Business, Spoken

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all announced this week that thousands of content moderators are being sent home—leaving more of our feeds in the hands of machines.

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Netflix is slowing streams in Europe in an effort to preserve bandwidth amid the pandemic. But US providers seem to be holding up to the surge in usage.

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Drivers for Uber and Lyft in Seattle say demand for rides has plummeted, and they have few workplace benefits to fall back on.

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Microsoft's founder has been slowly inching away from his company. Now Gates has stepped down from the board seat he held for 44 years.

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Google and the White House are working together now, but they're still not describing the same website.

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Digestive is a peculiar font. Its ornate, wiggly letters make it look a bit like calligraphy by aliens from outer space. But Digestive isn't just unusual in how it looks. It's also unusual in how it was sold. Thanks to Future Fonts, a platform for selling fonts that are still works-in-progress, Digestive was already gracing magazine covers, concert posters, and even perfume boxes, before designer Jérémy Landes considered it finished.

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Narrators read our favorite written stories. You can listen to them anywhere, including on your smart speaker. Play for audio versions of WIRED's Business stories, including the latest on blockchain, crypto, startups, telecoms, national affairs, and tech culture.

The announcement earlier this week that Intuit, the financial software giant, would be buying the personal finance company Credit Karma for $7 billion was striking. The tech industry is under more antitrust scrutiny than ever; just a few weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission announced a broad inquiry into the past decade of acquisitions by the five biggest tech giants, with a focus on mergers that kill off budding rivals.

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On Thursday, 18 stories above the streets of Manhattan, the rooftop bar of one of the more than a dozen Marriott hotels in Midtown played host to an unusual crowd. Some were Airbnb hosts, others repped the burgeoning homesharing startup scene, most were wannabe rental empire titans—all were members of New York City’s booming short-term rental industry interested in learning how to turn their Airbnb side hustle into a hospitality superbrand.

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Amazon is cracking down on third-party merchants who violate its policies while selling items related to the new coronavirus disease known as Covid-19. Following reports by WIRED and others of price gouging and misleading claims, the retail giant confirmed it had removed or blocked over one million products that falsely advertised to defend against or cure the illness, as well as tens of thousands of items—such as face masks—that were listed for inflated prices.

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