraud, alleging that the platforms are biased against him and conservative viewpoints.

The order directs federal regulators, including the FCC, to review, and ultimately curtail, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives social media companies broad legal authority to moderate speech on their platforms.

Legal and tech policy experts said the order was legally dubious and wouldn't hold up in court. (It is already facing one such legal challenge).

"The First Amendment protects Twitter from Trump. It does not protect Trump from Twitter," Ashkhen Kazaryan, the director of civil liberties at the libertarian think tank TechFreedom told Business Insider's Sonam Sheth and Ashley Gold.

Wyden, one of the co-authors of Section 230 — which is widely credited with enabling the growth of today's internet platforms — also slammed Trump's order.

"This is a deeply flawed idea. Beyond the fact that this is a colossal Constitutional mess, I don't think even Donald Trump believes he's going to be able to get away with this," Wyden told The Verge.

Trump isn't alone in his dislike of Section 230, however. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have ramped up their criticisms of Section 230 in recent months, but for very different reasons.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has also called for Section 230 to be revoked, citing platforms' reluctance to enforce their policies against misinformation and hate speech, arguing the current law disincentivizes them from taking action because they're not held liable for content published by users.

Republicans, in particular Sen. Josh Hawley, have pushed to get rid of Section 230 protections in an effort to combat what they claim is anti-conservative bias by social media companies. Lawsuits alleging such bias have been largely rejected by courts, also on the grounds that the First Amendment doesn't apply to private companies.

SEE ALSO: Twitter could be facing an FTC fine of up to $250 million over allegations that it violated an agreement over user data privacy

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: July 15 is Tax Day — here's what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

• On Tuesday, Uber announced that corporate employees will have their voluntary work from home policy extended through June 2021. 
• Corporate employees will also be given a $500 stipend for a home office setup. 
• Uber is joining a growing list of companies that have extended their work-from-home polices into 2021.
• The company has still not issued a uniform policy for drivers during this time.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Tuesday, Uber announced that corporate employees will be allowed to voluntarily work from home through June 2021. 

"As a company built on flexible working, we want to provide our team with flexibility, choice and longer term clarity so they can plan ahead," the company said in a statement to Business Insider.

In order to accommodate this change, Uber will be offering a $500 stipend to help employees with their home office setups. 

If local offices open before June 2021, employees will have the option returning to the office if they feel comfortable. Uber said that whatever decision employees make will not factor into performance reviews.

While the company said it will be reevaluating the policy for a possible extension in the spring of 2021, the policy itself will not be shortened.

For drivers, Uber is offering financial assistance guides and a website for drivers to find other forms of employment if they are unable to make the same amount of money as they were in March before the coronavirus pandemic curbed the demand for ride sharing. The company has not announced any stipend for drivers at this time.

Uber is joining a long list of companies that have extended their work-from-home policies into 2021. Facebook and Google have also announced similar policies.

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NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

• A explosion at a port rocked the Lebanese capital city of Beirut on Tuesday, killing at least dozens of people.
• As videos of the explosion spread across social media sites, some users claimed an atomic bomb caused the disaster due to the appearance of a mushroom cloud.
• The Lebanese prime minister says the blast came from a stockpile of ammonium nitrate in a warehouse.
• Nuclear weapons experts say the detonation was definitely not triggered by an atomic bomb.
• Atomic explosions are characterized by a blinding flash of light, a pulse of searing heat, and radioactive fallout, none of which were detected.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When an enormous explosion created a mushroom cloud over Beirut, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands more, online commentators and conspiracy theorists quickly jumped to a frightening claim: A nuclear bomb had gone off in Lebanon's capital city. But as state officials say, and contrary to those fast-spreading rumors, the explosion was almost certainly not caused by a nuclear weapon.

Even before Lebanese officials said the explosion was caused by a large stockpile of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse at the port, according to The Guardian, experts who study nuclear weapons quickly and unequivocally rejected the idea that Beirut had been hit with a nuclear bomb.

Key to those rejections are the videos that Beirut residents managed to record video of the huge detonation.

People trained cameras on the Beirut port at the time of the blast because a worrisome cloud of smoke rose beforehand. Some of those videos show small flashes of light and reports (or sounds) that are distinctive to fireworks. Moments later, the huge explosion — which came with a visible blast wave and mushroom-like cloud of smoke — rocked the area, destroying nearby buildings and shattering distant windows.

In a tweet that accumulated thousands of likes and reshares before it was deleted, one user wrote: "Good Lord. Lebanese media says it was a fireworks factory. Nope. That's a mushroom cloud. That's atomic."

Vipin Narang, who studies nuclear proliferation and strategy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, immediately spiked the claim. "I study nuclear weapons. It is not," Narang tweeted on Tuesday.

Martin Pfeiffer, a PhD candidate at the University of New Mexico who researchers the human history of nuclear weapons, also rejected assertions on social media that a "nuke" caused the blast. "Obviously not a nuke," Pfeiffer tweeted, saying later: "That's a fire setting off explosives or chemicals." 

Pfeiffer indicated that the explosion lacked two hallmarks of a nuclear detonation: a "blinding white flash" and a thermal pulse, or surge of heat, which would otherwise start fires all over the area and severely burn people's skin.

The explosion did trigger a powerful blast wave that apparently shattered windows across Beirut, and it was briefly visible as an expanding, shell-like cloud — something often seen in historic footage of nuclear detonations. But Pfeiffer noted such blast-wave clouds, known to weapons researchers as a "Wilson Cloud," are made when humid air gets compressed and causes the water in it to condense. In other words: They aren't unique to nuclear bombs.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation reshared on Twitter by Narang suggests the blast was equivalent to around 240 tons of TNT, or about 10 times as large as the US military's "mother of all bombs" or MOAB is capable of unleashing. By contrast, the "Little Boy" bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was about 1,000 times as powerful.

As a counterpoint to suggestions the Beirut explosion was caused by a nuclear weapon, Pfeiffer offered a video showing the detonation of a rocket-propelled "Davy Crockett" nuclear weapon, which exploded with a force equivalent to about 20 tons of TNT.

The Davy Crockett was one-tenth as strong as the Beirut explosion, but had a distinctive flash that's missing from Tuesday's blast. No reports suggest there was any radioactive fallout after the Beirut blast, which would have been quickly detected.

It's not crazy to wonder if a large blast in a populous city might be an act of nuclear terrorism, of course. In fact, it's one of 15 disaster scenarios that the US government has simulated and planned for (to the point it created scripts for local authorities to use after such an attack).

