Technology

The FCC is finally going to require wireless carriers to implement an anti-robocalling technology, after asking them nicely for more than a year to do so at their convenience. Of course, the FCC itself is now required to do this after Congress got tired of waiting on them and took action itself.

The technology is called Secure Telephony Identity Revisited / Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs, mercifully abbreviated to STIR/SHAKEN, and amounts to a sort of certificate authority for calls that prevents phone numbers from being spoofed. (This is a good technical breakdown if you&re curious.)

STIR/SHAKEN has been talked about for quite some time as a major part of the fight against robocalls, and in 2018 FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said that carriers would have until the end of 2019 to implement it. 2019 came and went, and while the FCC (and indeed carriers) took other actions against robocallers, STIR/SHAKEN went largely undeployed.

Meanwhile, Congress, perhaps tired of receiving scam calls themselves, managed to collectively reach across the aisle and pass the TRACED Act, which essentially empowers the FCC and other departments to take action against robocallers — and prevents carriers from charging for anti-robocall services.

It also ordered the FCC to set a timeline for STIR/SHAKEN implementation, which is what Pai is doing now.

&Itclear that FCC action is needed to spur across-the-board deployment of this important technology. There is no silver bullet when it comes to eradicating robocalls, but this is a critical shot at the target,& he said in a statement issued today.

There does not, however, appear to be any great hurry. The proposal, which will be voted on at the FCCmeeting later this month, would require voice service providers to implement STIR/SHAKEN by June 30… of 2021. And one-year extensions will be available to smaller providers who claim difficulty getting the system up and running.

In other words, you can expect to keep receiving strange calls offering discounts on cruises and warning you of IRS penalties for some time to come. Of course, there are some things you can do to stem the flow of scammers — check out our 101 on preventing robocalls for some simple tips to save yourself some aggravation.

Twitter CEO defends himself from activist investors, Google takes additional coronavirus precautions and a fizzy drink maker raises $30 million. Hereyour Daily Crunch for March 6, 2020.

1. Twitter CEOweak argument why investors shouldn&t fire him

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke yesterday at a Morgan Stanley conference, where he delivered remarks (also shared via Twitterinvestor relations account) that responded obliquely to activist investor Elliott Managementefforts to pressure Twitter into a slew of reforms, potentially including replacing Dorsey with a new CEO.

Among other things, Dorsey said he might not spend six months a year in Africa after all, claimed the companyreal product development is happening under the hood and offered an excuse for deleting Vine before it could become TikTok.

2. Google recommends Washington State employees work from home, citing coronavirus risk

The software giant has not closed its Washington offices outright, nor is it planning to make an official statement regarding the recommendation, but the news certainly points to a broader trend of serious precautions around the novel coronavirus outbreak. The move follows a similar decision by Lyft, which sent home employees in its San Francisco office.

3. Spindrift, maker of fizzy drinks, has raised $29.8M

Spindrift, founded in 2010, is up against big players, like the beloved and decades-old LaCroix, another sparkling water brand. The company differentiates itself by emphasizing &real fruit& in its drinks — think cucumbers from Michigan, strawberries from California and Alfonso mangoes from India.

4. Airbnb and three other P2P rental platforms agree to share limited pan-EU data

The European Commission announced that it has reached a data-sharing agreement with vacation rental platforms Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor — trumpeting the arrangement as a &landmark agreement& which will allow the EUstatistical office to publish data on short-stay accommodations across the EU.

5. SaaS companies flirt with correction territory as another wild week comes to a close

Stocks are set to fall further today, likely forcing shares in SaaS and cloud companies down yet again. After two wild trading weeks, the high-flying tech category is off over 9% from recent highs before the bell this morning, putting it close to correction territory. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Mark Cuban backs ChatableApps, developer of a hearing assist app that removes background noise

The company has built a smartphone app that provides hearing assistance by removing background noise in near real time. Alongside auditory neural signal processing researcher Dr. Andy Simpson, the companyco-founders are Brendan O&Driscoll, Aidan Sliney and George Boyle — the original team behind the music discovery app Soundwave.

7. Pex buys Dubset to build YouTube ContentID for TikTok - more

Pex is a royalty attribution startup that scans social networks and other user-generated content sites for rightsholders& content, then lets them negotiate licensing with the platforms, request a take-down, demand attribution and/or track the consumption statistics. Dubset, meanwhile, has spent 10 years tackling the problem of getting remixes and multi-song DJ sets legalized for streaming.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunchroundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you&d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

While some gig economy companies have already taken steps to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among its workers, Sen. Mark Warner (VA) is encouraging them to go further and consider ensuring workers don&t face financial consequences as a result of the virus.

&I strongly urge that you attempt to address the potential financial hardship for your workers if they are sick or have to self-quarantine during this time,& he wrote. &In order to limit the spread of COVID-19, it is critical that platform companies lead by example by committing that economic uncertainty will not be deterrents to their workers following public health guidance during the response.&

In separate letters to Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Postmates, Grubhub and DoorDash, Sen. Warner laid out a couple of ideas. The first entails creating a special coronavirus health fund that would be available to gig workers if they need to take time off to get tested or self-quarantine. The other idea is to pay workers their regular average pay, even if they can&t work their normal average hours.

