While the White House scrambled to put a good face on President Trump’s equivocal and inadequate response to this weekend’s violent white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, Va., some Twitter users began publicly revealing the identities of the white supremacist “Unite the Right” protesters. The internet has already raised more than $200,000 in the name of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old counter-protester who was killed by a car during the clash.
Recode Daily: The internet and the White House respond to Charlottesville; Netflix takes on Disney, again
Plus, another investment group wants in on Uber, what you need to read the about “Google Manifesto” and bitcoin is booming.
Netflix has signed up “Scandal” producer Shonda Rhimes, one of the most powerful people in TV. Rhimes has spent the last 15 years working with Disney’s ABC; last week Disney said it was pulling at least some of its movies from Netflix. The move underscores Netflix’s increasing ability and ambition to create its own content rather than buying reruns from Hollywood. [Joe Flint / Wall Street Journal]
Investors who want a big stake in Uber are trying to cut a deal. A consortium led by Dragoneer Investment Group and General Atlantic are talking about buying shares; so are SoftBank and Uber. Meanwhile, a small group of Uber shareholders loyal to ousted CEO Travis Kalanick asked Uber investor Benchmark to divest and remove itself from the board, and some startups told Recode they are “nervous” about Benchmark’s lawsuit against Uber and Kalanick. [Theodore Schleifer / Recode]
There’s a lot of words out there about the “Google Manifesto,” the controversial memo about gender diversity that (re)ignited a battle over ideological diversity. Jason Hirschhorn has curated a must-read collection from a variety of sources, as the culture wars spread to Google. [Redef]
More allegations of sexual harassment will emerge from Silicon Valley, the head of the venture capital industry’s official trade group told Recode in an interview. Bobby Franklin, head of the Washington, D.C.-based National Venture Capital Association, was candid about the size of the problem in Silicon Valley, and predicted that more incidents will surface soon. [Theodore Schleifer / Recode]
Bitcoin, Wall Street’s latest obsession, is having a boom moment: Just a week ago it was trading at $3,000 for the first time; as of Sunday, it was trading at more than $4,100. The amount recently raised via initial coin offerings (ICO) have now — at least temporarily — topped the amount raised via early-stage venture capital. [Fitz Tepper / TechCrunch]
You’ll need a half-day to read the New Yorker’s very, very, very long profile of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. You’ll be rewarded with an up-close look at Assange’s strange life inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed up since 2012. But you won’t get a satisfying explanation of WikiLeaks’ connection to Russian email hackers. Except that Assange seems offended that the Russians are getting undue credit for the emails. [Raffi Khachatourian / New Yorker]
Top stories from Recode
It’s not surprising, but it’s still important.
“Perishable food isn’t a widget, right?”
On the latest Recode Decode podcast, Taggart Matthiesen, director of product at Lyft, predicts that Lyft will slowly evolve into a hybrid transportation service, with users getting paired with either a human driver or an autonomous vehicle — whichever is faster.
This is cool
Not real news: As part of its ongoing efforts to fact-check claims in suspected false news stories, the Associated Press has started a weekly roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue headlines of the week. [AP]
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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