But in this case, Beirut's tragedy was not in any way nuclear.

SEE ALSO: I just nuked Manhattan in a realistic new VR simulation, and the experience changed how I understand the bomb

DON'T MISS: If a nuclear weapon is about to explode, here's what a safety expert says you can do to survive

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NOW WATCH: Here's how easy it is for the US president to launch a nuclear weapon

Hi and welcome to Insider Advertising, weekly edition. I'm Lucia Moses, deputy editor. To get this in your inbox daily, go here.

This week: Microsoft's play for TikTok, Netflix's new secret weapon, and takeaways of the Facebook ad boycott.

Microsoft is interested in advertising again

People who know their Microsoft history are scratching their heads when it comes to its planned deal for TikTok's US business, and not just because it would plunge the tech giant into the unfamiliar territory unknown of teen-driven social media, with all its potential messiness and drama.

It's also because Microsoft all but abandoned its ad business in 2015 after its display ad revenue eroded over several years.

In recent years, it's focused on going after Amazon and Google on sponsored products, but still holds only an estimated 1.4% of the display ad market, according to EMarketer. 

And while TikTok's own ad business is nascent, it has big potential, with its growing, young user base that advertisers are salivating over.

A successful takeover could help Microsoft erode Facebook and Google's stronghold on digital advertising. But it would also help solidify tech giant's control over advertising and the rules that govern it.

And the losers? Old-guard media companies, for one, none of which has the means to bid for a company some valued at $50 billion, and whose voice at the advertising table will only continue to diminish.

Bozoma Saint John is Netflix's new secret weapon

Media coverage of Bozoma Saint John has largely focused on her glamour and charisma, but Tanya Dua and Patrick Coffee examined the ex-Apple and Uber marketer's record in this insightful profile as she starts as Netflix's CMO.

Saint John's approach runs counter to the trend of data-driven marketing, which has made her a target of some. But consider what her hire signals about how Netflix sees its challenges as its field becomes more competitive. From their piece:

Forrester principal analyst Jim Nail said co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos have recently begun emphasizing Netflix's ability to influence pop culture through a steady stream of original hits like "Bird Box," which helps it retain subscribers and sign up new ones who don't want to miss out on the latest cultural phenomenon...

Nail said Netflix's goal of influencing culture lined up with Saint John's record of helping companies stand out by co-opting trends beyond their industries.

"It's almost a repositioning. They're certainly enhancing and enriching their positioning with the idea of being a key part of culture," he said.

Read the full profile here: How Netflix's new CMO Bozoma Saint John rose to become the biggest 'badass' in marketing

Facebook's ad boycott: An accounting

More than 1,000 advertisers boycotted Facebook in a historic backlash against the company. But did any of it matter? Here are some key numbers, per Tanya Dua:

• Some advertisers, convinced by Facebook's promises to do better monitoring hate speech, or need to make their sales numbers, are returning, and some are staying away, but the biggest impact may have been to its reputation among some users.
• Facebook's ad revenue in the first three weeks of July grew about 10% year over year, the same rate as its second quarter.
• It reminded us that it's mostly reliant on small advertisers who continue to spend there, with its top 100 advertisers accounting for 16% of its over-$70 billion ad revenue.

Read more: Advertisers not part of the boycott also cut back spending on Facebook in July, but the platform says it will be just fine

Other stories you should check out in media, advertising, and beyond:

• Disney lost $3.5 billion in operating income from its closed theme parks last quarter and analysts say the impact could weigh on the business for years
• A startup that's helped brands like Hershey's and Petco make shoppable videos just raised $10 million to become an e-commerce platform that it says can help them drive more sales
• One of the very few Black women VCs says her 20 years in the industry helped her understand why she's such an anomaly — and how the industry's reverence for speed became the enemy of diversity
• Average fintech salaries are in the six figures. A talent exec at $5.3 billion Plaid lays out 3 ways to get your foot in the door.
• Poshmark clothing resellers are becoming Instagram influencers to increase sales and make money from brand sponsorships
• Radish wants you to binge-read romance novels, and now it has a fresh $63.2 million to pay its soap opera writers and gaming pros to get you hooked

Thanks for reading. See you next week!

— Lucia

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

• Social media platforms have enacted bans on disinformation related to COVID-19 and other issues, but researchers say that banning content after it's already gone viral can do more harm than good.  
• For example, the platforms recently banned a viral video of doctors urging COVID-19 treatment with hydroxychloroquine, which federal agencies have called ineffective and dangerous. 
• That ban prompted news coverage and charges by conspiracy theorists that the video contained truth being suppressed by authorities. 
• Social media platforms say they are addressing disinformation as quickly as they can.  
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Disinformation campaigns can rocket to virality by capitalizing on the very bans that social media companies have enacted to address them, researchers and analysts say. 

A key case in point is the "America's Frontline Doctors" video posted on July 27 in which a white-coated group urged treatment of COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine, which federal agencies have called ineffective and potentially dangerous. The video went viral after President Trump tweeted it, and the platforms removed it that day. But posts about it spiked July 28, the day after Twitter banned it, researchers say. Why? Viral posts about a video that was suddenly unavailable piqued interest even more, they say. 

The social media companies' bans are "stopping viral disinformation at a very high rate of engagement — once they have already been established," says Annie Klomhaus, cofounder and chief operating officer of the Austin internet and social media research firm Yonder. By cutting off the content after it's already gained so much steam, the bans end up putting the disinformation in a media spotlight. In the case of the "Frontline Doctors" video and the controversial drug, its proponents can then claim the ban is part of a suppression campaign connected to the government, furthering their conspiracy theory. 

In the case of the video, it spread through a formula that's proven incredibly effective for disseminating other messages (or disinformation), too. The groups pass around videos and other disinformation in private groups, which Facebook doesn't closely monitor. Once the content has momentum, users post it to Twitter and seek to engage large influential accounts that share the same ideology. At that point, it is difficult for social media companies to take any action that doesn't exacerbate the issue, in part because of intense coverage by traditional media, which will write up both the fact that disinformation has gone viral and its removal.

"The companies are in a really hard place," Klomhaus says. "They're trying to do the right thing,  but addressing something that is already viral is a really hard problem." 

Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, who has authored recent widely-cited research on social media disinformation, agrees. 

"By the time platforms even notice the existence of such a video, it's often gone viral, and millions of people have seen it, possibly being misled on important issues such as the effectiveness of supposed medical cures," he said. "What's more, the very act of taking down such content can feed into conspiracy theories that the material is being suppressed by malign interests."