&A health emergency for which they bear no responsibility should not place an undue financial burden on workers and their families,& he wrote.

Uber, in a statement to TechCrunch, said it is exploring options to compensate drivers who may be affected.

&We have a dedicated global team, guided by the advice of a consulting public health expert and public health organizations, working to respond as needed in each market where we operate around the world,& an Uber spokesperson said. &This team is also exploring compensation for drivers who have been quarantined or diagnosed with coronavirus, whether independently, through a fund, or in partnership with peer companies. We will keep the Senator updated about our plans and will respond directly to his letter.&

In a statement, a Lyft spokesperson said the company appreciates Sen. Warnerleadership but did not explicitly mention potential compensation.

&We are focused on taking appropriate actions and are actively planning for multiple scenarios,& the Lyft spokesperson said. &We stand ready to coordinate with government officials.&

DoorDash, meanwhile, says it plans to engage in with Sen. Warner today about &innovative solutions& that help to enhance the welfare of DoorDashdelivery workers.

&DoorDashtask force is actively working to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to protect the safety of our entire community in response to the spread of COVID-19,& a DoorDash spokesperson said. &We will continue to provide the latest public health guidance to consumers, Dashers, and merchants and remind our community in affected areas of the delivery instruction feature, enabling requests for food to be left at the door along with a photo of where the food should be left through the app.&

Postmates, which recently set up contactless delivery options, says it will continue to share information with its fleet of workers as the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention evolves. Additionally, Postmates said it plans to brief Sen. Warneroffice with its plans to &invest in the well being of our flexible workforce.&

&Community health and safety is paramount at Postmates, and we continue to issue in-app, precautionary CDC guidance with those carrying out deliveries so that they are aware of the latest preventative measures,& a Postmates spokesperson said in a statement. &Postmates also announced today an option to designate drop-off of an item without contact; and we will continue to encourage employees, merchants, consumers, and all parts of our community to follow safety protocols such as washing hands and staying in if you are sick.&

GruhHub, similarily, also says itfocused on the health and safety of its drivers, customers and restaurant partners.

&We share Senator Warnerconcerns about the safety and welfare of our drivers and look forward to working with the Senator on these important issues,& a GrubHub spokesperson said in a statement,

This focus on the response of gig economy companies comes at a time when many of them are trying to combat a new California gig worker protection law, which would make it harder for these companies to classify workers as independent contractors. If classified as W-2 employees, they would have access to things like health care and paid time off.

Outside of the gig economy, companies like Microsoft and Facebook have been more proactive in this area. Microsoft, for example, has committed to paying hourly workers their regular wages even if they are unable to work as a result of COVID-19 concerns. Facebook, shortly after Microsoftannouncement, committed to paying its contingent workers who cannot work during this time of concern. SXSW has also just recently cancelled its conference.

TechCrunch has reached out to Instacart . We&ll update this story if we hear back.

Startup accelerator Y Combinator announced today that it has moved its demo day online, citing a &growing concern over COVID-19,& or coronavirus. The demo day has historically drawn crowds of Silicon Valley elite, journalists and both national and international venture capitalists to watch more than 100 startups come out to the world.

&While we won&t be able to recreate every aspect of Demo Day, we&ll try our best to create an amazing experience for our founders and investors,& Y Combinator said in a blog post. Y Combinator30th annual demo day will be pre-recorded and released to investors on Monday March 23, per the post.

Thanks to a mix of history and glamour, demo day is the culminating day of a YC startupaccelerator experience. Ita big audience full of check writers and fast typers, and at the least, they&ll get a tweet or a couple of sign-ups. The move to remote, in some way, dims that excitement.

Brianne Kimmel, the founder of Work Life Ventures, noted that as investor demand for YC companies has grown, &the dozen or so breakout companies get funded weeks before demo day.& Kimmel attended YC2016 Winter batch, and attended the past four demo days as an investor.

&While the entire early stage ecosystem comes together at YC demo day — many investors are there to network and support the companies they&ve backed well before the founder presents on stage,& Kimmel said. Many other major tech events are being cancelled as well, including SXSW.

Kimmel invested in Tandem before demo day last year, and has already invested in Accord, a project management platform, ahead of this yeardemo day.

Beyond digital presentations, YC has said it will &provide additional written background information on each company and access to their decks.& It also will provide software to help investors and founders arrange one-on-one meetings.

Seth Bannon, a founding investor at Fifty Years and previous YC graduate (S12), said &the face to face human element is incredibly important, as founders try to gauge if they want to partner with an investor for the next tens years and vice versa.&

&At Demo Day you can have hundreds of those quick face to face interactions in hours. That said, I think this is the right decision for YC,& Bannon told TechCrunch. &The safety of founders and the broader community is most important. Good on them for making a really tough decision.&

Chris Woodward, the CEO of Handle (YC W19), said that &while not being able to meet investors in person at demo day could be seen as a blow to the current batches by some people, I see it as a potential opportunity for them to set longer meetings with investors post demo day.&

Other tech conferences have cancelled or moved operations online in an effort to protect against the new coronavirus. Earlier today, Jason LemkinSaaStr postponed its annual conference to September 2020. Another accelerator, 500 Startups, will be live-streaming its separate demo day. YCdecision to post pre-recorded videos is an attempt to bring deal access to investors, without shutting down all operations.

