10 things in tech you need to know today

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Elon Musk told staff they can go home if they feel sick.

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Tuesday.

1. Sources say Amazon has refused to close 2 Spanish warehouses despite 3 confirmed cases of COVID-19. The decision to keep the warehouses open incensed local workers' union the CCOO, which said it would be taking legal action against Amazon.
2. Amazon is hiring 100,000 warehouse workers and raising pay as the coronavirus causes an "unprecedented" increase in demand for this time of year. Amazon is raising its pay for warehouse workers by $2 per hour through April.
   
3. Google sister company Verily rushed out a half-finished coronavirus testing website, after Donald Trump botched the announcement. The tool is only available in parts of California and already appears to be at capacity.
4. Elon Musk told Tesla employees in a leaked email that they don't have to go to work if they're sick or worried about the coronavirus. Musk said that, to his knowledge, no Tesla employees have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
5. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, and Twitter said they're working together to fight coronavirus misinformation. The coronavirus pandemic has caused a spike in fake news and profiteering that's testing the industry's ability to crack down on harmful content.
6. France's antitrust watchdog fined Apple $1.2 billion for anti-competitive behavior. It's rare for Apple to be fined on competition grounds, and the French watchdog said the firm had abused economic dependence on resellers.
7. Mark Zuckerberg said it's easier for Facebook to "take a much harder line" on misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic. Zuckerberg told The New York Times that policies could be more "black and white" around a global health crisis like COVID-19 than they would in political discourse.
8. YouTube warned more videos than usual could be removed as content moderation becomes increasingly automated due to the coronavirus outbreak. YouTube said Monday that because of reduced in-office work, the platform is relying more on machine learning than humans to review videos.
9. A TikTok memo obtained by The Intercept directed censorship of users deemed ugly, overweight, or disabled, and banned users for livestreams that criticized governments. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok said the policies were never in place in the US market and were no longer in use at all.
10. GitHub announced it is acquiring NPM, a small startup that provides Javascript tools to 12 million developers. NPM had been rocked with turmoil in the past year, as many employees and executives resigned, the leadership team tried to establish a sustainable business model, and the company struggled to raise money, according to former employees.
    
    

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