Twitter has said its moderators take action swiftly when disinformation is discovered. In the case of the "Frontline Doctors" video, a Twitter spokesperson says, "Tweets with the video were in violation of our COVID-19 misinformation policy. We are taking action in line with our policy."

A Facebook spokesperson said, "It took us several hours to enforce against the video and we're doing a review to understand why this took longer than it should have." The company said it has removed more than 7 million pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram for violating its policy against sharing COVID-19 misinformation.

Some familiar social media influencers helped to make the "Frontline Doctors" video go viral. The video picked up momentum in private Facebook groups, then made the jump to Twitter, where the right-wing youth group Turning Point USA amplified it. (That group has opposed masks and social distancing despite its cofounder's death from COVID-19.) 

The far-right blog Breitbart News picked the story up, as did several programs on a favorite news source of the president, Fox News. The video reached millions when it was tweeted by President Trump and his son, Don Jr. This led to bans by Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Those bans were widely covered by news agencies, and the disinformation campaign reached its peak of 120,000 social media posts about the drug the day after Twitter banned the video. In the week before, there were 18,000 posts about the drug, according to researchers at Yonder. 

This may have been exactly what the groups promoting the video wanted. One of the main promoters of the video appears to confirm that view. 

A doctor thrust into the spotlight by the video, Stella Immanuel, posted on Twitter that her religious ministry – which says some health issues are caused by people having sex dreams about "demons"– benefited from the TV coverage brought about by the social media ban. 

"CNN, MSNBC etc are doing free commercials on our deliverance ministry," she said in a tweet on July 28, the day after Twitter banned the video. 

Immanuel did not respond to several requests for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When asked about his sharing of the video last week, President Trump said, "[Immanuel] said that she's had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients, and I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her."

The group is backed by Tea Party Patriots, a conservative group that has supported protests against lockdown measures.  The New York Times reported that the group posted the video to its YouTube channel on July 27 before it went viral. 

Klomhaus of Yonder notes that a similar hydroxychloroquine disinformation campaign followed this path in April, and more disinformation campaigns are likely to exploit this process, especially as the pursuit of a coronavirus cure continues, along with the upcoming election.

"As a vaccine comes closer to coming out, this narrative will probably continue," Klomhaus said. "If it follows the previous pattern of recurring in a few months, that would put this kind of viral politicalization of the virus squarely right in front of the election." 

For example, there are many many conspiracy theories about Microsoft founder Bill Gates and COVID-19 that have no basis in fact that are spreading in similar ways on social media, Klomhaus says. 

Barrett of NYU says social media platforms must address the holes in their techniques for addressing disinformation, because there's no way the problem is going away in the leadup to November's election. 

"Unfortunately, the platforms have no choice but to improve their technical and human content moderation methods and press ahead with removing content that is dangerous to users," he said. "The platforms cannot just throw up their hands and say the problem has no solution."

SEE ALSO: Facebook banned disinformation networks that downplayed the severity of COVID-19

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NOW WATCH: July 15 is Tax Day — here's what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

• Self-driving-car engineer Anthony Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a federal judge in San Francisco Tuesday afternoon, after pleading guilty to one count of trade secret theft in May.
• The once-celebrated engineer was at the center of Waymo's legal fight with Uber.
• Levandowski was a founding member of Google's "Project Chauffeur," which eventually became Waymo.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After pleading guilty to trade secret theft, Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer at the center of a massive legal fight between Waymo and Uber, was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a federal judge Tuesday afternoon.

He also agreed to pay Google $756,499 in restitution, to compensate the company for helping the government prosecute the case. Levandowski will not begin his prison sentence until the COVID-19 pandemic has entirely passed, and will also be charged a fine of $95,000.

Levandowski, 40, was indicted on 33 criminal counts of trade secret theft and attempted trade secret theft in August 2019.

The Department of Justice alleged he had left Google with troves of confidential technical documents with the intent to use them for his personal gain. Those same charges were at the heart of Waymo's 2017 lawsuit against Uber, which did not name Levandowski as a defendant.

The engineer left Google's team — which he had helped found in 2009 — in January 2016 to found a trucking-focused startup called Otto. The Google effort, meanwhile, took on the name Waymo in December 2016, when it became a standalone company under the Alphabet umbrella. A few months after Otto was founded, Uber acquired the small outfit for a reported $680 million and put Levandowski in charge of its entire self-driving effort. 

Waymo alleged that the ride-hailing giant set up the deal with Levandowski so it could use Google IP to accelerate its self-driving research, which then-CEO Travis Kalanick believed was key to Uber's long-term survival. After a year of legal wrangling, the case went to trial in February 2018, only to be settled within a week. By then, Kalanick had fired Levandowski, who declined to testify in the case, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Levandowski soon founded another self-driving truck startup, Pronto, but resigned his post as CEO when the DOJ indicted him. He initially declared himself innocent and promised to fight the charges, which could have landed him in prison for decades. In March, he accepted a deal in which he pled guilty to one of the 33 counts, involving a weekly report that tracked the Google team's progress, detailed technical challenges, and included notes on how the team had solved various problems in the past.

As part of his plea, the engineer acknowledged that that document counted as a trade secret, and that he had intended to use it for personal gain. He also admitted to downloading about 14,000 files from a Google server and moving them onto his personal computer. "I'm happy to put this behind me," he told Wired at the time. 

In his hearing, Levandowski's attorneys asked that he serve 12 months in home confinement at his house in Marin County, California, citing respiratory problems (he's suffered two bouts of pneumonia in recent years) and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Levandowski also proposed he do community service involving talking to engineering students about lessons from his case. 

"Mr Levandowski can solve big problems," Judge William Alsup — who also tried the Waymo v. Uber case — said. "I respect that. I want you to know that." But, Alsup said, "This was not a small crime...This was the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen." He cited the importance of deterring others from committing such crimes. "I want them to think, 'I could end up in federal prison.'"

Alsup also instructed Levandowski that, after serving his sentence, he must give a speech to a total of 200 people, titled "Why I Went to Federal Prison." 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

• The EU Commission has announced it is launching an in-depth probe into Google's proposal to acquire wearables maker Fitbit.
• "The Commission is concerned that the proposed transaction would further entrench Google's market position in the online advertising markets," it said in a statement.
• Google says the deal is about the devices, not the data.
• But after Google broke a major promise after acquiring DoubleClick in 2008, regulators are wary. Last week's antitrust hearing was a reminder of that.
• Are you a Google or Fitbit insider with more to share? You can contact this reporter securely using encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 628-228-1836) or encrypted email (hslangley@protonmail.com).
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

It's been nine months since Google announced its intentions to buy Fitbit for $2.1 billion, and the deal still hasn't closed.

