Today’s Hashtag Trending script was prepared by Samira Balsara.
Facebook is trying to set up a partnership with religious groups, YouTube removes videos posted by Brazil’s President, and Jeff Bezos offers NASA $2 billion dollars for a lunar lander contract.
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It’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Wednesday, July 28, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
According to a report from The New York Times, Facebook is trying to set up a deal with religious groups. Since 2018 Facebook has been courting several religious groups but in the past year the social media app has made even more of an effort. The leaders of the Church of God in Christ tested two new tools for Facebook. The first tool lets users donate to the church while watching live-streamed services and the second was a $10 subscription service. Facebook’s COO attended a virtual summit for religious leaders last month discussing new products the app is developing for religious groups.
YouTube has removed videos posted by Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. YouTube took down 15 of the president’s videos, some of which promoted cures for Coronavirus that were revealed to be very dangerous and had no backing from medical experts. While Brazil’s president has yet to make a comment about YouTube’s latest move, he has been very vocal about his stance on COVID-19. This is not the first social media app to silence Bolsonaro. Last March, Twitter took down two of the president’s videos which encouraged big gatherings and called for an end to lockdowns.
And lastly, the race to space continues. Jeff Bezos is offering NASA a discount of at least $2 billion for the agency to give his space company a profitable human lunar landing system contract. Rival Elon Musk’s SpaceX was the winner of the contract earlier this year. This is Bezos’ latest offer to win the contract for Blue Origin. Bezos has also said that Blue Origin would fund a Blue Moon test launch to low-orbit Earth. In April, NASA announced it would use SpaceX’s Starship to take the first U.S. crew to the Moon is almost a half-century by 2024. Since then, Bezos has persistently been trying to give NASA a reason to go with Blue Origin.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Friday at 3 pm. Thanks for listening, I’m Tom Li.