After two years of work, an independent civil rights audit of Facebook is now complete. The company had been under pressure from Congress and civil rights groups to undertake such an effort for some time, but the audit was voluntary on Facebook’s part. And while sometimes these outside consulting projects approach the client with kid gloves, lead auditor Laura Murphy and her team at the law firm Relman Colfax delivered an 89-page assessment of Facebook’s policies around voter suppression, hate speech, algorithmic bias, and content moderation that is measured but often unsparing.

Say your company makes a new email platform. In 2020, that means building not just a website but also an app — several of them, actually. You’ll probably want clients for Mac and Windows, iOS and Android, the open web, and — if you’re showing off — Linux. In some of these places, like the web, there is no cost for operating this service beyond building and hosting it.

On Sunday, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel sent employees an unusually personal note reflecting on the events of the past several weeks. Many brands took the occasion of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, and the global protests that have followed, to signal their solidarity with the black community and their allies. But few CEOs took the step, as Spiegel did, of reflecting on his own privilege — and then calling for reparations for black folks. (He threw in a cogent analysis of the federal budget, too.)

Legislation was introduced after the rapper said he subjects his daughter to a yearly hymen exam, sparking outrage on social media.

A new equation showing that the world is ‘deep in a climate emergency’ was unveiled on 24 September by Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of the world’s leading authorities on climate change, who said that people still don’t want to see the truth about the state we’re in.

Last year, Amazon cut a deal with Apple to bring direct iPhone sales to its platform for the first time. Now, that deal is coming under scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, The Verge has learned. The deal was first announced last fall, ostensibly as a way for Apple to sell on Amazon in an official capacity and cut down on counterfeit or misleadingly marketed products. However, it had the effect of kicking off hundreds of legitimate sellers that were offering low-cost and refurbished Apple products that were no longer for sale by the company itself.

Apple is paying contractors to listen to recorded Siri conversations, according to a new report from The Guardian, with a former contractor revealing that workers have heard accidental recordings of users’ personal lives, including doctor’s appointments, addresses, and even possible drug deals.

The Trump administration has clarified how it plans to ease the restrictions on US companies trading with Huawei. Officials said that the Chinese tech giant would remain on the Entity List, but that licenses to trade with the company would be issued under certain circumstances. Huawei was placed on the Entity List back in May, which means US companies are unable to sell technology to the company without government approval.

The email went out from senior Environmental Protection Agency officials to Kelly Craft, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, responding to questions she had about a funding matter. But the acknowledgment email the EPA got back a few hours later wasn’t from the ambassador. By Ellen Knickmeyer.

Simon Kuper returns to the place where Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt began their climb to power.

Jeremy Hunt had the nerve to call local councils ‘hidden victims of the cuts’, noticing that hospitals have been forced to prolong patient stays at great expense because of the disappearance of community care: ‘that wasn’t a smart move.’ No shit, Sherlock. By Tom Crewe.

The debate over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s use of the term “concentration camp” is not about language or facts. It is about how we perceive history, ourselves, and ourselves in history. By Masha Gessen.

While leaving the statehouse before the walkout, one Republican senator implied that police who pursued them should be ready to die: “Send bachelors and come heavily armed.” By Kelly Weill.

When it comes to starting wars, we don’t even bother to change the script anymore. By Matt Taibbi.

Before we retaliate over drone and oil tanker attacks, take a look at all the times we've been duped. By Robert W. Merry.

House Republicans and Democrats came together on Thursday to put forth comprehensive legislation designed not only to help end the scourge of robocalls but prevent U.S. consumers from being forced to foot the bill. The duly titled Stopping Bad Robocalls Act would require the Federal Communications Commission to prescribe regulations governing the use of automatic telephone dialing systems and other artificial or prerecorded messages, namely by forcing callers to...

Colorado just became the first state to cap the price of insulin at $100 per month. By Julia Belluz.

The agency set up a special unit on Iran, predating the Trump administration, that some hawks fretted was not focusing enough on regime change. By Vijay Prashad.

Officials are suggesting the 9/11 law used by three presidents to justify every intervention of the last 18 years is applicable to Tehran, too. By Heather Brandon-Smith.

Writer Simon Lau Sai Leung says the extradition bill is the nail in the coffin for Hong Kong’s autonomy under "One Country, Two Systems."