Now, the companies will have to wait even longer: the EU Commission just announced it has launched an in-depth probe into the deal with a decision to be made by Dec. 9, potentially extending the entire process to over a year.

Compared with talk of Microsoft potentially snapping up TikTok for as much as $50 billion, Google's Fitbit deal might look like small potatoes, but it still would be one of the largest acquisitions Google has ever made.

More importantly, the data of more than 28 million users would be sucked up into the Google mothership, and it's this bit that regulators are worried about. 

Or, as the commission put it in a statement announcing the investigation:

"The Commission is concerned that the proposed transaction would further entrench Google's market position in the online advertising markets by increasing the already vast amount of data that Google could use for personalization of the ads it serves and displays."

In an effort to push the deal through, Google promised to keep this data in a separate "silo" away from its advertising business, but the EU said the pledge was "insufficient" and didn't cover "all the data that Google would access as a result of the transaction and would be valuable for advertising purposes." 

The last time Brussels launched an all-out probe into one of Google's acquisitions was in 2007 when it investigated the company's plans to buy the internet advertising company DoubleClick.

At the time, Google promised it wouldn't combine DoubleClick's database of user's web browsing information with Google's own account data, and the deal was approved following an extended investigation by the EU.

Then in 2016, the company quietly removed that firewall and just meshed the two together anyway.

Four years later, Google's move is coming back to bite it as regulators decide whether to approve or veto the Fitbit deal.

Indeed, during last week's antitrust hearing, Val Demmings (D-FL) pressed Google CEO Sundar Pichai on whether he signed off on Google ultimately merging DoubleClick data with its own in 2016.

"I am concerned that Google's bait and switch with DoubleClick is part of a broader pattern where Google buys up companies for the purposes of surveilling Americans," Demmings told Pichai.

Like DoubleClick, user data is at the center of Google's Fitbit acquisition, and consumer groups from around the world have petitioned the regulators to closely scrutinize the deal. The European consumer organization BEUC said the deal would be a "test case" for analyzing potential data monopolies brought about through an acquisition.

The Commission apparently listened, and says it will now investigate whether obtaining Fitbit's data would put Google at an unfair advantage, what the merger could mean for digital healthcare, and whether Google could "degrade the interoperability" of rival wearables that connect with Android.

Google, for its part, insists this is all about hardware. "This deal is about devices, not data," said Google's SVP of devices and services Rick Osterloh in a statement, echoing a sentiment that Google has been sharing with reporters since the deal was announced.

And if it were just about hardware, then Google would have a case. After all, Apple dominates the wearables market right now – something we were reminded of last week when the company announced its Q3 earnings.

But the commission is more interested in the potential ramifications of Google grabbing Fitbit's data trove, and experts say the DoubleClick case is a lingering reminder for them to tread carefully. 

Some commentators also believe that privacy should play a more central role in the investigation, which is currently focused primarily on competition.

"I've argued generally that privacy is a competition problem," Tommaso Valletti, a professor of economics at Imperial College and prior chief economist of the Directorate General for Competition, told Business Insider.

"I really hope that we won't repeat the same mistakes with DoubleClick," he said.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

• SpaceX is developing a fully reusable rocket system called Starship-Super Heavy in Texas.
• Before the vehicle can fly to orbit, the aerospace company needs to prove the system's core design works.
• Elon Musk said that the latest Starship prototype, called SN5, could soon perform an experimental "hop" hundreds of feet into the air.
• After experiencing an engine problem during a launch attempt on Monday, Musk said SpaceX will "figure out why" and try again Tuesday. 
• Several groups are broadcasting live video of the next attempt on YouTube. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Update: SpaceX successfully launched and landed its Starship prototype, SN5, at 7:57 p.m. ET on August 4, 2020. See the launch and read our full coverage here.

If you think grain silos can't fly, you may be in for a surprise on Tuesday.

SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, is fervently working to develop a fully reusable, 39-story rocket system in Boca Chica, a relatively remote region at the southeastern tip of Texas.

If the system, called Starship-Super Heavy, works as Musk has promised, it may reduce the cost of launching anything to space by about 1,000-fold, enable missions to the moon and Mars, and even allow for hypersonic travel around Earth.

But first, SpaceX has to see if its core designs for Starship work.

To that end, the company is moving briskly to build, test, and launch prototypes of the upper-stage spaceship, called Starship. According to a July 30 tweet from Musk, the first such full-scale vehicle will "hop" from a beachside launch site to about 492 feet (150 meters) in the air, hover parallel to the ground, and gently touch down on a concrete pad.

To tee up that test flight, SpaceX on July 30 successfully fueled and ignited a Raptor engine on its latest Starship prototype, called SN5 (short for "serial number 5").

Musk confirmed a launch attempt from Boca Chica on Monday evening, but the rocket fizzled when it was supposed to lift off the ground.

"Scrubbed for the day. A Raptor turbopump spin start valve didn't open, triggering an automatic abort," Musk tweeted shortly after the attempt. "We'll figure out why & retry tomorrow."

Another apparent attempt was scrubbed on Tuesday, but Musk said on Twitter that they might try again before their window closes for the day. According to an FAA airspace notice posted on Monday morning, SN5 has until 9 p.m. ET to fly on Tuesday. (For safety reasons, SpaceX is required to file such notices before launching rockets.)

An FAA Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) for the area extends through August 19, allowing for more attempts in the next two weeks.

Several groups with video cameras pointed at SpaceX's launch site are streaming live footage of Tuesday's hop attempt. Below is NASASpaceFlight.com's live video and commentary, courtesy of Boca Chica Village resident Mary McConaughey.

A YouTube feed by LabPadre also shows a close-up view of the SN5 prototype, while SPadre's continuous live feed (filmed from a rooftop on South Padre Island about six miles away) shows a very wide view.

SpaceX had hoped to attempt a flight of SN5 on July 27, but Hurricane Hanna damaged a component that had to be fixed, Musk said. A previous FAA notice suggested the company would try to fly SN5 on Sunday— the same day as its successful attempt to land two NASA astronauts in the Gulf of Mexico — but the launch window came and went. (SpaceX's Demo -2 was an historic test flight of the company's Crew Dragon spaceship, a vehicle developed with about $2.7 billion in NASA funding.)

