Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Monday.
- Amazon has introduced mandatory overtime, increased hourly wages, and scrapped its security checks as it tries to motivate warehouse workers to keep coming to work. Four workers speaking to Business Insider described how the hand sanitizer often runs out and that they were alarmed for their health.
- Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is asking laid-off restaurant and bar workers to come work for Amazon amid the coronavirus crisis. Bezos said the company is hiring for 100,000 new roles, and is raising the wages of its hourly workers who help fulfill orders and deliver to customers.
- YouTube and Amazon Prime are following Netflix by reducing streaming quality in Europe. YouTube and Amazon both said Friday they would reduce the quality of their streams in Europe to deal with the influx of internet traffic amid the coronavirus outbreak.
- 10 countries are now tracking phone data as the coronavirus pandemic heralds a massive increase in surveillance. Some countries are collecting anonymized data to study the movement of people more generally, while others are providing detailed information about individuals' movements.
- Google fully canceled its I/O conference after saying it would move conference online, as California shelters in place because of the coronavirus. Google usually makes major announcements about Android and other products during Google I/O.
- SpaceX has not closed its facilities despite the outbreak of a novel coronavirus, BuzzFeed reported on Friday. According to BuzzFeed, when word spread among SpaceX's Redmond office that an employee's partner had tested positive for COVID-19, an unnamed SpaceX vice president told employees that offices wouldn't close, citing Musk's tweet.
- Microsoft held the company's first-ever all-remote town-hall employee meeting. According to a leaked excerpt of the meeting obtained by Business Insider, CEO Satya Nadella gave a rousing speech asking employees to do their part to address the coronavirus crisis – whether or not it's in their job descriptions.
- Apple won't let anyone buy more than 2 of the same iPhone model from its online store. Dropdown menus on country-specific websites prevent users from buying more than two of the same device.
- Republicans have written to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to urge that the Chinese government should be banned from the platform. Two Republicans stressed that the Chinese government was using the social media platform to "disseminate propaganda" amid the coronavirus pandemic.
- Elon Musk tweeted a piece of misinformation about children being 'essentially immune' to the coronavirus, but Twitter isn't taking it down. Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday that children were "essentially immune" to the novel coronavirus, which is false.
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