After pausing new account verifications last week, Twitter said on Wednesday that it will begin to review verified accounts and revoke the status from those whose conduct on the services doesn't follow the company's guidelines.
Why it matters: Twitter has been in hot water recently for doling out the coveted "verified" status to controversial figures like Jason Kessler, who organized the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Though it originally began as a way to protect celebrities from impersonators, Twitter's verified status has been interpreted to signal endorsement by the company.
Amazon's movie studio has acquired the rights to former New York Times columnist Nick Bilton's "The Bunker," an original screenplay about tech billionaires who take shelter in a luxurious underground bunker after an attack on the U.S., according to Deadline.
Quick take: Hollywood has been increasing fascinated with Silicon Valley, "The Bunker" is the latest attempt at bringing stories from its culture to wider audiences. But these have found mixed success in balancing compelling universal stories with an authentic portrayal of the tech industry's characters and dynamics.
Dr. David Hanson, founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics, has spent decades on a quest to build robots that look and act like humans, and he's getting pretty darn close. Business Insider conducted an interview this week with one of his creations, Sophia, who was built to look like Audrey Hepburn, featuring her high cheekbones and expressiveness.
As Hanson told the Tonight Show's Jimmy Fallon earlier this year, "she can process visual data, see people's faces, process conversational and emotional data and use all of this to form relationships with people." Here is the must-watch video:
Time Inc. is launching its Sports Illustrated TV tomorrow on Amazon Prime. The channel will include five original shows, original documentaries featuring stars like LeBron James, exclusive interviews, and sport-related shows and movies acquired by Amazon.
Why it matters: This is Time Inc.'s first over-the-top subscription-video service. "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED TV is a new home for sports lovers who want to go beyond sports highlights and heated debates with distinctive, immersive and entertaining original programming," Time's president and CEO Rich Battista said via a press release.
Amazon is ditching its plans to create an online streaming skinny bundle because it doesn't think it will be profitable enough, per Reuters. It has been unable to court traditional TV networks to bring their content to its Amazon Channels service.
Why it matters: Amazon has made large investments in video with the hope of increasing user engagement on its platform. It was hoping to dip into the TV streaming model, but the reported lack of confidence in the platform shows that the distribution economics behind the linear TV model are tough to completely reimagine for digital.
Facebook hired the former top aide to a lawmaker investigating how Russians may have used its platform to subvert the 2016 election to lobby on its behalf last month, according to a disclosure posted last Friday.
Why it matters: Facebook is bolstering its forces in Washington amid unprecedented investigations into the power of its platform and a new bill that would create new disclosure requirements for online political ads.
The FBI complained last week that it had been unable to access the smartphone of the Texas church shooter, an echo of the San Bernardino shooting.
Yes, but: If, as has been reported, the phone is an iPhone, law enforcement may have missed its easiest, best opportunity to access the phone and avoid another fight over encryption.
As morbid as it sounds, authorities might have been able to unlock the phone using the dead shooter's finger had they moved quickly, assuming he had a recent iPhone with Touch ID enabled. (Touch ID times out and requires a passcode after 48 hours).