Rapidly prototyping toward Mars

SN5 is the latest of several full-scale Starship prototypes that SpaceX has built in Texas. The previous versions have either crumpled during tests or, as was the case on May 29, catastrophically exploded.

Each failure has taught SpaceX valuable lessons to inform design and material changes, tweaks that Musk says are already being worked into the SN6, SN7, and SN8 prototypes, which are in various stages of assembly within the company's expanding and bustling work yards in South Texas. Musk has said SpaceX may need to build as many as 20 different versions before reaching orbit.

The steel vehicles don't have wing-like canards or nosecones attached, in case something goes wrong in their earliest phases of testing, so they look more like flying fuel tanks or grain silos than rocket ships.

However, as last year's test launch of an early Starship prototype called Starhopper showed, the flights of even experimental vehicles (shown above) can impress: On August 27, Starhopper soared about 492 feet (150 meters) into the air, translated across a launch site, and landed on a nearby concrete pad.

SpaceX obtained a launch license from the FAA to send Starship prototypes on a "suborbital trajectory," meaning the experimental rocket ships could reach dozens of miles above Earth before returning and landing. However, it's uncertain if SpaceX eventually plans to launch SN5 on such an ambitious flight path if it survives the pending "hop."

The company couldn't attempt more ambitious flights until late August at the soonest, though.

On July 23, SpaceX asked the FCC for permission to communicate with prototypes flying as high as 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) within the next seven months. The earliest date noted on the request, which is still pending, is August 18.

SpaceX is also pursuing a launch license for full-scale, orbital-class Starship-Super Heavy vehicles. Musk hopes Starship will launch a cargo mission to Mars in 2022, send a private crew around the moon in 2023, return NASA astronauts to the lunar surface in 2024, and even begin sending people to Mars the same year.

Have a story or inside information to share about the spaceflight industry? Send Dave Mosher an email at dmosher+tips@businessinsider.com or a Twitter direct message at @davemosher. More secure communication options are listed here.

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published on July 21, 2020.

SEE ALSO: SpaceX must pass a new environmental review before it can launch Starship-Super Heavy rockets from Texas, and it might add years to Elon Musk's Mars timeline

DON'T MISS: Rocket Lab's founder and CEO Peter Beck opens up about the company's recent launch failure — and its spacecraft to reach the moon, Venus, or even Mars

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why NASA waited nearly a decade to send astronauts into space from the US

• SpaceX is developing a fully reusable rocket system called Starship-Super Heavy in Boca Chica, Texas.
• The latest Starship prototype, called SN5, performed an experimental "hop" hundreds of feet into the air on Tuesday.
• The roughly 16-story vehicle soared off the launch pad, flew for about 40 seconds, and then landed downrange.
• Several live video feeds on YouTube — including SPadre, LabPadre, and NASASpaceFlight— recorded footage of the long-awaited test flight. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SpaceX is one giant grain-silo launch closer to reaching Mars.

The aerospace company, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, launched and landed an early prototype of a potentially revolutionary rocket system called Starship at 7:57 p.m. ET on Monday. The flight occured at SpaceX's expanding rocket factory, development, and test site in Boca Chica, a relatively remote region at the southeastern tip of Texas.

"Mars is looking real," Musk tweeted shortly after the flight of roughly 492 feet (150 meters) into the air.

SPadre.com, which has a camera trained on SpaceX's launch site from 6 miles away (on South Padre Island), captured the entire launch from start-to-finish on a 24-hour live feed on YouTube. In the background of a livestream by NASASpaceFlight.com (which caught yet another view with a different camera and angle), audible cheers could be heard coming from on-site SpaceX employees and contractors.

The clip below shows a profile of the whole flight from SPadre's feed.

In the clip, the prototype takes off using a single Raptor rocket engine, translates across the launch site, deploys a set of short landing legs, and touches down on a concrete pad.

Musk later tweeted that Starship's next set of landing legs "will be ~60% longer" and that a version farther down the line "will be much wider & taller" like the legs of a Falcon 9 rocket booster, "but capable of landing on unimproved surfaces & auto-leveling." (In other words, optimized to landing on the moon or Mars.)

LabPadre, which hosted a live feed of SpaceX's launch site featuring multiple camera views, also recorded the flight.

Below is that YouTube channel's edited recording of the experimental launch.

If Starship and its Super Heavy rocket booster end up being fully reusable, Musk has said, the system may reduce the cost of launching anything to space by about 1,000-fold and enable hypersonic travel around Earth.

But first, SpaceX has to see if its core designs for Starship work. To that end, the company is moving briskly to build, test, and launch prototypes.

Monday's "hop" flight — Musk said ahead of the flight that SpaceX was targeting an altitude of 150 meters (492 feet) — represents the first flight of any full-scale Starship hardware. It's also a crucial step toward informing future prototypes and, ultimately, launches that fly Starships into orbit around Earth.

SpaceX had hoped to attempt a flight of SN5 on July 27, but Hurricane Hanna damaged a component that had to be fixed, Musk said. A previous notice to airmen, or NOTAM, suggested the company would try to fly SN5 on Sunday — the same day as its attempt to land two NASA astronauts in the Gulf of Mexico — but the launch window came and went. (SpaceX's Demo -2 was an historic test flight of the company's Crew Dragon spaceship, a vehicle developed with about $2.7 billion in NASA funding.)

Prototyping toward Mars

The above photo shows the SN5 prototype from above during a test-firing of its engine on July 30.

SN5 is the latest of several full-scale Starship prototypes that SpaceX has built in Texas. The previous versions have either crumpled during tests or, as was the case on May 29, catastrophically exploded.

Each failure has taught SpaceX valuable lessons to inform design and material changes — tweaks that Musk says are already being worked into SN6, SN7, and SN8 prototypes, which are in various stages of assembly within the company's expanding and bustling work yards in South Texas.

The steel vehicles don't have wing-like canards or nosecones attached, in case something goes wrong in their earliest phases of testing, so they look more like flying fuel tanks or grain silos than rocket ships.

However, as last year's test launch of an early Starship prototype called Starhopper showed, the flights of even experimental vehicles (shown above) can impress: On August 27, Starhopper soared to a similar height as SN5, translated across a launch site, and landed on a nearby concrete pad.

