Daily Insight

The ongoing saga of Elon Musk insights continues...

Elon Musk is once again the world's richest man. His first run with the title lasted just four days after an 8% drop in Tesla shares on Monday cost him $13.5B. Jeff Bezos has fallen back to second after recapturing the title for a day and is now $1.4B below Musk. (Click to Tweet)

Many people have recently tweeted out our Daily Insights; our writers and marketing team will continue trying to like, comment, or retweet all your insights. 

WhatsApp has denied the allegations that its new privacy policy update would mandate users to share sensitive profile information with Facebook. The company has issued a clarification, following a surge in the download of rival apps such as Signal and Telegram. Prominent personalities including Elon Musk and investor Chamath Palihapitiya recommended the Signal app to their social media followers following the allegations. 

More:

• WhatsApp has clarified that, according to its privacy policy, it would only read communication with WhatsApp business profiles so that the information could be used for marketing purposes.
• The company added that interactions with the Facebook Shops feature through WhatsApp could be used to display ads on Facebook and Instagram, though this feature is optional.
• Further, WhatsApp stated that it cannot read private messages sent across its platforms due to its end-to-end encryption features. 
• However, WhatsApp opts users in to share information such as their mobile number with Facebook by default. It claims that the information obtained will only be used for improved Facebook ad and product experience. 
• Apple recently mandated developers to disclose data obtained from users under different categories such as "data used to track you," "data linked to you," and "data not linked to you." Apple denied Facebook's claim that the new policy doesn't apply to Apple's apps.
• Due to the allegations against WhatsApp, Signal has become one of the most downloaded apps in app stores since last week, followed by Telegram. The non-profit organization Signal Foundation was co-founded by WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, and it acts as Signal's holding company. Brian Acton previously donated $50M for the foundation and said that Signal's idea is to sustain through donations. 
• Around 25 million new users signed up for Telegram in the last three days.

In other data-privacy related news:

• Hours before Amazon shut down Parler, hackers downloaded around 99% of public data available on Parler, including photos, videos, and geolocation data, due to flaws in basic security features. The FBI has sought to obtain the data collected by the hackers as part of their search for suspects who swarmed the U.S. Capitol last week. 

Lately, our Inside Business readers have been very active, regularly emailing our team or reaching out on social media. As our community engagement grows, our team is looking for ways to share our knowledge to your benefit.

Airbnb has announced that they will cancel all reservations made in Washington D.C., for the week of January 18th. The move intends to prevent travelers from going to Washington during the inauguration of President-elect Biden. The company is also blocking any new reservations from being made in Washington for that week. 

More:

• Airbnb will be reimbursing all travelers who currently have bookings. 
• The company will also pay all hosts a sum equivalent to what they would have earned from their guests. This money will come out of the company's own accounts. 
• The move is part of a new safety plan the company is instituting. This includes banning all individuals involved in the U.S. Capitol riots from the service. 
• The company will also be banning all individuals they believe to be associates of hate groups from making bookings in the future. 

Intel-owned Mobileye is producing laser sensors that will ensure affordable autonomous vehicles are available by 2025. Mobileye plans to use an Intel silicon chip to develop a full self-driving sensor suite that will include LiDAR laser sensors.

More:

• Mobileye controls 80% of the world's market for advanced driver-assistance vision systems and was acquired by Intel in 2017.
• Later this year, Mobileye will expand test fleets of its autonomous vehicle program to Detroit, Paris, Shanghai, and Tokyo.
• Mobileye will begin selling its level-four self-driving system to robotaxi operators in 2022, as well as integrating the self-driving system into its own driverless vehicles.

A version of this story first appeared in Inside Transportation. Read the full issue here.

Visa and Plaid's $5.3B acquisition deal has been called off following the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit. The deal was announced in January last year before the pandemic, and the lawsuit was filed in November. 

More:

• Plaid offers banking-as-a-service through its API platform. Since the deal announcement, the company's revenue is expected to have increased by triple digits.
• Visa said that it sees Plaid as not being competitive but complementary to its offerings, and hence the deal would have prevailed despite the lawsuit. But, the deal has been called off due to complex litigations that could take years to solve.
• Plaid said that the company had added hundreds of banks to its customer base with an overall 60% growth last year. The company will continue to work with Visa as a partner.
• Mastercard's $825M acquisition of Finicity — a company similar to Plaid — was approved by the DoJ as Mastercard has less than 25% market share in the payment processing market.
• TechCrunch noted that the Visa-Plaid deal cancellation could affect the valuation of fintech startups and investments from VCs.  

Inside Washington

• Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) is supporting $2000 stimulus checks to be passed under President-elect Joe Biden. 
• President-elect Biden is expected to nominate Gary Gensler as SEC Chair.
• Mike Pompeo has canceled his final trip as Secretary of State after officials from the European Union and Luxembourg government refused to meet with him.
• The head of Operation Warp Speed has resigned as requested by President-elect Biden. 
   

QUICK HITS:

• This company raised $9.3M to help orgs gift employees with glamping trips, Peloton bikes, and virtual sommelier lessons. Check out Blueboard's Experience menu. *
• Google has paused all political ads until the presidential inauguration on Jan 21.
• Amazon's Prime Video has launched a comparatively cheaper subscription for mobile editions. The plan starts at $1.20 per month which includes a certain amount of free data usage (from 6GB per month) based on the subscription tier.
• YouTube has removed two videos uploaded to President Trump's account and has suspended new uploads in the channel for a week.
• Over 30,000 companies are building their eCommerce apps all without writing a single line of code. *

* This is sponsored content.