&For 15 years, startup investors have supported every new batch of YC companies, and we know the same will be true for this batch,& the post said.

Last night, in a move that all companies should look to emulate, Microsoft announced that it would continue to pay hourly workers impacted by office closures as the company responds to the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.

Now, Facebook appears to be following suit, according to a statement from the company:

&We are working closely with our vendors to ensure we prioritize our teamhealth and safety. Facebookwill pay contingent workers that cannot work due to reduced staffing requirements during voluntary work from home, when we close an office, when we choose to send an employee home, or when they are sick,& Chloe Meyere, aFacebook company spokesperson wrote in an email.

In a blog post announcing Microsoftdecision, company President Brad Smith wrote:

&While the work to protect public health needs to speed up, the economy can&t afford to slow down. We&re committed as a company to making pubic health our first priority anddoing what we can to address the economic and social impact of COVID-19. We appreciate that whataffordable for a large employer may not be affordable for a small business, but we believe that large employers who can afford to take this type of step should consider doing so.&

Several tech companies have asked employees to work from home in places where COVID-19 cases have been identified, like Washington state and California, including Google,LyftandSquare. Concerns about the COVID-19 have alsoled to the cancellationsof major events, like Mobile World Congress and GoogleI/O developer conference.

Tech companies have created a dual-class worker system in recent years, keeping their more technical and product-oriented staff as full-time workers for the main company, while exporting elements of labor to third-party companies. This nigh-class-based system has raised both eyebrows and ire, especially when techfamous buses were under public attack. Moving to comp more, or all workers is not only good PR, though it is also that, itsimply good ethics.

Perhaps the current situation will help more tech companies bring more of their workforce in-house. Whether itAlphabetdependence on temps, Facebookoutsourcing of moderating work, or just hiring other companies to staff their operations, thereprobably too much internal outsourcing going on. But at least hourly folks aren&t going to take a pay cut during a pandemic. A low bar, and not one that all tech companies have cleared so far, but a better step than nothing at all.

If you&re an early-stage startup founder with a big vision and even bigger dreams, join us and more than 10,000 other like-minded startuppers at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2020 on September 14-16. Silicon Valleypremier early-stage startup extravaganza focuses on founders, investors and startup experts determined to disrupt and reshape technology.

Attending is awesome, but attending and exhibiting at Disrupt — for free — is even better. What magic is this? No hocus-pocus required. Simply apply to our TC Top Picks program. Applying is also free, and iteasy to do. However, earning that coveted Top Pick designation — not so easy.

TechCrunch editors have a keen eye for the qualities that translate into serious startup success. They&ll thoroughly review every application and then choose up to five stellar startups for each of the following categories:AI, Biotech + Healthtech, Enterprise/SaaS, Fintech, Mobility, Retail + E-commerce, Robotics + Hardware IOT, Security/Privacy, Social Impact + Education, Space.

Pro tip: Keep the phrase &up to five& in mind. If the editors feel only three startups fit the bill for any given category, they&ll stop at three.

Now that you know how to apply, lettalk about why you should apply. Every Top Pick startup receives a free Startup Alley Exhibitor Package. As a Top Pick VIP, you&ll strut your impressive stuff for a full day in a prime location in Startup Alley, our exhibition floor. The package also includes three complimentary Founder passes to Disrupt SF 2020 — bring your crew and make the most of your time at the show.

Thousands of people, including investors and tech media, pour through Startup Alley, and everyone wants to know who made the Top Pick cut. You&ll reap invaluable exposure to potential customers, partners, mentors and again…investors. Who doesn&t love investors?

Herewhat Francisco Serra-Martins, founder of Australia-based Sonder Designs, says about his Top Pick experience:

&Being a TC Top Pick at Disrupt San Francisco not only helped us close out an additional $1 million investment for our seed round, it was an incredible opportunity to introduce our technology to an international community and to engage with the San Francisco startup ecosystem.&

One of the most exciting parts of earning a Top Pick designation is the media exposure. Hundreds of top media outlets attend Disrupt, and they&re all looking for great stories. And, drum roll please, your media experience also includes being interviewed by a TechCrunch editor live on the Showcase Stage.

We record the interview, edit the video and blast it across our social media networks. Ita valuable marketing tool that you can use long after Disrupt ends.

Intrigued? Want to know more? Check out who we chose as TC Top Picks at Disrupt SF 2019.

TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2020takes place on September 14-16 at Moscone West. Take a chance and apply to be a TC Top Pick. If you&re not quite there yet, thatOK. Come to Disrupt and learn from the best minds in the startup ecosystem. Buy an early-bird ticket here and save up to $1,800.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team byfilling out this form.