SpaceX obtained a launch license from the FAA to send Starship prototypes on a "suborbital trajectory," meaning the experimental rocket ships could reach dozens of miles above Earth before returning and landing. However, it's uncertain if SpaceX eventually plans to launch SN5 on such an ambitious flight path after Monday's "hop."

The company couldn't attempt more ambitious flights until late August at the soonest, though.

On July 23, SpaceX asked the FCC for permission to communicate with prototypes flying as high as 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) within the next seven months. The earliest date noted on the request, which is still pending, is August 18.

SpaceX is also pursuing a launch license for full-scale, orbital-class Starship-Super Heavy vehicles. Musk hopes Starship will launch a cargo mission to Mars in 2022, send a private crew around the moon in 2023, return NASA astronauts to the lunar surface in 2024, and even begin sending people to Mars the same year.

This story has been updated with new information.

SEE ALSO: SpaceX must pass a new environmental review before it can launch Starship-Super Heavy rockets from Texas, and it might add years to Elon Musk's Mars timeline

DON'T MISS: Rocket Lab's founder and CEO Peter Beck opens up about the company's recent launch failure — and its spacecraft to reach the moon, Venus, or even Mars

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NOW WATCH: Why NASA waited nearly a decade to send astronauts into space from the US

• Trump defended his threat to condition the sale of TikTok to an American company on the US government receiving a "very big proportion" of the deal during a press conference Tuesday.
• "We have all the cards, without us you can't come into the United States," Trump said.
• Trump did not elaborate on how he plans to require the companies to pay up or which side the money would come from, but claimed that TikTok and Microsoft — which are in acquisition talks — both agreed that the US should receive a payout.
• Trump threatened to ban the app from operating in the US last month, citing national security concerns, though it's unclear what authority he has to do that.
• China responded by calling the US a "rogue country" and arguing Trump's proposal would be an "open robbery."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump doubled down on his demand that any sale of TikTok to an American company involve the US government receiving a "very big proportion."

"We have all the cards, without us you can't come into the United States," Trump said during a press conference Tuesday.

"If they make a deal for TikTok, whether it's the 30% in the United States or the whole company, I say, 'it's okay, but if you do that, we're really making it possible because we're letting you operate here," Trump said, adding that "the United States Treasury would have to benefit also."

Trump also claimed that both TikTok and Microsoft — which confirmed Sunday that it's in talks to buy the viral video app developer— agreed with his condition of cutting the US government in on the deal. TikTok has reportedly been privately valued as high as $50 billion. 

"They understood that, and actually they agreed with me," Trump said. "I think they agreed with me very much."

A Microsoft spokesperson referred Business Insider to a blog post the company published Sunday saying that it plans to continue talks with TikTok following a conversation between CEO Satya Nadella and Trump.

"Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President's concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury," the post said.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.

The president didn't offer any specifics as to how he would force TikTok, which is owned by Chinese-based parent company ByteDance, or a potential buyer to share deal proceeds with the US government.

Trump has the authority under a 1988 law to block foreign business deals pertaining to US companies if he considers the deals to be a national security threat, which he has used twice before to block deals involving firms from China and Singapore that were looking to acquire American companies.

Chinese state media called Trump's proposal "open robbery" and a "smash and grab," and accused him of "turning the once great America into a rogue country."

Trump threatened last month to ban the app from operating in the US entirely, but it's unclear what power he has to completely ban an app from the country. Trump said the ban was meant to punish China over the coronavirus, a motivation he reiterated Tuesday.

Trump and other politicians including Joe Biden have ratcheted up their rhetoric against TikTok in recent months, citing concerns that the app could share data with Beijing or spy on Americans. However, experts have pointed out that the app collects user data in similar ways to US-based competitors like Facebook.

Trump added that he thought Microsoft would be an acceptable buyer because of its "high-level" security clearances, which already allow it to do business with the Department of Defense and other federal agencies — though he said other companies are interested as well.

Paige Leskin contributed reporting for this story.

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NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

• NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley completed their mission on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship when they landed in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday.
• The spaceship's scorching-hot fall through Earth's atmosphere, parachute deployments, and splashdown went as planned.
• From inside the Crew Dragon, Behnken said the return trip felt like being "inside of an animal," with violent jolts along the way.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley plunged through Earth's atmosphere at 25 times the speed of sound on Sunday, slowing just in time to land safely off the coast of Pensacola, Florida.

The splashdown concluded their two-month mission flying SpaceX's new spaceship — the Crew Dragon — to the International Space Station and back, making them the first people to ever fly aboard a commercial spacecraft.

Each step in their return trip to Earth went as planned. But inside the spaceship, the astronauts said, the flight didn't feel as smooth as it may have looked.

"The landing was — I would say it was more than what Doug and I expected," Behnken said in a press briefing on Tuesday. "I personally was surprised at just how quickly events all transpired."

Though they were pleased with the process, Behnken added, "it felt like we were inside of an animal."

Of the mission in general, he added, the astronauts will have suggestions to help SpaceX and NASA make the Crew Dragon "a little bit more comfortable" for future astronauts.

The pivotal moments of the landing process — the capsule separating from its trunk, the parachutes deploying as they approached the Gulf of Mexico — felt "very much like getting hit in the back of the chair with a baseball bat," Behnken said.

The first of those jolts came when the capsule jettisoned its trunk — a lower section outfitted with fuel tanks, solar panels, and other hardware, which the astronauts no longer needed. The ride only got bumpier from there.

'It doesn't sound like a machine'

Once they started edging into the atmosphere, Crew Dragon "came alive," Behnken said, firing its thruster to stay on course. The astronauts could hear the atmosphere rumbling around them.

"As the vehicle tries to control, you feel a little bit of that that shimmy in your body," Behnken said. "So we could feel those small rolls and pitches and yaws."

The spacecraft fired its thrusters continuously, pushing itself further into the atmosphere. Behnken said he recorded some audio of the sounds, which got louder as they descended.

"It doesn't sound like a machine, it sounds like an animal," he said.

That's when he felt the capsule heating up, and the force of Earth's gravity pulling on them for the first time in two months. He said it felt like being in a centrifuge.

That strong force restricted their movements, so they didn't get to crane their necks to look out the windows below their feet. If they had, they might have seen the layer of scorching-hot plasma that was wrapping around the spacecraft — a "really thin, pinkish hue," as Hurley described it from his prior experience on the space shuttle.

Then the parachutes deployed, giving them "a pretty significant jolt," Behnken said. A few minutes later, the capsule landed in the ocean.

"We felt the splash and we saw it splash up over the windows," Behnken said. "It was just a great relief, I think, for both of us at that point."

SEE ALSO: New video shows SpaceX's astronaut crew plummeting through Earth's atmosphere, floating under parachutes, and landing in the ocean

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NOW WATCH: Why NASA waited nearly a decade to send astronauts into space from the US

• Writing things out by hand takes longer than typing it up.
• But that extra friction makes your brain work harder at engaging with the information.
• And that engagement yields better learning. 
• Click here for more BI Prime content.

Typing is fast. 

Handwriting is slow.

Weirdly, that's precisely why handwriting is better suited to learning. 

Take it from research psychologists Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles, who did a fascinating study investigating just how terrible laptops are for note-taking in classrooms. 

Earlier studies have argued that laptops make for poor note-taking because of the litany of distractions available on the internet, but their experiments yielded a counterintuitive conclusion: Handwriting is better because it slows the learner down. 

By slowing down the process of taking notes, you accelerate learning. 

It works like this. If a skilled typist (also known as an American millennial or Gen Z) is sitting in a meeting, he or she will be able to write down almost every word said. And yet: that transcription process doesn't require any critical thinking. So while you're putting the words down on the page, your brain doesn't have to engage with the material.

As learning science has discovered, if you're not signaling that the material is important to your brain, it will discard the lecture from memory for the sake of efficiency. 

But if you are taking notes by hand, you won't be able to write down every word the speaker says. Instead, you'll have to look for representative quotes, summarize concepts, and ask questions about what you don't understand.

This requires more effort than just typing every word out — and the effort is what helps cement the material in your memory. The more effort you put into understanding something, the stronger signal you're giving your brain that it's worth remembering.

Mueller and Oppenheimer conclude that for students, "transcrib[ing] lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning."

The caveats

Critics of the study, and others like it, say that its findings are too mixed to be considered definitive. Rebecca Sullivan, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, points out that the students handwriting notes didn't always outperform students typing them.

"In fact, in one test given shortly after participants watched the videos," writes Sullivan, "the laptop, eWriter, and no notes group all slightly outperformed the group that had taken handwritten notes on conceptual questions.

As Sullivan alludes to, the type of questions on the test also matter. Students who wrote notes by hand performed better on questions testing factual knowledge, but they did not "significantly outperform" the typing group on conceptual questions. 

Finally, Sullivan points out that students rarely listen to a lecture, take notes, and then immediately take an exam; they usually have at least a night to study. And when researchers gave students the opportunity to study their notes before the test, the advantage of handwriting over typing "disappears."

None of these counterpoints invalidate the overall findings of the study — that handwriting notes leads to better retention — but they do add necessary context. It is a safe bet, but not a sure bet, that writing out your thoughts will help you remember them more clearly later.

The takeaway

The benefits of handwriting — though it's a disappearing skill— have been documented by lots of educational psychologists, who have found that handwriting engages parts of the brain that typing neglects, especially areas associated with memory formation. For these reasons, the arguments go, kids come up with more ideas when they're writing in cursive versus typing. 

So, as French psychologist Stanislas Dehaene told The New York Times, you may want to step away from the keyboard. 

"When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated," he said. "There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain, it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn't realize."

The result?

"Learning is made easier," he concluded.

SEE ALSO: 'Expressive Writing' Is A Super-Easy Way To Become Way Happier

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• This is a preview of the Business Insider Intelligence Internet of Medical Things premium research report. Purchase this report here.
• Business Insider Intelligence offers even more technology coverage with our Connectivity & Tech Briefing. Subscribe today to receive industry-changing connectivity news and analysis to your inbox.

Healthcare providers have been turning to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to facilitate their digital transformation since before the coronavirus hit the US — but the pandemic has caused a sea change in providers' willingness to implement IoT solutions that augment efforts in preparing for, containing, and diagnosing the virus. 

As the backbone that powers the IoMT, connectivity and technology providers have a mounting opportunity to capture a larger slice of the market as it evolves alongside the coronavirus pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, healthcare providers were forecast to adopt IoT devices at one of the fastest rates of any industry segment, with the installed base of IoT endpoints expected to grow 29% year-over-year in 2020.

And pre-pandemic, healthcare was among the top three industries expected to see the fastest growth rates (15.4%) in IoT investment in terms of spending over the 2017-2022 forecast period. But the coronavirus is fundamentally changing how healthcare can be accessed and delivered in the US, and we expect to see even faster growth throughout 2020 — and that this upward momentum will outlast the pandemic.

In TheInternet of Medical Things, Business Insider Intelligence assesses the North American IoMT market and explores how the IoMT opportunity for connectivity providers is evolving alongside the coronavirus pandemic, and how these players are carving out their place in the growing segment. We first unpack the opportunities for connectivity and technology providers in the IoMT market and outline how the coronavirus pandemic will impact demand for various IoT solutions in healthcare. We then detail how emerging techonlogies are propelling the healthcare IoT space forward. Finally, we explore how connectivity and technology players can expand within the IoMT ecosystem.

The companies mentioned in this report include: AT&T, Augmedics, AVIA, Choice IoT, DarioHealth, Eko, GE Healthcare, Intel, Medtronic, Packet, Phillips, PlushCare, PTC, Smardii, Sprint, Telit, Vuzix, XENEX, Zebra. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report: 

• Healthcare providers are prioritizing IoT investment in solutions that enhance virtual care delivery, augment emergency services and triage, and automate or streamline tasks. 
• The IoMT opportunities for connectivity and technology providers will only be amplified as the IoT intersects with other emerging technologies. 
• We interviewed executive decision-makers in the connectivity and technology space to gather their insights on how they determine which IoMT opportunities to prioritize, the best go-to-market strategy for these new opportunities, and what goes into the decision process when selecting a partner to expand within the IoMT. 
• The report also highlights the opinions of executive decision-makers in the connectivity and technology space on topics that include: telemedicine, preventative care, administrative operations, 5G, edge computing, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality. 

In full, the report: 

• Sizes the North American IoMT market through 2022 and explains how it compares with pre-coronavirus estimates. 
• Identifies the three biggest IoMT opportunities for connectivity and technology providers based on conversations with companies entrenched in the IoMT ecosystem, and on our analysis of their impact, scalability, early evidence of value creation, and increased utility amid the coronavirus pandemic.
• Provides recommendations for connectivity and technology providers on how to carve out and expand their footprint in ways that unlock the most value. 

Interested in getting the full report? Here's how to get access:

1. Business Insider Intelligence analyzes the tech industry and provides in-depth analyst reports, proprietary forecasts, customizable charts, and more. >> Check if your company has BII Enterprise membership access to the full report
2. Sign up for the  Connectivity & Tech Briefing, Business Insider Intelligence's expert email newsletter keeping you up-to-date on the people, technologies, trends, and companies shaping the future of healthcare, delivered to your inbox 6x a week. >>Get Started
3. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now

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• Match Group's second quarter 2020 earnings report shows more people using online dating apps since COVID-19 hit.
• Match Group owns popular online dating apps including Tinder, OKCupid, Match, and Plenty of Fish.
• Apps have rolled out virtual dating options, while some have also been accused of encouraging people to break social distancing orders.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Online dating is what people do when everything else has been cancelled, it seems. Match Group's second quarter 2020 earnings report shows an increase in subscribers and downloads over pre-COVID-19 levels, and users are back to paying for membership at the same level they were before. 

Match Group's more than 45 dating brands include some of the most popular, like Tinder, Hinge, Match, and OKCupid. According to Apptopia, Match controls over 60% of the dating app market. As shelter in place and stay at home orders shut down most parts of social life, people apparently turned to online dating to fill the gap, leading to the 15% increase in new subscribers Match reported over the quarter.

Tinder is the most popular of the company's dating apps, and saw a large increase in users during a time when business has been down in most sectors. Tinder tried to get ahead of the virus and possible snafus related to meeting up with strangers. Back in March, Tinder added a popup message warning users to practice basic precautions like hand washing and maintaining social distance. "Your wellbeing is our #1 priority," the message read, linking to the World Health Organization for more information.

Despite these messages of caution, the goal of dating apps is to bring people together in real life, a potentially tough sell during a deadly pandemic. In May, Business Insider reported on dating app users trying to convince others to violate social distancing.

Some dating apps, including those owned by Match Group, launched new features for safer dating in a pandemic. Hinge released "Date from Home," Plenty of Fish added a livestreaming feature, and Tinder later added a video dating feature. Match says some of its apps, especially on Plenty of Fish, are seeing "healthy adoption."

Possibly most surprising, and most promising for Match Group, average revenue per user (ARPU) rebounded and even surpassed pre-coronavirus levels. April was a low spot, but ARPU has steadily increased since, despite the economic crisis.

Match ended the quarter with 10 million subscribers, 6 million of which are Tinder users. 

SEE ALSO: These sealed individual work pods with air purifiers show what returning to the office could look like

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NOW WATCH: Pathologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

• SpaceX on Tuesday launched and landed a vehicle called SN5, which is a full-scale prototype of a planned Mars rocket ship called Starship.
• On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump wrongfully appeared to take credit for the privately developed vehicle's creation or launch.
• Trump also shared falsehoods about NASA, which spaceflight experts pointed out and corrected.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SpaceX on Tuesday night launched an early prototype of a Starship rocket hundreds of feet into the air, hovered it across the beachside launch site, and then landed it on a concrete pad.

The full-scale vehicle, called Starship SN5 (for serial number 5), looked more like a flying grain silo or beer can than an early version of a Mars-bound rocket. Still, the feat represents a key step toward SpaceX founder Elon Musk's dream of creating a fully reusable space vehicle that can reach, return from, and help populate the Red Planet.

In Wednesday tweet rife with falsehoods, US President Donald Trump reshared a NASASpaceFlight video of SN5's flight — and appeared to take credit for SpaceX's flight by insinuating it was part of a NASA program.

"NASA was Closed & Dead until I got it going again. Now it is the most vibrant place of its kind on the Planet...And we have Space Force to go along with it. We have accomplished more than any Administration in first 3 1/2 years. Sorry, but it all doesn't happen with Sleepy Joe!" Trump claimed.

After the tweet, numerousspaceflightjournalists and industry experts pointed out that Trump was far from the mark.

Jeff Foust, a Space News senior writer and aerospace analyst who's followed the industry for decades, tweeted the following response to the president's claims:

"Fact check:
- NASA was neither closed nor dead at the start of the current administration.
- Many recent NASA successes have their origins in prior administrations.
- The Starship test the president is retweeting has nothing to do with NASA; it's a private effort by SpaceX."

Per Foust's first point, NASA has been operating continuously since its creation on October 1, 1958.

With his second bullet point, Foust was referring to spaceflight commercialization work by the Bush and Obama administrations that preceded Trump by more than a decade. In 2004, President George W. Bush started a commercial cargo-spaceship development program at NASA. The goal was to bolster cargo transportation capabilities to the International Space Station ahead of the 2011 retirement of NASA's space shuttle program.

That effort, which funded SpaceX to develop an uncrewed vehicle called Dragon, preceded and informed a follow-on NASA effort called Commercial Crew. President Barack Obama first funded the program in 2009 and authorized funding until he left office in 2016. That funding enabled SpaceX (and Boeing) to develop a crewed vehicle.

That effort culminated in SpaceX's most recent achievement: resurrecting crewed spaceflight from American soil. Specifically, the company leaned on $2.7 billion, most of which was awarded by 2014, to develop its Crew Dragon spaceship. The vehicle launched in May with two astronauts on board and landed in August, successfully completing its first spaceflight with people.

"This does a disservice to the nearly 17,000 dedicated women and men of @NASA," Phil Larson, a former SpaceX employee, tweeted in response to Trump's claims.

SpaceX has some funding and assistance from NASA for Starship development, such as orbital refilling of fuel tanks. The company also was awarded a $100 million contract to develop a Starship moon-landing system.

However, to date SpaceX has predominantly and privately raised hundreds of millions of dollars to fund Starship's development. Musk has also ordered many of the rocket company's thousands of employees to prioritize the vehicle's development effort at SpaceX's commercial launch site in Boca Chica, Texas— a private, non-governmental facility.

The Biden campaign declined to comment on the matter and instead provided a prior statement from the Democratic candidate about the splashdown of Demo-2, congratulating those involved.

Spokespeople for the White House and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. A NASA spokesperson said the agency is looking into the matter. 

SEE ALSO: 3 Apollo astronauts say they support Trump's plan to land people on the moon — but NASA would need to make two big changes

DON'T MISS: A boat flying a Trump flag approached SpaceX's spaceship after the astronauts landed. NASA promised to 'do a better job' next time.

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NOW WATCH: Why NASA waited nearly a decade to send astronauts into space from the US